Halloween Teal Pumpkin Pride

Food allergies are probably kind of a joke to you. Maybe in your mind it evokes a similar reaction to hearing someone say their kid gets gas from gluten. You nod and smile and internally roll your eyes. You then briefly wonder why food allergies seem to be becoming a parenting "fad" and don't remember even knowing one kid with a food allergy when you were young. You think these parents must be helicopter moms and dads or overreacting busybodies with nothing better to do than sit at a PTA meeting and plead for a peanut /treenut free classroom for their precious snowflake. And you think "Who the hell are you to ask my kid to forgo their PB&J? My kid LOVES PB&J its the only thing she eats and here you are saying she cant bring one to school? No. Nope sorry honey, not going to happen. How about you just watch your kids yourself huh? Why don't you just be an actual parent and explain to them that they cant eat things with peanuts?! So what if they cant read labels, you should be able to show them every single thing that may contain peanuts and train them to just not eat it! And Halloween? Are you stupid??? Its freaking Halloween for christs sake!! Why should I have to buy stickers or nilla wafers on the off chance your little tike decides to stop by my door?? He can get a snickers bar like everyone else and should know better to not eat it. If he cant handle that responsibility, then don't let him go trick or treating, duh! In fact, you probably should just home school him as well, or better yet, confine him to a bubble in your basement.


I want you to know I've tried writing this from a humble perspective and from a logical focus and from a pleading lens but its Oct 30th, we are one day away from Halloween and after reading enough stupid shit on the internet to make my head explode, I decided fuck it, I'm just going to be me and if this pisses you off or offends you or annoys you, I really don't care.

My youngest kid has one confirmed food allergy. We found out when he was 9 months old after his doctor told us to try giving him peanut butter for the first time. I went home that day and gave him less than a cm worth on an M&M sized piece of bread and he instantly went into what I later learned was the beginning of an anaphylactic reaction. It was terrifying and even more so because he didn't really look that bad, but I could tell something was very wrong. After being sent home from the ER without any medication administered or any testing done I realized that this shit, this having a food allergy business, if confirmed, was going to be a constant uphill battle with the rest of the nonallergy having world. Testing done the following day at his normal doctors office confirmed my fears a week later--he was highly allergic to peanuts and what he experienced was a serious reaction.

We were told to remove all peanut products and possible peanut products from our home. That meant any product made in a facility that also processes peanuts isn't safe due to the possibility of cross contamination. We were to always carry two epipen injectors with the baby at all times, where ever he goes, even if its just across the street. Epipens are a lifesaving way to quickly inject a person with epinephrine, a drug that helps halt a serious allergic reaction in its tracks. The faster one is used, the better chance the person has of preventing the life threatening stages of anaphylaxis. We were to avoid ice cream shops, Asian restaurants, and bakeries as they are the most common places to have accidental ingestion of peanuts. We were going to have to get used to telling friends and relatives no you cant just feed our kid without checking with us first. We were going to have to eagle eye every playground, playplace, splashhpad for signs of kids eating peanut butter, or peanuts, or candy with peanut filling and then pray to all the gods that we neutralized the threat before our allergic kid accidentally toddled over and picked up that Reeses wrapper and shoved it down his throat.

We were told to basically be on terror level red at all times for the rest of his life, unless we are one of the lucky families, and hes one of the 20% of kids that outgrows it. So, there's an 80% chance this is our and his new normal for the rest of his life. The rest of his life. Let that sink in. My kid may have to be constantly on alert for signs that he may die from simply doing something he has to do every single day to survive--eat. You convince a teenage boy to carry an epipen with him at all times. You try to get a grade schooler to truly understand why she cant eat the rice krispie treats all her friends are eating at the birthday party. You explain to a toddler who loves eating everything that isn't nailed down why his world is actually a minefield. This isn't just about fear for parents, its about having to literally teach your own child to be afraid of food enough to take their allergy seriously, but equally empower them so that they can function in a relatively normal way at the same time. Because parenting is all sunshine and rainbow farts without that on top of it.

You look me in the eye and tell me now that its ridiculous for parents of food allergy kids to ask other adults to please take simple steps every once in a while to try and keep their food allergy kids safe. 1 in 13 kids in the US has a confirmed food allergy, a diagnosis that has steadily risen over the past years. These kids aren't 1 in a million, they are in your neighborhoods, your churches, your sports leagues, your schools. If the trend continues, and the numbers continue to rise, it is only a matter of time until your own family or friend's family is impacted as well. Before my son's diagnosis, I didn't get it either--you never really do until its your own kid.

So for anyone out there that thinks this is whats wrong with our country today and that everyone is too sensitive and that want me to bow my head and feel embarrassed for asking for help in keeping my kid and other kids safe:

For everyone else that is offering toys instead of candy or painting a pumpkin teal or simply not being a judgey POS regarding food allergies, a giant thank you very much, you do not know how much you are appreciated by these kids and parents.

For more information on food allergies visit http://www.foodallergy.org/


Happy Halloween to all y'all out there big and small

Year 7

Its taken this long for me to allow myself to realize that I have no fucking clue how to grieve you. There are stages and the last once is supposed to be accompanied with this literal physical release that is a kind of giving up of all the pain and hurt and sadness to the universe. I havent done that yet. I havent even come close. I can feel it all inside wanting to be free, wanting to be released from the cage Ive made with cement blocks and mortar and heavy heavy chains. But Ive forgotten where I put the key. My hands dont remember the pathways of tearing down this house I built myself to contain you. And so it sits, heavy in my chest. Full of all my incredibly intense fears of truly having to let you go.

For the first few years I couldnt even talk about you with family. Your death was an invisible pink elephant crying in the corner, anguishing from lonliness. Someone look at me!! Dont you see me?? Im still here!! But I refused to look. Your death was a faraway thing, like someone discussing the pyramids who'd never actually been to Eygpt. I was told how strong I was, how well I was doing. I couldnt cry with people about you. And to watch others cry about you to me? The rage!! The horror! NONONO STOP. You dont get to be sad. You dont get to cry. I am the one who should not ever have to get out of bed again and here I am comforting you? Too much. Too much. I block things out. I dont want to feel them again, I dont want these memories of these people telling me these things about you that I already know. How could I not know? I lived in you. We shared the same blood. You were my home.

This year there is an acknowledgement for the first time of how much anger is there. Thats a step, maybe I am moving forward? But slowly so slowly. Dragging my feet and shouting the entire way. So much anger. How could you leave me???? You were all I had !!! Just you and me for forever and now forever is gone because you left. You left me.
You
       left
             me
                  here

You went somewhere I cant follow. So Here I am. Here I sit. Here I lay. Here I eat. Here I sleep. All the while trying to continue wanting to do it without you. I am trying. I try.

I listened to a woman speak about Death. She said we choose our paths in life, that before we are born we plan it all out like blueprints, and every heartache, every loss, we signed up for. We chose to experience it. She said there is a heaven but its more like here than we imagine. She said I will see you again, that you are around, that you can let me know youre with me. I get a brief mental image of you in a garden in this heaven she described, which is funny because you never were really into outside and plants like me and gram are. But I see you clear as day, with a little rake and you look up like you just remember you had somewhere you were planning to be, but that you got too immersed in your work. These things swirl around in my head like leaves caught in a tidepool and the undercurrent that pulls at me without fail is the wanting. These are things I want to believe. I want so bad for these things she said to be true. Equally as hard, I feel the weight of my cement house, tethering me in disbelief, unwilling to let me feel this hope, this joy.

The grief of you wont let me feel things. Childlike wonder still gets through probably because thats something Ive never given up. I can still feel the stars and a beautiful sunset or sunrise or a giant flock of birds fully. But other things, very important life altering things? They are grey around the edges. My wedding, the births of my children, building a new home with my husband, all have these little grey edges. Like photographs forgotten and left too long in damp basements.

 I want to be fully happy again. I want to see the true joy in all things. Ive just forgotten how. I still laugh. My husband makes me laugh. My kids make me laugh. I love watching them. I stare at them for culminations of hours and hours upon hours. Watching them play. Watching their little minds figure things out, make up stories. In them I see me and I want to protect them from these hurts I harbor within. I want them to grow up feeling secure and free and light. Lightness. All childhoods should be made of lightness. Heaviness is an adult thing.

Every passing year it becomes more clear to me how much I dont know. I do not know if this is the correct way to lament another souls passing. Is it supposed to take this long? Shouldnt I feel patched up by now? Why cant I remember how to remove these chains and bricks from around you? I dont know. I dont know. Im trying. I try.

But time passes. It moves on. I wonder what you think of me, what you think of what Im doing, what Ive done. Are you proud?  Do you wish you could hold your grandchildren upon your lap? I tell them about you. I will never stop telling them. Jack has your fiestiness. Mookie has your eyes. He really does. They are hazel. I hope they stay that way. I mourn a bit for the baby girl that I couldve named after you. Is that wrong? I dont know. I think I just wanted to be able to see something alive that was part you and carried your name. Something I could see and hold and touch and love. But Mookie has your eyes. And Jack has your spirit. You are in there, just as you are in me.

Today I will go to your grave. I will clean it and put up some yellow and organge flowers. And I will hold my head up to the sky and wait for the sunshine to fall across my face and pretend its your hand there. My children will be with me. We will go and sit to honor you. We have not forgotten you Holly Marie.

And yet, this story isnt one of hopelessness. Grief, Im learning, takes time. Grief, isnt what we are told it will be, its a russian doll with 55 inner pieces. What we are told equates to the cheerful smiling face painted on the outermost doll. I am working my way through these dolls, and when I get to the tiniest one I think at last I will be free. Free to fully feel again. Free to throw this hurt to the universe and to only smile when I think of you.
Im trying.
I try.

In memory of Holly Marie Stadnik

June 12th 1957-Oct 22nd 2008