I have a question for all of you parents out there. Please raise your hands all of you who hope your children will grow up and put themselves last on the priority list regarding health. Go ahead, don’t be shy. What? No hands? Oh, you think I’m being ridiculous? But wait a minute, that’s exactly what we’ve been doing by running around at wit’s end ignoring our health, skipping checkups, avoiding yearly screenings. We are teaching our children that it’s not possible to grow up and take care of yourself and your family at the same time. The moral of this little exercise, if we want to be good parents we have to be good to ourselves.
So guilt aside how do we do that? Well that’s exactly what we’ve been working on. This Summer I am serving as the Ambassador for the American Heart Association’s Go Red For Women BetterU 12 week program. Everything that I have done this Summer, every step that I have taken, both literally and figuratively, I have done so in the presence of my children. They are my support team, but they are also very much my audience, watching and internalizing the choices that I am making, whether I or they like it or not. What can I learn from that? Well, first and foremost I can learn that I am not alone.
From the first time I started going to the doctor alone as a teen-ager, when the doctor would ask the “What’s your family history?” questions I would quickly interject that I am adopted. That would end that. There was nothing more to be said. It didn’t bother me so much at the time because my visits got to be that much shorter! But when I was pregnant with my first child it became incredibly important to me that I seek out my history so that I could arm my children with every possible chance of living a long and fruitful life. A great way to do that is through prevention. With all of our medical advances since I was a child we now know that there are things we can do to attempt prevent history from repeating itself. But you have to know your history to start. I engaged an internet company and found my birth father while I was pregnant with my first child. Unfortunately when I found him he was already in the throes of dementia. I didn’t get those answers that I sought so I just gave up.
My instincts were right on. There is so much that we as individuals can do to protect our health simply by knowing our history. Since that day I have found more of my biological family and now there are blanks that I can slowly fill in. But I will have to do the work to get the history. But it doesn’t end there. After I gain my history I have to pass it down to my children. So here’s your assignment this week from Miss Lori. I want you to go and interview your relatives: parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Anyone you have available to you. I want you to begin to fill in the blanks of your history, and then I want you to pass that history down to your children. If they are old enough you can talk about it in details. If they aren’t, then write it down in a family health history journal so that they will have it available to them. Then when the time comes for them to go into a doctor office on their own they’ll give their history, your history, your parents history; the full story. Because bottom line is, we are not alone. We may not always know who the shadows are that stand with us, but make no mistake they are there. Why not shine some light on them and give them an identity so they can provide support and knowledge, instead of darkness and confusion. It’s not just history, it’s OUR story. Together we can be BETTER.
SMILE On!
ML
Miss Lori can be found Musing from her Minivan at MissLori.TV , Wearetherealdeal.com , YoungChicagonista , ChicagoMomsBlog , and ChicagoMoms.com. She is the Chicago Family Entertainment Blogger for Examiner.com and a Discussion Leader for MomsLikeMeChicago. You can also see her Activating to Be Great at Miss Lori’s CAMPUS on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
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