There will be stormy days ahead...

All your life, you stand around with your friends and you practice, and anticipate your role.
You do your best to lay out the next moment, and the next hour, and the next performance.
You practice the tune and are ready to play your part, at the right moment.

Sometimes, at the time when you need to come in, you choke up, you stop breathing, you get a cough, you freeze. Your friends cover for you, and you're safe for now. But you know, deep down, that this can happen again. You know this and you are ashamed and mortified at what happened, and how you couldn't play when your time came up.

You suffered a crisis of confidence. A crisis of identity too. You thought you had done your best to prepare yourself for this moment. And yet...

If your friends and teachers and parents didn't support you and encouraged you through these crises, you would never play an instrument, give a speech, try out for a part, and face challenges that frighten you. No matter your age, you will find that new challenges will be creeping in from all sides, asking you to keep re-tooling, change your manners, learn new ways.

You can't quit every time something feels uncomfortable.

I just faced a new challenge just this week. My husband had minor surgery and before  being sent home the nurse wanted to show me how to apply a wet-to-dry bandaging.  I tend to pass out when needles or blood is involved, and told her so. She insisted it was easy to do. Just as she revealed the open wound (yes, an open wound, hence the wet-to-dry instructions) I broke down.

I can't be afraid of a wound that needs bandaging. There will be more of these ahead as we both grow weaker and sicker. Though we know that Hubby needs to face housework and cooking without me, and I need to face handling technical matters and nursing matters without flinching, there is a whole lot of complications and health issues that we may not anticipate at all.

This new stage of our lives is all about facing our darkest fears. Our parents didn't live this long.  Now that the health industry has so many new procedures to prolong life and good living, we have new challenges to anticipate too, challenges that might frighten us, break us down if we are not prepared.

As for me, I'm taking a nursing course next semester, needles or not.

What? Women Issues again?

Between Barbie dolls and horse rides, girls think a lot about their future. A lot.  Girls dream all sorts of dreams, to run companies, to become Speaker of the House, CEO's of International corporations, and even President of this United States.

How is it then that their health and welfare gets to be so controversial now and then?
Whenever human reproduction issues come about, mainly women's health issues, family planning, and other issues involving girls health and future, we begin to re frame these arguments and go back to the different ways we were brought up.

This is not the time to get into a religious war.

By the time your girl is twelve, you better have a set of guidelines to help her grow strong, healthy and unscathed.  Being a girl should not be an "issue".

Education is our first target.  Through education, both boys and girls  should receive basic information of how their bodies are changing, and the choices they will face with their increasing sexualities.
Pure and simple facts.
Parents ought to be the first educators, by the way.

Many poor women do not get health care through doctors and family physicians.  Most of them rely on Family Planning Clinics for information and check-ups.  Making these institutions disappear or lose their funding is denying poor women basic health care at a most precarious age, I might add.

You say the government shouldn't interfere with private issues?
 I say the government is providing a health alternative for those people who need it the most.
 It is voluntary.
 It is not associated with any churches or religious tenets. 
It is a health delivery system.

If you have never visited these places, drop in and see.
You'll be surprised on how they benefit the health and welfare of a lot of women.
You'd be happy to know that your tax dollars are preventing diseases, curing ailments and providing education and information to assist women plan a healthy and vibrant family.