Why we #embracethebif

It’s October, which means it’s time for perhaps the most poorly-timed awareness month of all, at least from my point of view. Sandwiched between all the pinkwashing of Breast Cancer Awareness, the purple of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the yellow and blue of Down Syndrome Awareness Month, you might see a little yellow, because it’s Spina Bifida Awareness Month, too. Last year, some friends and I got a little annoyed with the way some of our bigger advocacy orgs handle Spina Bifida Awareness Month, often focusing on prevention (something you may or may not really be able to totally achieve, because despite what folks tell you about folic acid, Spina Bifida is not 100% preventable) than on the beautiful, vibrant, varied people with Spina Bifida who are ALREADY HERE. So we started a little hashtag, #embracethebif. We just wanted to show people that life with Spina Bifida isn’t all sadness, pain, and difficulty. In fact, like any other life, life with SB is often beautiful, funny, interesting, and full. In short, it’s just LIFE.

Almost daily, someone just starting out on their SB journey finds their way to my blog or twitter or Instagram, and lets me know that even though they are in the dark place of a new diagnosis, kind of freaked out by medical jargon and grim prognoses, just seeing pictures of and reading stories about our ordinary life has given them hope. I remember doing the same when our diagnosis was new. I looked for blogs and images of kids with SB just being kids. And their faces turned out to be a lot more comforting to me than uncertain futures and things like surgeries, shunts, catheters, bowel programs, therapies, delays, braces, wheelchairs, walkers, and all the other things that seemed so huge and freaky when we were staring down a lifetime of them like some sort of loaded gun.

Yes, our life does sometimes involve all of those “scary” things, and some seasons are more full of pain, worry, and medical interventions than others. But mostly? Mostly those things are a sidebar to the life we live and love. So, this year, I want to again fill up my corner of the internet with positive, regular-life images of life with SB, because that’s what I think people who don’t know anything about SB need to see. Life with SB is just another way of being a person in the world. In my house, it looks like blonde curls, a deep belly laugh, a stubborn spirit, a love of dancing, a friend to babies, a snuggler extraordinaire– our Claire Bear.

Please consider sharing images of what SB looks like to you– use the #embracethebif hashtag, and let’s show the world that life with SB isn’t something to fear, but worthy of embracing with open arms. If you’d like, you can also submit images to me via my Facebook Page, and I’ll share them throughout the month!