Share The Gift of Life

As most of you know, I am interning at the New York Organ Donor Network this summer doing Hispanic Marketing and Public Relations with their Outreach team and I wanted to share some myths and facts that I've learned this summer so far. It's really a great cause and I can't help but try to outreach even more after meeting so many people that have gotten a transplant or are on the waiting list. These are real people and need your help to live their lives normally without the fear of imminent death. Saving lives is actually quite easy, and with your gift of life, up to 8 people can be saved. It's a powerful cause, statement, and mission. I've been having a great summer working for them and hope you'll consider the facts of this beautiful process. Thanks guys!


1) MYTH: Doctors will not do everything they can to save my life if they know I want to be a donor.

FACT: Donation can only occur after a patient has been declared brain dead by physicians who are not affiliated with the transplant recovery teams.

2) MYTH: Wealth and celebrity status dictate who on the transplant waiting list receives an organ first.

FACT: The transplant waiting list is completely blind to wealth or celebrity status. The severity of illness, time spent waiting for an organ and blood type are what matters for people waiting.

3) MYTH: Donation is against my religion.

FACT: All major religions endorse donation as the highest humanitarian act. Religious leaders, including the Pope, have all publicly supported donation.

4) MYTH: My family will have to pay extra bills.

FACT: A family of an organ and tissue donor is never responsible for costs related to donation.

5) MYTH: Donation will disfigure my body.

FACT: Donation takes place under the same strict sterile conditions as any medical procedure. A donor is treated with extreme care and the body is not disfigured.

6) MYTH: It is impossible to have a regular funeral service following organ donation.

FACT: Donation does not interfere with funeral arrangements. Open casket services are possible.

7) MYTH: Organs can be bought and sold on a black market.
FACT: In the U.S., law prohibits the buying and selling of organs. The

system for matching donor organs and potential recipients is regulated by the Federal Government.

8) MYTH: Signing the back of my driver's license or donor card will ensure that I will be a donor.

FACT: Surviving family must give consent before donation can take place, so it is essential that the family know the patient's wishes.


**Please sign up to share your gift of life by visiting http://www.donatelife.net/ to sign up to your state's registry. 18 people die daily waiting for an organ transplant and every 12 minutes, another name is added to the waiting list. With just one organ donor, up to 8 lives can be saved. If you need more information feel free to contact me!

Universal Solvent

The water droplets caress my face, massage my shoulders, and cleanse my thighs.

The soap washes the germs, removing the grime, and leaving us smooth to invite a new day, a brighter beginning, and a way to start fresh.

As I move the shower head settings from a soft gentle rain to a rougher massage waterfall, I know that this feeling of being free will only last for the next twenty minutes.

I’m showering not because I’m dirty or unclean.

I’m showering because showering is my way of hiding the pain and hoping that the water can somehow erase the past.

I once learned that water was the universal solvent. Does its universal powers work with humans as well?

My shower can camouflage the tears that stream down my face and the red and puffy eyes I’ve acquired from sleepless nights and sorrowful days.

The soap can wash away the bruises, the scrapes, and the blood that physically sting me.

And the shaver can scrape away a layer of dead skin and hair follicles as I hope that it also shaves away the layers of yesterday.

Taking a shower for me is more than a quick cleaning process, it’s where I gain hope that once I step out onto the bathroom rug and dry off, that times have changed, and that the solvent really did dissolve the past.

Unfortunately I’ve never had that experience yet, so I’m staying in the shower for 40 more minutes to soap up, wash, and shave off some more layers.

Rain and water may not be able to dissolve the past, but shavers and blood can terminate the future.

Cauterize Me

I’ve been hurt.

I’ve been hurt by this dagger that continues to pierce my diaphragm into my ribcage, slicing my heart...day after day.

The hurt isn’t a physical hurt. It’s a hurt that stings deeper than the flesh and the muscles that encase my pain.

It’s a hurt that has developed and stung me with cuts and bruises for so many years that the scabs are now dark brown and the purple-blue bruises just never seem to heal.

A hurt that I’ve been unable to let go, remove, or separate myself from.

Sadly enough this hurt has enveloped me and trapped me with its controlling gaze and claws and won’t let me go.

This hurt I speak of is fatal:

The wounds of a child unable to make him happy.

The wounds of a girl unable to make him proud.

The wounds of a teenager wondering what a man really is.

The wounds of a woman trying to make things work, and still destructively failing.

It’s a hurt that I can’t seem to outrun - even after sprinting through the finish line, he has already arrived at the end and caught his breath to taunt and humiliate me.

Go figure – it’s my luck: the escape hatches have all been removed, and he just keeps pushing me further and further into the darkened alleyway of heartache.

This hurt is unavoidable and damaging.

Unfortunately, as much as I try to fight it, this hurt is also apparently eternal.

Getting away seems unpromising, unattainable, and strictly impossible.

The claws have gripped and they have wounded me as deep as the Aetos Kaukasios wounded Prometheus regularly.

Although… Prometheus had a reason to be cut open, marred, and impaled on a daily basis.

What’s my reason?

"Performing"

There's something about dancing that just hits me at the core of who I am. I've tried for so many years to try and figure out why dance has become such an integral part of who I am and why it's so important in my life but I can never figure out why, I just know that it is. From ballet, jazz, merengue, salsa, pointe, tap, lyrical, mambo, and more I can't seem to stop performing year in and year out.

There's something in the act of performing and getting that step just perfect that makes me feel so much more fulfilled in life. I use practices as my study breaks and stress relievers. The practices and hundreds of people I've danced with over my 15 years of dancing have kept me sane and motivated to strive for more technique, seek more experiences, and learn new styles.** I no longer get nervous and jittery before I go on stage, but instead I feel anxious and ready to let my body take over. The feeling of being before hundreds of people who paid to see your show, executing a move perfectly, and performing for all to see motivates me every day to go to practices, extra rehearsals, or even dance in my room to a song all alone. It's not something I do just because, it's a part of who I am. When I try and explain this to people who don't understand, it's almost impossible to have them grasp the experience of being on stage after hours and hours of practice, sweat dripping down your face, eyeshadow and glitter shining on your eyes, and just letting your body take over the music. When I'm on stage, I don't even think about the moves - somehow they just come... I think about "performing", looking out to the audience, and enjoying my precious and limited 4 minutes of time to be on stage.

The funny part is that this feeling of adrenaline, excitement, and self-fulfillment extends far beyond the stage as I've realized - it goes into social dancing and clubbing as well. You know when you have a great salsa or mambo dance if you're not trying to follow, but if you're thoroughly enjoying the dance. The dance itself becomes a performance sans stage. The crowd is the audience and your partner is your co-choreographer for those 4-5 minutes of bliss that constitutes a social dance. And somehow a connection is always fabricated with this stranger who you've just spent the last 4 minutes with dancing - it's a connection that doesn't last longer than the dance itself, but a connection that makes you able to transcend the dance floor and make the moves mean more than what they are. I think that's one thing that distinctly separates amazing dancers from good ones - for me, they not only execute moves with precision, accuracy, and technique, but they genuinely enjoy every time they step, every hand styling, every drop of sweat, every turn, and every pattern that comes their way as they move to the rhythms that are played. It's their way of expressing themselves and their smiles and "performance" faces on-stage and off-stage show it. I can only hope that I have shown and continue to show my love and passion for dancing the same way it shows for these performers. Because in the end, we aren't really "performing"- we are just dancing from our hearts, doing what we love, and showing the world how much dance means to us.


** Shout out to my mother who took me to endless practices every week as child and pushed me to further continue my passion. Surprisingly, I wanted to quit dance when I first started, it was because of my mother that I didn't. She and the rest of my family still support me 100% in shows and they never missed a show before college. Even now, as long as I ask them, they make it out to support me in another state - the support is unyielding, noticed, and appreciated.

Must Haves

After chatting with a friend today for awhile about life, its perils, and how to make relationships work, I was given some great advice. Although I don't agree with a yearly "evaluation," there does need to be some type of analysis and understanding of the other person when you are together. So as per his advice, he made me think of my own "Must Have's" in a relationship and my "Should Haves". The Must Haves are the things you cannot sacrifice - the things that will make or break a boyfriend if he/she doesn't have it. I've realized with time things that should have been on my Must Have list that weren't before. The Should Haves are things that your significant other should have, but doesn't necessarily need. These are the things you compromise on and give a little on because let's face it - no one is perfect. :) Here is my list of Must and Should Haves - it'll definitely change with time, but for now this works.

A Man Must Have/Be:

• the desire to be a father and have a family
  
• be a Christian and want to raise his children with Christian values
  
• determination, drive to succeed, and goals
• understanding of me emotionally
• respect for me
• social, friendly
• have his own circle of friends outside of our mutual friends
• confidence in himself, but soft on the inside
• humble and compassionate
• able to dance with me no matter how good/bad you are - grinding is necessary :)
• ability to engage me intellectually & physically
• financially stability, or at least working towards this

A Man Should Have/Be:

• the want to raise his kids in a suburb
• the desire to send his kids to a private school
• a liking Hispanic food
• some hair on his body - armpits (*coughRudolphcough*) lol
• be bigger and taller than me
  
• an understanding of Latino culture
• basic understanding of Spanish
  

Losing Heart

"There is a secret set within each of our hearts. It often goes unnoticed, we rarely can put words to it, and yet it guides us throughout the days of our lives. This secret remains hidden for the most part in our deepest selves. It is the desire for life as it was meant to be. Isn't there a life you've been searching for all your days? You may not always be aware of your search, and there are times when you seem to have abandoned looking altogether. But again and again it returns to us, this yearning that calls out from for life we prize. It is elusive, to be sure. It seems to come and go at will. Seasons may pass until it surfaces again. And though it seems to taunt us, and may at times cause us great pain, we know that when it returns it is priceless. For if we could rediscover this desire, unearth it from beneath all other distractions, and embrace it as our deepest treasure, we would discover the secret of our existence."

-John Eldredge, Desire

"It's too late..." "I'm too old..." "I can't..." "I dont' know how to..."

STOP.

Stop the nonsense and listen to yourself. Are you really too old? Can you really not accomplish your goal? I need you to ask yourself this five times. Reflect and then get back to me. I don't believe in excuses, and especially not when they come in the way of getting to your heart's desires. If there is one thing I can take away from my junior year, it is to not settle and to go after my desires. How you go about getting to your heart's desires is the tricky part. But you should never have to sacrifice your own desires if you know that this is what you are after. I did this for too long in my life. I settled and convinced myself that I was happy, confident, and that I believed in my past decisions. I knew for so long what I was after, I knew for so long what could make me happy, and I knew for so long what I wanted. But I bottled it up, and in turn bottled my voice and happiness up. Little spurts of it came out every now and then, but it my desires were quickly fastened up again in their glass container never to reach the air I breathed.

Then I started to think about what I was doing, where I was going, and where I wanted to be. A good exercise for this is to make a list of what you want to do - anything and everything, big or small - and then ask yourself if you are en route to accomplishing all of those things. If you aren't... fix it.

Easier said than done, I am WELL aware. But honesty, if you don't confront yourself and really listen to your desires, your heart will constantly ache to be let free and to be let go. Happiness will be impossible if you do not listen carefully to yourself. Change is inevitable and while I myself am generally fearful of change, I have learned to deal with it and cope as best as possible - so far, so good. I have found myself happier day in and day out - taking steps every day to accomplish my goals and desires. When you accomplish one desire, cross it off your list. And when you hear another whisper from within you, write it down. Your secret "List of Desires" as I like to call it, should be ever changing and always full. As a jump start, I recommend reading John Eldregde's book called "Desire." Not only does it speak of how important it is to listen to yourself, but also sparks conversation about how to get there and how to live a life of passion and fulfillment - the life you were meant to live.

"The greatest human tragedy is to give up searching. Nothing is of greater importance than the life of our deep heart. To lose heart is to lose everything."

Don't lose heart... listen to yourself. ;)

Unfulfilled Hope

Too often we hope for a change –

Scratching off lottery tickets, praying to our God, or voting for a president whose motto is change.

But really – is there such a thing? Or are we so obsessed and consumed in our own worlds, our own hopes, and own dreams to realize – nothing changes.

For what I see – everything and everyone is just the same, only in another time and place. Time is the only real change we can rely on – we will grow older, our hair will grow gray, and our children will one day move on. But can we change as people? Is it possible?

I like to believe and I like to have faith in the fact that maybe one day we will be worthy of the change – the change we long for, the change we yearn, and more than anything, the change we deserve.

And that maybe with time we can all find a better world and a better human race that will thrive on hospitality and warmth and compassion.

God teaches us to believe in people and the human race as a whole – for its possibility to be forgiven and one’s ability to yes, change. But can it happen? Is it attainable? And after so much hardship and praying – are we capable of change?

If you know how... please share.