What's The Difference?

When Haiti happened, the response was amazing. And heart warming! I took part in the Hope For Haiti telethon that actually started with George Clooney and MTV. Crazy, right?

So now I'm watching the videos of Pakistan and I've read that the need is big, people are saying even bigger than Haiti.

This is from the site How Big Really powered by the BBC:


You can change the center using this link: http://howbigreally.com/dimension/environmental_disasters/pakistan_floods

And I keep wondering...
Where are the celebrities?
Where are the telethons?

The comments I keep reading on CNN/MSNBC are disheartening.

I understand that Pakistan has harbored terrorists. I understand that there have been flag burnings there. And people have been murdered. Innocent people. But I look at those little children and think about how much they hurt.

I understand that the economy is bad. I don't blame my friends for not donating. It seems like everything has gone wrong this year, right? You've got Haiti and you've got the BP oil crisis and it just keeps coming. "Donor fatigue" as a friend of mine put it.

Maybe it's that. Maybe it's just all coming on the tail of so much disaster that we're tired of it. That we need a little sunshine in our lives.

I can understand that too.

Plus, it's hard to empathize with someone who is so far away. My mom always likes to tell the story of the alarm she felt when my sister (very, very young and a long time ago) had heard about a plane crash with no survivors. My sister said, 'Why should I care? I didn't know them.' (My mother feared for YEARS for my sister's compassion after that)

There's a quote that is very accurate for me:
Do not commit the error, common among the young, of assuming that if you cannot save the whole of mankind you have failed.
~ Jan de Hartog

Sorry. I'm not really going to wrap this up. It's almost time for work to end, I have a headache, I don't know how to wrap it up, really. There are my thoughts, splattered across a page.

If you are interested in donating through the PRIVATE SECTOR: http://www.oxfam.org/ , http://www.theirc.org/ or through the U.S. STATE DEPARTMENT: http://www.state.gov/

Hurting Your Parents

You never want to see your kids hurt, you know? I had surgery once and I mean, I was at least 20, but I could NOT handle the IDEA of an I.V., let alone putting one in my arm. Now that I've donated blood, you could stick a needle in and I wouldn't notice, but at that time, I was almost screaming in the hospital. My mother was with me before they took me and right when they were putting the needle in my arm. She's trying to hold me still so they can put it in and I'm having a nervous breakdown. I remember her tears too that day. I don't remember much after that because of the ridiculous amount of drugs, but she told me silly stories about myself. But she cried first.


Please ignore that ridiculous look on my face. That's my mom and me this past Christmas.

My husband's father had a heart attack and I was left alone in New York City while he flew back to Ohio. Not a big deal, right? I dropped my keys on the tracks and, as I was going to donate platelets (my favorite Sunday activity, after church, at that time), I passed out on the 6 train platform. A train attendant had to help me and call and ambulance. I called my mother in the emergency room waiting area and she got upset and said, 'What do you want me to do about it?'

My parents live in Hong Kong. That's 13 hours away and it takes me at least 15 numbers for me to dial their phone number. I didn't want her to do anything. I didn't want to come up later and she be like, what?!?! She told me later that she was upset because there was nothing she could do.

I'm old enough to make my own decisions now, of course, along with my husband. And I feel that I'm being called.

But how do you tell your parents that you're giving up a kidney? And I'm not just giving up my kidney...it's to a woman at church, not a family member.

I like my mom's approach that she's using with her parents. My mom, dad, and brother all live in Hong Kong (my brother is young enough to still be in school) and they were supposed to be moving back to the US this June. They've signed on to stay in Hong Kong for 3 more years so that my brother can graduate from high school. But...my mom doesn't want to tell my grandparents. Because they talk ALL the time about my parents moving back to the United States. She just wants them to find out when my parents don't move back in June.

I'm kind of feeling that approach.

When I was a teenager, I suffered from depression and self-harming. Long story short, I (kind of) told my parents. My mom didn't talk to me for weeks. She was upset; she thought she was a bad parent. That was a long time ago, but I still get nervous: what is she going to say when I tell them?

In the end, it doesn't matter. But I still get this pit in my stomach whenever I think about it.

My mother has told my brother that he can do MMA fighting and that he can play rugby. She will sit on the sidelines and she'll support him, but she may close her eyes and I know that she sits at his rugby games and cries. She doesn't get up to help him because she knows he can make it on his own.


This is my 14-year-old brother. Covered in mud and his own blood after being kicked in the head during a rugby game.

I'm kind of hoping that's how she'll feel with me.

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For those of you in the US (or even those outside), tonight is the Hope For Haiti Now Telethon. MTV is hosting it so that means I'm working! But I think you should watch it. WHAT?! YOU DON'T WATCH MTV!!?? (That's okay, neither do I) But that's okay! Because the Hope For Haiti Now telethon will be on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Facebook, Myspace, MTV.com, CBS.com, Palladia...you get the picture.

If you are outside of the United States, Hope For Haiti Now will be streaming on MTV International in 21 different languages. Just visit hope.mtv.com

And thanks for listening to me. :) I really appreciate it!