Spina Bifida Awareness: A Note from Misty

Today's face of Spina Bifida comes from a grown woman who has Spina Bifida. When I saw this I just BAWLED. I pray that I am a strong enough mom, who knows just the right balance of tough love and unconditional love, that SOME DAY my precious son might have just as kind of words for me! This is a picture of the mom all of us SB mom's strive to be! Thank you Misty for sharing your mom, and your fabulous words to her, with us!

Dear Mom,

Thank you for giving me life when “they” said I’d be better off dead.

Thank you for fighting on my behalf when I was too little and weak.

 Thank you for loving me even though you were scared.

Thank you for becoming a nurse in our home long before you were ever a nurse at a hospital. I know that must have been in...timidating.

 Thank you for learning what all those tubes were for, and where they went, and how they helped me.

Thank you for countless doctor visits and E.R. visits, no matter what time I needed to go.

Thank you for walking up and down the halls of the hospital with me while people gawked.

Thank you for your paranoia about every little thing that didn’t seem right. I know sometimes you thought you looked nuts, but I’m sure it kept me alive more than once.

Thank you for yelling at doctors when they said, “She’s fine,” when you knew me well enough to know I wasn’t.

Thank you for the ugly stares you gave back to people when I was doing my best to learn to walk.

Thank you for being patient when other kids my age were running circles around me. I needed more time.

Thank you for remembering countless medications, and cath schedules, and putting my AFO’s on for me, and dressing me when it took me a little longer to learn.

Thank you for yelling at me when I wouldn’t take care of myself as a teenager (not that it worked…I’m stubborn).

Thank you for making me stubborn. I needed that attitude. I don’t know how I would have made it without my pain in the rear attitude.

Thank you for pushing me to do everything you knew I could do, and I knew I couldn’t. Turns out, you’re pretty smart.

Thank you for letting me do things you were scared of. I know I terrified you sometimes. I had to know if I could ride my bike down that hill at supersonic speed. I could. Fun!

Thank you for making me know that I was worthy of love. I never let a boy tell me anything different. There were a lot of worms, but I dropped them all for something I knew I deserved.

Thank you for cheering at my graduation. If my doctors had it their way, that day wouldn’t have come, but you believed.

Thank you for spending countless hours planning that crazy wedding, yet another thing that wasn’t supposed to happen.

And thank you for forks! LOL! Only my mother will get that one!

Basically, thank you for stepping into an unfamiliar, scary world, that you didn’t sign up for. I appreciate it, and I think you did a great job! I turned out okay!

Love,

Your SB kid

This letter was originally write by Misty to her mom as a tribute to her for Mother's Day and posted on Misty's blog. Thank you Misty for allowing us to re post it!

Please visit Misty over at HER BLOG, she is a very insightful woman and I love reading her words!