9 years

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

It has been an emotional week. Yesterday marked 9 years since I re-entered the world after eating disorder treatment. I am still here, sometimes by a thread, but I am here. I eat.

The shoes I wore on the plane home are still in my closet. Some of my clothes are still marked with my number "318" (maybe I should shop more??) There are days that the emotions are still to raw to 'there' to deal with.

My eating disorder will never be gone. Will never leave me entirely-- in the way I eat, the way I look at myself in mirrors, the damage to my physical self, and the damage to my emotional/spiritual self--remnants are there and will always be there.

Thank you Mom and Dad. Thank you for sending me. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for believing in me when I was batty and wild. I cannot thank you enough. I love you

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

A Handler,

Sorry to post this on your comments, but I couldn't find an e-mail address on your blog, and I wanted to tell you about this cool opportunity!

You and your blog readers could help thousands of public school kids by participating in the DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge, which starts on October 1. TechCrunch, BoingBoing, Engadget, BlogHer, Curbed, and many smaller bloggers are each creating challenge pages which list specific classroom requests in public schools--and then encouraging their readers to donate to those classroom requests. We hope you will consider participating, too.

During the last DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge, blog readers donated $420,000 toward classroom projects benefiting 75,000 students in low-income communities. This October, we're hoping to have an even bigger impact, and we keenly hope you will participate. Technorati is sponsoring the "generosity rankings" and Fortune magazine will be covering the bloggers whose readers help the most public school students. There is even a special Blogger Challenge leaderboard just for Mommy blogs!

All you would need to do is:

1. Pick a few classroom requests posted on DonorsChoose.org and add them to a challenge page which takes 1-2 minutes to set up. A quick glance at our search page...

http://www.donorschoose.org/donors/search.html?zone=0

...will show you the volume and variety of classroom needs from which to choose.

If you're pressed for time, just tell me the kinds of classroom requests (technology, arts, literature) that would speak most to your readers, and we'll set up a challenge page for you.

2. Do a post on October 1 encouraging your readers to donate to any of the classroom requests on your challenge page. Your readers can give as little as $5.

3. (Optional) Publish a widget which pulls in the classroom requests you have selected and shouts out to your blog readers who have donated to those requests. (Widgets will be available for download on Monday, and I can pass along some cool mockups if you’d like to see what they look like).

BACKGROUND ON THE CHARITY

DonorsChoose.org grew out of a high school in the Bronx where teachers saw their students going without the materials needed to learn. Our website provides an easy way for everyday people to address this problem. Public school teachers post project requests that range from a $100 classroom library, to a $600 digital projector, to a $1,000 trip to the zoo. People like you can choose which projects to fund and then get photos and thank-you letters from the classroom.

BACKGROUND ON THE 2008 DONORSCHOOSE.ORG BLOGGER CHALLENGE In October of 2007, bloggers competed to see who could rally the most support for public schools via DonorsChoose.org. Blog readers gave $420,000 to classroom projects benefiting 75,000 students in low-income communities. While A-list bloggers like Engadget and TechCrunch inspired great generosity, smaller blogs with really engaged readers generated even more!

The next DonorsChoose.org Blogger Challenge, running through the month of October, promises to have an even bigger impact. Technorati is sponsoring the rankings, and Fortune magazine is already committed to covering the event.

If you were to participate, we could help thousands more kids in public schools. I'd love to tell you more if you are interested.

Thank you for your consideration,
Kirk
kirk at donorschoose dot org

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