Today’s blog post is a spontaneous Public Service Announcement.  I will keep it short in hopes you will read it.  Please.

I am passionate about two causes, adoption and organ & tissue donation.  I have first-hand, life-changing experiences with both. Since embarking on my new writing career, I have discovered I can take words, ordinary words of my own choosing, and turn them into text for effect.  Sometimes that’s money to pay the mortgage, but, more important (not importantly, by the way), I can use words to share my stories about these two very worthy causes, in hopes of raising awareness.

So today, I want to offer some gentle guidance about the words we choose to speak about these two topics, words which can be either helpful or hurtful.

On Adoption

My son’s birth mom, Kathy, did not give him up for adoption.  No.  Wise beyond her teenage years, she chose to give him birth, then she made an adoption plan for him.  By some miracle, she included me and Burke’s dad in her plan.  I thank Kathy and God for that decision every day.  If you have an opportunity to speak to someone about the miracle of adoption, out of respect for these courageous individuals who selflessly decide to move forward with their unplanned pregnancies then have the wisdom to realize that they cannot give their babies the lives they hope for them, please don’t say they gave up their children.  If this isn’t an example of planning, albeit post conception, I don’t know what is.

On Organ & Tissue Donation

In doing some online research for an article I am writing on this topic, this morning I ran across an article in Sports Illustrated about how a cadaver tendon was used to replace (then) Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer’s knee.  No, (author) Michael Silver, that was a donor tendon from a once living, loving, albeit a little crazy human being, my sister Julie.  Another individual who selflessly gave of herself to benefit others.  Before she died, she expressed her wish to someday be a donor, and when she died, she became an organ and tissue donor.  (No one signs up to be a cadaver.) As a result, an estimated 35+ lives were either saved or enriched.

If you’ve hung with me this long, thank you.  Really.  Call me and I will buy you a beer.  Then we’ll summon Uber for a ride home.