When I traveled with HAPLOS, the Hemophilia Philippines Foundation, about six years ago to visit families with bleeding disorders in rural provinces, I expected hardship. What I didn’t expect was how drastically the…
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Lately, I’ve been toying with the idea of starting a social media channel that captures slices of my everyday life. On the surface, that might not sound unusual. Plenty of people create online spaces…
Kids have a way of flattening the extraordinary into the ordinary. My 6-year-old daughter once scraped her knee, looked down at the blood, and calmly said, “Like Daddy, because he bleeds.” Then there was…
The other day, I asked my husband, Jared, if he’d ever consider leading a harm reduction seminar for the teens in his hemophilia organization. His immediate response was, “Of course —…
Some days it’s easy to see the cracks in our family’s situation — the unpredictable costs, the logistics of keeping medication on hand, the mental load of being a partner to someone with…
All my life, I’ve chased achievement. It made me crave purpose. I was once a “gifted child,” even called a genius by the Philippine Daily Inquirer — and briefly, I was a commercial…
As someone with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, I crave a challenge. It doesn’t even have to be a significant one, just something that gives me a little feeling of accomplishment. A small win early…
People often assume that loving someone with hemophilia — and in my husband’s case, epilepsy, too — must come with endless patience, unshakable optimism, and the kind of soft, gentle pity we reserve…
My husband, Jared, and I both have marketing backgrounds. We’re used to thinking in terms of value. In branding, you ask: What makes this product worth noticing? What problem does it solve? Why should…
The other day, I found an old document from my husband Jared’s last hospital stay — the one after his freak accident on a pool slide. I’d written about it before, but seeing…
I recently came across a social media post that hit home. It began: “Never judge someone with a chronic illness if they …” and went on to list things like skipping meds,…
My husband, Jared, doesn’t need a gym anymore, or dumbbells, or fancy machines. These days, all he needs is the floor, a bit of space, and his body. He still loves the gym and…
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