Confidence

May 23, 2011 By

It’s amazing how alone you feel while dealing with relationship issues until you realize that there are a million other girls out there dealing with the exact same thing.

Tonight, a good friend of mine needed to talk out the issues she was having with her boy that sounded almost exactly like the issues I had been having with my ex-boyfriend of now over 3 months.

Though the situation as a whole was very different, the traits of the boy and the pattern of the relationship paralleled what I had gone through. She had come to me because she knew I was a few steps ahead of her.

The moral I tried to instil in her was that she deserved to be treated like a queen, and any guy who treated her as anything less was not worth her time. She knew this, but was having difficulty making sure she was actually treated as so. It can be easy to see what’s wrong, but fixing it isn’t quite as simple. This was something that I struggled with myself.

It was only after having been lied to by my ex, (an action that results in immediate expulsion from my life), that I was finally able to draw the strength I needed to end the rollercoaster of drama for good. It took me two years, but I was finally able to do it. I was lucky, I suppose, to have found out he lied, because it gave me the “over” (as my friend called it) that I needed to make it happen. She didn’t have the “over” yet, so it wasn’t as easy. She’s a smart girl, though, so I’m confident she’s going to be just fine. With me, though… I needed that real push.

Every time my ex and I had broken up, I thought I had had the “over.” Apparently I was wrong, as we kept getting back together. It was not until tonight, and talking to my friend, that I was confident that I had, in fact, found my strength, my confidence, and my self-respect to do better.

I stopped blogging about my stupid relationship drama a while ago because, well, it got immensely repetitive. I felt the need to blog tonight not only because of the coincidental email I received from my ex late last night coupled with my friends similar issue, but because I felt the need to share, especially with the ostomates, the sense of self-respect and confidence that I feel right now.

It’s hard for any person, especially a woman, in this day and age to be confident in themselves because of all the (ok I know this sounds cliché, but it’s true) magazines and television representations of the perfect image; body type, personality, lifestyle…

This can slowly tear away at the little self-confidence one has so that it’s easy to fall into a trap and believe that, if one guy says he loves you more than anything in the world, that he means it, even when he treats you like garbage.

Though I am a confident person and don’t even factor my ostomy into my self-image, it’s still very easy to fall into that trap. It’s hard enough for a normal person to realize how amazing they are and to ensure they get the respect deserved from their partner, but it must be a million times more difficult for a person uncomfortable with themselves because of their lifesaving appliance.

I guess this is another reason why I do this blog thing. I share because I want to make sure others don’t fall into the same patterns as I have, and especially, do not fall into ones much worse. I blog and post pictures of myself with my bag to encourage other ostomates to be proud of what they have and then, hopefully, that sense of pride can culminate itself into self-confidence.

Each and every one of you, bag or no bag, deserves to be treated with respect, dignity, and love.

Please make sure you are.

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Be an Ostomy Ambassador

September 2, 2010 By

One of the best traditions that we have at ostomy camp is our final campfire. It’s a time for everyone to talk about the experience they had that week at camp, send love to someone who couldn’t make it that year, or tell everyone there how much they mean to them.

In front of the campfire this year, someone came up and said a little speech. This person talked about how camp was where we all felt comfortable, happy, and secure with who we are. Camp was where it didn’t matter what we had, because at there, everyone was accepted.

Camp, they said, was the way the rest of the world should be and that we had the power to make it so.

I completely agree.

We do have the power to make the world as amazing as ostomy camp.

As individuals, we can make the world as accepting and comfortable with differences by talking about them and being comfortable with them ourselves. We can teach those who don’t know and we can show that there is never anything to be ashamed about.

I don’t think I talk about this enough, but this campaign was created to do just that. It was made to teach those who didn’t know about ostomies what they are and that we, as ostomates, or we, as people who know about ostomies, completely accept them.

It is our duty, as individuals, to make the world like camp.

Tell people about your ostomy or, if you don’t have one, tell people that you know about them or know someone who has one. Explain what it is, show them the Facebook group, and show them the website.

Then, tell me about it!

I’ve decided that I want to name these, what I’m calling, “Ostomy Ambassadors”.

As I see them, I will blog about them and say what they have done to help spread the word. So far I already have 3 I want to write about because they have come to me and told me what they had done. They also told me how great they felt by doing it.

So to all of my followers- Invite people to the Facebook page, show off the website, tell everyone you know about what “ostomy” means, and tell me about it! Write it on the Facebook wall, or post it here, or send me a message- anything.

Do whatever you can to be an Ostomy Ambassador

Thanks guys :]

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Uncover Ostomy; Making Changes All Over The World- Hello Scotland

May 28, 2010 By

Well I had an interesting experience tonight…

I mean, it was a normal night. Got on my computer, logged onto Facebook, checked Uncover Ostomy, and then noticed I had a new friend request. I always notice. I just. Um. I leave them.

The thing is, I get a lot of people adding me to Facebook because of the campaign. I think it’s awesome that they want to add me. Especially with some of the messages I get along with them. They’re all so sweet. The problem is, I have a lot of personal information on Facebook that I don’t feel comfortable sharing with people I’ve never met and don’t know. So instead… I kind of leave the friend requests until I can message each person back individually and apologize.

Anyways, today I got a little popup saying I had a new friend request. I noticed the name and said, ok I’ll message him later, I’m in the middle of something.

A little while later I get a popup on my msn messenger saying someone wants to add me to their list. The email looks just like the guy who friend requested me. So I accepted msn and started to talk to him. I asked him if I knew him and he said no but he had found me on Facebook and thought my campaign was inspirational.

Ok,  I guess I can talk to him.

Anyways, we continue to talk and I find out he’s a 17 year old who got his ostomy when he was 13 and has been struggling. He hasn’t told anyone he has one . He told me his doctor told him to check out a website to find some answers and help him out. I asked him why he couldn’t talk about his ostomy and he said he couldn’t even say the word ostomy because it bothered him.

“You can’t even say it?! Say IT!”

I told him to get a microphone and record him saying it so I knew he did.

Well, to that, he said the microphone was downstairs and it was 1am.

1am? It was 7pm here.

“Where are you from?”

“Scotland”

Apparently his doctor had given this guy information on IDEAS and through it he found Uncover Ostomy. All the way from Scotland.

Wow.

Anyways, he began telling me that he was trying to get rid of his ostomy.

He wanted to get rid of it so badly that he was willing to be part of an experiment they were doing in Scotland. Apparently, he was going to get a new immune system.

Sound familiar?

He was going to get chemotherapy to kill his immune system and then he was going to have a bone marrow transplant.

I then automatically said, “oh wow, my dad had one”

And then I thought, oh crap I’m going to scare this poor kid.

“Oh but never mind.”

He said he really wanted to know about it all and asked about how my dad’s recovery was.

Well, we all know my dad’s story didn’t end well. But I told him. He considered it.

After that we talked a bit more and I asked him why he didn’t like talking about his ostomy. He said he didn’t like it. We eventually figured out he resented it because it stopped him from following his dream of being an army surgeon. Instead, he had to do it in a hospital. I told him if he hadn’t gotten the ostomy he wouldn’t even get to work in a hospital.

He considered this too. Then began to ask me some personal questions. He asked me about how I started the campaign and how I was able to open up. He also asked me about relationships and I explained the ostomy wasn’t an issue.

By the end of our conversation he told me he was surprised to know there was someone with an ostomy living with a normal life. The people he knew with them, he said, were social outcasts. He was surprised I was real.

By the end of the conversation he said,

“I think I’m going to try a new angle”

“What angle is that?”

“I think I’m going to try to live with my ostomy.”

There we go.

:]

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“Coming Out of The Bathroom”

October 16, 2009 By

It was really nice to see the positive response from the discussion posted today on the Facebook fanpage.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, the question was, “Is Uncover Ostomy too sexy?”

I read every single response and I can honestly say each and every one of them sent a shiver down my spine. [Except the one my friend Josh made... haha]

Today was the day I realized that we are actually am helping people.

We’re helping people come out of the bathroom :]

In the responses though, I noticed more than just a discussion about the pictures, but a discussion about intimacy and how hard it has been for some ostomates.

In some ways I can relate but in some ways I cant.

I was 13 when I first got my ostomy. So I had never had the chance for intimate experiences beforehand. When I first starting dating at 17/18 [I was a realllllllly late bloomer lol] I didn’t really have any issues. I was happy with who I was and still thought of myself as normal. Telling the boy though, was a completely different story. I was petrified. I had told all my friends and random people I’d met I had an ostomy, but never a boy in this type of situation. It turns out he didn’t care at all. He thought it was kind of cool. So did the next boy, and the next boy, and the next… and so on and so forth. I’ll be honest, I’ve been in the situation where I haven’t even been dating the guy and he hasn’t cared. I’ve never once had a problem with saying or showing my ostomy. So after the first few boys didn’t seem to care about my ostomy, I didn’t even care about telling the next. I figured, if this one didn’t like it, I’d find someone else. Hey, they aren’t worth my time.

Maybe one day I will meet a jackass who will care, but that’s not my problem. They’ll be missing out.

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