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Love Remembers Day: What It Means For All

March 27, 2015  |  Advocacy, Allergy, Allergy-awareness, Anaphylaxis, Awareness, Blog, Education, Epinephrine, Food-allergy, Food-allergy-blog, Medications, School, Support
Love Remembers Day: What It Means For All

A little over 10 years ago, I remember being a happy mom, feeling so fortunate to have my three children. My oldest had asthma concerns in his younger years but had stabilized well and life seemed good. Suddenly, in an instant, things got scary, very scary. The day came when I decided to start weaning my sweet baby girl after nursing her since birth. Slowly, I poured cow’s milk into a bottle mixed with half a bottle of breast milk. The rest seemed like a blur as she went into anaphylaxis and I rushed my then 13 month old child to the ER. Fortunately, the hospital knew what to do and even though she’s had other episodes of anaphylaxis since then, she is doing well with her multiple food allergies and asthma.

Unfortunately, not every family has been as lucky as ours. Though there is far more education available today than ever before about food allergies and anaphylaxis, our community still grieves losses each year.    With that in mind, a few years ago I asked myself, “what happens to the families once they lose a loved one?” Knowing that national organizations do reach out to families to help, I still felt like there needed to be more – a dedicated initiative. There needed to be something to let these families know that ‘we all’ honor the legacy of their family members as we continue to navigate the journey in our own homes.   

It is the legacy of those lost that helps us continue to push forward and work to make a difference for everyone. In that vein, 2014 was the year of discovery. A grassroots initiative I started entitled Flowers for Anaphylaxis™ where I sent out sympathy cards with logos from support groups all over the US sometimes including bracelets or flowers made by my daughter, needed to grow. Hence, Love Remembers Day was born.

The initial purpose was to help other advocates and supporters in the food allergic community find ways to speak with a larger, unified voice in support of legacy families. In a community like ours where we are constantly reminded over 15 million people are affected by food allergies, it is important that people band together to show families we are ‘together’ in this before, during or after. Just like other advocates, I knew that life would never be the same for these families even when the rest of us went back to our daily routines. I wanted to make sure people knew no one would forget how important their family members were to them and the world.

Love Remembers Day was also designed to be a special time for those same families to honor the legacy and beautiful memories of their loved ones in ways that were unique to them personally while knowing that thousands of people across the nation shared the time of remembrance with them in spirit. This year, Love Remembers Day will take place March 28-29.