03 Jan Here’s to Good Health – When Speaking Up Becomes Important!

Happy New Year! This is an odd way to start this post, but in many ways it’s very appropriate. I have many blog posts to write, the review of 2017 one, all I learned at BOLD Summit, the Pantone Color of the Year one (which if you haven’t heard yet, is Ultra Violet), and many more. Sometimes there isn’t enough time to write all I want to write. But this week’s topic is timely and important. Far more to you and me, and our friends and family, than the color of the year. It’s about our health, the thing we sometimes wish everyone each year when we say “Happy New Year”! We often throw in “Good Health” along with “Prosperity”, “Happiness” and more.

But it is “Good Health”, the one New Year wish out of all of them, that we generally, as a society, take for granted.

Please stop what you’re doing for just a few minutes, stop multi-tasking, or planning your new year and really think about if you take your health for granted. Do you push yourself to finish projects until you get sick and then, only then, do you stop and take some time off for yourself? Because truthfully, when we’re young, we all think nothing will happen to us and we’ll live forever, right? Well of course! Why wouldn’t we? We’re young, energetic, maybe finishing up college, and our whole life is before us. And that’s what we’re led to believe.

But for over 1 million Americans, that simply is not true. All their dreams and good health went out the window in one terrible moment. Consider the case of Jennifer Brea, a young woman, age 28, studying for her PhD at Harvard, and newly married.

Her story, which was featured Tuesday in an interview on NPR’s Here & Now (please see link below), has brought into sharp focus both her personal struggle with ME/CFS (Myalgic Encephalopathy/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome) and her award-winning documentary, UnRest, that brings that struggle to us on film.

This educational documentary, UnRest, has been shown in cities all across the United States and Europe, even here in Austin at SXSW Festival this past spring, and will air on PBS Monday, January 8th. It’s beginning to get a lot of attention and is waking up the public and the medical community about a much misunderstood and often misdiagnosed condition, ME/CFS.

I encourage you to tune into your local PBS on Monday (check your local listings for exact times) to watch this powerful film and talk to your friends and family about it, because we can never take our health for granted. And Jennifer Brea truly demonstrates this in this extraordinary courageous film UnRest.

Below is the link to the NPR interview and you can read a Los Angeles Time review of the film by Amy Kaufman here. Thank you. Till next week, enjoy the rest of your holidays and watch for a Dallas Market preview and some exciting changes here on our blog, XO PG

‘Unrest Director Turns Camera on Herself to Document Chronic Fatigue Syndrome.