#anon i hope you guys have a wonderful weekend ahead 🥹💖

[ofmermaidstories]

Oh gosh. My mom had a transplant… it was similar in the way we kinda knew whose organ lives through her now. I helped her put together the letter—the family wasn’t comfortable responding and that’s okay. Enough time has passed that we don’t think about as often as we used to—the scar is healed and the raised skin is just another part of mom now. But once it was a red itchy reminder of a beautiful wonderful life wrongfully cut short. Thank you for including the grief and guilt of that experience.

Here in Australia, the website for the donor registry is called donate life. They have like, a bunch of facts and figures—80,000 people a year die in hospital (a requirement to meet before your organs can be donated), but like, of those 80 thousand only a tiny, tiny fraction (roughly 1400 of them in 2022) are eligible. And then that number gets halved again, when the families are asked for permission. 🥺 I’m not sure how much it differs, country to country, but with such intense odds it really does make organ donation such an incredible gift. 🥺 Guilt is so, so natural, to so much of what we do let alone something so—hard. But I keep thinking about what you said, about your mum’s scar now being healed—and how much of a gift that is, too. How much of a difference it makes. 🥺🌷

All any of us can do is our best. With the gifts we’re given, or the gifts we give others. And you and your Mum are doing beautifully, Anon. Here’s to so, so much life together—for you, for Mum, and for Mum’s heart. 💕🌷☀️