Self-Care is a dirty word. (Yet, I hope you do it.)

I cannot believe it is February already!

First and foremost, I will update you that Adam, Zoey and I are doing well, all things considered. We have a new home, and we are slowly, very slowly, picking up the pieces and moving forward each day. And it really is thanks to the amazing supportive community around us, so thank you tremendously for all you have done for us.

I have certainly learned a lot about grief and what it does to your body on many levels. And while "self-care" always feels like a bit of a privileged word to me, there really is something to be said for what it means to truly take care of yourself: cooking a meal, washing your face, brushing your teeth, taking a long shower, feeling "put together" or the effort of getting ready for the day, quality sleep, moving your body - I took a lot of these for granted prior to this experience.

JVN on the latest season of Queer Eye says that the act of taking care of yourself is beauty. And they are right. It's not about the result of it - how your hair looks, how your make up looks, how your body looks in an outfit. But the act of showing up for yourself and taking care of you, inside and out, is an act of love that is so important and really can change how you show up for others. 

So this month, I hope you will focus one area of "self-care" where you can improve.  And approach it from that idea that if you take care of you, you will then be ready to take care of others around you. 

As always, sending all my love and good health to you and yours.

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This month, 20% of our proceeds will go to the Michael J. Fox Parkinson Foundation. 
In memory of my cousin Jon Schwengel who passed away last week, I would like to share the work of the Michael J. Fox Parkinson Foundation.

They are dedicated to finding a cure for Parkinson's disease through an aggressively funded research agenda and to ensuring the development of improved therapies for those living with Parkinson's today.

They identify and fund projects most vital to patients, spearhead solutions around seemingly intractable field-wide challenges, coordinate and streamline efforts of multiple, often disparate, teams, and do whatever it takes to drive faster knowledge turns for the benefit of every life touched by PD.

Their core values are optimism, tenacity, collaboration, boldness, adaptability and curiosity in problem-solving to work on behalf of the 6 million people worldwide living with Parkinson's. 

"We aspire to go out of business. We deliberately hold no endowment or excessive financial reserves. We act with urgency, typically deploying funds raised within a few months for the fastest possible impact."

Some of their achievements so far: 

- 20 early-stage therapeutic programs, which have attracted follow-on funding from venture capital, pharmaceutical or government funders for continuing development 

- sponsored scores of clinical trials in partnership with academic and industry teams; currently, more than 15 disease-modifying interventions are in clinical trials

- Parkinson's Progression Markers Initiative has built the most robust dataset and biosample library in the history of Parkinson's research using brain scans (MRI, DaTscan), biosample analysis (spinal fluid protein levels) and intensive "omics" investigations (whole genome and RNA sequencing) from 1500 volunteers and researched over 1.7 million times since the launch in 2010

- Fox Insight, an online clinical study, has galvanized people with Parkinson's and their families to take an active role in research by sharing their lived experience; since 2017, more than 48,000 people have raised their hand to become citizen scientists to power PD research

To learn more about their current work and needs, please visit their website: https://www.michaeljfox.org/

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