It’s May! This month not only do we recognize National Women’s Health Week, but we also honor and celebrate mothers.
As I watch news updates on the status of the Nigerian young women being held captive, my thoughts continually go back to their mothers. As a mother and grandmother myself, I can only imagine the agonies these mothers must be experiencing each moment their daughters are being kept away from home.
In the United States alone, approximately 800,000 children are reported missing each year. As a health educator, I understand the negative impact of trauma that a family experiencing an abduction and the community surrounding them has. And with the world watching what happens to these Nigerian young women, we are all invested.
On Monday, Boko Haram released a video of the kidnapped girls. The New York Times reported that the video was “an unwelcome window into [the] children’s forbidding new world was opened to the grieving parents.” The Nigerian government had arranged a first showing of the video in Chibok, Nigeria, to identify the girls, but it had to be halted abruptly when the parents became overcome with grief.
“The families became upset and they started crying ‘this is my child,’ ” a senior state official said. “They started shouting. They had to stop the filming.”
Continuing to watch the newscast Monday night, I began to feel a knot in my stomach as my eyes filled with tears. I thought about everything I have been taught relating to stress and an individual’s living environment and how adversities such as these can negatively affect the blood pressure, heart, and various other parts of our health. Below is information shared from the Office on Women’s Health during this week – National Women’s Health Week.
As government officials around the world continue to strategize to bring these young women safely home, let us remember their families and each of us as we endure this ordeal and be ready with physical and mental health services in the aftermath. What can we do to take care of ourselves when faced with high-stress situations? Sometimes we are affected just by hearing the stories of other’s trauma. Sometimes the trauma is ours.
To talk through stressful situations or traumas, feel free to contact the YWCA to schedule an appointment! Call 425.922.6192 or email Mental Health Director Chris Bingham.
Filed under: Women's Health Outreach Tagged: 2014, Boko Haram, Community, Environment Stress, Health, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Kidnapped, Mental Health, Mother's Day, National Women's Health Week, New York Times, Nigerian Girls, Parenting, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Stress, Women, Women's Health, YWCA, YWCA Seatte
