Upworthy is sharing this letter from Myra Sack on the anniversary of the passing of her daughter Havi Lev Goldstein. Loss affects everyone differently and nothing can prepare us for the loss of a young child. But as this letter beautifully demonstrates, grief is not something to be ignored or denied. We hope the honest words and feelings shared below can help you or someone you know who is processing grief of their own. The original letter appeared on 1.20.22. It begins below: Dear Beauty,Time is crawling to January 20th, the one-year anniversary of the day you took your final breath on my chest in our bed. We had a dance party the night before. Your posse came over. Aunts, uncles, grandparents, closest friends, and your loving nanny Tia. We sat in the warm kitchen with music on and passed you from one set of arms to another. Everyone wanted one last dance with you. We didn’t mess around with only slow songs. You danced to Havana and Danza Kuduro, too. Somehow, you mustered the energy to sway and rock with each of us, despite not having had anything to eat or drink for six days. That night, January 19th, we laughed and cried and sang and danced. And we held each other. We let our snot and our tears rest on each other’s shoulders; we didn’t wipe any of them away. We ate ice cream after dinner, as we do every night. And on this night, we rubbed a little bit of fresh mint chocolate chip against your lips. Maybe you’d taste the sweetness.Reggaeton and country music. Blueberry pancakes and ice cream. Deep, long sobs and outbursts of real, raw laughter. Conversations about what our relationships mean to each other and why we are on this earth.This is grief in our home.We lost our first-born daughter, Havi Lev Goldstein, on January 20th, 2021, at 9:04am. She died peacefully in our bed, in our arms. She died from a cruel disease called Tay-Sachs, that strips your mind and body of every function over 12-18 months. Havi was two years, four months and sixteen days old when she died.My husband, Matt Goldstein, and I underwent preconception genetic testing for Tay-Sachs disease. We are both Ashkenazi Jewish, a population that has a higher risk for having a mutation in the gene that causes Tay-Sachs. We took our genetic testing very seriously. My testing results came back showing that I was a carrier; Matt’s results said he was not. Given the autosomal recessive nature of the disease, both parents need to be carriers for the fetus to be at risk of inheriting the disease. Months later, we were pregnant with our first child.Tragically, Matt received the wrong test, and his carrier status was mis-reported. Matt was in fact, a carrier for Tay-Sachs. 15 months into her life, we learned that our daughter, Havi, was now a victim of this fatal, progressive neurodegenerative disease. In an instant, we were transformed from being not only first-time parents, but now first-time parents of a dying child.From the date of Havi’s diagnosis, December 17th, 2019, to her death on January 20th, 2021, we followed her lead. She never spoke a word, never walked a single step. But she communicated powerfully through smiles and tears, through the brightness of her eyes and the back-and-forth movements of her head. She loved, deeply. And when you closed your eyes and listened closely, her voice was clear.Havi taught us that life can be even more beautiful and painful than we ever imagined. And when we live at the edge of that deepest beauty and deepest pain, then everything—our hearts, our world view, our community—will deepen and expand.We honored Havi’s life every Friday night with family and friends in a celebration that we called Shabbirthday. The word is a combination of Shabbat and Birthday. Havi’s favorite food, the only food that she ever crawled toward, was challah, the braided Jewish bread that we eat every Shabbat. And we knew that her birthdays would be limited to two. That was not enough. We wanted more. So we threw Havi 57 Shabbirthdays before she died. Balloons, cakes, beach walks, fancy dinners, always a challah, and beautiful songs and prayers. We didn’t pretend to be happy on these Shabbirthdays. We weren’t. We were heart broken. We didn’t throw parties to distract or numb the pain. We found moments of beauty and celebration embedded in and between our deepest pain. We knew we needed the love and support of our closest people right there with us, too. And we treated every moment as sacred, not scary. As holy, not superficial.This is grief in our home.Since Havi’s death, we continue to honor Shabbirthdays every Friday. Now, we read poems, listen to Cole Swindell’s, ‘You Should Be Here’, and close our eyes tightly to try and recall the feeling of her wrapped tightly in our arms. Sometimes it’s hard to breathe. Sometimes I don’t want to open my eyes at the end of the song. And sometimes, I feel okay. Sometimes I can even smile through the song and cuddle with our beautiful younger daughter, Kaia. Whatever the feelings are, however the anguish of grief is manifesting, I pay attention.Havi’s story is for anyone who has lost the person they love most in this world; for anyone who has watched someone they love lose their beloved; or for anyone who has yet to be touched by their own tragic loss and is open to learning about what it might feel like for them one day.For me, Havi’s death is not a one-time event. It happens over and over again every moment she is not where she is supposed to be: Picking out a mismatched set of clothes that look adorable anyway; walking into preschool with her little hand gripping my index finger; pausing between the slides and the swings for a few bites of fig bar at the playground; playing with her little sister who looks up in admiration at her god given best friend. The losses are layered and constant. And they will accrue, every day, and on every missed milestone until the day I die. I’m not sure people understand that about losing a young child.I think that the only way to be okay is to keep inviting our dead into those spaces, to keep them present in those moments where they should be. And not in a delusional way, either. Only in a way that helps us to create new memories and experiences with them since their life on this earth was so tragically short. Relationships don’t have to end when the physical ends. We don’t need to relegate them to the margins. As our therapist, Dr. Joanne Cacciatore puts it: We keep them right in the front row. From that place, they can participate actively in the life they were meant to have. And we can be proud to include them in it. And they can continue to encourage us to live a life of fullness and in service to others.Even after only one year on this earth without Havi, my relationship with her has undergone profound and deepening changes. In the same way that relationships in the world of the living require immense attention and constant adjustments, so too, do our relationships with our dead. There are moments when I can still feel the touch of Hav’s softest cheeks against mine and there are also moments when I feel far away from her. There are times when I can hear her voice in my head and in my heart and times when the silence is everywhere even though I’m begging for her to show up.A lot of this journey is a solitary one but it’s made so much easier when other people in our lives keep Havi present. This looks like so many beautiful things: Havi’s name written in the sand; outfits in the color purple; beautiful sunsets over mountains filled with wild flowers; a glass raised ‘To Hav’ before dinner begins; photographs on a bookshelf; text messages on important dates; acts of kindness in the spirit of a beautiful little girl. We do not need to ‘move on’ and we never will. We want to be joined in existing in the space where love and pain coexist for that is the space where we are closest to Hav. We, we all, can be changed forever by the power of loss. Falling into its embrace can make us more powerful, more productive, more alive, and more human. But that growth is ours to discover and cannot be rushed, or forced.I wish we were kinder to grieving people. I wish we understood that grief is not scary. Losing Havi is the worst possible thing I could have ever imagined as a new mother. It is tragic and unnatural. But what is natural is to want to keep her close to us, to want to make her proud, to want to make the world better in her name, to want other people to know and love her. Those are all natural, quite beautiful, instincts that keep grieving people feeling like they can be okay and maybe even that they can become bigger and better versions of themselves.I know my relationship with grief, and with Havi, is going to change many more times in my lifetime. I only hope that there will be more safe places to inhabit my suffering when it does.Children are not supposed to die before their parents. But they do. And they do in this country, they do in all of our neighborhoods. And there are thousands of children, and their parents, who deserve a dance party filled with deep soulful sobs, uncontrollable laughter, and the rhythm of the music keeping us all on our feet for one more day. Most importantly, they deserve to be remembered. This article originally appeared on 1.20.22

Cancer is serious. Ryan Reynolds is not. Luckily his characteristic sense of humor—along with being true to his word—has helped shine a light on a sobering topic in a fun way. After apparently losing a bet to friend and “Welcome to Wrexham” co-star Rob McElhenney of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” Reynolds agreed to get a colonoscopy … while broadcasting it to the entire world, of course. Reynolds is an actor famous for hilarious hijinks. From his intense fictional feud with Hugh Jackman to performing epic pranks on talk shows, he is often the best thing on the internet for a good laugh. However, he is also not one to shy away from difficult conversations, particularly when it comes to health. So raising awareness about the importance of colonoscopies was, as he quipped, “enough motivation for me to let you in on a camera being shoved up my ass.” Reynolds might have lost the bet, but his actions paid off. The procedure turned out to be lifesaving. The video shows the “Free Guy” actor getting the news that an “extremely subtle” polyp was discovered and cut out. Reynolds had previously shown no symptoms.“I’m not being dramatic,” his doctor told him. “This is exactly why you do this. You are interrupting the natural history of a disease, of something of a process that could have ended up developing into cancer and causing all sorts of problems. Instead, you are not only diagnosing the polyp, you are taking it out.”Ever the expert marketer, Reynolds smoothly slid in a quick plug for his alcohol brand, joking that “I can’t believe you pumped all that Aviation Gin into my IV. I was out like a light” before thanking the doctor. Reynolds got his colonoscopy at 45, which is the recommended age to begin routine screenings. Though it’s a preventable cancer, colorectal cancer is the third most common cause of cancer-related deaths for men and women combined, and it is predicted to be the top cancer killer for people under 50 by the year 2030. Because of the inherent invasiveness of the procedure, many people feel uncomfortable even talking about colonoscopies, let alone getting one, despite early detection being so vital. But now, thanks to Reynolds hilariously riffing on his experience, the whole thing might not seem so daunting after all.Thanks for the delightfully silly PSA, Ryan. This article originally appeared on 9.16.22

The Queen of Halloween was once a Las Vegas showgirl.

What we just witnessed in the Middle East shocked the entire globe.  Sadly, a lot more death and destruction is coming.  Whether they are both willing to admit it or not, the truth is that Israel and Hezbollah are at war.  It is just a limited war for now, but it is only a matter of time before it escalates into an “all-out war” that kills vast numbers of people on both sides.  It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out how this ends.  When there is an existential conflict that involves two parties which absolutely refuse to back down, only one party is ultimately going to survive.  Unfortunately, most people have absolutely no idea what is coming. It appears that we may have already reached a point of no return.  After the attack that occurred on Tuesday, Hezbollah will be more determined to wipe out Israel than ever before… At about 3:30 p.m. local time on Tuesday, pagers started heating up and then exploding in the pockets and hands of those carrying them — particularly in a southern Beirut suburb and the Beqaa region of eastern Lebanon where Hezbollah has a strong presence, and in Damascus, where several Hezbollah members were wounded, Lebanese security officials and a Hezbollah official said. The Hezbollah official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press. When I first heard about this, it sounded like something out of a science fiction movie. Apparently the pagers that exploded had been recently purchased by Hezbollah… The pagers that exploded had been newly acquired by Hezbollah after the group’s leader ordered members to stop using cell phones, warning they could be tracked by Israeli intelligence. A Hezbollah official told The Associated Press the pagers were a new brand the group had not used before. So how in the world did Israel pull this off? As I write this article, there are two main theories that are being floated… It’s not currently clear exactly how the explosions happened. Two main theories are being bandied about by security experts. Some believe Israel, through its shadow Mossad intelligence agency, managed to send out a mass cyberattack that overheated the lithium ion batteries of the pagers. Others believe Mossad was able to slip into Hezbollah’s supply chain, sneaking explosive material into the pagers as they were manufactured, which would later be triggered by a mass message to the devices. It seems unlikely that simply overheating the lithium ion batteries of the pagers could have caused the immense devastation that we witnessed. At least one news source is claiming that the Mossad was somehow able to implant explosive material inside the devices before they were delivered to Hezbollah… Sky News Arabia quotes sources saying that today’s large-scale pager attack in Lebanon was possible because the Mossad spy agency got hold of Hezbollah’s communication devices before they were handed over to the terror group. The Israeli spy agency placed a quantity of PETN, a highly explosive material, on the batteries of the devices, and detonated them by raising the temperature of the batteries from afar, the source says. I think that all of us will be looking at our electronic devices differently from this point forward. When they woke up on Tuesday, thousands of Hezbollah militants had no idea that they were about to be maimed by the pagers that they were carrying around… Video footage from inside a Beirut supermarket appears to show the moment Israel sent out its deadly message. A Hezbollah attacker was seen confusedly lifting his shirt up at a supermarket after getting a message on his pager, which lit up. He stared at it for a second before it detonated, collapsing him in an instant as supermarket workers and fellow shoppers panicked and fled. After the explosions occurred, local hospitals were soon overwhelmed by the injured and the dying… Another video showed patients writhing on the floor in agony as medical staff try desperately to treat them. White bandages can be seen wrapped around the limbs of people inside a hospital, with doctors’ white coats covered in blood as they try to get through the throng of people inside the medical institution. Men, women and children can be heard howling in agony, while doctors and nurses try to shout over the noise to communicate with each other. As I write this article, it is being reported that 11 people are dead and approximately 4,000 more have been wounded… Lebanon’s health ministry updates the death toll in the pager explosions to 11. Another 4,000 are wounded, including 400 in critical condition, according to ministry numbers cited by Arabic-language media. After what we just witnessed, the conflict should be over. If Hezbollah was smart, they would throw in the towel and pull their forces north of the Litani River. But that isn’t going to happen. Instead, the thirst for revenge will just be even stronger than it was before. Of course Israel is not going to back down either. There are approximately 100,000 Israelis that have not been able to return to their homes in northern Israel for months, and Hezbollah continues to strike targets in Israeli territory on a regular basis. So it appears that the IDF will soon be conducting a major military operation in southern Lebanon… Israel has for months warned that it could launch a military operation to drive Hezbollah away from its border. Orna Mizrachi, a former Israeli national security official, said in a call with reporters that the pager attack could signal that Israel is about to change its Gaza war strategy, where it has been fighting Hamas for almost a year, and move its main front to the north to fight Hezbollah. There are some experts that are suggesting that Israel may initiate such an operation before the U.S. presidential election in November. If an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah erupts, it is going to make the Biden/Harris administration look really bad, and it will likely cost Kamala Harris thousands of Muslim votes in Michigan and other swing states. Needless to say, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu does not want Kamala Harris to win the election. But when all-out war erupts, Israel isn’t just going to be fighting Hezbollah. For years, Iran has been arming groups throughout the region “for this very showdown”… The Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Shiite militias in Syria and Iraq, and the terrorist organizations in Gaza, Judea and Samaria – for years Iran has been equipping its allies for this very showdown. If all of Israel’s enemies unite, IDF forces will quickly find themselves outnumbered. But of course Israel possesses technology that the other side does not. When push comes to shove, both sides will try to absolutely crush one another, and that will be truly horrifying to watch. When I write about “apocalyptic” wars, I am not exaggerating one bit. It would be in everyone’s best interest for opposing sides to step back from the brink in the Middle East, in Ukraine, and elsewhere. The wars that are in our future are going to involve weapons of unthinkable destructive power, and those wars are going to be far more horrible than most people would dare to imagine. Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com. About the Author: Michael Snyder’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com. He has also written eight other books that are available on Amazon.com including “Chaos”, “End Times”, “7 Year Apocalypse”, “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America”, “The Beginning Of The End”, and “Living A Life That Really Matters”.  When you purchase any of Michael’s books you help to support the work that he is doing.  You can also get his articles by email as soon as he publishes them by subscribing to his Substack newsletter.  Michael has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, and he always freely and happily allows others to republish those articles on their own websites.  These are such troubled times, and people need hope.  John 3:16 tells us about the hope that God has given us through Jesus Christ: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”  If you have not already done so, we strongly urge you to invite Jesus Christ to be your Lord and Savior today. The post The Existential War That Is Rapidly Escalating In The Middle East Will Be Far More Horrible Than Most People Would Dare To Imagine appeared first on End Of The American Dream.

by Daisy Luther, The Organic Prepper: Friends, I have a few questions about the second Trump assassination attempt in as many months. I don’t have answers for these questions (though I do have some theories – but not enough evidence to voice most of them.) My questions Here goes… Why, shortly after the first assassination […]

by Mac Slavo, SHTF Plan: Did you know that voting will never create any real or lasting progress in politics? This is going to challenge the status quo, and when one does that, controversy happens, unfortunately. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be striving to be the most moral human beings possible. With new information, we […]

from Sarah Westall: TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/