Wednesday — February 14, 2024
Hello friends, Happy Valentine’s Day!
I am missing my husband this Valentine’s Day (he went home last week after visiting us for a couple of weeks for Avi’s birthday). In case you did not know, I have been traveling with my two youngest sons (Charlie is 15, and Avi turned 19 two weeks ago) most of the past year (since last May), doing Lead-poisoning prevention advocacy work around the globe — while also trying to figure out the answers to big questions, including “How can we continue to support the needs of our family, of our disabled children, without working ourselves to death?!”
One thing I have said in several recent podcast interviews is that I will never NOT be a mother of disabled/ Lead-poisoned children. Being a parent of disabled children is a “forever” thing — that shapes the rest of your life. Last year I decided to put this context for our life (parenting disabled children as a life-long commitment) at the forefront of our decision-making process moving forward.
Speaking of recent podcast interviews…
Here’s one recent interview,
and here’s another…
We arrived in Scotland on January 20th, and have plans to be here at least through the end of March (and possibly April). We’re here this winter for several reasons…
One reason is that I am working on trying to finish one of my books (at the urging of a publisher who wants to publish all the books I have in the pipeline)!
I decided to come to Scotland to write, as our family is exploring the possibility of a long-term move here. We are in Scotland trying to see if this is a move that would work for our family in all the ways we anticipate it might — cheaper housing, more affordable and healthier food, cheaper health insurance, cheaper/ more environmentally-conscious transportation options, and easy access to educational opportunities for my youngest son, Charlie. All of the above combined together makes Scotland seem like a very reasonable alternative to the rat race of the United States! This idea is still very much in the “exploration” phase. We left the United States (most recently) on November 6th, and our current plans are to return stateside on May 1st — in time for A.J.’s (my second son, who was Lead-poisoned at just 3 years old) college graduation.
My long-term goal is to be able to continue doing the work I do (growing the Lead Safe Mama movement, and helping families around the world protect their children from Lead exposure), without the struggle generated by the hardships of living in the United States.
In other news…
This week I expect to be catching up on publishing several new articles for the Lead Safe Mama Baby Bottle Guide — so please stay tuned for that.
In the meantime, while I have not written anything particularly interesting or groundbreaking recently (besides one CPSC violation notice for the Stanley-brand children’s products, linked below!) the work of Lead Safe Mama, LLC was written about by countless journalists in the past several weeks — featured in nearly every major news source in the world (and lots of smaller outlets, too)! Here’s the link to our press page, which features most of the recent coverage. If you read a recent article mentioning our work and it is not linked there yet, please let me know and I will have the Lead Safe Mama team (Carissa and Ainslie) update the page!
I wanted to share three of my favorite articles from this flurry of recent coverage of our work with you. If you load remote content for this e-mail and click on each of the three images at the top of this newsletter, you can read those articles. No reporting is perfect (the Canadian piece says I was using “at-home tests[!]”) but each of these three articles contain highlights I was very excited to see in print.
Another little (personal) update for this week: My older two sons’ appearance on American Idol has been pushed back to February 25th — so please do look for that. If you are not yet following them on social media, I would be so thankful if you considered doing so (you’ll be able to say you “knew them when!”). It’s a simple and free way to support their work as performing artists. Thank you. Links below:
This link has their most recent album, if you would like to listen to it!
This is Colescott’s Instagram page (he’s my oldest son).
This is Alexander’s Instagram page (my second son).
This is their collective page “The Rubin Brothers.”
I have told many people recently how busy I am taking care of the needs of my family — and I don’t think folks can begin to imagine what my day-to-day is like (trying to both work/ run Lead Safe Mama, LLC and manage the kids!) but one of the things that we have been working diligently on (for the past six months, actually!) is Avi’s college application process.
I am very excited to share with you today that Avi got accepted to his first college last week! Not only did he get accepted into college, but he got accepted into a program for a degree in Astrophysics (at the University of Hawaii at Manoa). He’s waiting to hear from a few other schools, but it is amazing to see all of his hard work pay off and his dreams come true! Hopefully this is also good news for others who have children like him (children with a permanent brain injury due to Lead-poisoning): With hard work, persistence, encouragement, dedication, and support, these kids can succeed (in spite of the often profound impacts of childhood Lead poisoning)!
Tamara
Sent to 16,758 friends today
Happy Anniversary! I love Scotland, everyone is so friendly. Congrats to you all for amazing accomplishments.
Thanks for all you do!
Jeanne