Migraine Awareness Month #17: "Father Knows Best"

I really need to title today's post "Father Knows Best, and So Does Mother," because both my parents have been remarkably supportive of what I've been trying to deal with around migraine.

So thanks to both of you.

Today's prompt reads:

Migraine Awareness Month Blogging Challenge #17: "Father Knows Best"

Some understand Migraines, some don't. It's Father's Day. Write a letter to your father or the man closest to you, and talk to him about your Migraines.

I figure the prompt is focused on fathers, because we are in June, and so we encounter father's day. But I don't see a need to masculinist about my post.

Dear Dad & Mom,

Thank you for loving me, regardless of the various difficult challenges I have faced in my life. I am and always have been grateful to have you both in my life--as parents, as role models, as confidantes, and as friends.

As this is Migraine Awareness Month, I will speak to issues specifically surrounding migraine.

Mom, thanks for helping me understand this disease, through your own experience with it.

Both of you, thank you for being understanding and kind as I've tried to navigate my way to an understanding of what Migraine presents--its challenges, its symptoms, its unpredictable nature, its complications, the way it intrudes on things I'd rather be doing, the way it changes my sense of who I am.

It means a great deal to me that when we talk on the phone, you always ask how I have been feeling, and that you want so much for me to feel better. But not for me to pretend to feel better, just to make things better for you, and for other people. I am grateful that you appreciate how complicated this experience is, and how it infringes on so many things.

It means even more to me that when we are together you are so flexible about what I can and cannot do, and that you trust me to do what I can, and to rest when I need to. In many ways, that makes it easier for me to try to be as strong as I can.

And I appreciate your willingness to go along with the various attempts I have made to make things better--giving up gluten and dairy and eggs right at Christmas, going without caffeine, going without alcohol, even though none of things has brought a solution--even though I know they make things harder for everyone else, too.

Most of all, I love knowing how much you love me, and how much you want these things to be better. Every time I can see that love, it makes me stronger.

National Migraine Awareness Month is initiated by the National Headache Foundation. The Blogger's Challenge is initiated by www.FightingHeadacheDisorders.com.