By SUSAN DROMEY HEETER, Joyful Musings
January and February can be long, cold, desperate months. If you are like me, your heels are the texture of the wicker furniture you’ve left outside, your girth is far more comfortable in elasticized waists, you don’t recall ever using the air conditioning inside your vehicle. Alas, dear Joyful Musers, I write with a challenge that might put a literal spring in your step, might get you outside of your own woes, might make the world just that much lighter and filled with hope.
I invite you to join the February Dog Walking Challenge for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Below is an overview from their Facebook page:
Join thousands of others taking part in the February Dog Walking Challenge and walking 50 miles with their four-legged friends for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP). The support and encouragement in this group will help you stay motivated and inspired to keep going throughout February. Register for the challenge to get a FREE bandana for your pup to wear on walks and to set up your fundraiser.
Sadly, desperately, stunningly, we all know someone who has taken their own life. It’s inevitable, as we age, we know someone or perhaps ARE that someone who is simply at the end of their rope. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is an organization which offers hope and guidance and, well, this simple challenge to allow spring to arrive a little sooner, to keep us on track with our canine joys, to remember those who have hit literal bottom with their despondancy.
Interested? I muse joyfully you are. And I muse joyfully on those who’ve left far too soon. As I walk with my own Bennie, as I set up my own little fundraiser, I know those souls are with me, are walking alongside, are going to muse joyfully that someone else need not succumb to suicide as the solution.
I muse joyfully you will join. Thank you.
Susan Dromey Heeter is a writer from Dover who recently let her hair go au natural white. Writing has been her passion since her English majoring days at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Dromey Heeter has lived in The Netherlands, Alaska and currently basks in all things New England, including the frigid winters. An avid swimmer, Dromey Heeter’s great passion is to bring back body surfing as most children have no idea how to ride waves without ridiculous boogie boards.