Being an Advocate

I'm typically a shy person when it comes to asking for things in public. Someone might be smoking too close to me and instead of asking them to move, I'll just move away to make things easier on myself. Salary negotiations give me no small amount of anxiety.

I've been forced to get over that discomfort a bit since my son and I both have food sensitivities. His are so severe that he wasn't growing before we figured it out, and he quickly gets sick if he's gotten accidentally exposed to something - mostly gluten and dairy. I've had to be okay asking someone to please make another hamburger without the bun - no, they can't just take the bun off because it's a food allergy (and hoping I'm saying it nicely enough that they do what I ask).

Last week was a bit hard for me in the advocacy department. Since we were at camp, all our meals were served in the communal dining hall. I brought a special bag of food to store in the walk-in fridge since I knew the drill from last year, but even sneaking back into the bustling big kitchen to get the bag felt like an imposition.  I felt too uncomfortable asking them to make special pasta, or getting them to tell me all the ingredients in each of the dishes, for all three meals. I just made my best guesses re. the food and supplemented with the bag we brought.

Then Alex got sick. I felt angry that I was saddled with this burden of asking, and angry at myself for being so uncomfortable about asking and having failed the test.  And then, while drinking my gluten-free beer in the dinner line, I met another gluten-free woman who has celiac. She would go in the kitchen in the morning and get the run-down as best she could from the cook, and I'd ask her the report. And the next night, miracle of miracles, she even asked the cook to make us some eggplant parmesan with no breading. I still had to hold up the dinner line asking for my special meal, but I savored every bite of that delicious eggplant.

It was so nice to find someone else on the journey, who ended up being my advocate too as she asked about her own needs. It took the pressure off me, but it also reminded me an important thing: ask, you and you shall receive eggplant parmesan.