Helping Hearts, Blog of Anne Sanders

How does it start? Anger, lack of control and lashing out at someone else. One in four women and one in nine men will experience domestic violence in their lifetime according to the Centers for Disease Control. Five million children are impacted by domestic violence each year and two hundred seventy five million people are impacted worldwide from domestic violence according to Childhood Domestic Violence Association . Can you imagine what it’s like to live in constant fear of violence? Or maybe you know what it’s like from personal experience. It’s not pretty. Long-term effects of domestic violence on women who have been abused may include anxiety, depression, death, health problems, malnutrition, panic attacks, suicide attempts and an inability to adequately respond to the needs of their children according to findcounseling.com. Those children suffer, too. They suffer s hame, guilt and self blame, fear of abandonment or expressing emotions, anger and depression. Children of do...

Last Friday was World Arthritis Day and honestly, I wasn’t sure what to say about it. Arthritis is a condition that affects more than 46 million U.S. adults—a number that's expected to increase to 67 million adults by the year 2030. But I’ve not had a personal experience with it until I became friends with a lady at my church who has arthritis. She asked people to wear blue on World Arthritis Day and then I asked her if she'd like to be interviewed! There are more than 100 types of arthritis but rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is the most common type of inflammatory arthritis. More than 1.3 million Americans are affected by RA. According to the American College of Rheumatology, about 75 percent of those affected are women. In fact, between one and three percent of women are likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis in their lifetime. So, it’s appropriate that my friend is a woman. Her name is Melissa Maxey and here is her story. 1.        How long have you h...

Do you have a pink bra? Up until about a month ago, I didn’t, but now I have one covered in flowers which I’m waiting to wear on October 27. You see, the last Saturday of this month is the Making Strides Against Breast Cancer walk. Thousands of women (and men) will be strapping on a decorated pink bra over their t-shirts, putting on pink wigs, wearing pink tutus. Why? Because they want to stop breast cancer in its tracks. This is my second year of involvement with the walk. Last year I volunteered to count money behind the scenes. I’ll be doing that again this year, but I made myself a bra this year and got on a team that’s fundraising, too. October 27, the day of the walk, also happens to be USA Weekend’s Make a Difference Day . What better way to make a difference than to fundraise to fight breast cancer and walk to raise awareness about it? Here’s some more awareness. Women over 40, like myself, need to get mammograms every year. I didn’t get one last year. My gynecolo...

A dime a day. Does it sound like too much or too little? It adds up to about three dollars a month, less than the cost of a Starbucks espresso or a Burger King Whopper. It is the coin of compassion that Help Every Day deducts from your credit card monthly to support its projects. If you’re not sure how to go about helping other people and you don’t have much money to do so, then Help Every Day is a great option. They’ve done projects around the world: improving water collection in Tanzania, developing literacy and vocational skills among poor adolescent girls in India, providing bikes for new health care professionals in Tanzania, financing difficult deliveries of babies in Sierra Leone, caring for orphaned Kenyan babies, providing training for older orphans in Kenya. Their current project is helping the indigenous Quechua communities in Peru. By financing a project over a six month period, Help Every Day will assist these threatened communities with economic developmen...