What Does Real Health Mean to You?

Disclosure: This post is Sponsored by Anthem Blue Cross.

One of the things I adore about my life in social media, both as the co-founder of SpanglishBaby and the founder of Latina Bloggers Connect, is the opportunity to work on campaigns that allow me to go beyond my normal comfort zone. Although the topic of raising bilingual and bicultural kids is always front and center on this blog, we often get a bit personal where it comes to the real issues affecting families and women in particular. One of those issues, especially in the current media environment, is our health.

I decided to lend my voice and story to the Real Health campaign because I think about the what health means to me on a daily basis. Not only from a place of reflection by giving thanks for my and my family’s health every day, but also based on the decisions I make or don’t. For me, having real health means I must think of health in holistic terms. Being healthy comes with feeling healthy in mind, body and soul and being conscious of putting myself first. Yes, much easier said than done, especially when life hits you in the face.

Life did hit me in the face a few months after my girl was born and the recession affected my house. No matter how much I was trying to remain holistically healthy, the fact was that we couldn’t even afford health insurance and that was the scariest feeling of all. I had a newborn that needed constant visits to the pediatrician, so we had to sacrifice everything we had just to keep our healthcare coverage because we were borderline for qualifying for California’s Healthy Families program.

Before my daughter was born, not having health insurance didn’t stress me out as much. Now, it’s our priority and there’s no way I would go without it. This was reinforced for me this summer when my mom came down with an extremely rare tumor that had to be operated on immediately and had to be done at the best cancer hospital in the nation. If she didn’t have the insurance she had, there’s no way we could have paid the $30,000 deposit required just to get her an appointment to be assessed. The total bill came out to over $150,000 and now, in her mid-60s, she’s almost depleted her lifetime maximum. That is scary.

Here’s the first installment of my health story.

You can visit the Real Health website or Facebook page for other stories from real women like me that answer the question “What does health care mean to you?”