Emily Ybarra Curry

Community Health | Social Justice |Women’s Health. RN | Social Worker | Latina. Creative Altruism over Destructive Selfishness. she/her/ella (opinions my own)

[Rep. Debbie Dingell @RepDebDingell]

Today we honor our dear friend John Lewis and the extraordinary legacy he left behind. He dedicated his life to protecting our democracy, expanding the right to vote, and urging us to make “good trouble” in the face of injustice. The best way to honor him is to keep doing that work.

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@LePapillonBlu2 😭💙

[NAMI @NAMICommunicate]

Hundreds of SAMHSA grants supporting mental health and substance use services were terminated overnight.

These decisions threaten suicide prevention, overdose prevention, and community-based care nationwide.

Read NAMI’s statement:
📷 https://t.co/R40Fwv9iCX

@NAMIAdvocacy

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@ZaRdOz420WPN @bmcarthur20 @ICEgov Devastating. The inhumanity

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

“A well-lived life demands more reality—stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope—often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.” @BenSasse

[Ben Sasse @BenSasse]

Friends-

This is a tough note to write, but since a bunch of you have started to suspect something, I’ll cut to the chase: Last week I was diagnosed with metastasized, stage-four pancreatic cancer, and am gonna die.

Advanced pancreatic is nasty stuff; it’s a death sentence. But I already had a death sentence before last week too — we all do.

I’m blessed with amazing siblings and half-a-dozen buddies that are genuinely brothers. As one of them put it, “Sure, you’re on the clock, but we’re all on the clock.” Death is a wicked thief, and the bastard pursues us all.

Still, I’ve got less time than I’d prefer. This is hard for someone wired to work and build, but harder still as a husband and a dad. I can’t begin to describe how great my people are. During the past year, as we’d temporarily stepped back from public life and built new family rhythms, Melissa and I have grown even closer — and that on top of three decades of the best friend a man could ever have. Seven months ago, Corrie was commissioned into the Air Force and she’s off at instrument and multi-engine rounds of flight school. Last week, Alex kicked butt graduating from college a semester early even while teaching gen chem, organic, and physics (she’s a freak). This summer, 14-year-old Breck started learning to drive. (Okay, we’ve been driving off-book for six years — but now we’ve got paper to make it street-legal.) I couldn’t be more grateful to constantly get to bear-hug this motley crew of sinners and saints.

There’s not a good time to tell your peeps you’re now marching to the beat of a faster drummer — but the season of advent isn’t the worst. As a Christian, the weeks running up to Christmas are a time to orient our hearts toward the hope of what’s to come.

Not an abstract hope in fanciful human goodness; not hope in vague hallmark-sappy spirituality; not a bootstrapped hope in our own strength (what foolishness is the evaporating-muscle I once prided myself in). Nope — often we lazily say “hope” when what we mean is “optimism.” To be clear, optimism is great, and it’s absolutely necessary, but it’s insufficient. It’s not the kinda thing that holds up when you tell your daughters you’re not going to walk them down the aisle. Nor telling your mom and pops they’re gonna bury their son.

A well-lived life demands more reality — stiffer stuff. That’s why, during advent, even while still walking in darkness, we shout our hope — often properly with a gravelly voice soldiering through tears.

Such is the calling of the pilgrim. Those who know ourselves to need a Physician should dang well look forward to enduring beauty and eventual fulfillment. That is, we hope in a real Deliverer — a rescuing God, born at a real time, in a real place. But the eternal city — with foundations and without cancer — is not yet.

Remembering Isaiah’s prophecies of what’s to come doesn’t dull the pain of current sufferings. But it does put it in eternity’s perspective:
“When we've been there 10,000 years…We've no less days to sing God's praise.”

I’ll have more to say. I’m not going down without a fight. One sub-part of God’s grace is found in the jawdropping advances science has made the past few years in immunotherapy and more. Death and dying aren’t the same — the process of dying is still something to be lived. We’re zealously embracing a lot of gallows humor in our house, and I’ve pledged to do my part to run through the irreverent tape.

But for now, as our family faces the reality of treatments, but more importantly as we celebrate Christmas, we wish you peace: “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned….For to us a son is given” (Isaiah 9).

With great gratitude, and with gravelly-but-hopeful voices,
Ben — and the Sasses

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@Timodc So cringe.

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

Join me in asking the Department of Education to revise its proposed definition of 'professional degree' programs to include nursing.

#Nursing #RN #RegisteredNurse

@ANANursingWorld

Stand up for nurses’ education and workforce—sign the petition.  https://t.co/ziDuZwGIAo

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@JHWeissmann lol

[KFF @KFF]

As Congress debates the future of the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits, new KFF polling finds significant concern about affordability if they expire at the end of the year.

Explore the findings: https://t.co/WuA8VQUFZh

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@AlexSmith815 @emnode @DHSgov @grok It’s not the media. It’s our government.

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@CrabbyAshley @EricLDaugh lol this made me lol thank you :)

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@MicahBeckwith Huh?

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@aldohartman3 @NPRMichel I disagree. But thanks for engaging with me.

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@aldohartman3 They were. The whole first half of interview. I don’t understand the issue with her question… All leaders should to condemn policial violence. I think we can agree on that. Again, prayers for Charlie’s family. Horrible horrible

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@TheMediaReport1 That is not what happened. Yes, listen to the full segment.

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@lakedog73 @_ezinne1 Did you listen to the recording?

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@travistiempo Heard it. It was sooo awful. He had a chance to be a leader, but completely failed.

[Emily Ybarra Curry @EmilyYbarraRN]

@mschlapp You had such an opportunity today on npr. Disappointed you didn’t take the opportunity to send message of unity on all sides. Instead fell back into the awful rhetoric. We pray for Charlie Kirk’s family. We need both to happen or we never get better as Americans.

[Chris Murphy 🟧 @ChrisMurphyCT]

My thoughts on this dark day.

1/ The beating heart of a free society is the ability for citizens to engage in political life with no fear of violence. Once we lose this freedom, few will step forward, and our entire democratic experiment unwinds into chaos and recrimination.