Recovery is a journey. It is a journey of heart and spirit as much as it is of body and mind. It is a journey not only foisted upon the ill or injured, but it becomes a journey for all those connected to them. And journeys - whether they are joyful or painful - are not complete nor fulfilled unless they are shared.
CaringBridges was created to make that sharing a little easier, and to ease the burden of the sometimes emotionally exhausting task of informing one’s concerned circle about an ill, injured or recovering loved one.
This is a free web-based service where anyone can quickly and easily create a personal web site that then serves as a hub of communication and support for both the patient and the family.
Each web site has a “journal” for communications from the patient or caregivers, as well as a message board for friends and family to post messages. Each site has a photo gallery that also serves to help visitors stay connected to the family and loved one.
CaringBridges was founded by Sona Mehring in 1997 when she was faced with task of spreading the word about the premature birth of her dear friends’ baby. She hit upon the idea of creating a web site as a method to keep their social circle informed during the difficult days ahead. Sona created her web site the day the baby was born, and it since has blossomed into CaringBridges and has enabled more than100,000 individual web sites, each created by people facing their own short and long-term life journeys.
While CaringBridges has mostly health-related web pages, a recent story in Delta Airline’s Sky Magazine cites couples creating a web page at CaringBridges to keep friends informed of their international adoption proceedings, and a displaced nursing home that created pages for all of its residents right after the Hurricane Katrina crisis.
Not only do these sites serve as a central communication point, they relieve some of the emotional stress for caregivers of delivering news while at the same time being a lifeline of support and encouragement.
CaringBridges is being embraced by healthcare organizations and non-profits serving health-related issues as a way of serving their constituents. St. Francis Hospital in Minnesota, or example, has gone so far as to put a computer for accessing the site in their Acute Care family waiting room.
CaringBridges has grown to be the largest charitable non-profit website in the world. More than 100 sites are being created there each day, and it averages three people each minute coming to register to visit them. Visitors from 40 different countries have left over 15 million messages of hope and encouragement. CaringBridges is supported solely by donations - 90% of them from individuals and families who use the service.
We hope you will stop by the CaringBridges web site and support them by spreading the word.
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Posted by: Rachel | November 07, 2011 at 01:29 PM