Lumigrate Turns One Today at 9:50 AM

Do YOU know how much YOU are part of something GRAND today?  If you're reading this, you've found a website that's just starting to 'toddle' on our first birthday -- and it's been generally recognized as being an innovative resource for changing people's lives related to health care by providing a different type of information, in a different way.  All new things take time to settle out or as I say 'see what sticks to the wall', but our becoming an information portal and resource is very much what has happened. And we have EACH ONE OF YOU who comes to the website to thank.  "The Grate Group" you guys named yourselves!  The day Ellen dropped in last fall from the sky and said 'I don't do anything with my time unless it is FUN and this site is FUN' was a day I'll never forget, and now she is a popular writer of Yenta.  The statistics of visits is extremely important at this point, as we can now go to sponsors for the wonderful sections we have and say 'we value your company, would you like to sponsor a section of ours?'  So please keep coming -- you are making a difference!  Think of stopping be regularly as similar to voting for American Idol or Dancing with the Stars!  Hopefully we're entertaining and uplifting as those shows can be, and they are education too.  

A year ago today at 9:50 in the morning I got a text from Lumigrate's creative director who was at the office that said 'We're up and running!'  I was in the presentation/conference room in the big medical building I had left, where I was the only occupational therapist and merrily seeing a dwindling number of patients and therefore revenue, rising overheard, and basically the whole health care system crumbling that was going on.  It was in yesterday's newspaper that many physicians are getting out of their private practices for the same reasons and going to work for hospitals or other organizations as employees, in part due to the cost of electronic medical records, which had been a factor in my reality as we were electronic and I had to provide laptops for myself and my therapy assistant and for our office. 

When I got the good news that my new 'brainchild' had finally been born after over a year of preparation which, no kidding, STARTED with having to have a moving truck and crew TWICE because the painter hadn't gotten word to do the trim on my office FIRST the day of my move from my old offices so when we arrived he was painting my office and we only had two hours allocated on their schedule, I was relieved.  Because in between that day and March 27th of 2009 I had hired one full and one part time employee with good skills for what Lumigrate needed but we all had LOTS to learn, which entailed hiring consultants as trainers, attorneys, artists and accountants, buying all the equipment and software needed to record and make brochures and edit full seminars which Lumigrate was going to launch with, renting the space required to have it be able to happen due to the busy schedules of the providers (dedicated space), putting in the DSL lines, routers, and hardware/phones that were necessary for the new space, which of course was a different type than the building I moved from.  We adjusted on a daily basis for something being thrown in the way of how I'd planned things to go originally -- none of which ever made things FASTER or cost LESS money in one way or the other. 

So when the GRATE NEWS CAME that Lumigrate was LIVE after literally years of immersing myself in a team coming together to talk about the concept of forming an "integrative medicine center", it was ironic or maybe 'meant to be' that I was in a seminar room in my old building where Chris Young and his wife Cheryl who is a pediatric specialist and autism expert and I used to collaborate with patients who had mild head injuries, autism, fibromyalgia, or other neurologic disorders.  I'd just heard Chris and Cheryl present their seminar on 'Adverse Childhood Experiences and Chronic Illness in Adulthood' and I was filled with optimism about how COOL it is that these amazing providers in my own back yard had come together to form an integrative medicine center and I was about to offer full length videos and then written information on a website to help people anywhere in the world get progressive health education -- providers AND the public. 

We've had to just see what came in this first year.  MANY people took the time to download videos, particularly the free ones.  Many didn't, and when I would ask if it was the cost or the time or the technology, it was that 'I think I'll have time to do that in the future and then my time gets used up on other things'.  The providers you see on Lumigrate didn't even watch each other's videos generally because of time I suspect.  Maybe some don't know they can download -- that's a big hurdle for us because it's just not in our habits yet.  The economy tanked and so people didn't but the electronics that are available now to watch things from the internet on your TVs. 

People and the Internet and technology, when you think about it, are a 'system' and it can only shift so fast, just like any system.  That's why, basically, the initial proposals and ideas about health care 'reform' turned out to be what was passed this last week -- it's going to take lots of time and shifts and time and shifts to get things adjusted.  As I have always said, MY BEST IDEA about health care 'reform' is what YOU see on the home page of Lumigrate, and what I presented about in Berkeley if you chose to read about that in the Forum area or blog in July where I've written about it.  But the analyst that I was fortunate enough to get some time with, Tom Sawyer of Ryan, Sawyer and Whitney, and others who have had reason to see the statistics for Lumigrate due to their business collaboration interests with me, are I.M.P.R.E.S.S.E.D.  That the # of people who even know about Lumigrate now has somewhat intentionally kept limited and with a controlled growth in order to keep the quality of the people writing high level as it is have utilized Lumigrate in the ways they have, particularly taking the time to download videos in 2009 --- ROCKED. 

And the other thing that I'm very happy about is the quality and sincerely passionate people who have come to be the featured experts and writers at Lumigrate.  Ilene Morgan did such a nice piece about nails that the ND and MD then added onto, Yenta has given us much humor and wisdom and Jewish Mother LOVE, Alice is well on her way with her new Forum and has been such a great team player, and I want to mention Toni who is the first person to write in the Your Story About Your Fibromyalgia topic in the Fibromyalgia Forum, as she and her family included me one evening last fall in a lovely dinner at the their home, bringing me a sense of satisfaction of what Lumigrate brings people with it's education.  It is a ton of work and this honestly is the most stressful period of my life, and I've had a couple of very stressful  periods in the past that I had hoped I'd never see the likes of, but I wouldn't go back and do it differently.  Some of the things I've learned along the way I wish I'd known at the time, but that's what learning is about, right?  

What I've also been working on for years now, in addition to the experts you see on the videos we launched with a year ago, is virtually creating what you see on the You model --  having a provider from each discipline as the featured expert on Lumigrate writing for that disciple. Deirdre Rawlings for ND,  April Schulte-Barclay for acupuncture and Oriental medicine, Marc Spurlock as medical doctor (who has a major background with fibromyalgia and environmental medicine), Cindy Schmidt and Gwen Pettit as PTs and health coaches, whose FIRST installment about fibromyalgia I hope to post immediately after this blog (what nice timing as a birthday present! -- we also coincidentally have Karen's Korner about to start up --- all puns intended as it's going to be about driving as that's her specialty, as well as other OT and health care lessons and thoughts). Mitch Sprier for pharmacy with a compounding focus, Karen Richardson and Jan Peterson as OTs are not yet visible -- they all were in Colorado Springs before 3/4 of us scattered, coincidentally.  But I sure look forward to getting THEIR components added in the next few days or so.  Bay Recovery in San Diego is interested in developing a Forum area about addiction and recovery but they're so very busy we're having to be patient -- which I'm learning to be through all this. I'm finding that professionals that have the background that I'm looking for are A) Busy and when B) when I say 'write' they think 'long, hard work' like doing a professional journal article, when in fact, the public is busy too, so I want short, sweet, STREAMLINED things from VALID and PROGRESSIVE providers ...

and overall we make it FUN (that would be YENTA! and the Movement Therapy Forums mostly -- Kohava Howard's Topic on YogaDance was extremely well-read, which was very intersting to see .. she will be bringing us more 'happy feet' once she gets back from traveling to Israel again!)   Adding to the FUN factor that then reaches over into the 'spirit' portion of integrative medicine (body, mind spirit) will be Cinda Crawford of the Health Matters Show, and I also want to include Llenar Bragg who 'is' No Out There, Stop the Blame Game -- because there is No Out There out there, as quantum physics now suggests, as she has a topic on Lumigrate and I hope to develop more collaboratively with her, but Forums are not her 'thing', which right now is where Lumigrate is 'at'.)  I also have interest from Paula King, who has vast interest and expertise in this area but not in writing on forums, in collaborating in other media that I'm part of but which aren't currently 'what is at Lumigrate.com'. 

But really, everyone who writes allows for cross polination of learning with each other, and many MANY more are now coming to read.  One of my goals with Lumigrate was to help more people a week than I was as a clinician and today, without having posted anything on facebook to remind anyone and not having YET posted anything new on Lumigrate myself today, I've had more people helped on a Saturday (non work day previously for me) than in weekday at the clinic one on one with me.  And that's pretty cool.  So I hope YOU have read this and now feel how important YOU are to Lumigrate, because YOU are the reason I did it!  Thanks for being part of our SECOND year if you're reading this on or after March 27, 2010.  And I look forward to reviewing this a year from now and seeing where Lumigrate 'was at' and what the blog for a year from now says!  And I hope you'll be healthier and happier and reading it too!  At least you'll have had a resource for education and people to help you move forwards, I most certainly know.