I have imagined sitting down to write this update many times since I stopped making daily social media posts for the foundation. It’s not that I think I owe anyone an explanation, or that I believe anyone has been out there wondering all this time what happened, for me to go from posting every day to occasionally to not at all. More that I would like to try to explain for myself — what happened then, and what life is like now.
The financial part of the Rader Ward Foundation is operating as it has from the beginning. We are still accepting donations, and taking applications and awarding scholarships to the three Montessori schools in our county that offer elementary and middle school education. (Faith Montessori Homeschool Co-op is, in fact, expanding into the high school grades — a development we are thrilled to see and support.)
But the social media work part was a passion project of mine. I loved it and it was one way of keeping Rader close to my heart: finding resources for mental health, suicide prevention, and grief support, and posting something new daily, with something more lighthearted for balance weekly on Mario Mondays.
Then almost exactly two years ago, the week of Mar10 Day 2022, I made my first visit to ReCraft Creative Reuse Center (it made its way into my posts for the first time April 2, 2022). Later in April, I made my 1,000th post. I started missing days (one day at a time, then two) in May, and gradually posted less and less after that.
I mention ReCraft not because they’re ‘to blame’ for the end of my daily posting, but when I started to volunteer there that first day I went in to donate some of my mom’s old sewing supplies, I found that being there fulfilled me in many of the same ways that tending to the foundation social media had fulfilled me.
One area where Rader loved to express his creativity was making things with discarded or repurposed materials. Being at ReCraft helps me continue to feel close to him, and brings back a lot of fond memories of projects he worked on. He had the kind of imagination where he could look at an item and see a completely new use for it. ReCraft is full of these types of raw materials — and people who see them with that same eye Rader had — every day. (Also I find sorting through donations and putting them out on the floor for folks to discover to be a really soothing activity. In an out-of-control world, being able to put order to one small part of it feels amazing.)
Then in the fall of 2022, because of anti-LGBTQ+ developments in my local public library system, I began to attend and speak at meetings of our library board, and meetings of the body that appoints our library board members, County Council. It’s a bit of an understatement to say that that whole thing took on a life of its own, and advocacy now occupies a fair bit of my attention daily. (If you’re interested in the details, check out the Linktree of Freedom in Libraries Advocacy Group — especially the timeline and the white paper. I’m also involved in leading my local chapter of PFLAG.)
I believe that sharing the great work of other nonprofits and creatives on social media was a useful service and that it helped people for those 1,000+ days I was doing it consistently. But advocating personally on behalf of marginalized folks living within my community and state has become a more important and urgent use of my time and energy.
I’m still just as much into Super Mario, and my wardrobe of clothing and pins continues to expand, along with my stash of collectibles. I still love taking care of my houseplants. (On a personal note, my mother passed away a couple weeks ago, and I now have a couple of new plants to tend to as I journey into that fresh loss.) I miss regularly interacting with some of you via likes and comments. Without daily posting, I’m using Instagram and Facebook and Twitter a lot less.
There’s a part of me that wishes I could figure out a system of semi-regular posting for the foundation. I thrive on a schedule, so posting ‘whenever I feel like it’ gets me pretty much nowhere. Maybe I could look at each upcoming month and plan two posts? That doesn’t seem so overwhelming, but it’s still a new habit I’ll have to start and reinforce.
Thanks for reading! — Susan, Rader’s mom