Allergy Book Recommendation: Allergic Girl


I was at the library recently and decided to peak through the new non-fiction releases. This is NOT something I usually do since I really like to loose myself in girly-fiction novels!

The book Allergic Girl: Adventures in Living Well with Food Allergies by Sloan Miller caught my eye so I brought it home. Normally, I try to stay away from books about food allergies because they tend to be overwhelming, scary, and/or just not at all relevant. However, this book was great!

To me, the book did a great job of simply expressing that food allergies are a way of life. They are scary. They are frustrating. They are manageable.

These are all the things I've said about food allergies for a long time so why did I find the book helpful? Because it validated the fears, talked about the work involved to find safe foods, and, most importantly, let me see the allergies from my daughter's eyes. 

All along, I've seen the allergies from my eyes. What they mean to me in regards to keeping her safe. What I have to do to ensure she's growing, to keep her being able to attend parties, to keep our family traveling across the USA, and to create a network of doctors to manage her care. What I forgot to do was to think about how she feels about her allergies.

She's at the age where they are scary to her. She remembers her reactions. She knows what they feel like and how scary they are. She doesn't want to experience them anymore. I forgot what her daily life is like living with allergies because I thought I was doing such a great job of keeping her safe from them.

So now we've entered a new chapter of food allergies. A chapter where we don't expect her to grow out of these; where we need to teach her how to feel in control of her allergies; and where we start including her in the process of planning how to keep her safe at friends' houses and parties.

If you're friends with us and you don't understand our life with food allergies, I recommend this book. It's a quick read. (BTW, feel free to skip the end of it where she's just giving travel advice!)

1 comment:

DandW said...

I'm reading the book now and find it very enlightening. It's definitely worth the time on many levels.