Safe Room

 That kind of safe room sounds both compassionate and empowering—and it could offer more than just shelter. 🌿 Here's why such a space makes meaningful sense for people living with challenging diseases like multiple sclerosis, cancer, or others:

### 🧘‍♀️ Physical & Mental Recovery

- **Rest & Restoration**: A quiet space to rest can reduce fatigue and help manage pain.

- **Exercise Area**: Gentle movement improves mobility, circulation, and mental well-being—especially for conditions like MS where physical therapy is vital.

- **Mental Reset**: A tranquil environment supports mindfulness, reflection, and reduced anxiety or depression.

### 🌐 Connectivity with the World

- **Wi-Fi Access**: Keeps people connected to loved ones, telemedicine resources, entertainment, support groups, and work (if applicable).

- **Empowerment**: Enables continued engagement with passions, hobbies, or learning despite health challenges.

### 🛋️ Comfort & Community

- **Chill Zone**: Soothing furniture, calming aesthetics, and sensory-friendly features foster emotional well-being.

- **Non-hospital Vibes**: Creates a safe haven that feels like home, not a clinic.

### 💪 Taking Back Control

- **Choice & Agency**: Having a designated space where someone can feel safe and autonomous—even while managing something frightening—can reignite a sense of self.

- **Challenge-Free Zone**: Not in denial of the illness, but creating a space where it doesn’t have to dominate every moment.

It’s like building a sanctuary in the storm—a place that doesn’t erase the challenge, but helps people navigate it with more strength, dignity, and peace.

Quite Room

 

**“The Quiet Room”**

He named it *The Quiet Room*—though no plaque marked it, and no one else knew it had a name. It was just his bedroom at the end of the passage, where the noise of the world dimmed to a whisper. The curtains were always half drawn—not to shut out the light, but to soften it, the way someone might lower their voice when speaking to someone they loved.

Gerrie had once filled that room with music and jokes that wandered off mid-sentence because someone made him laugh too hard. His books lined the shelves, dog-eared and proud. But since the diagnosis, the room felt... slower. Quieter. Not heavy with grief, exactly—just dense with pause.

Multiple sclerosis hadn’t shattered him with a single blow. It trickled in—an unsteady leg, a numbed hand, a name forgotten mid-thought. At first, Gerrie wrote it off: fatigue, long days, maybe even stress. But MS doesn’t shout. It whispers. And it keeps whispering until you're forced to listen.

His gait changed. The long walks by the Vaal River became short strolls to the kettle. His handwriting curled into something foreign. Invitations from friends dried up—not out of cruelty, but the kind of awkwardness people feel around something they don’t understand. And Gerrie? He didn’t have the strength to explain. Not every time.

So the silence settled in. Not peace, not tranquility. Just *quiet*. The kind that buzzes in your ears when no one's texting back. The kind that fills a room after a joke that used to bring a roar, now lands alone.

But in that stillness, Gerrie began to notice things: the way his breathing slowed after the pain receded. The way the light danced differently each season across his bookshelf. The birds who still nested outside his window, indifferent to whether he made it outside to greet them.

He began to record voice notes. Not for anyone else—just for himself. Sometimes to rant. Sometimes to cry. Often just to say things out loud so he could remember what his voice sounded like when he wasn’t masking discomfort. Those whispers into his phone became companions—reminders that silence wasn't the enemy. It was space. Space to feel. To mourn. To adjust. To *be*.

One afternoon, his son Jean crept into the room and climbed up beside him. The boy looked up at his dad quietly, eyes full of questions too big for his age.

“Why don’t you talk so much anymore?” Jean asked, gently.

Gerrie smiled and tapped his temple. “I talk in here.” Then he placed a hand on his chest. “And in here too.”

Jean was quiet for a second. Then, with a wisdom beyond his years, he said, “I hear it, Papa.”

And in that moment, the room breathed. It didn’t feel so quiet anymore.

Community

 The last two days we spend the days supporting our local community The Village with creating a awareness that a community united is a community building a future for all.

We tried to engage with each shop at The Village three Rivers having coffee, chicken, from bakery and so on the shows that the Ubuntu feeling in three Rivers is alive and that we can put out personal opinions behind us and see how we take the community forward.

A true rainbow nation experience to all. This shows that as South Africans we can take SA forward.

Thanks to all for supporting and the people behind the arrangement.

We all understand united we stand……… so please all take hands to you people around you and make it work.

Lost in Translation

 Good evening

Laying on may bed and streaming Music as is chosen for me by @Spotify. 

Listening to an Afrikaans song and never realised that the song is about the deep pain of Love or the life in general.

https://youtu.be/k5LEnbJt0ls?si=5RDHEGKTkmffFBz0

That suicide is the ultimate sacrifice. I wish for those going through this don’t  think about it as there is really so much good in the world if you put it out in the Universe what ever is your believe… just put faith in the universe that life can and will be better for all if we just try a little bit and biggest respect the people around you. The important business man, the lady that starts early morning mopping the floors so when we go shopping all is clean. 

My personal view is that at the end we are equal in this universe no one is superior to the person next to you. 

 Please take time out and show respect to the people around you.

Respect is contagious

Preperation

 Good evening all.

So for years I have learned to prepare for the expected and unexpected in everyday life in my Journey. 

So the past weeks I have been preparing again to go for my six monthly drips.. and then there was a glimmer of hope that I could go on the new and greatest medicine, but like all ofer world medical aids has a different time line. But I am fine with this as I know my time will come when it is the right time.

But I have learned again that I would rather focus on my blessings be thankful for the great stuff happening around me. 

Over the past weeks been some fun MS battles from being bed ridden for 4 weeks and a week in hospital. But as I have learned my body needed it.

But in the bigger picture life is great and a blessing. 

Have also had some fun and created MS awareness as below.

https://www.facebook.com/1790232397/posts/pfbid02tv1R3Coi3UeePqhdn1XNgyPMq6Z3mdo6zXTBmWKMAFEUvnjeFJ3JWX5hCYgEACcUl/?

https://glanslewe.blogspot.com/2024/02/veelvuldige-sklerose-veterane-verf-die.html

And these days are the days that take us forward.

Let us look forward and Keep S’Myelin

The Grains of sand

 As I live me life I come to realise we are more like the grains of sand in a desert. Each grain has iets place and needs to move as the wind and water and earth needs it to be and go. A grain can fight the wind the water but ultimately it will end in the place where it is needed. 

Looking over a desert and reading the terrible news of the flooding in Libya we need to just try to support the people in need. People are being moved by mother nature in an terrible and tragic way, The lives lost and families destroyed and damaged caused we can not imagine. My heart goes out to all people that are suffering during these times.

 It brings back my personal experience of the heartache the was caused by the Arib Spring some years ago, one the act of nature and other the act of the human kind.

Both started with a small grain of sand that shifted and changed the lives of so many people.

We need to respect the grain we are and what we doing to people around us… the question is it for the good to the people around you. Think hard before you start a grain rolling.

Please let us all be the best person we must be.

 

So all starts falling in place

 Years ago when I started my journey on blogging… most of them in dark corners in hospitals.. just to have some peace of mind .

I personally never thought I / we would be where we are know… the then a dream of a book is now reality although only Ebooks as yet. But in discussion with the printing side.. then a new story. 

To have a book out in less then a month and have reached global exposure via online friends from US to europa, Australia, Asia, Africa. 

Then all the media exposure is exceptional.  But this thanks to a PR team making it happen.. 

It also started stimulating my brain on Blogging again.

And today again aligning with a team of  professional our web presence is out there… and it will grow. 

www.smyelin.co.za

I would like to just share two youtube video’s not may own please see people that did them it just speaks to the the our Book Just keep S’Myelin line that positivity is a blessing and a help no matter what your situation. 

https://youtu.be/ura03MbXZKI

https://youtu.be/pXWihqmEjO0