Many of you in the ukulele community will know Joey Paul, and may also remember that she wrote a piece about herself on Got A Ukulele a little while ago.
Amongst other conditions, Joey suffers from Fibromyalgia, and recently got in touch with me to tell me that she has released a single in support of the Fibromyalgia charity "Fibroduck Foundation". I am therefore honoured and delighted to assist in giving her some space on Got A Ukulele to promote this worthy cause. Please dig deep.
Joey writes:
My name is Joey,
I am thirty and have had Fibromyalgia and M.E since I was nineteen. I have a bunch of other conditions, but they are not relvant here. If you want to know what Fibro is, here's an explanation [life is like a game of kerplunk = http://www.fibroduckfoundation.com/page24.html] Basically, I'm in a lot of pain, every day. My pain scale runs from one to ten, every day it sits at least at a five, that's even with painkillers. My five is about your seven or eight. I'm not alone, Fibromyalgia affects millions of people world wide and we're all desperate for same things...the cure, a treatment that works, people not to say we're faking it, people to be aware of what it's like for us....Our lives back.
Every year on May 12th, which is M.E and Fibromyalgia Awareness Day I make a post in my blog and try to raise awareness in the small circle of friends who read it. I think my friends are as informed as they are ever going to get so now, this year, I decided to do something different. I started playing the ukulele back in August 2010 and have since written nine songs, the latest being the single 'It Hurts To Be Me'.
I played the song for my friend Kim, I wasn't happy with the chords I'd chosen, but she already had a tune in her head and it all fit together beautifully, and then the possibility was it could raise some money for The Fibroduck Foundation. So despite the fact that it scares me silly, that people may hate it and all of that. I decided to release it and from there, any profits made could go to the foundation.
The Fibroduck Foundation started as someone wanting to raise awareness by sending 1 million rubber ducks out into the world to show people that Fibromyalgia exists and something needs to be done. Everyone could order a duck, and you could take photos and post them on it's website. On it's second birthday back in September 2011, they launched the Foundation, which is committed to providing funds to aid research, to help to find tests to prove it exists, treatments to aid the sufferers and maybe a cure.
I wanted to something more than just write a post, I wanted to say what a lot of fibromites are thinking that, it hurts to be us and so, while sleep was evading me one day, I wrote the song and Kim and her husband added Ukulele, guitar, bass, synth and she produced the whole thing and made it into the beauty it is today. Every penny of profit will go to the Fibroduck Foundation. It is available on iTunes and Amazon as well as other places around the web and hopefully, it will selll enough copies that it will not only raise awareness of what it's like to be a Fibro sufferer, but it will also raise funds for their first research project. I didn't want to just write a post and hope it made people aware, I didn't want to make money off my pain, I want to make a difference. I can only hope it will.
Joey - A very worthy cause and I wish you the very best of success with this. Kim and Anders - your support and assistance to Joey in getting this out there is such a brilliant display of friendship. Nice playing too guys!! Just grabbed my copy and would urge my readers to do the same. A reminder of the places it's available:
I clicked the link for "Isrealites by Desmond Dekker and this is the page that comes up?
ReplyDeleteWhoops - error - will fix!
ReplyDeleteCraig - fixed!
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