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Nadia Pendleton

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Health Fair @childrensnational - So glad to have had the opportunity to connect with families & staff there on whole health, wellbeing & quality of life. Gave out stress balls, dried sachets of organic lavender (“Oh, yes please!”), books (“My favorite!”), “empowerment bracelets” (“Can I have another one please?”), room signs & paintings with positive affirmations on them (“Can I give some of these to other kids?”), “secret note” cards (“ooh, What are these?”), nut-free nutrition bars (“I’ll take an extra one for later”), and our info pamphlets.

Such special moments, including watching a child sit right down on the floor with his dad to read one of the books we gave him, a little girl lining her wrist with “empowerment bracelets” in awe that they can be “magical”, reconnecting with staff we knew many moons ago, and talking with staff who hopefully can collaborate with us in new ways.

Loved sharing the table line with the Social Work team, Patient & Family Experience team, and the Family Resource Library—Absolutely awesome individuals who care so much 💖

Thank you to the organizers who invited us to be part of this wonderful event as a community collaborator.

#elianaslight #childrensnationalhospital #childrensnational #childrenshealth

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Shout out to Josue on his 1st birthday!🥰🥳🙌💖🤗

Please join us in sending him love and best wishes through a comment below and through the Universe to wrap around him at home💖

You may remember “Dr. J.” from our March 29th post. (If you don’t, pls scroll on down to find it!😘)

At that moment, he was recovering from a successful heart surgery. In this moment, he’s at home with his loving family who is celebrating every ounce of his cuteness and their time together. Such a wonderful family.

Please send them all your love with best wishes💖

#elianaslight #childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions #caregiversupport #love #community

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Today, on National Nonprofit Day, we’re reflecting on what makes the work of Eliana’s Light possible: people caring for people. 💛

Eliana’s Light is a volunteer-led nonprofit supporting children with complex medical conditions and the people who care for them. Our work is guided by our C.A.R.E. model—bringing together compassionate support, resources, relationships, and whole-health approaches to help children, families, caregivers, and care providers feel supported along difficult journeys.

But C.A.R.E. is more than a model. It comes to life through community.

It looks like a child creating something for another child they may never meet. A volunteer assembling a care package. A practitioner offering a moment of restoration to a caregiver. A community partner sharing their skills or resources. A physician being supported in their own well-being so they have greater capacity to care for others.

No one person or organization does this work alone. Care moves through connection.

We are deeply grateful for every volunteer, donor, partner, family, care provider, and friend who has become part of this community over the years.

And if you’d like to help that circle of care reach another child or family, we welcome your support. A donation of any size helps us continue providing meaningful resources, experiences, and moments of comfort to those we serve. A link is in our bio ⬆️

Thank you for helping us keep Eliana’s Light shining. ✨

#NationalNonprofitDay #ElianasLight #CareInCommunity #CaregiverSupport #wholehealth

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For medical professionals in our community who are interested in #integrativepediatrics (as we are), we’re highlighting this conference in support of CHOP’s work in this area. The event will be offered in hybrid format.

@childrenshospitalofpa #integrativehealth #childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions #childrenwithmedicalcomplexities #elianaslight

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Send Riri lots of love with us please. She’s currently in the hospital on bypass. Beautiful and sweet Riri has hydranencephaly, cerebral palsy, and epilepsy. She is blind, receives her nutrition through a G/J tube, and is on oxygen support 24/7. She has a loving, caring a devoted mom and 4 siblings.

Together, we wrap our arms around them and send them love.

With the help of donors, we’ve been able to help them stay housed as they were facing eviction next week. We’re with them as they continue, and seeking additional supports for them.

Thank you to all our donors who give us the means to help with basic needs beyond the emotional support we can give and the assistance we can provide in accessing additional resources.

We love you, Riri!💖

#childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions #elianaslight #helpingothers #service #love

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Pls email us your reflections on how we’ve made a positive impact on you and/or the children & families you’ve supported & we’ve served over the past 10 years and how you recommend we focus as we continue. Kindly email me directly at whitney @elianaslight .com.

We want to create the most meaningful impact we can through our mission of supporting the whole health, wellbeing and quality of life of DC, MD, and VA families that include children who have complex medical conditions.

Thank you for your collaboration. You mean so much to us 💖

#childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions #dcnonprofit #johnshopkinschildrenscenter #childrensnationalhospital #inovachildrenshospital

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Father’s Day gifts in distribution at Children’s National Hospital starting today, thanks to the awesome Patient Experience and Patient & Family Engagement team and the wonderful people who donated, decorated and packed the gift bags with us.

(It’s always so special to see & collaborate with Darcel, pictured, who makes the Father’s Day event today possible at the hospital.💖)

Gift bag items include: stress balls, foot massage rollers, coffee pods w/ some mugs, tea, @kind_bar energy bars, hand lotion, hand sanitizer, journals & pens, worry stones, ear plugs, a couple of phone chargers & ear buds, tissues, and some facial wipes.

Community came together to show we care about these dads who will be with their hospitalized child over Father’s Day.

Thank you to everyone involved!

@childrensnational #elianaslight #childrensnationalhospital #caringforcaregivers #childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions

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Your donations to team Eliana’s Light in last year’s Race for Every Child has been supporting (among other things) the coaching of parents in how to give infant massage to their children in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit and Heart & Kidney Unit.

Infant massage is an evidence-based & research-backed way to reduce stress in both the infants and the caregivers. It also can improve the parent-child bond, sleep in the child and the adult, the child’s immune function and gastrointestinal movement, and the confidence that the parent has to touch their baby who might be post-surgery or connected to machines. Infant massage can also reduce parental anxiety and depression, as well as the baby’s length of hospitalization.

There are even more benefits! If you know any that aren’t mentioned here, please put them in a comment below.

We’ll soon launch our 2026 team for the October Race for Every Child in which we’ll raise more money for meaningful, researched and evidence-based approaches that align with #wholehealth approaches to care. We hope you’ll join us!

We greatly appreciate our collaborators @childrensnational and other local pediatric hospitals who incorporate these approaches & techniques into the care kids receive there ❤️

#elianaslight #childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions #wholehealthcare #integrativecare

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Father’s Day service program — It’s prep time! Thank you to everyone who has already contributed self-care items we can give to dads who will be at their hospitalized child’s bedside this Father’s Day.

There’s a link to our Amazon Wish List in our bio. We’re especially welcoming some stress balls and more mini hand sanitizer.

Do you have any recommendations of any other items we should include?

We want local dads to know we care about them as they care for their kids this Father’s Day.

#elianaslight #helpingothers #childrenwithcomplexmedicalconditions #caregiversupport #caringforthecaregivers

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Deliveries for Mother’s Day have begun! Thank you to the wonderful Darcel and her colleagues within the Patient & Family Experience team @childrensnational for their collaboration in distributing gift bags that our volunteers donated to, filled & decorated.

These gift bags of self-care items will be going to moms who will be at their child’s hospital bedside on Mother’s Day💖

Items in the gift bags going to this & other hospitals include: journals, cozy socks, shower steams, lotion, tea, Keurig coffee pods, energy bars, sanitizer, ear plugs, adult mandala coloring books, facial wipes, stress balls, and foot massage rollers.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this effort!

Deliveries continue! Stay tuned for more 🤗

#elianaslight #childrensnational #childrensnationalhospital #momshelpingmoms #mothersday

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I want to say Happy Nurses Week to all the Nurses Nationwide!!! You are appreciated and loved!!! Thank you for all you do!!!

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Yes! @harvardmed is hosting “Pediatric Mind-Body Medicine Symposium: Advancing Integrative Whole-Person Care in Children, Adolescents and Young Adults” May 7-8.

This symposium “brings together leading experts in mind-body medicine, psychology, psychiatry, trauma studies, gastroenterology, neurology, and complementary medicine, including music, art, and body -based therapies, to educate health care professionals about the vital connections between mental, emotional, and physical health in young people.”

“This first-of-its-kind course empowers healthcare providers with practical, evidence-based mind-body approaches to help manage health conditions such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, disorders of gut-brain interaction, and functional neurological disorders.”- (from event description)

These conditions can stem from having complex medical conditions and needing to endure painful procedures, take high numbers of medications that have side effects each day, persevere through unexpected and long hospitalizations that take the child away from regular social interactions with peers and loved ones, etc.

This symposium is vital, for both the children who can benefit from this kind of care that we advocate for at Eliana’s Light, and for the care providers who can benefit from learning techniques that can support their self-care and personal wellbeing. Care provider burnout is a nationwide crisis.

We need to care for those who care for others so the best care, which we believe involves whole person and integrative care, can be given.

When the best care is given, the patient experience, symptoms and outcomes improve. Also, costs can go down when less re-hospitalizations, less medications, and less procedures may be needed. We need to dig deeper into all of this, which is why this and other gatherings like it are so important.

As the cost is too high for Eliana’s Light to attend, we’d be grateful to connect with any care providers who attend and who are willing to share key takeaways with us. We want to collaborate to help move the needle so this way of providing care becomes standard practice.

#elianaslight #harvardmedicalschool #wholehealth #wholehealthcare

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