You don't look sick?

How often have you wanted to punch someone who said this to you or loved ones suffering from things you cannot see but they still exist?  If a tree falls in the woods and you do not hear it, did it happen?  Probably so.  While some disabilities are quite obvious, this is no usually true.  Can you look at a picture and know whether someone has suffered from aspergers' depression bipolar, chronic pain, anxiety, or a long list of ailments?  Do you see cancer unless it has become so advanced it is clear?  Can you see HIV?  Does this make you reconsider invadiating the experience of others?  It should.  There are hypochrondriacs in the World who truly are not sick but simply think it so. I should know, having been raised by the best.  But usually, this presumption is just that, presumption.  Compassion means listening and believing without the jaded presumption that comes wit 40 or 50 years.  Most that suffer from "invisible disabilities" suffer twice over once for the disability and twice for the ostracizing they receive from family members and others who refuse to acknowledge the reality of their lives.  Sometimes all they need is support--a pretty inexpensive gift so easy and yet so hard.