Category Archives: mothers

Freud’s Legacy

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In our building, we have a small library with some good mysteries (which I love), and we all share the books between us.

I like to read them before bed, and this last one just is over the top in stereotypes.  I quit reading trashy romance novels because of the way women were portrayed as always needing rescued and in some of the cases, the women were…how to put this…gently raped.  Or perhaps I should say date raped….the last romance novel with this in it had portrayed a Native American woman as a princess (there is no such thing) that was  in love with a European guy who thought she was seeing someone else.  He proceeds to throw her on the bed and rip her clothes off….and you get the rest.  This was so offensive that it pretty much turned me off of them (some exceptions are ones where the woman is independent and doesn’t need rescued, but enjoys having a companion to share her life).

So…long intro story into the book I just finished—

This mystery was about a serial killer that was attacking women in a certain area.  I’ll spare you the gruesome details (also not one of my favorite reads–I prefer the kind Agatha Christie wrote that focused more on analytical ability than the gore).  But essentially these women were connected to a domestic violence recovery center and three of them disappeared and two bodies were recovered.  A third survived, but would be blind and deaf for life.  I liked the fact that the book somewhat highlighted centers that helped women to recover from abusive relationships–absolutely get that, BUT that was briefly talked about.  The other women characters, save for our one heroine and the lady running the center, were textbook misogyny.  As Freud did, the acts of the brutal men were blamed on the women in their lives.  The killer, a professional man whom nobody suspected (except me–I had him nailed after the first few chapters), was driven to the horrible crimes by his overbearing, career driven wife.  The book brings up a real life serial killer (whose name escapes me right now) whose mother was so controlling that it drove him to his crimes.   Another woman married to a man who commits domestic violence on her and their child was portrayed as an alcoholic who did not help her son or try to seek help at said domestic violence center—a curious part of the plot.

The heroine of the book was a teacher.  Now, most teachers I know are dedicated as this one was portrayed.  But to portray only her as “a good woman” just left me depressed as women have to be perfect in order to be considered “good women”.

The career woman was a complete bitch who did not care about her child or husband.  I’m not saying that those women don’t exist, but it was just sooo over the top.  And to blame her for the violent actions of her husband was pure Freud.  Anything wrong in the relationship or the man acts in anti-social ways?  Well, then, blame the woman he’s with or his mother….case closed!

As I’ve said before—there are plenty of people who have been abused as children and don’t go on to abuse others as adults.  They make that choice not to repeat the abuse….

…which leads to the question of why do some folks go on to abuse and others do not?   Compassion?  Why don’t those that go on to abuse others have that compassion?  Free will plays in this, I know, but why do they choose violence?

Thanks for letting me vent.  End of rant

 

A celiac story

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(Taking time out for a quick post.  Mom is doing better at the moment….but not out of the woods yet)

I asked permission to post this story of the recovery of a GAPS support group member:

Hi you guys
I wanted to encourage all newbies. My son age 4/12 was non verbal when we started this diet. He also had no social skills and he didn’t respond to his name

We have been on the diet for two years now. It has been a rough road to say the least. Not only was he nonverbal he also had extreme behavioral problems. Taking out high candida foods, like fruit, nuts and honey helped tremendously. We also have a Laura V from the group Gaps practitioner and Naturopath ND helping us.

Eli had a wonderful day at the park yesterday. My heart was overwhelmed with joy watching him play with other kids. He saw a little guy his age. He walked over to him and asked if he wanted to play. The other kiddo said yes. They played on the swing, they played tag and ran around. The other kid saw a friend he knew at the park. The friend also played with Eli. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Not to long Eli would shy away from kids. He use to act so strange around them. Perhaps because he couldn’t speak

He is also talking using sentences, asking questions and making comments on things that he hears and sees. We thought we would never see this happen

To all newbies stay the course. This diet can be stressful at times but the benefits of healing is so worth it. Dr NCM talks about adding cherries on top if you don’t see healing within a year or so. We had to get additional help. In addition to the diet. Eli is on homeopathic remedies to address his faulty detox system, his over exposure to antibiotics and his chronic gut issues due to the meds that was given to him as a baby. My doc is in the process of becoming gaps certified. I will post his info as soon as that happens

Hugs
Reg

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I can’t add anything to this.  It’s just absolutely stunning how diet can impact one so profoundly.  God Bless Regina for being the kind of Mom who acts on her intuition and asks questions until she finds the answer.

The people that you meet…

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(PERSONAL BLOG)

I’ve been trying to get my car squared away for the last two days-we are expecting a winter storm that will require the housing folks to clear the parking lot, which means you have to move your vehicle–or else they will tow it.

I finally told my son about my flat tire I got in December. He actually chuckled at the whole story…

Anyway, I got a used tire with some mileage left in it put on.  Meanwhile, my battery continues to go dead.  They say the battery is good, so my alternator may be slowly dying on me.  Can’t blame it–the car is sixteen years old and has over 200k on it.  While I was waiting for them to recharge the battery, I sat in the customer wait area.

You know how you meet someone and they just have a presence about them?  An older African American gentleman sitting in the area had that quality.

They had a TV on in the wait area with the new version of “Let”s Make a Deal” on.  Now, I don’t normally watch it, but it was already on when I walked in the room, so I sat back for a look.

The older gentleman said, “They certainly seem to enjoy themselves, don’t they?”  (speaking about the contestants)

I answered in the affirmative (yeah, I know some of that is acting, but what the hey).   We chatted a little, but it was later when the noon news came on about a devastating fire overnight that he started a conversation.  He said he used to fight fires. Forest fires.  I asked if he worked for the National Parks system, and he said that he fought fires for the CC camp.  He continued to talk as I was wondering if he meant that he worked for the “New Deal” programs.

Yes, indeed, he did.

He was paid $1 per day.  He had his clothes and his meals provided for him.

He later said that he also worked the loading docks–carrying cargo up and down the planks.  He said it was hard work (probably back-breaking, too). I was unclear on whether it, too, was a part of the CC camp or whether he meant that was what he went to after his two years of CC camp.

I mentioned a large park in Illinois that has been largely untouched by the modern world.  It is a beautiful area that is so far off the beaten path, you would not know of the traffic, pollution, etc.  It’s preserved so well it’s stunning.

And, no, I’m not naming it because I want it to stay that way.

Anyway, this park was built with New Deal labor–small cabins and a huge lodge with dining room.  Trails blazed by their labor.

The older gentleman said no, he had not worked there.

We went on to talk about gardening–something we both love.  Love to play in the dirt.  Love to see the plants spring up from the ground.  I said it was amazing that you could put a seed in the ground, and see a plant shoot up with more food for you.  He said he used to grow watermelons when his wife was still living, but she has passed, he no longer does that.  I told him that I never could grow watermelons…just didn’t have the knack for it. (same with melons and pumpkins, too…)

He said he had two wives–one he was married to for 36 years and the other 24 (?) years.  He outlived them and five children.  Wow.  I don’t know how I would handle losing one child–let alone five.  One of his children started as a police officer and is now a detective.

We chatted a little while longer about nothing in particular, and then his vehicle was ready to go.  He slowly rose from his chair with his cane and shuffled out to the registers.

He had told me during our talk that he didn’t expect the auto repair to cost so much and he was short $20.  I overheard the customer service rep tell him “don’t worry about it, we’ll take care of it.”

This was not a mom and pop service shop.  This was a major national chain, folks.  Major national chains don’t do that.  They just don’t.  I imagine the manager put in his own $20–he was a personable person who actually seem to give a crap about his customers.

Then it was my turn to check out.  My windshield wipers were worn thin, and unsafe.  I purchased new ones, planning to put them on myself–we’re supposed to be getting blasted with a winter storm with up to 8 inches of snow and the ones I had just smeared the stuff on the windshield–not safe at all.  The service rep grabbed the wipers and took off for the mechanics’ bay area.  She then came back and said she had the mechanic put them on.  What a sweet kid.

So…now I have to take back every bad thing I’ve said about chains….

Sometimes, they do bend the rules and act like human beings. (And yes, I’m not mentioning what chain it was on purpose–I don’t want the young lady to get into trouble because they charge $2 for wiper installation.)

For the circumstances, it was an enjoyable and surreal morning.

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While I’m on this, I wanted to talk about a conversation I’ve had recently with a black lady.  She said that she worked for the FW schools, and she also worked in nursing homes.

She said, “I’m not prejudiced, but black folks take care of their own.  White folks?  They just abandon their family (members).”

I told her that I didn’t think she was prejudice, because I’ve made the same observation.

Black folk in my building take care of each other.  They’ve helped me, too, when I’ve asked for it.  Even when I haven’t asked for it.  One gentleman asked about my flat tire when he saw it.  He even tried to help get it off, but the previous owner changed the rims and I can’t get them off with the lug wrench that came with the vehicle.  (I know, I know, I should get one, but with a car that is looking at perhaps another 20,000 miles, it doesn’t make much sense….) Anyway, he didn’t have the right lug wrench, either.

One white lady has been a Godsend because she has helped me out on several occasions (she even sat with me while the stupid battery was being charged the first time).  She has offered to help without expecting anything in return.  And we cry on each other’s shoulders about life as poor women.  Until one lives it, you just don’t understand how difficult the life is.  And to say that we’re poor because we just didn’t work hard enough is utter bullshit.  Nobody works harder than a cleaning woman or a ditch digger….but you don’t see them living in mansions, do you?  And my staying home for twelve years with my children was the best contribution to society I could have given –hard work and even better rewards that can’t be counted in $$.

A Man’s View

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Continuing along the thoughts on Friday’s blog~~~

I don’t mind telling you that this blog brought tears to my eyes. Really stunning to read such honesty and depth.  And he’s not gay! (meaning that, as Patrick states, most gay guys “get” women and their perspective, but straight guys, especially straight white guys don’t.)

From the interview:

Growing up in my house, feminism was actually a positive word. My mother, who is a strong woman, has always identified as a feminist. Despite this fact, she found herself being mistreated by my father. This just goes to show that even strong women — even feminist-identified women — can find themselves involved with men who treat them badly.

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This was so powerful…because in the finger-pointing department, when blame is being handed out, it’s always the woman’s fault if she is mistreated.

This, too, was powerful:

Seeing the way she was treated, and experiencing mistreatment myself, showed me that boys who grow up in violent households do not have to follow the path of the abuser. Instead, we can follow another path — the path of empathy for our mother, and that we can become allies in the struggle for women’s equality, rather than just another violent enforcer of male supremacy.

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This is the thing that is so hard to understand:  why do some men recognize what was done to them and their mothers, but then go on to abuse others?  Why do some choose that path and others fight against it?

And this reinforces my thoughts on a previous blog on how some folks are abused but do not go on to continue the abuse.  I’m thinking there are more out there than is being acknowledged, because they aren’t the ones being arrested for committing acts of cruelty…they are the ones quietly living their lives without repeating the abuse…

…but that also doesn’t mean that all of those committing acts of cruelty are being dealt with by society…such as men who beat their mates, but the mates refuse to press charges (or never call police to report it.)

Further down the post, Patrick goes into what defines feminism–and how women themselves cannot agree on the definition. I know that I don’t.  As I’ve posted before, I believe in equality, but I don’t think abortions should be performed after six weeks’ gestation.  But feminists don’t see it that way–they feel a woman should be able to have an abortion any time she wants it–right up until birth.  I can’t in good conscience agree with that thinking.  In the feminist world, that automatically excludes me from being called a feminist.  This point of view wasn’t easy to come by, either, as I have seen the photo of the woman dead on a hotel room floor with a hangar protruding from her vagina.  I don’t want to see women in such desperate circumstances that they resort to that–it is much better to have safe, reliable contraceptives available to her. (Yes, men should be responsible for contraception, too, but since she is the one who will be most impacted by a pregnancy, and he could be unreliable, she needs to take responsibility for her own sake.)

Feminists in the 70s were so anti-homemaking that women who chose this route were treated as if they were mindless dummies.

It’s an odd circumstance that things that defined us as women–the home, childbirth and raising children, became so hated.  It’s as if they wanted us to become equal by embracing the stereotyped attributes of men.

In other words, we could only be thought of as valuable and therefore equal….if we became men…

…and the unintended consequences of that is the world tilted even more towards the masculine and diminished the feminine.

What we need to right the world is to once again embrace the feminine as valuable–to recognize that one can be soft as well as strong and that those two attributes don’t have to be mutually exclusive.  That we can prop each other up when one is feeling weak, instead of attacking.  That it’s okay for women to have an opinion different than a man’s and it’s just as valid and valuable. That taking care of the Earth is the feminine that needs to be honored.

There’s more to write, but perhaps for another day.  I’m out of time.

More compelling evidence…

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Good Grief, how many children/adults have to suffer?

Why isn’t the evidence is for public viewing.?  Pretty evident that Big Pharma is culpable, and getting away with it because if you can keep the information from being in the public sphere, more folks will be unaware and less likely to realize their child or their selves have symptoms caused by vaccination.  And as this story illustrates, the court cases can have motion after motion filed and be dragged on for years, and only someone of means could afford to pay an attorney to fight their case.  In other words, more profits for Big Pharma…

And my new favorite Twain quote is…

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“If Christ were here,  there is one thing he would not be…A Christian.”  Brilliantly said.  Trying to act like Christ is a little too much work…as it requires following “Do Unto Others…”

Diane Sweet has a post up on the fundamentalist Pat Robertson, doing what fundamentalists do:  putting women beneath them…

I disagree with one of the commenters who said that this kind of thinking was dying out.  It’s a dangerous assumption, and from what I’m seeing, far from being a thing of the past.  This crap has been going on for thousands of years, in different forms and won’t “die out” until women are seen and treated as equals. Women are a still not thought of as having equal value in whatever they do–if they stay home to raise the children and care for the house, or if they work outside the home.

The issues with rape and the degradation of the young woman in Steubenville are classic examples of treating women as “less than” and making moral judgments against her that are not made against the men.  She’s a slut to be peed on.  He’s just having a good time.

 

 

Celiac

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I can’t remember if I’ve blogged on this website or not, so forgive the repeat if I did~

Celiac.com is a wonderful resource for those with gluten intolerance/celiac.

I was reading the forums from others and it really helps especially during the holidays.  One of the posters has family that don’t understand how serious the condition is and that they can’t eat the normal foods associated with the holidays.  The family member took offense that she would want to fix food for her family (husband and child are affected) separately.

In another post, it really struck home for me–a new member asked if she could cheat a little, as long as she was eating right most of the time.  I have to admit that I’ve cheated, too, and was thinking that as long as I was eating the right foods 90% of the time, that a little bit of cheating wouldn’t hurt.

Wrong.

The other members were quick to tell her in no uncertain terms not to do it.  For one, even if you’re diligent about eating the right foods, you never know when you’ll be exposed to cross contamination (eating food prepared in a facility that also prepares wheat products or even breathing the wheat dust while someone else is baking can affect one, as well).  One member related that she got fed up with the gluten-free diet and for a year or so ate whatever she wanted….she was at a pizzeria when she doubled over in pain and had to be taken to the hospital.  They rushed her into emergency surgery and removed part of her bowel that had literally exploded.  She now has a colostomy and hopes to heal enough to get it removed in the near future.

And on the support group (GAPS), a member posted about her child that had been given crackers by the teacher.  When the parent raised alarm at this, and how this was not allowed, the teacher made some comment that it was *only* six crackers (or something like that).

Incredible!

If the child had a peanut allergy, and this teacher had given him/her peanuts, it would be considered a serious breach of duty.

Even a doctors have told their Celiac patients that they can cheat *a little*.  Wow.

And trying to tell my family about this disease and warning them that it’s inherited and pointing out signs of it has fallen on deaf ears….some even get a little perturbed at me….<sigh>

Bigger questions…

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I was just stunned last night when the news reported that Nancy Lanza was taking her troubled son to shooting ranges and teaching him how to shoot a gun.  What on Earth was she thinking?! Some links here and here.

It’s just beyond comprehension how she is portrayed as being so fearful of her son, and then teaching him not only to shoot, but to have guns in the home–it makes absolutely no sense.

One of the stories says she was “responsible” and this meant she would keep the guns locked up.  But if she’s out showing off the guns to her landscaper, and anyone that comes to the home, then I have my doubts on whether the guns are kept locked up.  She was obsessed with them.

Story after story states that she was this great mother and doted on her son and was advocating for him…but it just doesn’t go with the other details coming out–keeping in mind that the Connecticut State Police stated they had “good evidence” they recovered at the home.

I’m wondering about Nancy’s mental state, as well.

Adam Lanza was reported to have Asperger’s, which is a form of autism.  He was painfully shy.  He was intelligent, but could not connect with people and with him burning himself, he was crying out for someone to help him.

All of the above symptoms can be connected to mercury/heavy metal poisoning, which some believe (me being one of them) is linked to autism.

A good general article here on the symptoms.

An article here linking heavy metals with autism, ADD, Asperger’s, etc. (I don’t recommend the products or cleanses this site is pushing).

A quote from the above:

The relationship of the heavy metals and children with autistic symptoms is being researched from every angle thought of. One team of investigators reported damage to the intestinal mucosal layer , in the form of increased permeability, in over 40% of autistic children tested. This gastrointestinal dysfunction would allow greater amount of toxins to penetrate the gut barrier into systemic circulation, and thus increase the toxin burden in children unable to properly process this onslaught of toxin agents.

This is known among those of us with “leaky gut”–the question is which comes first–the heavy metal poisoning that damages the gut, or the damaged gut (from undigested gluten) allowing more heavy metals to poison us?

Rage is one thing that is linked to heavy metal poisoning, so it is not unreasonable to think that Adam could have been toxic.  What I want to know is this:  Did his mother have amalgams? Did Adam?  Was there any known exposure to heavy metals (a redundant question on my part, because it’s not IF you’ve been exposed, it’s when and how much)?

Robert Kennedy speaks about the increase in autism with increased vaccination here.

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(A side note here: Santa just arrived here in the Library. There’s a group of little ones here for story hour–squealing with delight.  Nice.  Trying hard not to get emotional with the mixed feelings….)

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A good article here on toxins in Stratford, Connecticut.  Another here on toxins in the fish in CN rivers. And since the damage to DNA happens slowly, from generation to generation, it’s quite possible that Nancy was mildly toxic, and Adam was more so…

A side story here on a nuclear reactor in Connecticut also being shut down because the water in Long Island sound was too hot to cool it.  If you recall, this also happened here in the midwest. (Nuclear radiation damages the thyroid, among other things, which can also lead to mental issues.)

Government reported toxic releases in Connecticut.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t mention mercury releases, but this does.

Finally, this from HuffPost on heavy metal poisoning.

The questions to what happened in Connecticut will continue, and hopefully, this time, we will get the right answers.  It’s a complex problem, but not impossible to solve–it just takes more than lather, rinse, repeat…