Dear friends,
This is not going to be one of those rants about meat eating being better than being vegan. This is also not a secret way of drawing meat eaters in with a subject title and then trying to convert them to a vegan lifestyle.
This is my, extremely specific story, and I just wonder if it resonates with others.
This morning, I was noodling around on youtube, and this video by Mayim Bialik (Yes, I still think of her as Blossom) came up in my suggested feed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofcUGuMhGGo
Because I'm a technological idiot, that link is to a video where she explains, very honestly, and diplomatically, the reasons she is vegan. I do think it's interesting that she doesn't bring in whether or not she feeds her children a vegan diet, but I suspect that perhaps she doesn't, and discussing her reasons why might cloud her message. I pass absolutely no judgement on her if that's the case, if nothing else, having a baby has taught me that I can make decisions with my own ethical principals in mind, but I have no right to force those decisions on my baby. I have to make decisions for him with his health and safety as the deciding factors first and foremost.
But I digress...
So, back in 2001, when I first entered the world of disordered eating, going vegan was actually my first foray into anorexia.
Of course, that's not how it started at all.
It started with an expose in the October 2001 issue of Adbusters magazine.
I had already started my "project", which is what I called the calories counting and restricting I was using to lose weight, but yogurt was a fundamental part of my breakfasts, and cheese was a large part of my dinners. I had started skipping the meat they served in my school cafeteria because it was pretty nasty, but I got a lot of protein from dairy and eggs, so even though I wasn't eating as much as before, and the approach to eating was still unhealthy, I wasn't depriving myself of vital nutrients.
I was blown away by the expose. It showed unflinching photographs of meat factory farm conditions, and showcased the conditions in other countries where food was either scarce or hunted, and I remember very clearly, it was the first time I felt guilt, horrible, all-consuming guilt, about food. I felt like I could never let meat, dairy, or eggs ever pass my lips again otherwise I might as well be force-feeding piglets or trapping chickens in cages with my own two hands.
I went vegan, then and there.
Immediately, my diet changed radically. Instead of a big bowl of yogurt and granola for breakfast, which kept me relatively full until the afternoon, I suddenly started eating a bowl of grapenuts cereal with soymilk.
I stopped loading my dinner time salads with cheese and eggs and I skipped the hot and buttery garlic bread I'd been eating on the side and started eating salads sprinkled with cubed tofu (this was before tempeh, seitan, quorn, and all those fun meatless products had debuted in grocery stores, let alone college dining halls), and since the only dairy free option for dressing was vinaigrette that's what I used. I also subbed a piece of dry, multigrain toast for my garlic bread.
I remember carrying my tray through the milling crowds of students with their hamsteaks and tator tots. Their cheesy nachos and plates of spaghetti and meatballs. I felt virtuous. I felt like an activist.
I felt like I was not contributing to the horror that my peers were, and that made me feel less guilty.
But I also started losing a lot more weight.
As my weight plummeted, my feelings of virtue increased so that my will power wouldn't crumble. I firmly planted associations of morality to food that still plague me to this day. I had no idea that they weren't about me rescuing pigs and chickens. Those feelings might have been there, but larger than that was the classic anorexic's feeling of mental strength and superiority.
I won't go into the rest of my ED story, since I've already chronicled it here, but I'll talk about how after I started to get help, I still refused to eat meat, not for another 7 years would I begin to be the mindful omnivore I am now.
Now let's talk about the video...
See, I still feel as strongly about the factory farm industry as I did at that first moment of revelation.
In fact, I don't see how anyone, once they know what's going on to get that burger on their plate could be complicit in the industry, however, I would now like to talk about privilege.
Mayim Bialik is a successful actress. She is a scientist, a mother, and many other very cool things, but economically, she's a very well paid actress. Compared to the millions of dollars Brad Pitt gets for sneezing onscreen, I'm sure she makes peanuts, but compared to me, she's doing pretty good.
Unfortunately economic hardship is what determines how parents feed their families.
This is what drives the factory farm industry. The average American family cannot afford to ethically feed themselves because the price of doing so is impossible. The industry has created its own need by using such horrible shortcuts to mass produce meat that they can afford charge cut rates for their products. It's easy any time you go into a grocery store.
I stand next to the eggs and it's 99 cents for a dozen white factory eggs. A dozen farm fresh eggs from a chicken that got to eat regular old corn instead of gmo "feed" is $3.29.
Are you kidding?
I can't afford three bucks for eggs, and I'm guessing neither can the majority of poverty level Americans.
So here we are.
I don't skip buying the eggs.
I hate myself a little, and I promise myself that as soon as we're financially able, I will be buying the free chicken eggs, but my priority right now is to feed my family the most nutritious food I am able.
This is where I use the term mindful omnivore, because, yes, as a society, we do rely far too heavily on meat and animal products. They make up way more of our diet than is necessary.
So I feed my baby eggs, but I also feed him beans.
If I can, I buy the non-antibiotic chicken, and I feed him little bits.
I make as much food as I can myself to cut down on additives, chemicals, and processes which condition our palettes to prefer the industrially produced food, but I do not flog myself with guilt if my budget doesn't give me wiggle room enough to buy organic produce, because the thing I've learned is that I have to feed my baby andI have to feed him well. Everything else is details.
So I guess I will close this by saying, as long as you're trying, as long as you're thinking, and actively making the healthiest choices for yourself, your family, and your babies, don't let anyone, especially a wealthy celebrity make you feel guilty for not being able to support her cause.
I love Mayim Bialik. I love Kat Von D. I love a lot of actively vegan celebrities, and I fully support them and their motives. I am, however, not privileged enough to maintain their lifestyle, and that doesn't make me a bad person or a bad mother, quite the opposite actually. Doing what's best for us, and however that has to be, is what makes me a great mum.
Monday, December 19, 2016
Wednesday, December 14, 2016
What are you doing?
On Monday my baby turned one.
He celebrated his first revolution around the sun by hanging out with his Mama.
Everybody who was there when he was born was busy.
I got one text from a good friend. After I posted on facebook I got a few hearty
"Happy Birthday Baz"s in the comments, but altogether it felt like the world did what the world does. It looked at the individual and said, "Yeah, so what?"
Something I never anticipated about becoming a mother is how acutely I feel the loss of the love between people. The community has gone extinct at the time that we need it the most. Perhaps more than anything, that is what this recent election has taught me as well.
We are only looking out for our own interests.
Our mouths shape the words of love and commonality, but when it comes time to make those words take shape with their fingers, the action is left undone and incomplete. The arm falters halfway through the swing, and the ball never leaves the hand. The wrist goes limp. There is no follow through.
I too fall prey to this.
I made declarations that I was going to donate to Planned Parenthood right after the election. I was waiting for my check from Refinery 29 so I didn't feel like I was taking money from the family to do so, but the check has yet to arrive, and so I have yet to give money to anyone.
The plight of the stay at home parent is the feeling that none of the money brought in actually belongs to you. You can use it to buy groceries, pay bills, and treat the baby, but you can't bring yourself to spend it on yourself.
You don't feel like you deserve to.
And charity becomes another luxury, like a haircut, or a new pair of boots, or a couple of fancy cocktails.
Tragedy.
I see the images from Aleppo.
Men carrying babies the same size as my son out of bombed out buildings.
I can't bring myself to read the text beneath the pictures.
I can't know if those babies didn't make it.
And even that fear and shock and horror brings with it horrible waves of guilt.
Who am I?
Why should my child be safe in my arms, in this neighborhood, and those men's children not safe at all?
What makes my life so blessed?
And it isn't.
We're always only five years away from complete disaster
or ultimate glory.
The scale can go either way. And we have much less influence over it than we'd like to think.
The only thing we have control over is how we treat each other, especially when it gets difficult.
I see other people.
People better than me, who have less, or the same, and they donate. They give. They go forth with courage and hope.
I want to be them, but my cautious nature trips me up.
My desire to burrow into the ground and hide from the madness is constantly at war with my guilt that I have that as an option. Again, I have to ask, Who am I?
What does it make me if I wait and wait and wait for things to get better, but this is actually the high point before the fall?
I couldn't sleep last night.
I kept thinking about how powerless I feel. Perhaps that's the biggest fuck you of motherhood of all, that by committing the most radical act of creation, you are accepting the horrible knowledge that you have no control over the events that shape your child. You have no control over the things that happen to him or the injuries and injustices done to him. Even while he still lives in your arms and nurses from you, you are moving, daily, away from the ability to protect him.
Are you protecting him when you send twenty dollars to the ACLU?
Are you protecting him when you vote?
Are you protecting him when you decide to leave the country?
Are you protecting him when you move far away from the city, build a farm, and begin to foster chickens?
What are you doing if you're not protecting him?
If you aren't earning money,
If you aren't taking action,
If you aren't giving to the people meant to protect you,
if you aren't supporting the people you love,
if you aren't doing anything except getting from sunrise to sunrise the best you can and praying that as soon as you can you will be able to do more than you can do now,
What are you doing?
He celebrated his first revolution around the sun by hanging out with his Mama.
Everybody who was there when he was born was busy.
I got one text from a good friend. After I posted on facebook I got a few hearty
"Happy Birthday Baz"s in the comments, but altogether it felt like the world did what the world does. It looked at the individual and said, "Yeah, so what?"
Something I never anticipated about becoming a mother is how acutely I feel the loss of the love between people. The community has gone extinct at the time that we need it the most. Perhaps more than anything, that is what this recent election has taught me as well.
We are only looking out for our own interests.
Our mouths shape the words of love and commonality, but when it comes time to make those words take shape with their fingers, the action is left undone and incomplete. The arm falters halfway through the swing, and the ball never leaves the hand. The wrist goes limp. There is no follow through.
I too fall prey to this.
I made declarations that I was going to donate to Planned Parenthood right after the election. I was waiting for my check from Refinery 29 so I didn't feel like I was taking money from the family to do so, but the check has yet to arrive, and so I have yet to give money to anyone.
The plight of the stay at home parent is the feeling that none of the money brought in actually belongs to you. You can use it to buy groceries, pay bills, and treat the baby, but you can't bring yourself to spend it on yourself.
You don't feel like you deserve to.
And charity becomes another luxury, like a haircut, or a new pair of boots, or a couple of fancy cocktails.
Tragedy.
I see the images from Aleppo.
Men carrying babies the same size as my son out of bombed out buildings.
I can't bring myself to read the text beneath the pictures.
I can't know if those babies didn't make it.
And even that fear and shock and horror brings with it horrible waves of guilt.
Who am I?
Why should my child be safe in my arms, in this neighborhood, and those men's children not safe at all?
What makes my life so blessed?
And it isn't.
We're always only five years away from complete disaster
or ultimate glory.
The scale can go either way. And we have much less influence over it than we'd like to think.
The only thing we have control over is how we treat each other, especially when it gets difficult.
I see other people.
People better than me, who have less, or the same, and they donate. They give. They go forth with courage and hope.
I want to be them, but my cautious nature trips me up.
My desire to burrow into the ground and hide from the madness is constantly at war with my guilt that I have that as an option. Again, I have to ask, Who am I?
What does it make me if I wait and wait and wait for things to get better, but this is actually the high point before the fall?
I couldn't sleep last night.
I kept thinking about how powerless I feel. Perhaps that's the biggest fuck you of motherhood of all, that by committing the most radical act of creation, you are accepting the horrible knowledge that you have no control over the events that shape your child. You have no control over the things that happen to him or the injuries and injustices done to him. Even while he still lives in your arms and nurses from you, you are moving, daily, away from the ability to protect him.
Are you protecting him when you send twenty dollars to the ACLU?
Are you protecting him when you vote?
Are you protecting him when you decide to leave the country?
Are you protecting him when you move far away from the city, build a farm, and begin to foster chickens?
What are you doing if you're not protecting him?
If you aren't earning money,
If you aren't taking action,
If you aren't giving to the people meant to protect you,
if you aren't supporting the people you love,
if you aren't doing anything except getting from sunrise to sunrise the best you can and praying that as soon as you can you will be able to do more than you can do now,
What are you doing?
Saturday, December 10, 2016
The Great White Winter Of Our Discontent
A couple of years ago, I remember the meteorologists warned the upcoming winter was going to be brutal.
They talked about the now notorious "Polar Vortex" and record breaking cold.
I looked at the temperature every morning before I walked my 2.7 miles to work, and I steeled myself, but it was awful.
See, the route between Beverly and Salem includes a bridge, and not just any bridge, a big ass, almost 3/4 of a mile long bridge with some serious elevation.
In the summer it's a gorgeous way to see the harbor. In the early mornings, you can pause there and watch fishing boats bring in their hauls. In the winter time, no joke, I've seen birds fly into the railings and die.
The meteorologists are predicting this winter will see New England suffer another Polar Vortex.
It's not even solstice yet, and today the temperature never got higher than 26 degrees. It's going to be brutal.
And in some ways, I dread this.
I dread this because I already know, I bloody hate winter.
I hate the cold, the dry air, the slight scent of burnt metal in the air from the furnace.
I hate the static electricity that shocks me every time I touch a doorknob, but more than anything, I hate being stuck indoors. If I ever go on a murderous rampage, you can blame cabin fever and boredom for the bloodlust.
With all that being said, it is coming (insert Game of Thrones joke here), and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I have some idea of how miserable it will be. I know already there will be times that I can't stand it and think I am going crazy. There will be times that I want to move to Vanuatu and never see another snowflake again, but I will endure.
I am steeling myself.
Do you see where I'm going with this people?
There is something else we will have to steel ourself to endure for the next four years. A kind of "winter" if you will. We already know it's going to suck. Maybe we don't know the particulars, but we don't have to. The evidence is there, the predictions are in, and no matter how badly I want this winter to just skip us altogether, I don't think it's healthy to delude myself into thinking it will just miss us.
The thing is, I'm lucky.
I'm lucky as hell.
I don't have to walk across the bridge to get to work every day.
In fact, I don't have to be anywhere if I don't want to.
I can just stay inside and be safe and toasty warm with my baby.
I can pull the blinds and plug up all the drafts and turn up the heat pretending the cold won't touch me.
But that's cowardice.
And I don't want to teach my kid to be a coward.
I want to teach my kid to suit up, and step out the door, even when he knows it's brutal out.
And if I want him to do that, then I have to lead by example.
I need to cross that bridge at least a few times this winter.
I need to have difficult conversations and donate money to worthy causes, and stop letting people get away with casual, socially acceptable racism/sexism/homophobia/xenophobia/transphobia. I need to suit up step out and be brave.
It's okay to hate the cold.
But you can't hide from it, and you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
Because sooner or later it finds you, and if you aren't ready...well...just be ready.
They talked about the now notorious "Polar Vortex" and record breaking cold.
I looked at the temperature every morning before I walked my 2.7 miles to work, and I steeled myself, but it was awful.
See, the route between Beverly and Salem includes a bridge, and not just any bridge, a big ass, almost 3/4 of a mile long bridge with some serious elevation.
In the summer it's a gorgeous way to see the harbor. In the early mornings, you can pause there and watch fishing boats bring in their hauls. In the winter time, no joke, I've seen birds fly into the railings and die.
The meteorologists are predicting this winter will see New England suffer another Polar Vortex.
It's not even solstice yet, and today the temperature never got higher than 26 degrees. It's going to be brutal.
And in some ways, I dread this.
I dread this because I already know, I bloody hate winter.
I hate the cold, the dry air, the slight scent of burnt metal in the air from the furnace.
I hate the static electricity that shocks me every time I touch a doorknob, but more than anything, I hate being stuck indoors. If I ever go on a murderous rampage, you can blame cabin fever and boredom for the bloodlust.
With all that being said, it is coming (insert Game of Thrones joke here), and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I have some idea of how miserable it will be. I know already there will be times that I can't stand it and think I am going crazy. There will be times that I want to move to Vanuatu and never see another snowflake again, but I will endure.
I am steeling myself.
Do you see where I'm going with this people?
There is something else we will have to steel ourself to endure for the next four years. A kind of "winter" if you will. We already know it's going to suck. Maybe we don't know the particulars, but we don't have to. The evidence is there, the predictions are in, and no matter how badly I want this winter to just skip us altogether, I don't think it's healthy to delude myself into thinking it will just miss us.
The thing is, I'm lucky.
I'm lucky as hell.
I don't have to walk across the bridge to get to work every day.
In fact, I don't have to be anywhere if I don't want to.
I can just stay inside and be safe and toasty warm with my baby.
I can pull the blinds and plug up all the drafts and turn up the heat pretending the cold won't touch me.
But that's cowardice.
And I don't want to teach my kid to be a coward.
I want to teach my kid to suit up, and step out the door, even when he knows it's brutal out.
And if I want him to do that, then I have to lead by example.
I need to cross that bridge at least a few times this winter.
I need to have difficult conversations and donate money to worthy causes, and stop letting people get away with casual, socially acceptable racism/sexism/homophobia/xenophobia/transphobia. I need to suit up step out and be brave.
It's okay to hate the cold.
But you can't hide from it, and you can't pretend it doesn't exist.
Because sooner or later it finds you, and if you aren't ready...well...just be ready.
Sunday, December 4, 2016
Zwiggen: A Mother's Walk into Death
As we approach my son's first birthday, I feel as though I am living in a strange ballet.
I know the steps, I dance them through the rooms of the house, except this time, the baby is in my arms instead of inside me.
Fifty one weeks ago, I was forty one weeks pregnant.
I had appointments for two doses of induction medication waiting for me the next week, and I had a full fledged induction scheduled for the Friday.
I remember feeling like I was in suspended animation then. Zwiggen is what the Germans call it;
a kind of twilight realm where the mother has to walk slowly into the realm of death in order to fetch the soul of her baby and bring it back. It is an altered state of being, where the mother is neither alive nor dead. She is between worlds.
As she voyages deeper into this space, labor begins. In order to touch the spirit of the baby, she has to get closer to death, so she goes closer, unquestioningly, unfailingly. She goes closer until she is barely alive, until she is mostly spirit herself, only then can she touch the baby's soul and grasp it.
This is why so many women, if not all women, reach a point in birth where they say, "I can't do this."
They feel fear like an animal, fear not of what they are doing, but fear that they are too tired to come back out of death. It has taken so long to get there, so long to reach the baby's soul, that bringing it back out feels impossible. Physically, this is the most critical moment in labor, the point at which the baby must pass through the pelvis. This moment is the reason why humans are born after only nine months gestation.
The first three months of a humans life are the most touch and go because technically, a newborn should still be in the womb, but we have evolved to be born prematurely due to the size of our infant heads. A baby at proper full length gestation could not pass through its mother's pelvic bone, and both mother and child would die, so we are born before we are finished being made.
Our bodies are not finished yet.
The souls have not made their way to them yet.
So the mother, must go get the soul, bring it back, and in this last, crucial moment, split her physical self down the middle to all at once let out the baby while giving it its soul and put back her own spirit at the same time.
This is why we falter. The moment of return of knowing we can never go back to the way we were before, it is too big, too intimidating.
A woman is never the same after she gives birth because she has gone into death and back.
There is no being the same after that journey.
It does not matter if you have a c-section. It does not matter what medical interventions need to be taken. If you have had a child, you have walked into death and come out again, and there is no going back afterward.
So I look forward to celebrating my child's birthday.
I am so excited to give him presents, watch him eat cake, and delight in his celebration of life, but for now, I am mourning the last memories I have of being a girl before her walk into death, because I am different now. I have never felt more different, and more alive.
I know the steps, I dance them through the rooms of the house, except this time, the baby is in my arms instead of inside me.
Fifty one weeks ago, I was forty one weeks pregnant.
I had appointments for two doses of induction medication waiting for me the next week, and I had a full fledged induction scheduled for the Friday.
I remember feeling like I was in suspended animation then. Zwiggen is what the Germans call it;
a kind of twilight realm where the mother has to walk slowly into the realm of death in order to fetch the soul of her baby and bring it back. It is an altered state of being, where the mother is neither alive nor dead. She is between worlds.
As she voyages deeper into this space, labor begins. In order to touch the spirit of the baby, she has to get closer to death, so she goes closer, unquestioningly, unfailingly. She goes closer until she is barely alive, until she is mostly spirit herself, only then can she touch the baby's soul and grasp it.
This is why so many women, if not all women, reach a point in birth where they say, "I can't do this."
They feel fear like an animal, fear not of what they are doing, but fear that they are too tired to come back out of death. It has taken so long to get there, so long to reach the baby's soul, that bringing it back out feels impossible. Physically, this is the most critical moment in labor, the point at which the baby must pass through the pelvis. This moment is the reason why humans are born after only nine months gestation.
The first three months of a humans life are the most touch and go because technically, a newborn should still be in the womb, but we have evolved to be born prematurely due to the size of our infant heads. A baby at proper full length gestation could not pass through its mother's pelvic bone, and both mother and child would die, so we are born before we are finished being made.
Our bodies are not finished yet.
The souls have not made their way to them yet.
So the mother, must go get the soul, bring it back, and in this last, crucial moment, split her physical self down the middle to all at once let out the baby while giving it its soul and put back her own spirit at the same time.
This is why we falter. The moment of return of knowing we can never go back to the way we were before, it is too big, too intimidating.
A woman is never the same after she gives birth because she has gone into death and back.
There is no being the same after that journey.
It does not matter if you have a c-section. It does not matter what medical interventions need to be taken. If you have had a child, you have walked into death and come out again, and there is no going back afterward.
So I look forward to celebrating my child's birthday.
I am so excited to give him presents, watch him eat cake, and delight in his celebration of life, but for now, I am mourning the last memories I have of being a girl before her walk into death, because I am different now. I have never felt more different, and more alive.
Friday, December 2, 2016
The New and Improved Hallucinogen is Motherhood. Bring on the Lizard People!
Babe woke up at 4am this morning.
Did I stutter?
No. 4. Four. FOUR.
Ugh.
And not just, stir a little, nurse him back down, kind of awake, like, full crawl up on my chest and begin crowing like a rooster awake. My poor Beard tousled the baby's hair and turned over. He has to be up for work at 6:30, and we all know how shitty it is to be woken up and see you have to start your day in a mere two-ish hours.
So I got up, thinking, I'd be able to re-settle the child better in the living room, and maybe cruise around on Etsy looking for Christmas presents.
Forty five minutes of squirming, fidgeting, fussing, and general chicanery, and then the kid sinks his teeth into a nip and I know, we're done.
It's quarter to five in the morning, and I am strapping my kid into his high chair, nuking a mug of yesterday's coffee, and cutting up chinks of banana.
The dog and cat watch us, bemused. I have no explanation.
I turn on the oven because the kitchen is cold and the gas bill is cheaper than heat.
I watch while Baz demolishes hunks of banana. My coffee clutched between claws of injustice.
I notice a butternut squash on my kitchen table and bung it in the oven.
It will make the house smell good. Oh, and, by the way, if you're still hacking away at your squashes, scooping out seeds and placing them neatly on foil lined trays before baking them, don't.
It's way easier to just peel off the sticker and hurl the whole gourd in. Bake it at a lower temp for a bit longer (like 350 for an hour), and then get it out. Let it cool for twenty minutes and then you can cut it in half with a butterknife, scoop the seeds out with a spoon, and it's ready for whatever you want to do with a butternut squash at five in the morning.
Me?
I mostly want to hurl it at the side of the house in some dramatic display of futility and ignominy, but then I'd have to clean it up.
Or blame it on the teenagers in the apartment upstairs...
Anyway...
So I make pancakes. I do this by throwing a generous scoop of baked squash, an egg yolk, some instant oats, cinnamon, the other half of the banana, and some baking soda into the baby bullet. I blitz the whole thing for a minute while a pan heats on the stove, then I fry the pancakes while the monster in the high chair bangs measuring cups and flings gummy banana bits at me or the dog depending on which of us deserves more derision in that moment.
Pancakes made, I serve a chunked up one to the baby. He hoovers it up with a look of glee. The fresh pot of coffee is done now too, so I pour myself a decent cup. I look at the clock, it's 5:55am.
Fucking hell.
This is the Gonzo Mothering life.
I don't know what I'm doing, and I'll never proclaim otherwise.
Well, maybe when I'm sixty five, and this kid is all grown up and hopefully a semi-functional adult, but by then nobody will be listening to me as I'll be a pink haired, rhinestone wearing retiree with a newly discovered passion for ballroom dancing with partners a third my age.
Also nobody will be reading blogs by then. We'll all be getting information uploaded to the insides out our eyelids, where we have surgically grafted lcd screens so nobody has to look at each other anymore. We can all just lie in bed and watch the world as it is fed to us through the information robots.
Wow...getting up at four in the morning makes me get dark fast.
Can I take a moment just to say too, that I am in fact a morning person?
I actually am at my best about two hours after wake up?
I can read whole paragraphs and understand them. I can sometimes string words into full sentences. Two hours after I get up I am raring to go.
I tend to unravel the later it gets.
Today for instance, around six o'clock, I'll be in a corner sobbing hysterically about the state of the world fisting peanut m&ms into my mouth as the baby takes his first steps across the living room floor, and you can bet they'll be away from me.
Dear god, he will be thinking, why is bipedalism so difficult? I'd be miles away by now if I could just figure out this balancing bullshit.
So here we are. It's not even seven, the baby has curled up in my lap for a post-pancake nap, and I am too wired to take him back to sleep and actually get some shut eye.
I think about his instincts though, and I must commend him.
I mean, getting up early because you're hungry, eating a pile of pancakes, and then taking a snooze sounds like every dumb instagrammer's "perfect Sunday" so he must be doing something right.
I on the other hand am now vibrating at a frequency that makes my dog's knees buckle.
There is no hope here in the Gonzo Motherland.
Give me twelve hours,
we'll be in bat country.
Monday, November 28, 2016
Weaponized Food. My Darkest Times with ED. Trigger Warning: anorexia, BED, general ED discussion
Night time used to be my ED's favorite time.
Like most people, especially people with weird work schedules, I often used to look forward to the midnight hour as my only time to myself.
It was only then, when I was in college, and my roommate was asleep, or as I grew older, after Beard went to bed, that I felt I could breathe a sigh of relief and reflect on the day. Sometimes this meant reading, watching movies, or catching up on social media and weird blogs. Sometimes it meant getting done what little writing I had the energy left for.
One thing was certain though, it was always the right time for a binge.
See, when I was in the deep dark jungle of my anorectic behavior, I had a strict eating routine. I could only eat food at the two specific meal times I allowed myself. It had to be specific foods, and it had to be all consumed in a specific time frame.
Dinner was complete by 6pm, and I was not allowed to eat again until 8am the next morning.
Let's review for the cheap seats:
After a measly salad and one cookie (my "daily indulgence"), I was to go a minimum of fourteen hours without so much as a snack.
To do this, I kept myself busy. I was a member of a dozen clubs and I always had meetings to attend, events to plan, functions to organize, and then homework to do.
By ten or eleven at night, my stomach would be screaming for food, but to distract myself, I would begin an arduous circuit of visiting friends in their dorm rooms.
Often, they would be nuking ramen bowls, sharing pints of ice cream, or snacking on popcorn while watching movies, and I always declined, feeling lighter and more virtuous with every, "Oh no thank you," I stuttered through.
In the year and a half of my worst restricting, I recall three binges. At the time, they were monumental. Afterwards, to atone, I would tot up my calories for the day (I obsessively kept my calories between 800-1100 every day, my goal was always 950), and after a binge, they would often run as high as 1900 (remember, the average human, with no physical activity, requires about 2,000 calories every day, but to me, coming it that close to normal eating levels, was catastrophic), and I would berate myself for being so indulgent, so weak and pathetic. I would need to "make up" for those excess calories, and so the next day I would fast.
When the pendulum swung back, and it swung hard, I still couldn't shake that need to compensate for a binge. It became almost religious, the cleansing feeling I associated with lightheaded hunger after a day of not eating, and I would do every trick in the book to get through it.
Then, when night came, and I was all alone, the feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, and often the voice of reason too, finally came through.
"Why are you doing this?" my common sense would ask.
"To be better," was always my reply.
"But you're not," my ED would answer.
"But I want to be," I would say.
"You can't sleep this hungry you know," my common sense would counter.
"I know," I would say, already on my way to the kitchen.
"Just a little snack," my common sense would say, "something to get through until tomorrow. It's not good to go this long without food."
I would agree.
I would portion myself out something healthy, something I could call "good", and I would eat it.
At first, slowly, trying, with every ounce of my will power to make it last, to make it enough for an entire day of restriction.
The problem was, it was never enough, and my ED would seize on this little snack as it's moment to completely destroy me.
It would hit me with shame, with failure, with the sense that I couldn't even make it 24 hours without eating, then it would play it's trump card, "You've already fucked up" it would say "you might as well fuck up big."
And then I would basically turn into a werewolf and demolish the contents of my kitchen.
For a while I even stole food.
I already felt so guilty about what I was doing, it was my ED's reasoning to plan for the next day's atonement, while I was in the middle of a binge. My ED would make me eat every last crumb of something that wasn't mine, a roommate's, my Beard's, if I was at someone else's house, sometimes an entire box of cereal or a container of ice cream that even while I was doing it, I knew would get me in trouble. Someone was bound to find out and force me to face the consequences. My ED was counting on that shame to start the cycle over again, because it was shame that kept me fasting the next day.
My head was always blurry with these three voices. They constantly fought for dominion.
My ED wanted to rule. My common sense (what I now recognize was my body's natural hunger and fullness cues) was trying so hard to tell me what I needed as an organism, and my own voice, that felt silenced and unimportant compared to the others.
In the thirteen years that this disorder ruled my life, I never ate anything because I was hungry, because I wanted to, because it looked good.
Food was a loaded weapon, and I viewed it as the enemy. Either to be avoided at all costs, or used ritualistically to hurt myself.
It didn't matter what I did, my interaction with food never changed, and that's because my needs as a human being never changed.
I needed to eat to survive, and I was denying myself the means to do so.
It was that simple.
I overcomplicated it to the point of madness.
I raced around and around in my head trying to figure out
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME?
But in the end, it was the simplest thing of all.
I was fighting my body, and my body knew what was best for me.
Imagine caring for your body is like taking care of the cutest, sweetest puppy in the whole world.
It loves everything about life.
It wants to play, to go outside and romp around.
It hates being too cold, too wet, or too hot.
It loves eating when it's hungry because food tastes good, especially when it's full of the things you need most at that moment, protein or carbohydrates, fat and sugar, or vitamins and minerals.
The fact is, you would never deny a puppy food to punish it.
Even if it pooped on your floor every day.
Even if it bit your ankles, chewed your shoes, and tipped over the trash at every opportunity.
It would never occur to you to do something so cruel as to deny the creature food as punishment.
You might use other methods to discipline the animal, but because you love it, because it's just a baby doing what babies do, you never think to actually, willfully hurt it, which is what starving it would be.
Now apply this to your body.
This was a revolutionary concept to me.
I couldn't learn.
I couldn't improve.
I couldn't just be a better version of myself.
Because I was using food as a means of reward and punishment, which it has no business being.
I had to take everything I had taught myself about the meaning of food and throw it out the window.
My body was an adorable puppy, and when my stomach growled, it was the same as that puppy scratching at an empty food dish.
It may sound silly, but this metaphor saved my life.
When I started thinking of my body as something that deserved my care, something that I was put in charge of and deserved to be treated as well as it could be, I stopped hurting myself on purpose.
And that meant listening for those tummy growls.
It had been so long since I had actually responded to my body's hunger and fullness cues that it took me a really long time to be able to understand them. I had to look and listen for the obvious physical symptoms, because the more subtle ones couldn't get through to my brain at first.
If my stomach growled,
I ate something.
I reached for the thing that looked the best to me at that moment.
If it was a yogurt and a banana, then that's what I ate.
If it was tortilla chips and salsa, then that's what I ate.
If it was chocolate chips, then that's what I ate.
Nothing was off limits, it just had to be the honest answer to the question: What do you want the most right now?
If the answer was a glass of water, then I drank that, waited ten minutes, and if my stomach growled again, then I asked the question again.
I kept doing it.
And every time I finished eating the thing, I took ten minutes and then I asked, are you still hungry?
If the answer was yes, then I went back and got another thing.
If the answer was no, then I didn't
If the answer was, I can't tell, then I waited ten minutes more and asked again.
But there were never any foods off limits, and there was never a 'wrong' time to eat.
So for a long time, my body was confused.
It formed weird habits.
It craved foods I had previously denied myself.
I ate a lot of chocolate and peanut butter because those were huge trigger foods for me.
Then one day, I reached for the bag of chocolate chips, and my body said, "no, that's not what I want."
So I waited.
And instead, it directed me to the bananas, and the peanut butter, and the bread.
I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and it was exactly what I wanted.
And I didn't feel like I had to eat the rest of the peanut butter with a spoon afterwards because I knew that it was there if I wanted to do that. The question was, would that make me feel good? Was that really what my body wanted me to do?
Last night,
the baby got me up at 11pm. We'd been asleep for about two hours, and he wanted to nurse.
Since I've been going to bed early with the baby, my schedule's kept me away from my trigger time (the deep dark hours of night).
I've been either too tired to think about eating, too lazy, or not hungry.
Last night, I could see the trigger moment coming toward me as clearly as a pothole in the road.
I thought to myself:
It is 11pm.
Nobody is awake.
My stomach growled.
My ED said, "You should go binge on something you would not allow yourself today," which ten years ago, would have been everything, but the magic of listening to my body meant that I had an answer for it.
"But I allowed myself everything today. There's nothing I missed out on, or need to make up for."
My ED got quieter, "Yes, but..."
Instead, I asked my body, "Hey puppy, what sounds good to you right now?"
My body said, "The sweet potato pie leftover in the fridge from thanksgiving."
I said, "Okay."
So I got myself a slice of pie.
I had some plain yogurt in a container, and I liked the idea of a nice, tart, cool counterpart to the sweet richness of the pie, so I plopped a blob on top of the pie.
I ate it slowly, while the baby nursed, enjoying the feeling of the food filling my stomach.
I drank a glass of water, and about half an hour later, I went back to bed, and I slept wonderfully.
I remembered, as I lay there, the baby snoring next to me, how in the depths of my ED, I used to never be able to sleep when I was hungry, and then I was never able to sleep when I binged.
Both ways, I was so uncomfortable that all I could do was think obsessively about why why why I was doing this to myself.
Last night, I had a nice, happy tummy. I didn't feel overfull, and I didn't feel hungry.
I felt content.
And I fell back to sleep in no time flat.
Like most people, especially people with weird work schedules, I often used to look forward to the midnight hour as my only time to myself.
It was only then, when I was in college, and my roommate was asleep, or as I grew older, after Beard went to bed, that I felt I could breathe a sigh of relief and reflect on the day. Sometimes this meant reading, watching movies, or catching up on social media and weird blogs. Sometimes it meant getting done what little writing I had the energy left for.
One thing was certain though, it was always the right time for a binge.
See, when I was in the deep dark jungle of my anorectic behavior, I had a strict eating routine. I could only eat food at the two specific meal times I allowed myself. It had to be specific foods, and it had to be all consumed in a specific time frame.
Dinner was complete by 6pm, and I was not allowed to eat again until 8am the next morning.
Let's review for the cheap seats:
After a measly salad and one cookie (my "daily indulgence"), I was to go a minimum of fourteen hours without so much as a snack.
To do this, I kept myself busy. I was a member of a dozen clubs and I always had meetings to attend, events to plan, functions to organize, and then homework to do.
By ten or eleven at night, my stomach would be screaming for food, but to distract myself, I would begin an arduous circuit of visiting friends in their dorm rooms.
Often, they would be nuking ramen bowls, sharing pints of ice cream, or snacking on popcorn while watching movies, and I always declined, feeling lighter and more virtuous with every, "Oh no thank you," I stuttered through.
In the year and a half of my worst restricting, I recall three binges. At the time, they were monumental. Afterwards, to atone, I would tot up my calories for the day (I obsessively kept my calories between 800-1100 every day, my goal was always 950), and after a binge, they would often run as high as 1900 (remember, the average human, with no physical activity, requires about 2,000 calories every day, but to me, coming it that close to normal eating levels, was catastrophic), and I would berate myself for being so indulgent, so weak and pathetic. I would need to "make up" for those excess calories, and so the next day I would fast.
When the pendulum swung back, and it swung hard, I still couldn't shake that need to compensate for a binge. It became almost religious, the cleansing feeling I associated with lightheaded hunger after a day of not eating, and I would do every trick in the book to get through it.
Then, when night came, and I was all alone, the feelings of loneliness, worthlessness, and often the voice of reason too, finally came through.
"Why are you doing this?" my common sense would ask.
"To be better," was always my reply.
"But you're not," my ED would answer.
"But I want to be," I would say.
"You can't sleep this hungry you know," my common sense would counter.
"I know," I would say, already on my way to the kitchen.
"Just a little snack," my common sense would say, "something to get through until tomorrow. It's not good to go this long without food."
I would agree.
I would portion myself out something healthy, something I could call "good", and I would eat it.
At first, slowly, trying, with every ounce of my will power to make it last, to make it enough for an entire day of restriction.
The problem was, it was never enough, and my ED would seize on this little snack as it's moment to completely destroy me.
It would hit me with shame, with failure, with the sense that I couldn't even make it 24 hours without eating, then it would play it's trump card, "You've already fucked up" it would say "you might as well fuck up big."
And then I would basically turn into a werewolf and demolish the contents of my kitchen.
For a while I even stole food.
I already felt so guilty about what I was doing, it was my ED's reasoning to plan for the next day's atonement, while I was in the middle of a binge. My ED would make me eat every last crumb of something that wasn't mine, a roommate's, my Beard's, if I was at someone else's house, sometimes an entire box of cereal or a container of ice cream that even while I was doing it, I knew would get me in trouble. Someone was bound to find out and force me to face the consequences. My ED was counting on that shame to start the cycle over again, because it was shame that kept me fasting the next day.
My head was always blurry with these three voices. They constantly fought for dominion.
My ED wanted to rule. My common sense (what I now recognize was my body's natural hunger and fullness cues) was trying so hard to tell me what I needed as an organism, and my own voice, that felt silenced and unimportant compared to the others.
In the thirteen years that this disorder ruled my life, I never ate anything because I was hungry, because I wanted to, because it looked good.
Food was a loaded weapon, and I viewed it as the enemy. Either to be avoided at all costs, or used ritualistically to hurt myself.
It didn't matter what I did, my interaction with food never changed, and that's because my needs as a human being never changed.
I needed to eat to survive, and I was denying myself the means to do so.
It was that simple.
I overcomplicated it to the point of madness.
I raced around and around in my head trying to figure out
WHAT WAS WRONG WITH ME?
But in the end, it was the simplest thing of all.
I was fighting my body, and my body knew what was best for me.
Imagine caring for your body is like taking care of the cutest, sweetest puppy in the whole world.
It loves everything about life.
It wants to play, to go outside and romp around.
It hates being too cold, too wet, or too hot.
It loves eating when it's hungry because food tastes good, especially when it's full of the things you need most at that moment, protein or carbohydrates, fat and sugar, or vitamins and minerals.
The fact is, you would never deny a puppy food to punish it.
Even if it pooped on your floor every day.
Even if it bit your ankles, chewed your shoes, and tipped over the trash at every opportunity.
It would never occur to you to do something so cruel as to deny the creature food as punishment.
You might use other methods to discipline the animal, but because you love it, because it's just a baby doing what babies do, you never think to actually, willfully hurt it, which is what starving it would be.
Now apply this to your body.
This was a revolutionary concept to me.
I couldn't learn.
I couldn't improve.
I couldn't just be a better version of myself.
Because I was using food as a means of reward and punishment, which it has no business being.
I had to take everything I had taught myself about the meaning of food and throw it out the window.
My body was an adorable puppy, and when my stomach growled, it was the same as that puppy scratching at an empty food dish.
It may sound silly, but this metaphor saved my life.
When I started thinking of my body as something that deserved my care, something that I was put in charge of and deserved to be treated as well as it could be, I stopped hurting myself on purpose.
And that meant listening for those tummy growls.
It had been so long since I had actually responded to my body's hunger and fullness cues that it took me a really long time to be able to understand them. I had to look and listen for the obvious physical symptoms, because the more subtle ones couldn't get through to my brain at first.
If my stomach growled,
I ate something.
I reached for the thing that looked the best to me at that moment.
If it was a yogurt and a banana, then that's what I ate.
If it was tortilla chips and salsa, then that's what I ate.
If it was chocolate chips, then that's what I ate.
Nothing was off limits, it just had to be the honest answer to the question: What do you want the most right now?
If the answer was a glass of water, then I drank that, waited ten minutes, and if my stomach growled again, then I asked the question again.
I kept doing it.
And every time I finished eating the thing, I took ten minutes and then I asked, are you still hungry?
If the answer was yes, then I went back and got another thing.
If the answer was no, then I didn't
If the answer was, I can't tell, then I waited ten minutes more and asked again.
But there were never any foods off limits, and there was never a 'wrong' time to eat.
So for a long time, my body was confused.
It formed weird habits.
It craved foods I had previously denied myself.
I ate a lot of chocolate and peanut butter because those were huge trigger foods for me.
Then one day, I reached for the bag of chocolate chips, and my body said, "no, that's not what I want."
So I waited.
And instead, it directed me to the bananas, and the peanut butter, and the bread.
I made a peanut butter and banana sandwich, and it was exactly what I wanted.
And I didn't feel like I had to eat the rest of the peanut butter with a spoon afterwards because I knew that it was there if I wanted to do that. The question was, would that make me feel good? Was that really what my body wanted me to do?
Last night,
the baby got me up at 11pm. We'd been asleep for about two hours, and he wanted to nurse.
Since I've been going to bed early with the baby, my schedule's kept me away from my trigger time (the deep dark hours of night).
I've been either too tired to think about eating, too lazy, or not hungry.
Last night, I could see the trigger moment coming toward me as clearly as a pothole in the road.
I thought to myself:
It is 11pm.
Nobody is awake.
My stomach growled.
My ED said, "You should go binge on something you would not allow yourself today," which ten years ago, would have been everything, but the magic of listening to my body meant that I had an answer for it.
"But I allowed myself everything today. There's nothing I missed out on, or need to make up for."
My ED got quieter, "Yes, but..."
Instead, I asked my body, "Hey puppy, what sounds good to you right now?"
My body said, "The sweet potato pie leftover in the fridge from thanksgiving."
I said, "Okay."
So I got myself a slice of pie.
I had some plain yogurt in a container, and I liked the idea of a nice, tart, cool counterpart to the sweet richness of the pie, so I plopped a blob on top of the pie.
I ate it slowly, while the baby nursed, enjoying the feeling of the food filling my stomach.
I drank a glass of water, and about half an hour later, I went back to bed, and I slept wonderfully.
I remembered, as I lay there, the baby snoring next to me, how in the depths of my ED, I used to never be able to sleep when I was hungry, and then I was never able to sleep when I binged.
Both ways, I was so uncomfortable that all I could do was think obsessively about why why why I was doing this to myself.
Last night, I had a nice, happy tummy. I didn't feel overfull, and I didn't feel hungry.
I felt content.
And I fell back to sleep in no time flat.
Friday, November 25, 2016
EIGHT REAL REASONS TO BE HAPPY WHILE EVERYONE AROUND YOU FREAKS OUT
I recently read an article on a site that I should know better than to read (Ravishly).
It was titled 8 Things to Make You Feel Better About How Terrible The World Is.
In typical fluff piece fashion it included things like babies and puppies (yes, seriously). In delving for more emotional depth it cited clean water, food, and the internet (well duh, privilege of any kind is a creature comfort when times are scary), and then it got desperate and started listing things like full jars of nutella and leggings (dear god could we stop assuming all women want to do to feel better is binge eat their feelings?).
Now that I've pissed off a ton of people who love Ravishly, puppies, and cookie dough for dinner, I would like to counterpoint with 8 real things to make you feel better about how terrible the world is.
I'm going to avoid the obvious things like food, shelter, and family, because they are not givens for everyone, and even people who don't have the luxury of affordable healthy groceries and who might have to feed their kids mac and cheese, or people who had to move back in with their parents because they lost their jobs, or people who don't speak to their families due to abuse and trauma, or flat out loss, deserve to feel better during a time period when it seems like every adult I know has abandoned reason and logic and decided to hide under the bed.
1. People Are Actually Helping People
There are a shit ton of people supporting the effort to stop the DAPL.
If you would like to feel a little better about the world and can afford to donate, this is a great link to do so
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/help-standing-rock-sioux-dakota-access-pipeline_us_583480c9e4b000af95eca013?
If you are not in a position to afford to donate take a moment, realize that there is a multi-billion dollar corporation trying to do something truly horrible. It is being supported by the local law enforcement, BUT IT IS STILL BEING FOUGHT. The little guy, the guy who just wants clean drinking water for his family and respect for his sacred land, is standing tall right now and refusing to back down, and people are FLOCKING TO AID THE LITTLE GUY. If you can't be one of the flock, then appreciate that even though times are scary, people are still bonding together in the face of evil. This is a brave and beautiful example of human courage.
Take ten minutes, close your eyes, sit in a quiet room, and send them good vibes.
It may sound silly, but it's not. The people fighting the DAPL need good energy as much as they need everything else we can send them. So take a part of your day and direct good energy to them. It is a real, non-monetary, viable way of helping, and it should make you feel better too.
2. We Are Making a Difference
China is reducing it's air pollution.
This may sound distant and unrelated, but think about it.
Bejing has consistently ben reported to have the worst air quality in the entire world, but in 2015 there was a 16% drop in the most deadly air pollution over the city.
Read more in this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-air-pollution-2014_us_568e592ce4b0a2b6fb6ecb73
I find this heartening because if we can reverse something as precious as the poisoning of our air, then we can reverse a lot of environmental damage.
The point is to contribute to the solution a little bit, every day, not to contribute to the problem.
It doesn't matter where you live, but do your part.
Recycle your recyclables.
Walk distances shorter than a mile rather than driving them (and as a bonus, save on gas, and get a wee bit of fresh air!)
Turn off your lights and electronics when you aren't using them.
Compost if you can, and if you don't have the yard to do so, find out if there's someone in your neighborhood who needs compost, or if there's a community garden to which you can bring your compostable waste. If you're as lucky as I am, perhaps your town has a community compost pick up that you can sign up for.
It's small, but it's helping, and helping makes us feel less powerless, and when we feel like we can make a difference, we feel less afraid.
3. Body Positivity is Hitting the Mainstream
If you've read anything on this blog, you know I am a huge supporter and proponent of the body positivity movement.
I believe, (shockingly, radically) that people (especially women who have historically been conditioned to hate their bodies) are not allowed to love themselves at any and every incarnation of their health and size, but they SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO LOVE THEMSELVES PERIOD.
Why make this my business?
Whose business isn't this?
Sorry about the double negative there. What I mean is, if you have a body, you deserve to love it. You deserve to feel good about that body. You deserve to care for that body, to give it pleasure, and to experience everything the world has to offer you through that body.
The hatred most people internalize toward their physiques is not natural. It's only been thanks to the advent of modern advertising to sell us the notion that our bodies and lives are lacking unless we purchase products that has undermined several generations of people from enjoying any sensual pleasures their body can provide.
Until now that is!
This article cites how body positivity is gaining momentum and hopefully predicates a return to people just loving the shit out of themselves for who they are, to which I say HIP HIP FUCKING HOORAY!
http://time.com/4437468/women-body-image-obesity/
If you want further inspiring proof of BOPO gaining momentum, check out
http://www.themilitantbaker.com/
http://www.ashleygraham.com/
http://www.refinery29.com/2016/09/123724/afropunk-topless-woman-double-mastectomy
4. This Election Was An Old Man's Game. The Future Looks Better.
Hey, we know you're depressed about the President Elect. So am I.
But it was overwhelmingly the baby boomers who came out and put their ballots toward the fascist cheeto.
Millenials showed a strong Democratic majority with 1 in 10 18-29 year olds placing a third party vote.
This means that in the years to come, as the racist dinosaurs die out (and no, I'm not hating on baby boomers at large, just the overwhelming majority of them that put that troglodyte on the path to the white house), our generation will take the majority, and the stats say that we're all a hell of a lot more interested in a better future rather than a "great" regression.
And remember, millenials already outnumber baby boomers population wise so if we can nut up and show up in 2020, we can get back on a path that makes sense for this country.
Read more about it here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/what-this-election-taught-us-about-millennial-voters
5. There's More Coverage, but Violent Crimes Are Actually in Decline
It's easy with facebook's evil little headers, and the huffpo's leading headlines, along with the constant connectivity of modern life to feel overwhelmed by the violence and awfulness in this country, but homicides have actually declined in the last twenty years.
This is in no way supposed to overshadow or "make up for" the number of police brutality deaths, the misuse of power, the number of murders, or any time a human has used a gun to take the life of another human, but this article put things into perspective.
I don't know about anyone else, but back in the 90's the news was on in my house for an hour every night, and it was scary, and it was dark, but after that hour, we turned it off, and carried on with our lives.
I can't comment on whether or not it's better to be in the dark about the state of the world or whether blissful ignorance is a better state of being, but I can say that my parents were no less informed during that time period, and they weren't being bludgeoned by headlines designed as "clickbait" every time they turned the tv on. Every website, every social media outlet we log into, is trying to sell us the newest, freshest most dramatic horrible thing it can come up with, and if you're logging into a site several times a day, you're getting hit with horrible news that many times, so is it any wonder that we feel like things are so much worse than they really are?
I repeat, I'm not downplaying any of the violence that is or has occurred this year, I am only offering this article as a means to pose the idea that maybe things aren't the worst they've ever been, and we can take a breath.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/08/why-america-feels-so-violent-right-now/
6. Last Year Americans Were Record-Breakingly Generous
It may be a goofy thing to take note of, but in 2015 Americans were the most generous and charitable they had ever been.
https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2016/
I don't know about you, but when I feel like all hope is lost, I like to see that people are still taking care of each other. While I know it's easy to say, "If I were rich, I'd give away tons of money," and it's much more difficult to reach into your pocket when you're say, clipping coupons, living paycheck to paycheck, or waiting on unemployment, but the fact of the matter is, it makes us feel good to help one another.
I've been truly inspired by folks who, rather than greet hatred with justifiable rage, are doing incredible things like buying dinner for their bigoted neighbors and then signing the check with their wishes for them to be more tolerant.
It's easy to get angry. It's easy to let a situation escalate, but the sourness, the leftover anger, and the wave of nauseating fear and guilt (just me?) that follows an altercation is never something that leaves us feeling better about the world.
If we show we can rise above, and keep looking out for one another, our moods alone will be brighter, more optimistic, and hopeful, and not only that, but perhaps we'll have made a difference to someone who was really struggling.
7. We Live In The Future
It's easy to take for granted.
iphones, iwatches, livestreaming, skype and facetime, online shopping, fitibits, and many other technological advances that are the norm today were inconceivable twenty years ago.
Maybe it's because I'm in my thirties, and I am dreading the day my kid looks at me and says
"Wait Mom, YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THERE WAS THE INTERNET?"
the same way I said to my parents,
"Wait, YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THERE WAS TELEVISION?"
It's crazy, but I say it, and I believe it. We live in the goddamn future.
If you take a look at any of the pop culture future touchstones of my childhood (Star Treks: Voyager and Deep Space Nine and Back to the Future), the crazed imaginings of those tv shows and films included things that seem ludicrous and funny now.
If you were to travel back in time to say 1996, however, and show the average person your iphone, they'd lose their mind!
A camera, phone, voice recorder, alarm, calendar, camcorder, stereo, digital library, with voice command and access to the worlds most expansive database?
They'd burn you as a witch in no time.
Every so often, think about that little flip phone you had about ten years ago. You know, the one that cost thirty cents a text, and think about how far we've come in just a decade.
It's pretty magical.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/08/03/the-top-7-technology-trends-dominating-2016/#5b9bd961de34
8. Modern Medicine Has Never Been More Effective
Back in April, doctor's discovered a new drug that could help target cancer cells in Leukemia patients without also wiping out healthy cells and thusly making the patient horribly ill while undergoing treatment for their cancer.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/DrJohnson/story?id=117508&page=1
Along with this stunningly wonderful news 2 days ago this article was published in which scientists reveal they may have finally figured out a way to suppress the viral load in HIV positive patients to almost undetectable levels.
http://www.itechpost.com/articles/57635/20161124/cure-hiv-reduction-through-wonder-drug-now-possible-help-semen.htm
It will never cease to amaze me the leaps and bounds science takes every year in its efforts to treat the horrible diseases that plague we fragile humans.
It used to be a death sentence when the doctor gave you a cancer or and HIV diagnosis. I am so ecstatic to see the progress we are making against these illnesses. It seems not impossible that we will see viable cures within my lifetime, and that is something worth celebrating.
BONUS REASON:
Your Tribe Exists
This last one is a little hokey, but thanks to the magic of social media, and the somewhat endearing transparent trend of "letting one's freak flag fly" there is no reason why you, yes you, the person who feels incredibly alone and thinks there's nobody else out there like you in the whole wide world, can't find your tribe.
With the world wide web at your fingertips you can enter any interest you have and immediately be launched into a million different discussions about the finer points of your passion.
Before now, if you admitted you liked something gauche, you had to risk that you were going to get laughed out of the party by the neanderthals. But with the rise of popularity in things like Comic Cons, Horror Cons, hell even Rennaissance Fairs, and Rocky Horror fan clubs, there is no reason you can't get together with likeminded folks and revel in your collective weird.
I am not passing one iota of judgement.
In fact, if I had the time, I'd go to a couple of the events on this magical list:
http://costume.org/conventions.html
The point being, we live in an amazingly accepting age, with support, common interest groups, and conventions to suit every possible collection, hobby, tv or comic fandom, and enthusiast in existence.
In conclusion,
Here you have eight truly relevant reasons to be glad you live where you live right now in the time you are living.
It has never been a healthier, more friendly, generous, self accepting, hopeful time to be alive, and that's with all the stuff that people tell us is crappy going on!
Take heart, my friends.
We're all going to make it through this to that.
It was titled 8 Things to Make You Feel Better About How Terrible The World Is.
In typical fluff piece fashion it included things like babies and puppies (yes, seriously). In delving for more emotional depth it cited clean water, food, and the internet (well duh, privilege of any kind is a creature comfort when times are scary), and then it got desperate and started listing things like full jars of nutella and leggings (dear god could we stop assuming all women want to do to feel better is binge eat their feelings?).
Now that I've pissed off a ton of people who love Ravishly, puppies, and cookie dough for dinner, I would like to counterpoint with 8 real things to make you feel better about how terrible the world is.
I'm going to avoid the obvious things like food, shelter, and family, because they are not givens for everyone, and even people who don't have the luxury of affordable healthy groceries and who might have to feed their kids mac and cheese, or people who had to move back in with their parents because they lost their jobs, or people who don't speak to their families due to abuse and trauma, or flat out loss, deserve to feel better during a time period when it seems like every adult I know has abandoned reason and logic and decided to hide under the bed.
1. People Are Actually Helping People
There are a shit ton of people supporting the effort to stop the DAPL.
If you would like to feel a little better about the world and can afford to donate, this is a great link to do so
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/help-standing-rock-sioux-dakota-access-pipeline_us_583480c9e4b000af95eca013?
If you are not in a position to afford to donate take a moment, realize that there is a multi-billion dollar corporation trying to do something truly horrible. It is being supported by the local law enforcement, BUT IT IS STILL BEING FOUGHT. The little guy, the guy who just wants clean drinking water for his family and respect for his sacred land, is standing tall right now and refusing to back down, and people are FLOCKING TO AID THE LITTLE GUY. If you can't be one of the flock, then appreciate that even though times are scary, people are still bonding together in the face of evil. This is a brave and beautiful example of human courage.
Take ten minutes, close your eyes, sit in a quiet room, and send them good vibes.
It may sound silly, but it's not. The people fighting the DAPL need good energy as much as they need everything else we can send them. So take a part of your day and direct good energy to them. It is a real, non-monetary, viable way of helping, and it should make you feel better too.
2. We Are Making a Difference
China is reducing it's air pollution.
This may sound distant and unrelated, but think about it.
Bejing has consistently ben reported to have the worst air quality in the entire world, but in 2015 there was a 16% drop in the most deadly air pollution over the city.
Read more in this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/china-air-pollution-2014_us_568e592ce4b0a2b6fb6ecb73
I find this heartening because if we can reverse something as precious as the poisoning of our air, then we can reverse a lot of environmental damage.
The point is to contribute to the solution a little bit, every day, not to contribute to the problem.
It doesn't matter where you live, but do your part.
Recycle your recyclables.
Walk distances shorter than a mile rather than driving them (and as a bonus, save on gas, and get a wee bit of fresh air!)
Turn off your lights and electronics when you aren't using them.
Compost if you can, and if you don't have the yard to do so, find out if there's someone in your neighborhood who needs compost, or if there's a community garden to which you can bring your compostable waste. If you're as lucky as I am, perhaps your town has a community compost pick up that you can sign up for.
It's small, but it's helping, and helping makes us feel less powerless, and when we feel like we can make a difference, we feel less afraid.
3. Body Positivity is Hitting the Mainstream
If you've read anything on this blog, you know I am a huge supporter and proponent of the body positivity movement.
I believe, (shockingly, radically) that people (especially women who have historically been conditioned to hate their bodies) are not allowed to love themselves at any and every incarnation of their health and size, but they SHOULD BE ENCOURAGED TO LOVE THEMSELVES PERIOD.
Why make this my business?
Whose business isn't this?
Sorry about the double negative there. What I mean is, if you have a body, you deserve to love it. You deserve to feel good about that body. You deserve to care for that body, to give it pleasure, and to experience everything the world has to offer you through that body.
The hatred most people internalize toward their physiques is not natural. It's only been thanks to the advent of modern advertising to sell us the notion that our bodies and lives are lacking unless we purchase products that has undermined several generations of people from enjoying any sensual pleasures their body can provide.
Until now that is!
This article cites how body positivity is gaining momentum and hopefully predicates a return to people just loving the shit out of themselves for who they are, to which I say HIP HIP FUCKING HOORAY!
http://time.com/4437468/women-body-image-obesity/
If you want further inspiring proof of BOPO gaining momentum, check out
http://www.themilitantbaker.com/
http://www.ashleygraham.com/
http://www.refinery29.com/2016/09/123724/afropunk-topless-woman-double-mastectomy
4. This Election Was An Old Man's Game. The Future Looks Better.
Hey, we know you're depressed about the President Elect. So am I.
But it was overwhelmingly the baby boomers who came out and put their ballots toward the fascist cheeto.
Millenials showed a strong Democratic majority with 1 in 10 18-29 year olds placing a third party vote.
This means that in the years to come, as the racist dinosaurs die out (and no, I'm not hating on baby boomers at large, just the overwhelming majority of them that put that troglodyte on the path to the white house), our generation will take the majority, and the stats say that we're all a hell of a lot more interested in a better future rather than a "great" regression.
And remember, millenials already outnumber baby boomers population wise so if we can nut up and show up in 2020, we can get back on a path that makes sense for this country.
Read more about it here:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-09/what-this-election-taught-us-about-millennial-voters
5. There's More Coverage, but Violent Crimes Are Actually in Decline
It's easy with facebook's evil little headers, and the huffpo's leading headlines, along with the constant connectivity of modern life to feel overwhelmed by the violence and awfulness in this country, but homicides have actually declined in the last twenty years.
This is in no way supposed to overshadow or "make up for" the number of police brutality deaths, the misuse of power, the number of murders, or any time a human has used a gun to take the life of another human, but this article put things into perspective.
I don't know about anyone else, but back in the 90's the news was on in my house for an hour every night, and it was scary, and it was dark, but after that hour, we turned it off, and carried on with our lives.
I can't comment on whether or not it's better to be in the dark about the state of the world or whether blissful ignorance is a better state of being, but I can say that my parents were no less informed during that time period, and they weren't being bludgeoned by headlines designed as "clickbait" every time they turned the tv on. Every website, every social media outlet we log into, is trying to sell us the newest, freshest most dramatic horrible thing it can come up with, and if you're logging into a site several times a day, you're getting hit with horrible news that many times, so is it any wonder that we feel like things are so much worse than they really are?
I repeat, I'm not downplaying any of the violence that is or has occurred this year, I am only offering this article as a means to pose the idea that maybe things aren't the worst they've ever been, and we can take a breath.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/08/why-america-feels-so-violent-right-now/
6. Last Year Americans Were Record-Breakingly Generous
It may be a goofy thing to take note of, but in 2015 Americans were the most generous and charitable they had ever been.
https://givingusa.org/giving-usa-2016/
I don't know about you, but when I feel like all hope is lost, I like to see that people are still taking care of each other. While I know it's easy to say, "If I were rich, I'd give away tons of money," and it's much more difficult to reach into your pocket when you're say, clipping coupons, living paycheck to paycheck, or waiting on unemployment, but the fact of the matter is, it makes us feel good to help one another.
I've been truly inspired by folks who, rather than greet hatred with justifiable rage, are doing incredible things like buying dinner for their bigoted neighbors and then signing the check with their wishes for them to be more tolerant.
It's easy to get angry. It's easy to let a situation escalate, but the sourness, the leftover anger, and the wave of nauseating fear and guilt (just me?) that follows an altercation is never something that leaves us feeling better about the world.
If we show we can rise above, and keep looking out for one another, our moods alone will be brighter, more optimistic, and hopeful, and not only that, but perhaps we'll have made a difference to someone who was really struggling.
7. We Live In The Future
It's easy to take for granted.
iphones, iwatches, livestreaming, skype and facetime, online shopping, fitibits, and many other technological advances that are the norm today were inconceivable twenty years ago.
Maybe it's because I'm in my thirties, and I am dreading the day my kid looks at me and says
"Wait Mom, YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THERE WAS THE INTERNET?"
the same way I said to my parents,
"Wait, YOU WERE BORN BEFORE THERE WAS TELEVISION?"
It's crazy, but I say it, and I believe it. We live in the goddamn future.
If you take a look at any of the pop culture future touchstones of my childhood (Star Treks: Voyager and Deep Space Nine and Back to the Future), the crazed imaginings of those tv shows and films included things that seem ludicrous and funny now.
If you were to travel back in time to say 1996, however, and show the average person your iphone, they'd lose their mind!
A camera, phone, voice recorder, alarm, calendar, camcorder, stereo, digital library, with voice command and access to the worlds most expansive database?
They'd burn you as a witch in no time.
Every so often, think about that little flip phone you had about ten years ago. You know, the one that cost thirty cents a text, and think about how far we've come in just a decade.
It's pretty magical.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysondemers/2016/08/03/the-top-7-technology-trends-dominating-2016/#5b9bd961de34
8. Modern Medicine Has Never Been More Effective
Back in April, doctor's discovered a new drug that could help target cancer cells in Leukemia patients without also wiping out healthy cells and thusly making the patient horribly ill while undergoing treatment for their cancer.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/DrJohnson/story?id=117508&page=1
Along with this stunningly wonderful news 2 days ago this article was published in which scientists reveal they may have finally figured out a way to suppress the viral load in HIV positive patients to almost undetectable levels.
http://www.itechpost.com/articles/57635/20161124/cure-hiv-reduction-through-wonder-drug-now-possible-help-semen.htm
It will never cease to amaze me the leaps and bounds science takes every year in its efforts to treat the horrible diseases that plague we fragile humans.
It used to be a death sentence when the doctor gave you a cancer or and HIV diagnosis. I am so ecstatic to see the progress we are making against these illnesses. It seems not impossible that we will see viable cures within my lifetime, and that is something worth celebrating.
BONUS REASON:
Your Tribe Exists
This last one is a little hokey, but thanks to the magic of social media, and the somewhat endearing transparent trend of "letting one's freak flag fly" there is no reason why you, yes you, the person who feels incredibly alone and thinks there's nobody else out there like you in the whole wide world, can't find your tribe.
With the world wide web at your fingertips you can enter any interest you have and immediately be launched into a million different discussions about the finer points of your passion.
Before now, if you admitted you liked something gauche, you had to risk that you were going to get laughed out of the party by the neanderthals. But with the rise of popularity in things like Comic Cons, Horror Cons, hell even Rennaissance Fairs, and Rocky Horror fan clubs, there is no reason you can't get together with likeminded folks and revel in your collective weird.
I am not passing one iota of judgement.
In fact, if I had the time, I'd go to a couple of the events on this magical list:
http://costume.org/conventions.html
The point being, we live in an amazingly accepting age, with support, common interest groups, and conventions to suit every possible collection, hobby, tv or comic fandom, and enthusiast in existence.
In conclusion,
Here you have eight truly relevant reasons to be glad you live where you live right now in the time you are living.
It has never been a healthier, more friendly, generous, self accepting, hopeful time to be alive, and that's with all the stuff that people tell us is crappy going on!
Take heart, my friends.
We're all going to make it through this to that.
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