If you have followed the link from my guest posts on the No Longer Quivering blog, you may be interested in my other memoir entries, the links to which can be found here. Please keep in mind that these are rough drafts intended to establish the sequence of events and reveal some of the themes of my writing. The finished product may look very different. I am also not putting everything online for obvious reasons.

I should be clear that not all of my material is about the Hare Krishna movement. That is one period of my life, certainly, and for the NLQ blog I have discussed the movement in some depth since it was relevant. But my life is about more than my time in ISKCON and I hope to put it in context in my finished memoir.

Happy Birthday to my dear husband daveseeker

Spending so much time writing about my ex-husband only serves to make me more appreciative of the husband I have now. In fact, I don't think I'd be able to write about the past if my present relationship weren't so positive and healing. For every woman out there who has suffered through bad relationships, there is hope, there are good people out there and you can learn to recognize them. (Which is not to say any one is perfect, but there are human flaws and there are severe pathologies and the gulf between the two is huge.)

May this next year bring you as much happiness as you've given me.

My latest guest blog entry, entitled What It's Like To Sing The Blues, has been posted on No Longer Quivering.

I have a new guest blog post up at No Longer Quivering:

From Generation to Generation.

This project of memoir writing is a curious one because I am forced to remember how I thought and felt about people and events at the time. I've already had one present-day disagreement with someone who was unhappy about what I wrote about her. I know her in the present in a very different way than I knew her in the past. But I am writing about my past understanding and she couldn't see how I would write something critical of her behavior then if I don't have any grievance toward her now.

Those of you who have followed my guest blog posts at No Longer Quivering have read about my anger towards my mother, for example, although we mended our relationship later on. But there was a time in my life when I felt I truly hated her! Since those early years I've done a lot of work on compassion and forgiveness and can place her in perspective.

Likewise I've had a lot of years to think about my relationship with Mahasraya* and put it in some perspective. I myself was young and my own knowledge about how to have a relationship was limited and flawed based on the dysfunctions present in my own family. I played a role in accepting abuse by remaining in the relationship. Now I understand the many forces that keep women such as myself mired in abusive relationships--I've written about it myself. Yet that doesn't mean I don't bear some responsibility for enabling him to continue the abusive cycle without being held accountable by my leaving. I finally did, of course, and perhaps that prevented abuse to others in the future--I have no way of knowing that. Don't get me wrong--Mahasraya is the only one responsible for his behavior. I'm just saying that I am also responsible for my own.

( Read more... )

*also known as Michael John Cody, formerly from Chicago, IL, son of Patricia and John Cody, grandson of Emma Muhne, to separate him from the many other Michael Codys out there.

ETA: From the Ramayana by Tulsidas — “There is no other dharma better than acting for the welfare of others. There is no worst sin than giving suffering to other.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

----from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.

This was incorrectly attributed to Nelson Mandela, but he didn't say or write it or even quote it. I had seen it attributed to him in many places so I just thought I should mention this common error. Nelson has said plenty of great things--this just wasn't one of them. :)

With thanks to vito_excalibur for passing on the link to this excellent article.

An Epidemic of Fear: How Panicked Parents Skipping Shots Endangers Us All

To hear his enemies talk, you might think Paul Offit is the most hated man in America. A pediatrician in Philadelphia, he is the coinventor of a rotavirus vaccine that could save tens of thousands of lives every year. Yet environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. slams Offit as a “biostitute” who whores for the pharmaceutical industry. Actor Jim Carrey calls him a profiteer and distills the doctor’s attitude toward childhood vaccination down to this chilling mantra: “Grab ‘em and stab ‘em.” Recently, Carrey and his girlfriend, Jenny McCarthy, went on CNN’s Larry King Live and singled out Offit’s vaccine, RotaTeq, as one of many unnecessary vaccines, all administered, they said, for just one reason: “Greed.”

The poor man has received death threats and threats to his children!

( Read more... )

I spend a lot of my time writing about fanaticism and fundamentalism, and the way religion can be twisted into an abusive force. However, as religion scholar Karen Armstrong points out, compassion is taught in every religion. It is time to revive that and, as she says, it is the antidote to sectarianism and religious wars.

Karen Armstrong gives an amazing lecture about the importance of the Golden Rule and introduces her Charter For Compassion, asking world religious leaders to sign on.

Some of her lecture in written form, excerpt below.

Transforming Compassion Project

Charter For Compassion

Karen:

The religions that should help to heal these divisions have themselves been gravely implicated in the terrorism and violence of our time. Actually, the chief cause of our present troubles is political but in regions of the world where warfare has become chronic -- the Middle East, Afghanistan, Kashmir, Chechnya -- religion has been sucked into the vicious cycle of aggression, strike and counter-strike.

Yet at the core of every single one of the world religions is the virtue of compassion, which does not mean "pity"; its Latin root means to feel with the other. Each one of the world religions has developed its own version of the Golden Rule -- Do not treat others as you would not like to be treated yourself -- and maintained that this is the prime religious duty. Everything else in the Torah is "only commentary," said Rabbi Hillel; you can have faith that moves mountains, said St Paul, but without charity it is worthless. The Prophet Muhammad said that a person who did not fulfill the Golden Rule could not be called a believer. And each of the faiths also insists that you cannot confine your compassion to your own group. You must have "concern for everybody," love your enemies, and honour the stranger.

Yet -- some magnificent exceptions -- rarely hear our religious leaders speaking of compassion. All too often the message is strident, intolerant or else overly concerned with dogmatic belief or a particular sexual ethic. But wherever I go -- east or west -- I find that people are longing for a more compassionate world. The aim of the Charter is to change the conversation, make it cool to be compassionate, and bring the Golden Rule back to the centre of religious life.

So please contribute to the Charter on line. We need everybody's insights -- atheists, Buddhists, Hindus, Christians, Jews, Muslims -- everybody! We need to implement the Golden Rule globally, so that we only treat other nations as we would wish to be treated ourselves. We need a global democracy, where everybody's voice is heard with sympathy and absolute respect. Any ideology -- religious or secular -- that breeds hatred or contempt is failing the test of our time, because if we do not build a more compassionate global community it is unlikely that we will have a viable world to hand on to the next generation.

Talking about why self esteem is not enough--we need to truly love ourselves!

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/03/joy.01.html

Transcript of show with segment about the Quiverfull movement with Vyckie Garrison of No Longer Quivering discussing QF with current QFer Rachel Scott and with author Kathryn Joyce who wrote a book about the movement. (You'll have to scroll through the beginning segments.)

Amazingly, Rachel Scott tried to say she had an egalitarian marriage, that God is a feminist, implied that Catholics aren't real Christians (but denied that when asked), said most QF daughters go to college when they don't, and implied that Vyckie didn't do QF quite right or she wouldn't have been so unhappy.

If you look at her website, what Rachel usually says is very different from the image she tried to portray on the show, to the frustration of everyone who shared that segment with her. She also would hardly shut up and let anyone else speak. Other QF adherents have been shy about going on these shows, but not Rachel! She seems to yearn for the public spotlight.

Some of Rachel's REAL beliefs:

The enemy is also preparing his army for battle. Believers do not need to fear
the army of the enemy but we do need to be aware that they exist. On the other
side there are children being born who already desire to promote the enemy’s
agenda. Some are chosen in the womb through demonic rituals or other forms of
evil. Some are birthed into this world and taught to hate. The only hope these
children have is to find Christ, but until they do they will be
increasingly susceptible to the deeds and plans of the enemy.

* * *


We are presently living in the last generations before Christ returns. The
children that we are birthing right now are the beginnings of this end-time
army of Mighty Warriors who will worship the Lord and prepare the way for His
return.

Several generations fell into Babylonian thinking (Babylon in scripture
usually refers to human thinking and ideals) and the traditional family of:
mother/father, a loving marriage that produces loving children, fell apart
in both society and in churches. People left God's "ideal" and what resulted
were 70+ years of pain and suffering for families.

WAS IT SIMPLY "COINCIDENCE" THAT NEARLY 70 YEARS AFTER THESE
RULINGS AMERICA EXPERIENCED A "WAKE-UP" CALL
IN THE EVENTS OF 9/11/01?

I'm a former abuser... and Should you dump a former abuser? are two related articles, the first sparking the second. The Salon letters are, as always, quite interesting.

Natalie Portman, recently on Top Chef in a vegan challenge, opts to be one of those strident, obnoxious vegans that give the rest of us veggie-eating folks a bad reputation.

If you've watched the Dollhouse on TV, you might be interested in this thoughtful article about the real life dollhouse: Hollywood.

Finally, a government report underestimates the number of people with disabilities who have been raped.

The No Longer Quivering Carnival has kept me hopping, first with writing material in advance for the news items that are being posted throughout each day, short essays on different aspects of our experience by several women, really dynamite stuff. Then I'm running the body image workshop and that's been quite active (yay!) and there have been lots of very good questions. (Don't forget to check it out--guests can post and there will be a prize drawing among the participants.) I have a few behind-the-scenes jobs also.

Tonight on the Joy Behar show on HLN (the other CNN channel) Vyckie Garrison herself, NLQ blog owner, will be on debating Rachel Scott, mother of eight and author of "Birthing God's Mighty Warriors." Don't miss it! 9 p.m. ET/PT.

You can look at my introduction and first assignment on the Body Image Workshop pages today and get started on your homework and thinking about your questions.

Here's what Vyckie says:

Beginning Sunday evening, Nov. 1st until we collapse sometime before midnight on Wednesday the 4th ~ we’re creating a party-like atmosphere here at No Longer Quivering and on the NLQ forums which includes fun & games ~ and even some cool prizes!

There will be lots of interesting things to read, prizes, fun, and food for thought. Please check it out!

On November 1st I will begin hosting a body image workshop booth over at No Longer Quivering Forum for the Carnival. You won't need to sign up in order to participate--for the duration of the Carnival, guests will have access to post, ask questions, and have fun.

There will be exercises and assignments each day and a drawing among participants for the winner’s choice of either Self-Esteem Comes in all Sizes: How to be Happy and Healthy at Your Natural Weight by Carol A. Johnson, MA, or Bodylove: Learning to Like Our Looks and Ourselves by Rita Freedman, Ph.D.

Bring your questions about problems you are having with your body image. I'll be happy to answer them.

Please join us!

The time has come to get new tires for my car.

Even though I no longer work, I am married to a darling man who still has a middle class job and grew up a few rungs above me in terms of income and class status.

The difference in how we view the world is apparent in how we think about things like tires.

He assumes that of course one always buys 4 new tires and has them rotated regularly on schedule. While I have grown more used to that way of doing things, and agree that it's sensible, I explained the way poor people approach the same problem.

"The thing is," I said, "Poor people NEVER have money for 4 new or even used tires at the same time. So what you do is buy a decent used tire whenever you have one that can no longer be patched. You make sure you have towing and road service on your insurance."

Dave always urges me to write about these things because, he says, "People don't know what it's like."

Do people really want to know?

I suspect most people don't. They'd rather ignore poverty. Poverty serves a purpose. If we solved poverty, who would willingly do the dangerous or boring jobs for minimum wage? It's much easier to shake our heads and wonder why poor people don't just work harder and stop being poor. Heaven forbid we offer them health care with even one penny of our tax money.

ETA: http://whatever.scalzi.com/2005/09/03/being-poor/

Link provided by <lj user="almighty_patsy> --Thank you so much!

No Longer Quivering, the blog and associated forum started by Vyckie D. Garrison to talk about her days in the Quiverfull movement, is having a Carnival! Yes, talking about life under the thumb of the patriarchy doesn't have to be depressing--we're celebrating freedom and autonomy for all women! There will be prizes and a slew of interesting posts during the carnival. I will be contributing some posts.

Beginning Sunday evening, Nov. 1st until we collapse sometime before midnight on Wednesday the 4th ~ we’re creating a party-like atmosphere here at No Longer Quivering and on the NLQ forums which includes fun & games ~ and even some cool prizes!
The NLQ chat room will be open round-the-clock and we’ll be posting new NLQ articles every few hours.


We’ll be setting up a “Carnival Midway” on the NLQ forums which will be open to all visitors ~ no need to register. On the “Midway” visitors will find carnival booths with games and activities ~ plus plenty of excellent company!

Be there or be square!

A good resource: Pain Community News Archive list for .pdf issues from the American Pain Foundation. You can sign up to receive these for free by mail or read them online.

Fran, Spring 2009 issue has an article entitled "Lyme Disease and Chronic Pain."

Winter 2009 has a fascinating article about research concerning changes in the brain for chronic pain patients.

The American Pain Foundation also has an electronic publication called the Pain Monitor.

These are great folks to network with because they work hard to challenge any legislative or FDA changes that affect pain patients as well as working to create positive changes that will help us treat our pain effectively. They periodically send me email action alerts, some of which I've shared here.

I finally posted about vaccines and misinformation because I reached a critical mass of annoyance.

In the past few weeks I've been bombarded with misinformation and junk science links. Just today I got another one about how aspirin was the real cause of most of the Spanish Flu deaths, not the flu itself.

I posted on Facebook innocently that I had finally gotten my seasonal flu shot and got a bunch of responses about how dangerous vaccines are and of course the one person who always says "I got a flu shot once and got sick the next day so I'll never get one again." Um...you can't get symptoms that fast after exposure anyway. It has to incubate first. You were already incubating the flu if you got sick.

Then a pregnant woman who got the H1N1 vaccine was writing that all the information from the anti-vaccine crowd had her freaked out that she was hurting her fetus. That one put me over the edge because she had done the sensible thing but these people were scaring her with their junk science links and misinformation.

Get the vaccine or don't get the vaccine, I don't care, that's just more for me and my family. But please just stop with the hysteria over the vaccine and get your information from reputable sources.

I use natural medicine to some extent--I just read carefully before I do. I'm not anti-herbal medicine, acupuncture, or other natural therapies. I do believe that herbs are powerful enough to cause harm if you don't do your research and aren't careful about what you combine them with.

But I have seen natural medicine go horribly wrong. Here's just one example: a couple was staying with me and they'd been to Guatemala recently. The guy turned yellow and wasn't feeling well and went to a natural doc, a Chinese herbal medicine doc and acupuncturist. He was told that his liver had too many toxins and sent home with some herbs. He was cooking for our family in return for staying rent free. He gave my daughter and myself Hepatitis Type A, the kind you get from someone not washing their hands well after a bowel movement. We managed to get my son a gamma globulin shot and he didn't get it. We were as sick as dogs, and we fortunately just had a mild case. Hep A can kill in some cases. We could have avoided infection if he had been diagnosed correctly.

On the other hand, I had an acupuncturist cure something that a Western doc said it would take surgery to resolve. (Hardened matter in my tear duct after an infection, forming a huge lump--the herbs dissolved it.)

So I can see both sides of the natural/Western medicine debate, really I can. But science has done so much more for us than natural medicine had done in centuries. Our increased life spans is just one indicator of it's efficacy. Scientific method has given us every major advancement. My son would be dead without Western medicine.

In the area where I live, there are so many people not vaccinating their children that the old diseases have been making a comeback. When I was in college, not realizing that my immunity had worn off, I got whooping cough. I got to find out why it used to be so feared, in spite of the anti-vaccination folks saying it is a mild illness. That wasn't my experience or my daughter's. I didn't know there was an outbreak but she got it at school and brought it home.

With whooping cough the mucus is so thick it covers your throat until you can barely draw in breath to cough. There is just a tiny opening and it takes every ounce of strength to keep breathing in to get enough air to cough and try to clear your airway. You do this over and over again before you can breath easily, only to repeat the process later. All the usual things, expectorant, fluids, etc., don't seem to help.

I could imagine how the small children used to die just because they didn't have my adult strength to do this over and over and over again.

There's a reason we developed these vaccines. These diseases killed our children. Go to any cemetery and look at the many grave stones for young children of the past. (I walk through cemeteries just because I like them and I've seen.) People almost expected to lose a child pre-vaccine, pre-antibiotic, it happened so frequently. When we first got the vaccines, parents thought differently about the rare instances of bad reactions to them when compared to how many deaths they had seen before. Now, we've forgotten, and the rare reactions loom larger than the diseases we've never seen. So they're coming back. Maybe they need to in order to teach a whole new generation why they were feared.

I am reading a lot of stuff these days about people too afraid to take the H1N1 vaccine, people afraid to give their kids the chicken pox vaccine, the pertussis vaccine, and others.

What happened to science? Does no one read legitimate scientific research any more? The autism link has been thoroughly debunked. The vaccines have been changed so that thimerosol (the ingredient feared and thought to cause autism) is not used and still the hysteria continues. WTF?

We are having outbreaks of the diseases once nearly eradicated by widespread vaccination. The anti-vax crowd just says "Oh those diseases aren't as bad as we were told. So and so had whooping cough and was just fine! Measles, shmeasles." Yeah, let's bring back polio too. Kids really enjoyed the crutches and wheelchairs. Hey, they can pop wheelies!

I have a problem with chicken pox parties over vaccination, too. Do you people quarantine your kids after these parties? Because the immuno-suppressed kids might die if they get exposed. What about the pregnant lady on the bus? She shouldn't be exposed during the incubation phase either! You are all counting on a mild case of chicken pox--that's not the kind I had! Some people die from chicken pox but you'd rather deliberately expose your child than get a few shots of the vaccine? I had blisters in every conceivable place and some that you hadn't thought of. I was acutely miserable. I was lucky it wasn't worse. If I found out my parents deliberately gave it to me rather than give me a vaccine, I don't know if I would speak to them again.

While everyone is getting their exemption "for religious reasons" other kids can't go to school with your kids unless they're willing to risk their lives. A Pox on You chronicles the difficulties of one family with an immunosuppressed child who can't send him to a daycare because someone has an exemption. The author wonders what she will do when he goes to school:

For now, we will hire an at-home sitter for him. It's more expensive and not what we had wanted, but it's the best, safest option. When he is ready to go off to school, we will have to face this issue again: Public schools are forced to enroll unvaccinated children who have religious or philosophical exemptions—again, whatever that means. Because we want him to have as "normal" a life as possible, we'll likely send him off in the bright yellow school bus and cross our fingers that the kid sitting next to him didn't just attend a "chicken pox party" over the weekend. Because what's "just a case of chicken pox" for that kid could be a matter of life or death for mine.

Vaccination isn't just a personal decision. It's a public health matter that can affect others. Having a pox party can have devastating consequences unless all involved quarantine their children during the incubation phase. But since their children may attend multiple parties before they catch chicken pox, I am pessimistic that they will really keep their children home each time. If their own child has a mild case of chicken pox but kills another child through exposure, do they still feel good about their choice?

Junk science is rampant and ignorant people who don't read other sources fall for it every time. Anecdotal tales sound convincing but are no match scientifically for actual scientific studies, preferably more than one to duplicate results. Junk science is so compelling that a whole town fell for one spoof and wanted to ban foam containers with dihydrogenmonoxide or DHMO just to be safe. It's another way to describe H20, or water. One guy was so convinced by the spoof website that my husband couldn't convince him it was a scam even by showing him the debunking pages. "The hoax is designed to illustrate how the lack of scientific knowledge and an exaggerated analysis can lead to misplaced fears."

If you'd like to see the hoax, here is the page: http://www.dhmo.org/

More information:

http://www.vaccineinformation.org/

http://www.immunizationinfo.org/immunization_science.cfm

http://www.newsweek.com/id/218513

http://www.hhs.gov/nvpo/vacsafe.htm#The%20safety%20record%20on%20vaccines

With thanks to stephanieb

ETA:

http://www.slate.com/id/2232187?obref=obinsite (Far Left and Far Right together on anti-vaccine hysteria)

http://www.flu.gov/myths/index.html (Flu myths and realities)