Like many folks, I was immediately sucked into the catchy tune of “All About That Bass” the first time I heard it, but the longer I listened to the song, the more disturbed I was by the lyrics.  The best way I could come up with to articulate this blog post is in the form of a letter.

Dear Ms. Trainor,

I regret to inform you that your mama has lied to you.  She's right that most men do prefer more curves than an anorexic skin-and-bones supermodel can offer.  However, very few of them are Sir Mix-A-Lot.  They’re just not into the bass.  Unfortunately, the days of Rubens are long gone.

On one popular dating site, 90+% of men want a skinny woman.  By their own admission, the vast majority of those men won’t date an obese woman; a large percentage won't consider dating a slightly overweight woman even if she were their perfect woman in every other way.  It doesn’t matter if she is smart or funny or compassionate.  She’s got to be a treble.

Many people say that this is just a “preference” for slim partners that they can’t help.  It’s wasn’t so long ago that many people “preferred” not to associate with those in a minority group, and our society thought that was ok.  Let’s just call a spade a spade, shall we?  This "preference" is actually prejudice in most cases.  Yes, many of us find ourselves drawn to people who have certain characteristics, but to refuse to look outside of that type is no more than narrow-minded bigotry against those who are obese.

You may not be a size 2, but you are certainly not much more than a size 12.  As a matter of the fact, there are no truly plus-sized women in your video.  There is one obese male dancer wearing an ill-fitting shirt whose purpose is mystifying and objectifying, but then again, given how illogical most music videos are, I shouldn’t overanalyze these issues. 

I appreciate that you are spreading the message that “every inch of you is perfect from the bottom to the top.”  It’s definitely true that many women recognize “the magazine workin' that Photoshop/ We know that sh*t ain't real,” but other young and impressionable minds don’t yet know that those images of false perfection that they are confronted with all day, every day are fiction.

Perhaps instead of consoling women and telling them that their bass is ok you could focus on educating both men and women that all humans are far more than their physical appearance.  Their bodies aren’t what will hold a relationship together.  Instead, a person’s spirit, intellect, and personality are far more important.  I’d recommend you stop looking for a man who is concerned with your derrière and instead start looking for a man who respects your entire being.  You’re young, beautiful, and healthy.  If a man can’t look past a few pounds, he’s not worth your time and effort.

Sincerely,
Been There, Done That (and got the double bass t-shirt to prove it)

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

When I am killing off Lyme or when I have intestinal parasites dying, I end up having horrific nightmares.  I believe this is due to the toxins being released by these various invaders as they die.  The critters don’t go willingly, and they make me as miserable as they can in the process.  Compare it to a bee sting which kills the bee but also ends up hurting the person bitten immensely.  Even though I use natural binders to help my body with processing those toxins, the toxins still impact my systems.  It’s gotten to the point lately that I dread going to bed because I don’t want another night full of bad dreams. 

This past summer, my older two kids and I watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  We’re now watching Angel.  For those not familiar, these two series deal intensely with vampires, demons, and other fictional creatures of the night.  I enjoy the series immensely, but they are clearly working their way into my subconscious.

So the other day, my afternoon nap was filled with a nightmare about high school aged demon type people.  I was one of them.  It dredged up all sorts of painful incidents from my past plus it clearly was influenced by my television viewing choices.  When I woke up, I wrote down the following sentence:

"The monster within is what ends up shining through no matter how hard we try to keep it from manifesting externally."

Wow.  It’s a painfully true statement on some levels.  It’s also a little too much profundity for me for an afternoon nap.  Could I just get some decent sleep instead, please?

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

For most humans, our instinct is to be independent.  For those who are parents, we see this starting in our children starting at a very young age.  By the time most kids are two, they are very determined to do almost everything by themselves, a frustration for parents who don’t want to be slowed down by toddlers whose skills don’t match their desires for independence.

Our society promotes that independence as well.  The Protestant work ethic which is engrained in our nation’s consciousness dictates that everyone should work long and hard to achieve financial, career and social success.  Strength is rewarded; the weak fall to the bottom of the heap.  Darwinism confirms it.

Beyond those messages, the broader ideas of feminism have shaped many of us as we came of age.  Feminism taught us that women don’t need men to be whole people.  Women don’t need to be dependent on men. Women can do anything they set their minds to.

Except when they can’t.

All of us need help at times.  When our arms are full, we generally don’t cringe at the idea of someone holding a door for us:  We generally appreciate it.  But what happens when we need someone to hold that door open for us all the time because our arms are too weak to open heavy doors? What happened to the idea of the independent, able-bodied woman who didn’t need a man (or any other person) to open doors for her?

For many people, the aging process can be scary, and elderly people are downright terrifying.  Aside from fears of death, the general fear of the elderly is in part because it is so hard for us to see the decline of those we love.  We remember those people as able-bodied providers who took care of us when we were young.  They could do anything, or so we thought.  And now that they are older, it’s unbelievably hard to watch that role change.  For those who are losing their ability to care for themselves, unless they’ve lost their cognitive abilities along the way, it’s a very defeating situation to require so much help.

Most of us accept that the elderly need help despite our discomfort with it.  Yet very few of us really imagine that in our twenties we might be disabled and require assistance at a similar level.  Asking for help can become a very big challenge.  One is still youthful but no longer independent.  Suddenly help is necessary for almost everything in life. 

For me, during the worst years of my disability, I was unable to go grocery shopping or shopping at all for that matter.  I didn’t enter a store for six years.  When I finally was able to go back into Whole Foods for a brief trip, it was such an amazing wonderland.  I still have weeks when I don’t have the energy to handle a trip through Whole Foods and have to get someone else to do it for me.  Even now, after I’ve been in stores again for four years, I still value each trip and see it as such a privilege that I am able to buy groceries for me and my children without physical assistance.

The need for help often extends further for those dealing with chronic or acute illness.  Most of us have struggled with a jewelry clasp at some point, but when one’s hands become arthritic, help is necessary any time one wants to wear jewelry.  And it goes further.  Zipping zippers.  Tying shoes.  All these seemingly little tasks suddenly require asking for help.  When it extends to even more personal things such as getting in and out of the bathtub, asking for help can be truly demoralizing to the person now faced with disability.  The disabled individual must surrender their dignity and their independence in order to survive.  That’s very difficult to do on an emotional level.

It becomes even harder to ask for help when requests are met with bitterness or when it seems like offers aren’t genuine.  Some well-meaning people offer help only to then turn requests for help into means of applying guilt trips.  Caring for the disabled can be a taxing job, one that most people don’t knowingly sign up for.   It’s not hard to understand how one can run out of patience with helping someone who used to be self-sufficient, but it’s likewise very easy to know why being that person who has to ask for help is just as much of a life challenge.

The best ways to help those who are disabled are with genuine, specific offers.  If you’d like to help a friend by listening, then tell them that you’re available whenever they want to call, text, e-mail or Skype.  If you want to help by going for groceries, let them know that you go to the grocery store almost every Saturday and are happy to pick up what they need.  Specific offers generally are more likely to be accepted than general offers of “if you need something, let me know.”  Likewise, if someone asks you for help in a way you just can’t give right now for whatever reason, it’s ok to say no.  You have to take care of yourself and your family first before reaching out to others.  If you can help them find someone else to assist them, that’s often helpful, though.

Likewise, don’t presume disabled people always need help.  Ask before you push someone’s wheelchair without their consent.  Ask before you start cleaning someone’s house while visiting.  The person may be having a rough day but may feel confident they can take care of the tasks before them tomorrow.  Having other people presume they always need help can be demoralizing to those who are disabled.

I’ve also found that higher level help—from spirit guides, angels, and whatever higher sources of power you might believe in—is there, though not always in obvious form.  I’ve learned that we often can’t access that help without asking.  My spirit guides are always willing to assist me with things that will help in my protection or growth.  However, because free will comes into play, they often won’t step in until I explicitly tell them, “I really need your help with this issue.”  I have to make the choice to let them help me.

I have always found it so much easier to give than receive.  My disability has forced me to surrender to accepting help from others.  I still stubbornly try to do things on my own on occasion when I’d be better off asking for help, but I have gotten much better about accepting help when I desperately need it.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

(As always, I am not a medical doctor.  This information is based on my personal experiences and should not be substituted for medical diagnosis or treatment.  Please speak to your health care providers about your personal situation.)

Late disseminated Lyme disease (also known as chronic Lyme) is a highly contentious diagnosis at this point: The CDC still does not admit that it exists.  As someone who has it, I assure you it does.  It’s maddening to suffer greatly from a disease that authorities refuse to admit is even an issue.  Late disseminated Lyme disease is Lyme disease that was not caught early on and treated; as a result, the bacteria borrelia burgdorferi has spread extensively through the body creating an infection highly resistant to treatment.

My legal diagnoses are for fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), both of which I legitimately have.  However, for me, both the fibro and CFS are symptoms of the Lyme disease.  Treatment for me didn’t make significant progress until we began treating the true issue (a deeply engrained systemic bacterial infection) rather than just the symptoms (pain and fatigue).  A comparable analogy would be taking painkillers and a cough suppressant for tuberculosis.  They might treat the pain and coughing, but it won’t help you with fighting the infection causing the coughing.

In my experience, anyone I know who has been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome or multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) and has been tested for Lyme disease using the appropriate tests (see below) under the appropriate conditions has had results come back positive.  If you have any of these diagnoses, please consider speaking with a health care practitioner recommended by ILADS about Lyme disease testing.

Most people with these diagnoses mentioned above will not remember a tick bite which will keep them from being tested for Lyme.  However, only an estimated 30-40% of patients who have been diagnosed with Lyme disease remember a tick bite.*  Additionally, very few patients with Lyme had the classic bullseye Lyme rash.  In my case, my Lyme disease diagnosis was made fifteen years after a tick bite with a non-bullseye rash that had originally been misdiagnosed.  I had been suffering from fibro, CFS, and MCS for six years at that point.  Lyme is found extensively in ticks in Texas and across the nation.

So why are patients not diagnosed immediately with Lyme disease when symptoms appear and then later end up with other red herring health problems?  There are the issues of Western medicine missing the diagnosis initially.  But beyond that, in my personal theory, when bit by a tick transmitting the Lyme bacteria, most people have strong enough immune systems that their bodies can handle the insult with few side effects.  Their immune systems keep fighting the bacteria at a low and constant level with only a few side effects.  In my case, I initially had flu-like symptoms, but they resolved only leaving me with worsened allergies and frequent sinus infections for nine years.

So what causes the immune system to lose control over the Lyme and for it to become full-blown late disseminated Lyme disease? In most of the cases I’ve heard about, there is either a trauma or a hormonal event that disrupts the immune system’s control over the Lyme resulting in massive health issues.  In cases of trauma, it may be physical, emotional or sexual trauma including but not limited to an accident, a rape, abuse, surgery, toxic mold exposure, or a toxic insect bite. Moreover, the people whose immune systems are most likely to lose control after these traumas are usually (but not always) highly sensitive people as defined by Elaine Aron; others suffer from PTSD at some level.  In the case of a hormonal stressor causing the Lyme to flare, contributors include puberty, hormonal birth control, pregnancy, childbirth, lactation, and menopause.

Once the Lyme has settled into the body, a host of problems may occur.  If you have a great number of these problems and have not been diagnosed with fibromylagia, CFS, or MCS, you may also want to talk to a Lyme literate doctor (LLMD) about Lyme testing.  Symptoms include but are not limited to: adrenal fatigue, allergies, anemia (often quite severe), arthritis, asthma, any autoimmune disease, bipolar and other mental disorders diagnosed at an abnormally late age,  “brain fog,” chronic or recurring candida (yeast, jock itch) issues, depression, eczema, EMF sensitivity, food sensitivities (especially gluten intolerance), gallbladder problems, Gulf War Syndrome, hormonal problems, hypothyroidism, infertility, insulin resistance or diabetes, irritable bowel syndrome, low blood pressure, low body temperatures, low vitamin B12 levels, low vitamin D levels, menstrual problems (often serious enough to lead to hysterectomy), migraines, parasitic infections, sleep issues, swollen lymph nodes, and unexplained weight gain/loss.  Please note that not all Lyme patients have all of these symptoms:  I personally have not dealt with eight of these.  Likewise, if you have only had a few of the issues but have never experienced any of the other symptoms, it’s not likely you have Lyme.

Additionally, if you are a mother and you have had biological children since the time of your tick bite and the onset of your health issues, your children also probably have issues related to the Lyme.  The children of mothers with Lyme are often on the Autism spectrum, have food sensitivities, were highly colicky babies with reflux, and have allergies, asthma or eczema.  These children are also likely highly sensitive people.  Again, not all of those symptoms are required, and if you gave birth to your children before your tick bite, your children may not show any of these symptoms at all.

If you’ve read through this post and have seen yourself in what I’ve written, consider finding a physician through ILADS who will test for Lyme disease.  If you go to your general practitioner, s/he will run a Lyme test that has a 50% false negative rate rendering it statistically useless yet still commonly administered as insurance will pay for it.  Most insurances unfortunately will not pay for the expensive test from IgeneX which has been the best test available for quite a while.  There is also a newer yet still very expensvie DNA-based test available from Advanced Laboratory Services; this test was developed in conjunction with Dr. Burrascano who is one of the leading LLMDs.  If you decide to pursue Lyme testing, be sure to ask your doctor about whether an antibiotic challenge may help increase the accuracy of the test you choose to run.

*All statistics regarding Lyme disease vary widely due to a lack of serious study of the disease, a lack of sophisticated record keeping, and an underreporting and underdiagnosing of the disease itself.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

Over the past few years, I’ve spent quite a lot of time finding myself.  I love the song “Wake Me Up” by Avicii for its lines, “All this time I was finding myself/ And I didn't know I was lost.”  When I started on this journey, I was seeking inner peace and healing from trials I have endured in my life.  I really had no clue how lost I was.  I never expected that I would end up changing my life course completely.  However, I am so grateful for the results this journey has brought me.

Avicii also sings, “So wake me up when it's all over/ When I'm wiser and I'm older.”  When the road is rough, sometimes I wish that was true.  I really did sleep through many years of my life when I was so sick.  I was in bed 22+ hours a day, and sometimes I was sleeping 16-18 hours of those.  It was typical for me to sleep 14+ hours a day.  My body wasn’t strong enough to function any more than that. 

However, it’s those struggles of becoming wiser as we become older that make us appreciate what we have and which teach us lessons.  If I woke up tomorrow and had the life back that I had twelve years ago, I doubt I could be happy in it.  I have learned too much and changed radically.  If I had missed those years of struggle, I’m also not sure I would be able to value what I have now.  Regardless, hypotheticals like this are really pointless to argue:  We can only face the reality we have.  I’m grateful for the changes I’ve made in my life, and despite the excruciating pain along the way, I’m grateful for the wiser person I am now.

I also really appreciate the lines, “I tried carrying the weight of the world/ But I only have two hands.”  I think far too many of us have tried carrying the weight of the world.  It doesn’t work well.  Chronic illness taught me to let go of so many things.  I’ve narrowed my focus and have learned to change the world in small ways every day.  I am making a difference, just in a way than I ever imagined before.

When I watched the video for this song for the first time a few days ago, I was struck by the scenario of the females trying to fit in a place they didn’t belong.  That truly was me for so many years, trying to pretend I wasn’t an intuitive and pretending that I was happy in a marriage where I wasn’t.  It’s a huge risk to step outside of what you know to search for the place you belong, but it’s worth it in the long run.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

(As always, this blog post is based on my experiences in life.  I am not a midwife or medical doctor, so please consult with your caregivers when making decisions regarding your pregnancy and birthing decisions.)

I am a strong believer in the ability of women’s bodies to naturally birth babies in 90+% of situations without medical assistance and intervention.  There are times when Western medicine is truly needed in childbirth, but I feel the current profit driven and legally dominated medical practices greatly skew the way childbirth occurs in the US.  The c-section rate should be between 5-10%, not the 30-50% that is happening in our nation. 

However, despite my strong beliefs in childbirth as a fundamentally natural and normal process, I seem to have been a poster child for unusual births.  This post is about my second and third births of my twins.  Because I was an educated and determined woman plus I had luck on my side, they were unmedicated vaginal breech births. That’s a situation that rarely happens in the US any more.

My twins were bothtransverse (lying across my abdomen) at 36.5 weeks though they were still very active and they were rotating their heads from the left to the right side of my abdomen as confirmed by ultrasound.  Previous, Twin A, the twin who is lowest in the womb and will be born first, had been breech and fully engaged in my pelvis.  She dropped at 28 weeks, popping back out twice but never rotating to a vertex position.  We began doing moxibustion just before the twins were born in an attempt to rotate her into a vertex position.  I had also been doing many of the recommended home techniques for rotating babies.  The moxibustion worked:  Twin A dropped violently into my pelvis from the transverse position, breaking her water in the process.  Unfortunately, she dropped in the breech position yet again, not the vertex we had hoped for.  The short version of my labor story is that two hours after twin A’s water broke, she was born, and fifteen minutes later, her brother joined her on the earth plane, both without problems.

The longer version of my pregnancy labor involves a story of a lot of frustration.  My original practitioner quit handling deliveries when I was 20 weeks pregnant (only two weeks after I found out I was carrying twins), so I had to find another OB who would handle twins.  Unfortunately in Austin at that time (2000), there were less than a handful of doctors who would consider letting a woman labor without an epidural during a twin birth, and I refused to have an epidural due to my medication sensitivities and my phobia of having people stick needles in my spine.  None of the homebirth midwives in town could legally deliver twins at that point with the exception of one, and because of our relationship, she did not feel she would make a good, objective practitioner for us though she was present as a doula at my twins’ births.  Those restrictions narrowed my options dramatically. 

Once I finally found an OB who was a relatively good match for me, I started having to deal with the fact twin A was breech and engaged.  My obstetrician had experience in delivering breech twins vaginally when Twin A was breech though most OBs do not.  He could not legally tell me that he would deliver the twins if they were breech due to the medical/legal situation in the US; he actually made us schedule a c-section date at around 38.5 weeks gestation (which I had no intention of showing up for, but it was on the records).  What he did say was that if I showed up with a baby on my perineum, there would be nothing left for him to do but catch it.  So that was our original breech birthing plan:  I would labor outside of the hospital as long as possible monitoring the babies with fetal dopplers and then show up at the last minute.

During the end of the pregnancy I did a LOT of online research; most of the studies I found were based out of foreign countries.  What I discovered was that the US was one of the only nations where breech births were treated as an anathema and that breech births can be safely done if mother, baby, and doctor are all good candidates for the process.  I especially appreciated the works of Henci Goer which helped me to see that my situation made me an ideal candidate for breech births.  I had a proven pelvis with a baby who was likely larger than the twins I was expecting (and they were 1-1.5 lbs smaller than her).  Twin A was in a frank or complete breech position during labor; her head was tucked properly.  The twins were of a good gestational age and weight.  And most importantly, I had a practitioner who was experienced in vaginal breech births, and based on my questioning of him, he truly knew what to do and was not afraid to do it.

The way the birth actually played out was not as we had originally planned.  My labor started unexpectedly when we weren’t sure what position the twins were in.  We never planned on my water breaking before labor actively started.  And most frustratingly, my OB was out of town.  However, the OB on call trained outside of the United States in a rural community and also had a great deal of experience with vaginal breech births.  So luck was on my side in that regard.

I arrived at the hospital labor and delivery ward an hour after my water broke, but I wasn’t feeling contractions yet.  When the nurse checked me, I was at 7 centimeters and she could tell it was a butt presenting.  All hell then broke loose at the hospital as everyone but me went into a panic about a breech twin presenting with a mother who refused an epidural and wanted to have vaginal births.  In between contractions while I was in transition (by which time I was feeling the contractions quite strongly), I argued medical studies with the OB on call.  He ascertained that I did know what I was consenting to, though he still made my then-husband sign AMA (against medical advice) paperwork.  The labwork that they needed to put the epidural in place still had not shown up when it was time for me to start pushing, and they never found my paperwork that my OB’s office had sent over: Again, luck was on my side. 

I only pushed for two minutes with Twin A:  She was my smallest baby and by far my easiest birth.  Twin B was a breech extraction, a totally different situation that I think could have been avoided entirely had I been working with midwives rather than a Western doctor.  However, breech extractions are not uncommon for Twin B births though more and more doctors are refusing to perform them as well.  Since I was unmedicated, I was able to feel the entire process of the OB shoving his hand up my vagina, past my cervix, and into my uterus where he played chase with my son who was really not keen on the whole idea of being forced to be born when he had just gotten the whole uterus to himself for the first time in almost nine months.  That was nowhere near as painful as it might seem, but it’s still not a procedure I recommend doing for fun.

Despite the fact that both my twins were born healthy and vaginally, it was not a positive birthing experience for me.  I spent the entirety of labor arguing and fighting with the staff about the births.  I repeatedly had to refuse to let the hospital do unnecessary procedures and they still did several without my consent.  The birth was sterile in an OR filled with about 20 people whom I did not know and did not want there.  It essentially became a freak show for anyone and everyone to come watch.  I was forced to labor flat on my back with my legs in traditional stirrups though I asked for other positions.  I was ignored repeatedly during the birth.  I was treated as no more than a birthing machine, not a human.

After the birth, both my OB and the OB on call got chewed out by hospital administration for my refusal to consent to a c-section in a situation that clearly turned out for the best for me and my babies.  The legal risk was just too high for the administration to handle even though I would have sued had they done a c-section without my consent as that is medical assault.  The head nurse at the hospital even reprimanded my OB then next time she saw him, placing blame on him for me being an educated woman who wanted the best thing for me and my children.  Fortunately my OB knew she was off-base and ignored her.

While I’m grateful I was able to have these births, they aren’t what I would want for most women.  It is legal now in Texas for certified professional midwives to deliver breech babies and twins at home, and that increases the options for women if they can find  midwives who are trained in breech births and are willing to assist them.  While there are several more naturally oriented obstetricians in Austin than there were in 2000, the options for women wanting to have vaginal breech babies, especially vaginal twins where twin A is breech, are still VERY limited.  This is a situation that makes me very sad.  The greater Austin area has almost two million people at this point, and women should not have to go to other cities and other states in order to have safe, natural births.

(The photo above is of Jodi Egerton of Write Good Consulting.  The henna artwork was done during a Blessing Way ceremony when she was about 35 weeks pregnant.  This photograph was taken when she was 36 weeks and 2 days pregnant.  Her beautiful baby boy was born four weeks and two days later in a vertex homebirth.)

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance

One of the phrases that I’ve had said to me over and over throughout the years is “you’re so strong.”  People mean this as a compliment. They admire my fortitude when faced with devastating or seemingly impossible circumstances.  However, this is one of those phrases that no matter how well meant, it’s hurtful.

Those who are “so strong” are facing trials that seem insurmountable.  They keep putting one foot in front of the other.  When someone says, “I could never do what you’re doing,” the only polite response one can have is, “I hope you never have to.”  Telling someone that you could never handle what they’re handling is not helpful.  That struggling person never thought they could handle it either until their world was turned upside down.  Regardless of what one believes about how much we choose our destiny in this world, painful struggles are just that:  Painful.  No matter how much positive spin one puts on them, one still is dealing with arduous issues that they wouldn’t wish on their worst enemy.

Some people are better than others at masking their pain and suffering.  Maybe it’s an innate talent.  Maybe it does have to do with inner strength.  Maybe they’ve survived a lifetime of abuse and have learned in a dysfunctional way how to put on a smile for everyone they meet so that no one knows the “dirty” secrets they are protecting.  In many cases, however, those “strong” people you are admiring are crumbling on the inside.  They’re using every bit of strength to keep themselves going each day to fight one more day of a horrible disease or one more day without a job or one more day without a loved one physically present in their lives anymore. 

The next time you want to tell someone “you’re so strong,” stop and think what you really want to say to them.  If what you’re really thinking is, “I’m so glad I don’t have to face the hell you are in,” then withhold the thoughts you’re having.  If what you want to say is, “You’re an amazing person, and you bring so much good into my life,” then pay them the true compliment.  Meanwhile, recognize that what you are seeing on the surface may not be the true reality of what is going on inside any person in a difficult situation.

© 2014 Green Heart Guidance.com