LadybugFlights

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ISSN: 1530-5775
July 2008, Vol.10 #7

INDEX

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Featured Fiction

 

Hitting the Bricks
from Mary C. Wickner

I don't need more time just to be. I don't need to be there, to do this, or see that. I'm a watcher, and the watcher never needs a watch. I let the sun be my guide. It's something I can count on each day. But someone always seems to want to catch the sun, capture it, but not me. To me it's free.

I have traveled many miles of stone—cobbled and otherwise. I have met a lot of people out here as I hit and kick the bricks day after day. I have met many people as I trudge along sometimes alone, sometimes not so. Occasionally, I chat with individuals who actually have homes to go home to. It is at these times that I cannot help asking myself, "Would they take me in?"

"Would they take a chance and let me in?" Seriously! Would they?

I refuse to make a sign that says, "Will do.…for food". This might be interpreted in the wrong way since I am a woman—as a cruel joke, sarcastically, or just plain hatefully.

My sisters and I can be seen at freeway exits coming into the downtown area, and we figure prominently—in clusters or not—on the corner of any given street on any given day. For the first time in my life, I have wished and prayed sometimes that I was no longer a woman—not out here—not where some creep thinks that everything and everyone is out here for him to feast on. Not where a woman through unforeseen circumstances is thrown like a lamb to co-mingle with the lions—cowardly as they may be.

These predators can also morph into something that comes slithering around in the dirt and on the ground. They never rest, and we need protection from them for they capitalize very simply on their being stronger—stronger than a woman, that is.

We are better off if we wear disguises to erase all of the signs of our being feminine. Disguises we get at the neighborhood thrift store for a small donation or free if we find ourselves "lean in the pockets". The clerks at the store look out for us. They tell us about good deals at the Farmer's Market on fruits and vegetables, and once in awhile have even handed out a few bucks (not that we walk in expecting it-oh no), but they're great people anyway you look at it.

With some new old stuff on, we women brave all the elements on the streets no matter what direction they may be coming from. However, a baseball cap and some over-sized clothing a lot of times aren't enough for the faking so rape happens; and happens often, and with sadness. I must say that I was the target once again last week.

None of us ever talk about it. The philosophy here is " Sayin' it makes it so." If there is no discussion, it might make the awful moment fade away sooner. No one really believes that though, and none of us have tested the theory.

Then as sure as the sun goes down in the evening, we bear up for another night, not ever knowing which among us will be the next victim. Speaking from experience, I can say that I am bruised and beaten. I feel like I don't have what it takes to make it on these too mean streets, and often times I wish that I would not have survived the attack. However, I can't take time off to ease my physical, and emotional wounds, because the streets don't let me. I make it the best I can, trying not to look too vulnerable, not that with all the rest of the things I have to deal with. No woman out here can afford to be, or even look vulnerable.

Maybe if we become physically stronger, these cowards will take no action against us or maybe turn on each other or, better yet, turn on themselves.

Disease runs rampant, enveloping its prey, exhausting it, until it drops to the ground in complete surrender. I'm talking about the big ones—HIV, Hepatitis C and Meningitis. Recently, some wonderful souls opened a clinic that is available to those with little or no means. We pay what we can because of our circumstances. Children, (Yes there are children who are homeless right along with their moms and dads) who come to the clinic are always seen free. Oh what a blessing these kind hearts are!

From time to time, one of us needs to go to the hospital. Some hospitals turn us away; some don't. First chill has all of us seeking shelter, and there are those of us that have been known to share a bottle of sneaky pete now and then—each of us contributing what he or she can. We have been asked to leave the hospital on more than one occasion.

Once a homeless man who hadn't been out here long enough for any of us to get to know, was found in the men's room, and helped to the Emergency Room. His diagnosis was frostbite. Both his feet, all the way up his calves to his knees were bandaged. He left the hospital with some paperwork and pills to once again travel the streets he knew so little.

He was seen unwinding the bandages as he walked. Soon the bandages were no more. No one knew for sure if he had shoes to wear, and no one ever saw him again after that.

Phones are a desired commodity out here (Even if we are homeless, we do keep in contact with friends and family who have homes or apartments). Some of us even have mobile phones, now that they are so cheap to buy, and use the top-up plan. (Don't ask me—I don't know what that means—I am still a part of the old guard, I use a pay phone). It's great if we can actually find a phone that is not in use.

It seems that there are always harsh words exchanged by those who are on the phone as well as by those who are waiting to use the phone of the mix and match category. Once in awhile, it comes to blows when one or another of us are kept waiting too long. For, after all, there is no one there to determine how long or short a call should be. Sometimes there are long lines, as we make sure our meager means are maintained monthly. I try to have some change in my pocket just in case (most of the time I can't scrape it up).

The rundown motel around the corner has a continental breakfast for its paying guests. But once in awhile the help, thank goodness, are very good about forgetting who registered that morning or the night before. That the roll or rolls and coffee temporarily stops the cramping in our empty stomachs from the day before or longer. Seeking a few hots and a cot are definitely on my "To do" list for today. (Who am I kidding? They are always on my "To do" list everyday).

I manage out here with a deep trust in the good of all human beings (You may have already guessed that my last utterance was a lie—an untruth—I do not trust anyone! )

Trust… Is trust a word that is used anymore? Is the concept of trust even understood anymore? I think they deleted the word from the dictionary. I'll check that out on my next visit to the library.

If you are in my situation, having a library card is a must. It's rough to be constantly exposed to all of nature's angry elements. A bunch of us gather often at the library even though the employees chase us out all the time. We're persistent. We keep coming back. (It comes down to how much each side wants their way, and like I said: We're persistent.) That is when our library cards come in handy. We figure that no one should hassle a card-carrying member.

My hair is snarled, long, and dirty. I always dress in a rag tag this and a rag tag that. That pretty much describes the shape I'm in too. There are choices for those who want to clean up. A lot of us go to the fountain in a downtown park, or stroll into a public bathroom. Others take a chance at a water display in a fairly common building.

There are those who like the thrill of the game so they face being thrown out on their ears each day—every day. If you're lucky, and can clean up quickly, the water in the common building has a great payoff. The water is warm, and oh, does that water feel grand on those cold and windy days!

Every part of this lifestyle of mine flies in the face of where I started out. I am an under-achiever, somewhat headstrong, and pretty surly before my first cup of coffee. (Now that is another lie! —I may not have a cup of coffee as a choice for many days at a time.) Everything about me is either battered or broken; nevertheless, things are what they are.

Oh, how the song, "I Will Survive" applies to me! (Are you kidding me? That isn't even close to who I am, and what I am all about). Lately, I have thought that I should start writing things down about what I am feeling. I have turned so introspective in my advancing years. I have tried, but I can't seem to put my thoughts into words. I know I have often fallen short of my own or others' expectations. Maybe this time it will be different.

I hold back, though, for I fear my words may be used against me so I feel torn, confused, and just scared. In my state of disrepair, I find it hard to function practically all the time. Just getting from here to there is a big problem. I have no energy—no nothing.

Some people don't hesitate to ask what circumstances got me here. I'm usually asked that in a bus shelter (Go figure?) where I am either getting my belongings together or just sitting and resting awhile. I'm a old lady—what else can I say? Anyway, it is such a personal question for such a public place. It gets boring being just another causality of a dot.com investment; but that didn't happen to me.

Like a lot of people, my salary just wasn't enough anymore to pay off all the plastic that I owed. One thing lead to another, as it often does, and soon I found that I could no longer make ends meet and ultimately I had no job to go to work at and no home to go home to. None of my friends could take me in because a great deal of them had their parents living with them, which caused them to have a sandwiched situation between their parents and their kids. Others just didn't have the room.

My parents have been dead for a long time now. I never married. I have no children. I'm an only child so it is just me. It turns out that I finally have a family though. It is made up of a few cohorts I met here on the streets.

There are some places out here that take in the homeless; for instance churches always have some room. I know a place that was a motel several years ago, and now it takes in the homeless. (You get your own bathroom!) Of course, there are bridges that people like to live under better than having a roof over their head. I've seen in movies where the homeless person lays over a vent in the street. That doesn't happen around here simply because we don't have any vents like that anymore. There are also the actual shelters who take in people just for overnight. They have very strict rules about how many people can be taken in. There are only so many mattresses. That amount is how many they will let stay—no more mattresses; no more people are let in.

I sort of inherited a cardboard box that I now use for shelter. It used to belong to a lady named Belle. She told me it would be mine when she passed away. She was a grand lady who all of us described as a flower peeking through the cracks of the sidewalk in this place we call home. We were friends, and out here, you cannot say that too often.

Although we "homeless" do share a common bond that cannot be described in words, Belle and I rose above that bond to a higher level and we called each other "friend." But people out here would be lying to you if they said that they don't look out for number one—Belle and me included. Every once in awhile I make my way to a Catholic church in the neighborhood, and drop a few coins in the pay box, light a vigil candle, and pray for Belle. I have to confess that sometimes I only have a few pennies to give, or sometimes I don't have any money at all; but I still light a candle.

Belle left me her shopping cart too, along with her dog named, "Sarge". Lately, I have been busy gathering lots of stuff to put in my cart. It's amazing! I can't believe all of the things I suddenly cannot live without! I have become hyper-vigilant, a stalwart protector of my possessions. Kids like to mess with me. They come up and jostle me and my cart, They try to steal stuff, and then knock my cart over so my stuff spills out all over the d*#m place. I wait until their jubilation dies down, and they are a block or so down the street before I start putting myself and my stuff back together—again, for yet another time.

"Sarge" is a great dog. He is a mutt. We get along just fine. I am a mutt too. It is hard to get food for both of us though; but I try my best, and so far, we both are doing okay.

Whoever said that two can live as cheaply as one, should come on down to my cardboard box sometime. They will revise their thinking on that theory really fast. Yeah, I'll give them a quick reality check all right. I haven't put my name on my cardboard box yet. I only had to chase one squatter away so far because everyone that has been on the street for over two weeks knows not to mess with the address that used to be Belle's and is now mine. (It's got something to do with territory, and since most of the homeless are men you can kind of see how that goes).

When my time comes, I hope to pass my shelter on to a friend just as Belle did to me. I hope that the new "owner" will be able to get her hands on some current, headline-grabbing news to use as covers 'cause the sections that I have just won't do anymore.

There always seems to be another someone out here who needs to be shown the ropes, so to speak, and yeah, it's sad but it's true; but there seems to be more homeless people than there used to be say two years ago.

Many people out here say that they have achieved true freedom. There are people out here that could easily write a book because their lives have been so rich with happenings. We usually gather in a park or down by the library, and these talented folks can weave a story that could leave a best-selling author or successful publisher clamoring for more. However, they say that something as menial as a post office box impedes their true sense of freedom. Having a roof over their head, for a lot of people out here, would be likened to a prison cell. They spend a couple of days here or there and then, they take their leave.

They say they feel stifled—that they can't breathe if they have things to leave behind. Some are literally out here with just the clothes on their back. Everything for them is always in some state of flux. Nothing is permanent; nothing is for sure. That could be said about every person alive because who indeed has control of the present and the future. However, I definitely do feel at peace, at ease because I have no more Mr. Man or Ms. Woman to appease. I still have my trapeze, but I do not work without a net—not anymore anyway. I have no expectations; I no longer have to achieve any or a certain degree.

I think we all hope to reach a higher ground like Stevie Wonder sang about a few decades ago. Meanwhile, down here you might want to ask the question: Do you want to have a home to go to where you could sit sipping apple cider in front of a roaring fire?

Sure you bet even if it is only in a virtual way. (Yeah, I know about virtual—remember I have a library card)!

Maybe I should strive to be accepted out here. Acceptance... is that something that a person strives for out here? I know a person feels better when she or he is accepted into the fold into the fold she/he wants to be in. Of course, I believe there will be more "tests" along the way. Then when my time here is through, I will rise to the occasion. I will no longer have a need for possessions or a cart to put them in. I won't need or want to check my baggage.

Some time ago, "Sarge" passed away. He went to lay down, kind of whimpered, and that was that. He probably found an immediate and permanent home on Belle's lap. I can see that happening. At least, that is the vision I have in my mind. I don't believe that there is a separate place for pets and another place for their parents—nope, everyone is all together.

My departure was smooth and easy also. One day, not that long ago, I sat down on a park bench to people-watch, and found myself suddenly very weary. I closed my eyes to rest them for just a minute and that was that. I saw that bright light everybody talks about, and it is beautiful!

I know many people here from all the stages of my life. Up here we are all spirits. We have no need for clothing, food, or anything else our human body needed or craved. Come on up and see me sometime; come on up to stay. When you do, you may not recognize me; but don't fret. Everyday we have an assembly to welcome old friends and new, and you can always find me. I stand in the second row, fourth from the right.

I have lived most of my life in Minnesota. Most of the positions I have held were administrative aid positions. I started writing in 1969 with the an abstract poem about the rat race that most people are on. I continue writing poems. I have also written papers on such topics as eating disorders which LadybugFlights published a few years ago. In 1990 I injured my neck which permanently altered the way I do things. Since then I have continued to write, and have edited several college papers for undergraduates. My son and daughter-in-law live close so I have the privilege of watching my two grandchildren, Kieran and Bridget, grown up.

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Featured Article

Back At Work

from Georgia Jones

 

In 1970 I began a series of interviews and articles on attitudes of women toward the changes in work patterns of the times. What I found was not a consensus, nor was it a simple answer to what women want, or should expect, in the workplace. With all that women are said to have gained since then, is it only on paper or have our lives been enriched? Work is synonymous with food, clothing, and with shelter. It is important for us to see behind the public statements to women's lives.

Even the most meager statistical gains have been applauded by media and women's groups as progress. What I was, and am still, looking for is an assessment of the qualitative value of these numbers. As I plow through stacks of charts and analyses trying to compare these two points in time, I am taken by the fact that the information means something different to each analyzer. Bold headlines, documenting gains in income or a narrowing of the still large percentage-gap between the incomes of women and men, melt away in the face of other statistics. Those other statistics show those gains to mean only that women are working more and longer hours, raising their annual incomes out of proportion to hourly gains.

Our modern world is built on a cult of the worker and a burgeoning industry to serve that classification of human: professional shoppers, cleaners, paid care givers, and on and on. Work is the focal point of our society. All else can be hired out.

It is here that the biggest difference between the women of 1970 and those of today is obvious. In 1970 women still considered adequate daycare to be the right of every working woman.

Today the inadequacy of daycare, and government abandonment of daycare as a goal, are accepted realities of a working woman's life. Daycare is another privatized service—neither business nor government has taken responsibility for the children of women who are forced into the workplace by both their need for income and industry's need for workers— and the failure of our society to repond to this concern is driving women out of the workforce.

Work is the focal point of our society. As Joseph Piper put it: "A break in ones work, whether for an hour, a day, or a week, is still part of the world of work. It is a link in the chain of utilitarian functions. The pause is made for the sake of work, and a man is not only refreshed from work but for work."

It is the full employment of women, the full utilization of resources, that was to many the final step toward an industrial goal of Utopia, the final achievement of a civilized society. Buckminster Fuller, futurist to the futurists, said, almost in warning, in 1968: "Twenty-first century man will be preoccupied almost entirely by scientific and poetical research. Women will convert men's scientific findings into industrial production." He saw women in their traditional roles, the ultimate worker responding to man's needs as he pursues a higher aesthetic of contemplation and intellectualism. It was man, not woman, he misread, because his man of the future is more likely to be pursuing goals of power than of intellect, and joys of indulgence than of aestheticism.

Less than two years later, Dr. Jean Mayer, in his syndicated column, was urging women into politics. Because of their years of experience in running the private sectors of life, he foresaw women's role as expanded caretaker as practical, and something of a relief.

Looking at the male to female annual earnings graphs as if they were a Rorschach test for women's progress reveals a steady growth in income for both groups, and an odd kind of parallel. Though the graphs reveal a modest decline in the actual wage gap in favor of female workers, there is constancy in the absence of wage parity, and increases of the past have not continued for women. We are presently in a state of stagnation as far as income ratios go.

Women's status in the work force is, just like all workers, tied to the health and functioning of the macro economy as well as to the industry-specific, micro, of any given job. Women suffered along with minorities from economic shifts that put any gains made during healthy economies at serious risk when those economies turned sour. That reality has changed over the past quarter century. If census charts are to be believed, women workers show strong progress in this one area of work related issues: women are no longer "first fired". That narrow change, though it is important, does not give a full picture of the employment shifts for women since the 1970's.

I was told stories in 1970 of job programs that were used to keep women working as "apprentice" workers, at significantly below fair pay, long after the job had been mastered. Of welfare recipients unable to get the benefits they qualified for because of bureaucratic stalling or ineptitude. Of women whose benefits were cut off for infractions such as not being at their legal residence (because of emergency surgery) when required to be. These same circumstances still abound. The difference, just as in the issue of daycare, is that no one is listening to the voices of women.

Women are being forced into employment at wages which will not allow them to care for their children, and out again for this same reason. We have heard from Kiki Peppard (Hand In Hand at LadybugLive.com) about discrimination in the hiring of women with children and recent surveys show a significant increase in the number of women leaving the workforce because of child-rearing. Most of these are reported as "opting out", which implies a choice of actions, but attitudes of employers and the reality of the workplace make choice irrelevant. The answer has always been and will be again: Find a good man and hang onto him, no matter how he treats you. Daycare and workplace flexibility are the woman's workplace issues that may control our futures.

As I knocked on the door of Sue's apartment more than a quarter century ago, I had no idea where we would be today. I wanted very much to know where Sue, and all of the women I was interviewing, would want us to be.

We sat on a small balcony sheltered by the slope of the roof and I listened to her. "I just can't see people who work twenty or thirty years at the same thing. Even if it's rewarding... I just can't see all that precious time being poured into an organization, being spent with people, even if they're pleasant people, when the people you care about you see for three or four hours a night. And you're so tired you can't deal with them anyway."

I took a long look at Sue. She had the look of a dropout trying to repatriate. As she told me more about herself, it turned out that was exactly what she was. The secretarial job that was the excuse for our meeting was only temporary. She had tried it and, now, she was ready to bolt again. We talked for a long time. She had any number of plans. More than the average dose of dreams. And a tenseness inside that might send her, at any moment, to Europe, the South Seas, or a cabin in Kentucky from which she would return only to replenish her funds for survival.

How strange she would seem today. There are no more alternative lifestyles, only work, salaried to yourself or someone else. The days when you could live off your back garden and your wits in America are gone. One way or another, we must all come to an understanding with this thing called work.

"I see working as survival. It's a vicious circle. And it infringes on your weekends. It always infringes on your free time. You spend Saturday shopping and catching up on odds and ends that your work time produced. So how much free time do you actually have as a human being in our society?"

She said that, before cellular phones and laptop computers, before mobile faxes, and portable copiers, before all of the technology that was supposed to free us from the burdens of work—she said it before so many of our hopes for a more human and humane approach to employment had been dashed by years of Republican legislation.

The "Family Medical Leave Act" which allows for up to 12 weeks of paid maternity (or paternity) leave, is a toothless tiger in most states because the Federal version of the law only applies to companies with 50 or more employees. Since women are primarily employed in the lowest paying jobs in small companies, its only affect on women's work is disappointment, or to force those who can find shelter to get out of the workforce.

Another unrealized promise of the 1970's is flexible work: shared jobs and part time or from-home employment fall into this category. Yes, in some circumstances a company will allow a woman to share a job with another woman in a similar situation, but both women will be treated as part time workers and neither will receive health benefits. Repeat that same disclaimer for women who work from home or choose part time. Yet, the cost of daycare can make working financially unproductive, and a net loss if the time spent away from your children is factored in. And no one in our society can do without health care, especially those with small children, though too many do. To promise flexible work without adequate compensation in benefits and salary is not a promise at all—certainly not a promise kept.

Daycare is our biggest failure in this country. It is at the root in dealing with children's needs as well as women's choices—two things neither business nor government has chosen to do, and two places where public pressure for change has been weak or nonexistent.

These realities mean that women are hard-wired into a lower class, dependent upon men for what our society considers basic: the benefits of employment. Any crisis can be enough to push a woman into poverty, and old-age in a country that bases survival on past employment is a looming threat for the aging woman.

It has been nearly four decades. We have had our first viable woman presidential candidate overwhelmed by the subtleties of sexism that we still do not acknowledge as a society. And we are facing the biggest loss of human potential in the history of our country as Boomer women age into poverty.

Work is a mixed bag, blessing and curse, progress and assault on a woman's freedom. The only thing that is certain is that it is necessary to survival. If we are to control it, instead of being controlled by it, we must demystify and confront its issues. Those issues haven't changed very much at all.

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Special Feature

Your Own Tree of Dreams

from Lynn Andrews

 

"In the Tree of Dreams there is a song," Face in the Water said to me as we sat together in ceremony in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona. "Like any other living thing, it has a song to be sung. The Tree of Dreams is you and me. We are all a Tree of Dreams, filled with yearning, joy, and love, filled with the teachings we have received and the experiences we have had. The song in the Tree of Dreams is something to be listened for very, very carefully. It teaches you that life is never ending. To lose your song is to lose your soul."

Face in the Water is a shaman woman, a native elder who has helped so many people with the goodness and wisdom of her soul. She is a member of the Sisterhood of the Shields, forty-four native shaman women from indigenous cultures on five different continents who are guardians of an ancient wisdom born of the sacred feminine that has been preserved and handed down from mother to daughter, shaman to apprentice for many thousands of years, and I call her Grandmother.

I am a woman who has been greatly blessed with the opportunity to live many different lives in one. We hear so often how the pop singer Madonna has "reinvented" herself over and over again as she has moved through the various stages of her career and her life, changing her persona to meet new and often conflicting influences and demands as well as her own changing perception of herself. In a very real sense, you and I and everyone we know has done exactly the same thing, although few people ever stop to marvel at how any of the rest of us keeps up, or at the wonderfully ingenious things we create to keep it all together!

I was raised in the Pacific Northwest. My fondest memories of childhood are of riding horses and climbing up in an old apple tree to eat apples and write. Trees got me closer to the sky, closer to the stars. I knew what it felt like to be a star, to follow slowly through the universe, shining down on the earth. My closest friend in grade school was a Native American girl, and she and I would ride our horses across the plains, pretending we were stars and chasing each other across the universe. My father was an impatient man who swung between bouts of manic depression and rage. My mother, as brilliant and magnificent as she was, was always reserved with me. And I wanted to get away from the hurt and the depression of my unsettled family. So I would go out of my body; in my imagination I would go to the heavens and become a star. I would become its light.

Apple trees got me closer to God. I never saw God in a form, but as an experience, as the essence of my soul. There was one tree in particular that I loved to climb, an old grandmother tree. I would climb up to a fork in her branches where I could lean back into the crook of her arms, and she would hold me. I could reach up and pick one of her apples to eat. When I was sad, which was most of the time, I would climb up in the grandmother tree and talk to her. Then I would talk to God.

I even asked if I could go to a Catholic school because I knew that they had chapels where you could pray, so my father took me to Holy Names School in Spokane. There I learned to play the piano. I also stopped climbing in trees, because everybody thought it was extremely peculiar for this little girl in a uniform to be way up high in a tree. But I have always remembered the grandmother tree and the fruits that she gave me in so many ways.

When I was old enough to go out on my own, I had the wonderful good fortune to become a partner of R. Buckminster Fuller, developing an interactive play environment for children so that they could experience from a very young age their ability to interact with, and have an impact on, the world. I have been graced to study philosophy, art and literature all over the world and numbered among my friendships Anaďs Nin, Henry Miller, Laurence Duvall and Fritz Scholder. Over time, I was married to the vice president of a major motion picture studio. I became a collector and dealer of art living in Beverly Hills, California. And I was a founding member of the Santa Fe Writer's Co-op, where we secured a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to bridge cross-cultural boundaries and bring books and their authors to the small towns of New Mexico that had no library or bookstore.

It was while I was an art dealer that I embarked upon a strange and magnificent journey of spirit which was to take me from my then home in Beverly Hills to Guatemala, then to the far north of Canada where I met my two dearest teachers, Agnes Whistling Elk and Ruby Plenty Chiefs. Agnes and Ruby are native shaman healers; they are also members of the Sisterhood of the Shields. Through them, I have had the privilege of studying and working with indigenous shaman women from the Mayan Yucatán to Panama, Guatemala, Nepal, Australia, Europe, Egypt and the American Southwest; they even smuggled me across the Red Chinese border into Tibet to attend a special gathering of the Sisterhood!

In the beginning, I was told that I must keep my studies and work with these women a secret. After a time, they urged me to write about our work together so that their ancient teachings about the ways that power and energy move throughout the universe, and how to choreograph that energy toward a higher good, could be brought to life in a modern world that teeters on the edge of crisis. Today, I hold my own gatherings to bring these teachings in depth to others and have been doing so for the last 20 years, and I have also created a school of shamanic studies. I am a mother of a very wonderful daughter! And I am the only non-native member of the Sisterhood of the Shields.

How many different people have you been in your life? How many different people do you have to be just during the course of one given day? Have you ever stopped to gaze upon the amazing landscape that is your life and your accomplishments? Do it now.

The other women in the Sisterhood of the Shields often say to me that people are living with greater stress and confusion now than at any other time in human history, that human beings were never intended to live with the amount of chaos and pressure that we face in today's world. Yet here we are, and what a remarkable achievement it is to be a vibrant, functioning member of our world.

It is time to stop ogling at the accomplishments of others and celebrate your own wonderful, divine self! Your life has meaning. Your life is special. Your life is like no other. So celebrate your power. Celebrate the integrity of your very special personality.

One of the great teachings of this particular time in history is to learn how to live your life with the stress of three or four lives all at once and still maintain your center and your ease and your joy. This is a very difficult thing to do, but it can be done. It is like a problem in logic, like a mathematical equation using trade beads: The right symbolism has to be learned, the right thoughts must be written for the outcome to be beautiful.

It is time to write your own song, the song of your Tree of Dreams, and sing it in your heart every moment of your life. Do you know what your life's song is? Life is precious; you are precious.

Imagine yourself as a wise elder who is looking back on your life, reflecting on your legacy. If you were to write your legacy, what would you say? What would your song be? What would you like those who come after you to know of your experience? What is your Tree of Dreams? There has never been another person like you in this world. You are beautiful, and it is time, now, for you to bloom.

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Science & Medical

We were sorry to hear that Tina's mother has died, but it was interesting to hear about her life. We have added a page to our artists pages to honor Jill Adams. You will find samples of her art on t-shirts, cards and other products available there. The proceeds from these sales will not only help with her last expenses but will aid in one of her favorite causes, animal rescue. Our thoughts are with Tina. She will be back in her usual space starting in August.

Lose Weight With Smart Thinking, part 2
Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E.

To end emotional eating is a matter of knowing how to conquer your relationship with emotions. Maybe emotional eating could be called a disorder. Eating emotional, however, is actually a compensation for the inability to recognize that eating is a means of handling both comfortable and uncomfortable emotions.

For instance, in all your years of education, have you ever had a course or training in how to handle emotions? Even when this question is asked of health care professionals, only a small percentage have had any training in handling emotions. Little wonder then that the general populace has little guidance in dealing with emotions. If fact if you think about all the things you've been told about emotions, you'll find that you've been encouraged to ignore many emotions--pretend that you don't have them. Or you've been told that you shouldn't have many emotions.

For instance:
Don't be angry because your blood pressure will go up.
Or don't be angry because you'll say something you don't mean.
Or, don't be angry because you'll look foolish.

Then there's happiness. Don't be too happy because you'll set yourself up for the big let down. Don't be too happy because there are so many others in the world with so much less than you.

You'll find similar reasoning for every emotion—confusion, frustration, upset, excitement...

Unfortunately, we've become a nation—actually a world of emotional cripples. We try to explain emotions by understanding the various brain centers and functions. But mostly all we know is that the emotional brain—the limbic brain—was developed before the rational intellectual reticular brain.

Gurus such as Tony Robbins in his Get the Edge Program devoted an entire cd on emotions. He has a 10-step analysis of any particular emotion. Yes, looking at emotions can be like looking at the purpose of mankind—it can be awesome, or it can just be! The emotion process resembles dominos knocking over other dominos. Something does or doesn't work as expected and bang—there is an emotion, and bang—here is what we do about the emotion.

Along the way, we often want to be more or less expressive of emotions, control or handle them. The interesting thing is that there's no choice in this model. Our behavior is simply a product of our learned perceptions.

Add to this the fact that since we were infants we've learned to associate food with many different emotions —particularly happiness and upset.

Truth is that we don't allow ourselves to feel most emotions. We dilute them or avoid them by using different substances—alcohol, nicotine, and of course food.

So what is the disorder? Eating emotional is merely a symptom of our inability to embrace emotion as opposed to diluting them with food.

A progressive approach to end emotional eating involves asking important questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on the emotional aspects of the disorder--eating emotional than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to end emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a sales person, you'll be a better sales person. If you're an assembly line worker, you'll be a better assembly line worker; a mother, a better mother... Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined possible.

Only within the last decade has the idea of emotional eating being a contributing factor to obesity been considered.

And this is largely because emotions in general have been ignored for centuries. We've had far more training in how to ignore emotions or pretend that we don't feel them than we have in how to deal with emotions. Yet, it's emotions that end marriages and start wars.

Several decades ago, Theodore Isaac Rubin MD, psychiatrist, wrote the Angry Book. Although it is primarily about anger, the mechanisms revealed in the book can be applied to any emotion.

In the book he highlights how we have each learned to "seal ourselves off" from anger. Fact is, we've learned to "seal ourselves off" from many emotions. Case in point:
    Have you ever had anyone tell you how to feel anger?
    Have you ever had anyone tell you how to feel frustration?

The same question could be asked for boredom, depression, confusion, uncertainty... Let's not ignore emotions such as happiness, joy, and excitement--no one has taught us how to feel these feelings either.

In fact we've been more often coached in avoiding these feelings because:
    Our blood pressure will go up.
    They are useless feelings.
    No one will want to be around us.
    We'll be setting ourselves up for the big let down.
You should know what you want...

Where does food enter in this challenge to feel emotion?

Avoidance mechanisms of emotions include habits such as smoking, drugs, alcohol, and food. However, food is very easy, relatively inexpensive, and acceptable to the general population and has had a learned association from an early age.

When you cried as a baby, you weren't given a cigarette to smoke or a beer to drink; you were given food to calm you down.

When you can home from an embarrassing problem at school you weren't given drugs to shoot up with; you were given cookies and milk to calm down.

The association with food and emotions has been ingrained in each of us since we were infants. Since we were never given a training in how to deal with emotions, it's little wonder that we eat in response to many emotions. The end result is that we use food to dilute feelings. Food is the drug of choice for millions of Americans. Food is readily available with hundreds of thousands of purveyors providing us a multitude of tastes to please our palates.

And the irony is that rather than focusing on how to embrace feelings—getting at the root of the problem—the focus is on diets and techniques to lose weight.

Emotional eating is rarely entertained as the root cause.

An effective approach to eliminate emotional eating involves asking important questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on how to stop emotional eating--eating emotional stress than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to overcome emotional eating empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a sales person, you'll be a better sales person. If you're an assembly line worker, you'll be a better assembly line worker; a mother, a better mother... Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined possible.

To conquer emotional eating it's first important to manage one's thinking and self communication. Otherwise, one's efforts will be in vain.

We could begin with managing emotions and invest years of training in how to embrace emotions and experience them to leave overeating out of the picture. However, if one is an expert at managing emotions, little progress might be made in losing weight if one still has a "fat thinking frame of mind."

For instance, if one recognizes the emotion of boredom and the desire to snack because of the boredom that in itself is progress. Yet, to leave food out of the picture, there's a mental command issued. And the nature of that command determines whether the managing of the boredom is successful or unsuccessful. The command is in the form of self communication such as, "I don't want to eat (something).

Unfortunately, this particular command is actually a suggestion to focus on food for two different reasons: First, the brain skips "nots." It's like commanding a printer to NOT print--it's going to print. Second, it's like telling the child within you that it can't have something. It creates a parent child war and when food is involved, the child wins.

Any command such as, "I don't want to think about food," or "I don't crave sweets anymore," only cause one to focus on food either at that moment or hours or days later. "Gee I haven't been thinking much about desert for weeks and all of a sudden, that's all I can think about." The thought becomes a boomerang.

Of course there are lots of other command or self communication statements that contribute to failure such as:
    "I want to lose weight or quit eating so much." The words "lose" and "quit" are a problem. As youngsters we're taught that losing and quitting are not admirable traits. Or if you lose something you want to find it. So someone says, "Looks like you lost some weight." And what do you have to do--go find it, right?

    Or the idea of "giving up" or "doing without" likewise is a problem because once again "giving up" is not admirable and "doing without," is like being made to go to bed without dinner.

    "I'll eat today and diet tomorrow." The word "diet" is "die" with a "t" on the end and for most people means "doing without" and "giving up." Plus if you think of "dieting tomorrow," what do you do today? Eat everything in sight, right?

    "I'm so hungry I could eat a horse." A horse is a pretty big item. Plus for many reasons the word "hungry" is misused.

    "I can't stand myself any more." This one destroys self esteem and actually contributes to eating more--like self punishment.

The idea of forgetting about food along with some other specific can be far more effective at enforcing one's ability to stop eating emotional stress and leave food out of the picture than any of the above.

A progressive approach to conquer emotional eating habit involves asking important questions "What is missing here? Why are you not getting the results you've been promised?" It is clearly insane to keep dieting and thinking the same non productive thoughts when the results are so poor. It's more important to gain a grasp on how to stop emotional eating--eating emotional stress than it is to read the scale. Besides focusing on the scale doesn't empower you to be a better more enlightened person, whereas learning how to overcome emotional eating with effective self communication empowers you in all aspects of your life. If you're a sales person, you'll be a better sales person. If you're an assembly line worker, you'll be a better assembly line worker; a mother, a better mother... Overall, you'll build self worth and find that what you really want to eat is far more nutritious and less in quantity than you ever before imagined possible.

Richard Kuhns B.S.Ch.E. NGH Certified is one of the few engineers who has traversed the physical to the mental universe. He operated the Biofeedback Center of NJ and Hypnosis Consultants for nearly twenty years during which time he conducted stress management programs for corporations such as AT&T and IFF. He appeared on various radio and TV shows such as the Arlene Francis WOR radio show, Joe Franklin…

His website www.dstressdoc.com has programs using stress management and hypnotic techniques for self improvement. His other site (www.PanicBusters.com) is focused for the professional wanting to dramatically improve success in the treatment of panic/anxiety and agoraphobia.

Visit MyHealthNavigator.com

Listen to Tina on "BLue Lips" at LadybugLive and...
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Virtual World

Is the Internet Messing with Our Minds?

An article in the July/August 2008 isssue of the Atlantic Monthly screams "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Author Nicholas Carr suggests that his long-term usage of Google and the Internet for both professional and personal purposes is causing the way his mind functions to change. He feels that his thinking has speeded up and is less focused. He describes it this way" My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski." He tells about a conversation with pathologist Bruce Friedman who said his thinking has taken on a "staccato" quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. "I can't read War and Peace anymore."

Carr comes to the conclusion that the rapid flow of information has changed not only the speed, but something fundamental about the way dedicated internet users think. It's a different process from reading, much less contemplative and thoughtful. Quick answers are easier to get than fully developed concepts. He presents and analogy by looking at the differences in brain wiring between users of different languages. Modern imaging shows that people who use ideographic languages like Chinese light up completely different areas of the brain while reading than do those who use alphabetic languages. He comes to the conclusion that "the circuits woven by our use of the Net will be different from those woven by our reading of books and other printed works." This may well be to our detriment.

Surgeon Leonard Schlain looks at the changes caused by widespread internet use and comes to a different conclusion. In "The Alphabet and the Goddess" he argues that the earliest humans thought in images. The development of the alphabet, reading, writing, and the associated thought processes rewired human brains. This encouraged our present linear style of thinking and the development of patriarchy. He traces these ideas through the ages, corrleating timelines to make his case. He concludes that now, with the renewed emphasis on images encouraged by the internet, we are reverting to a more primitive, nurturing, wholistic way of thinking.

So is Google making us stupid? Or is it enabling us to return to a more natural, imagistic way of thinking? Or is it just a handy tool? Or…? Only you can know its impact on your own thinking. Have fun as you watch for noticeable effects. Email me if you find any.

I'm off now to reread "War and Peace".

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