I'm not generally one to go out and do advocacy stuff, or even much awareness raising stuff. Especially not IRL. In fact, I try not to even make small talk with strangers.
But, yesterday, I was in a good mood, so when the bagger made a comment about my insulated bag for my meat, I went ahead and got into a conversation about eating meat vs. being vegetarian. When I mentioned how I had to switch to a low glycemic index diet because of my insulin resistance, the girl ringing up my stuff got interested. Especially when I mentioned how I found out because we were trying to have a baby, and the IR was effecting my hormones. Turned out she has a family history of type 2 diabetes, and she asked how she could find out if being vegetarian is affecting her. I told her any doctor should be able to order an insulin test, and that was about it.
It wasn't until I got back to the car that I remembered that it's PCOS awareness month. I never used the word PCOS, because I find it easier to just say I have insulin resistance, which effects my hormones, but maybe, because of what I said, that girl will find out more about one of the major aspects of PCOS-related infertility--insulin resistance. So I guess you could say I did a little advocacy. Or at least maybe raised a little awareness. It was easy and felt good, probably because it came up as a natural part of the conversation. :-)
Showing posts with label Advocacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Advocacy. Show all posts
Sunday, September 25
Tuesday, May 10
Virtual Walk of Hope
Keiko posted today about a project at the Ladies in Waiting Book Club. Kim and her friends want to walk *for* all of us who can't be there. Just go over to this post, and add your name to the comments section if you want to participate. :-)
I just wish there were more walks like this in more locations around the country . . . I'd love to walk locally.
I just wish there were more walks like this in more locations around the country . . . I'd love to walk locally.
Monday, April 11
The Ugly Duckling
This blog is meant to be about my life now, focusing on my struggles with RPL, but my past shapes who I am. Who I was what I went through as a child, informs and affects how I deal with my life as an adult. I have hinted about my past to some of you in my comments on your blogs, but I've barely mentioned it here. I didn't want to get into my past $#!t. It isn't a nice story, but I think it's time to tell it. I'm not going to sugar coat it. I'm not going to go into details, either. I'm not looking for pity, and I hope I don't sound too bitter. I am dealing with my past in therapy. I probably can contemplate writing this post because I just had a major breakthrough last week. However, my story is one of being overlooked. I hope that by telling some of it--at least the pertinent details--other children may benefit.
I am a victim of childhood emotional abuse. I have symptoms of PTSD as a result of this abuse. This abuse was compounded by the fact that it was overlooked and dismissed by most of the people in my life who had the power to stop it. Over the course of my childhood, starting at the age of 4 years old and continuing throughout my teenage years, the perpetrators of this abuse humiliated, ostracized, and shunned me on an almost daily basis. This abuse occurred both in private and in the presence of responsible adults, including parents and teachers. The few adults who tried to help me weren't able to stop the abuse, only to limit it and partially mitigate it's effects. Most adults, however, were blind to the situation, and often blamed me for being too emotionally sensitive. Very few saw that there was a problem, and the ones who saw it didn't recognize that I was being abused. I believe this lack of recognition of the severity of the situation was largely due to the fact that the perpetrators were my peers.
That's right. My abusers were other children. I'm not just speaking of a class bully, although that would have been bad enough. No, this was the entire class. They closed ranks against me and permanently shut me out. I was at the bottom of the pecking order from preschool through 12th grade. Even the new kids were higher on the pecking order than I was. The abuse changed forms as time went on, and the other children became more subtle in their tactics. In elementary school, the preferred tactics were public humiliation and ostracism, by means of all sorts of verbal teasing, bating, and practical jokes, as well as wooing my few friends away from me. By high school I was simply shut out of the entire school's social life.* No one was saying anything mean to my face, but no one was inviting me to social functions, either. Unless it was a school event, I didn't hear about it until after the fact. People were friendly enough in person that the teachers didn't know I was shut out, but I knew.
I'm not going to go into more detail about what happened, because I'm not writing this to vent about my past. I'm writing it because Mel wrote recently about a bully who is only "six, so the damage she can do is fairly minimal". I don't know what kind of damage Mel was thinking about, but I will say that a 6 year old can do considerable damage to another 6 year old. For example, at 4 years old, I could (and would) say, "That hurts my feelings," when my peers teased me. By the time I was 7, they had beaten me down to the point where I no longer tried to stand up for myself. Words can cause deep, psychological wounds, that can take years to even be recognized, not to mention how long they take to heal.
I, myself, didn't even recognize the extent of the damage that had been done to me until late in 2008, when I attended a lecture by a representative of an organization called KidPower. The lecturer spoke about the damage of unkind words. She likened allowing children to wield words without supervision and training to allowing them to play near deep water, or with matches or knives. This rang so true for me. Children don't always know how to be kind. They try doing and saying all sorts of different things. If they get an interesting or exciting reaction, they don't think that it means something about the other person's feelings, they sit back and enjoy the show. They are generally not malicious, but they are also not necessarily instinctively gentle. Children need to be taught, both how to be kind and how to set boundaries when another person is unkind.
KidPower offers usable, kid-friendly, effective skills for dealing with bullying and unkind behavior. They teach empowering techniques, such as an imaginary trash can, in which to throw away unkind words, and, on the flip side, how to take kind words and compliments to heart. They also teach how to set boundaries in a non-defensive, firm, non-aggressive manner, and when and how to ask for help. Most importantly (in my opinion), they teach adults to supervise their children's interactions, teach their children to be kind and thoughtful, and be responsive when a child needs help with a social situation. This doesn't mean the adults hover over the children constantly, or never let them work things out, but it does mean that the adults are available if a child asks for help or a situation gets out of hand. I can clearly remember, as a child, asking for help in a social situation at recess and being dismissed by the supervising teacher. I wish that teacher had done more to a) validate my hurt feelings and help me soothe myself, and b) ensure that the other children learned kinder behavior for the future. I believe that, if KidPower workshops had been available to my community when I was growing up, much of the heartache I experienced could have been averted.
I also believe that trauma can be healed. I am in the process of using a powerful technique called EMDR to heal from the wounds of my childhood. With my therapist's help, I am becoming more whole. I hope to someday be completely free of the flashbacks and extreme emotional reactions that have plagued me for years. I tell my story in hope that it will help parents and teachers recognize the beginnings of childhood peer abuse, and take action to teach all the children in their care healthier social skills.
* I attended a small, private school, with only 40-60 students per grade each year. So the entire high school was at most 240 students (but actually closer to 160), and all of them knew that I was at the bottom of the social ladder.
I am a victim of childhood emotional abuse. I have symptoms of PTSD as a result of this abuse. This abuse was compounded by the fact that it was overlooked and dismissed by most of the people in my life who had the power to stop it. Over the course of my childhood, starting at the age of 4 years old and continuing throughout my teenage years, the perpetrators of this abuse humiliated, ostracized, and shunned me on an almost daily basis. This abuse occurred both in private and in the presence of responsible adults, including parents and teachers. The few adults who tried to help me weren't able to stop the abuse, only to limit it and partially mitigate it's effects. Most adults, however, were blind to the situation, and often blamed me for being too emotionally sensitive. Very few saw that there was a problem, and the ones who saw it didn't recognize that I was being abused. I believe this lack of recognition of the severity of the situation was largely due to the fact that the perpetrators were my peers.
That's right. My abusers were other children. I'm not just speaking of a class bully, although that would have been bad enough. No, this was the entire class. They closed ranks against me and permanently shut me out. I was at the bottom of the pecking order from preschool through 12th grade. Even the new kids were higher on the pecking order than I was. The abuse changed forms as time went on, and the other children became more subtle in their tactics. In elementary school, the preferred tactics were public humiliation and ostracism, by means of all sorts of verbal teasing, bating, and practical jokes, as well as wooing my few friends away from me. By high school I was simply shut out of the entire school's social life.* No one was saying anything mean to my face, but no one was inviting me to social functions, either. Unless it was a school event, I didn't hear about it until after the fact. People were friendly enough in person that the teachers didn't know I was shut out, but I knew.
I'm not going to go into more detail about what happened, because I'm not writing this to vent about my past. I'm writing it because Mel wrote recently about a bully who is only "six, so the damage she can do is fairly minimal". I don't know what kind of damage Mel was thinking about, but I will say that a 6 year old can do considerable damage to another 6 year old. For example, at 4 years old, I could (and would) say, "That hurts my feelings," when my peers teased me. By the time I was 7, they had beaten me down to the point where I no longer tried to stand up for myself. Words can cause deep, psychological wounds, that can take years to even be recognized, not to mention how long they take to heal.
I, myself, didn't even recognize the extent of the damage that had been done to me until late in 2008, when I attended a lecture by a representative of an organization called KidPower. The lecturer spoke about the damage of unkind words. She likened allowing children to wield words without supervision and training to allowing them to play near deep water, or with matches or knives. This rang so true for me. Children don't always know how to be kind. They try doing and saying all sorts of different things. If they get an interesting or exciting reaction, they don't think that it means something about the other person's feelings, they sit back and enjoy the show. They are generally not malicious, but they are also not necessarily instinctively gentle. Children need to be taught, both how to be kind and how to set boundaries when another person is unkind.
KidPower offers usable, kid-friendly, effective skills for dealing with bullying and unkind behavior. They teach empowering techniques, such as an imaginary trash can, in which to throw away unkind words, and, on the flip side, how to take kind words and compliments to heart. They also teach how to set boundaries in a non-defensive, firm, non-aggressive manner, and when and how to ask for help. Most importantly (in my opinion), they teach adults to supervise their children's interactions, teach their children to be kind and thoughtful, and be responsive when a child needs help with a social situation. This doesn't mean the adults hover over the children constantly, or never let them work things out, but it does mean that the adults are available if a child asks for help or a situation gets out of hand. I can clearly remember, as a child, asking for help in a social situation at recess and being dismissed by the supervising teacher. I wish that teacher had done more to a) validate my hurt feelings and help me soothe myself, and b) ensure that the other children learned kinder behavior for the future. I believe that, if KidPower workshops had been available to my community when I was growing up, much of the heartache I experienced could have been averted.
I also believe that trauma can be healed. I am in the process of using a powerful technique called EMDR to heal from the wounds of my childhood. With my therapist's help, I am becoming more whole. I hope to someday be completely free of the flashbacks and extreme emotional reactions that have plagued me for years. I tell my story in hope that it will help parents and teachers recognize the beginnings of childhood peer abuse, and take action to teach all the children in their care healthier social skills.
* I attended a small, private school, with only 40-60 students per grade each year. So the entire high school was at most 240 students (but actually closer to 160), and all of them knew that I was at the bottom of the social ladder.
Wednesday, February 23
Legislation that Threatens Women's Reproductive Rights
This just popped up on my radar today, thanks to Julie Anita at The Unbroken World who linked to Keiko's most recent post at Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed. Since I'm not Iowa voter, I can't call up my rep, and this bill really worries me. I'm hoping that by blogging about it, I can help to create enough uproar to stop the bill in its tracks. If you don't have time to read the article (or at least skim it), here's a summary. The bill I'm talking about is currently in the Iowa house and is a blatant attempt to ban all abortions in Iowa, by saying that personhood begins at conception.This would effect not only women who want to end unwanted pregnancies, but also women undergoing IVF who have more embryos than they need or want to transfer that cycle. As most of you know from experience, when there are several embryos to choose from the poor quality ones are usually discarded, while higher quality ones are either transfered to the mother or frozen for future use. This new law would make discarding poor quality embryos illegal. They would have to be either frozen or used (I'm not sure how the law would treat the freezing of embryos).
Another thing it would affect is women who have prenatal testing done that reveals a poor prognosis for the baby. Many babies can live and grow in-utero, but will be unable to survive, or have a very poor quality of life once they are born. Parents in this situation often make the heartbreaking choice to terminate a much wanted pregnancy, but this law would eliminate that choice for Iowa women. Women facing a poor prenatal diagnosis would instead have to choose between carrying to term or traveling out of state for a termination. Some women already have to make this choice when their doctors only find and diagnose a problem after the late-term abortion cut-off in their state. You can read some of their painful stories here. If this law passes, even more couples will face the extra strain of out-of-state travel at an already too-painful time in their lives.
Another frightening thing about this bill is that there won't be exceptions for cases of rape, and incest. Nor will there be exceptions for women with health conditions that put their life in danger from carrying to term. These types of conditions include pre-existing conditions that flare up in pregnancy like lupus and kidney problems, and unpredictable conditions like pre-eclampsia/eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. IMHO, by eliminating all exceptions, this bill puts the rights of unborn babies higher than the rights of their mothers.
Regardless of your opinion about elective abortion, a law that limits women's choices in situations of fertility treatment and medical complications is really scary. Please, do what you can, and share this info with anyone who might take action. Please let your voice be heard. The consequences to all women if this bill passes are almost too frightening to contemplate. If a bill like this gets a foothold in one state, other states are likely to follow suit.
One of the other issues in Keiko's post that really caught my attention is some Georgia legislation that would require criminal investigation into the cause of fetal death for all miscarriages—just in case they were actually abortions-in-disguise. If I lived in Georgia and that law were passed, could I be considered a criminal if no cause of death were found for my three implantation failures? Or would I be feeling super lucky that I don't get the nice, early BFP's to go with my symptoms that I wish I did? Would they ignore me because my pregnancies weren't confirmed? I don't know. I do know that going through this kind of investigation whilst grieving the loss of a much wanted baby would be rubbing salt and iodine and acid in the wound. Please, if you live in Georgia, speak up about this. It turns women into criminals for an aspect of reproduction that is already too far out of their own control!
Please, regardless of your views on elective abortion, help to prevent the passage of these laws. They will bring grief to many people who are trying to build their families! Please speak out!
Another thing it would affect is women who have prenatal testing done that reveals a poor prognosis for the baby. Many babies can live and grow in-utero, but will be unable to survive, or have a very poor quality of life once they are born. Parents in this situation often make the heartbreaking choice to terminate a much wanted pregnancy, but this law would eliminate that choice for Iowa women. Women facing a poor prenatal diagnosis would instead have to choose between carrying to term or traveling out of state for a termination. Some women already have to make this choice when their doctors only find and diagnose a problem after the late-term abortion cut-off in their state. You can read some of their painful stories here. If this law passes, even more couples will face the extra strain of out-of-state travel at an already too-painful time in their lives.
Another frightening thing about this bill is that there won't be exceptions for cases of rape, and incest. Nor will there be exceptions for women with health conditions that put their life in danger from carrying to term. These types of conditions include pre-existing conditions that flare up in pregnancy like lupus and kidney problems, and unpredictable conditions like pre-eclampsia/eclampsia and HELLP syndrome. IMHO, by eliminating all exceptions, this bill puts the rights of unborn babies higher than the rights of their mothers.
Regardless of your opinion about elective abortion, a law that limits women's choices in situations of fertility treatment and medical complications is really scary. Please, do what you can, and share this info with anyone who might take action. Please let your voice be heard. The consequences to all women if this bill passes are almost too frightening to contemplate. If a bill like this gets a foothold in one state, other states are likely to follow suit.
One of the other issues in Keiko's post that really caught my attention is some Georgia legislation that would require criminal investigation into the cause of fetal death for all miscarriages—just in case they were actually abortions-in-disguise. If I lived in Georgia and that law were passed, could I be considered a criminal if no cause of death were found for my three implantation failures? Or would I be feeling super lucky that I don't get the nice, early BFP's to go with my symptoms that I wish I did? Would they ignore me because my pregnancies weren't confirmed? I don't know. I do know that going through this kind of investigation whilst grieving the loss of a much wanted baby would be rubbing salt and iodine and acid in the wound. Please, if you live in Georgia, speak up about this. It turns women into criminals for an aspect of reproduction that is already too far out of their own control!
Please, regardless of your views on elective abortion, help to prevent the passage of these laws. They will bring grief to many people who are trying to build their families! Please speak out!
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