No One Is To Blame

We all got our COVID vaccines. For many of the reasons John Green talked about in his video last week, I have not wanted to talk much about vaccination. This is because I understand both sides, personally. We have a history of vaccine reactions, sensory integration issues, and seizure in our home. We also know more people than we should, statistically speaking, who had Guillain-Barre after vaccinations pre-COVID. I have also heard all the arguments, and I worked in science long enough to know how things can sometimes work in that industry.


I figured it is time to speak out because I met a new neighbor who is a retired dentist who seemed like he was kind of confused himself and said that “they passed a law that we are not allowed to say anything against ‘them’ and that “they can now go through our text messages and email.” I couldn’t get him to elaborate on who “them” was, and he did mention that his wife would not be happy if she knew he was talking to me about it, which made me wonder all sorts of things about how our beliefs about things can be sources of shame in our relationships. I didn’t want to add to anyone’s fear of the vaccine unnecessarily, so I have been keeping my mouth shut until I know how my family is doing. I was under no illusion that we would be able to continue on indefinitely alone. While my sudden illness in 2019 had the effect of cutting us off from many people, I didn’t anticipate how isolating it would be.


I understand why people are afraid of the vaccine. They have a right to be. For people who have not noticed a change in their cognition after illness or vaccine, of course they’re not going to think these things are a big deal. But to have a neurological illness is torture. Just like you can’t explain to a woman what it is like to push seven and a half pounds of human being through her vagina before she does it herself, you can’t explain what constant vertigo, arm and leg weakness, fatigue, and feeling cold as pain is like to a person who has not experienced it.


We had reactions to the COVID vaccine. I’m not sure I can say they were severe, because they were different than actually having COVID. They were like apples and oranges, neither particularly enjoyable, but the virus itself was way worse for us. Well-meaning liberal people have shrugged our vaccine reactions off saying, “Well, that must mean you’re getting good immunity.” As far as I know, we know nothing about the severity of reaction to vaccines and how it may be connected to effective immunity. Besides, if they *didn’t* have a reaction, what does that mean for *their* immunity? It may mean nothing at all. I never had a positive COVID test when I was ill, yet I lost my sense of smell and had many other symptoms which distinguish COVID from other illnesses.


My son had a reaction to the MMR vaccine when he was an infant. As a scientist, it has been excruciating having to deal with other health professionals who have never experienced a severe vaccine reaction, which can go on for months or even years because medicine does not know how to treat it. That being said, I am not an immunologist, and I am going off what I have heard from other immunologists and what my gut has told me that what we understand about immunity from the cursory survey I got through molecular biology, biochemistry and cellular biology courses. Our understanding of how to prevent infectious disease at the immunological level is poor at best. We do, however, have a pretty good track record when it comes to life-extending band-aid pharmaceutical interventions, and I think we are missing that opportunity with COVID, because we place too much trust in vaccines as an encompassing solution.


I don’t like being experimented on without my consent, yet because I am female, that’s essentially what has always been done to me.


Much to my frustration, my husband was digging around in the medical literature last year and became convinced that because he saw evidence of gene splicing activity involving furin and coronavirus before the pandemic, that it was a lab leak. Because I had worked on engineering retroviruses and was trained to work in a BSL4 lab, I knew it was possible. When I was in grad school, we had a unit on genetic engineering and ethics in my cellular biology class which informed us about the problems Monsanto had generated in Argentina (this was in the mid-90’s) which had wiped out most of the indigenous corn. Our professor made no bones about the fact that genetic engineering technology came with great responsibility, and that it was possible that humans actually weren’t intelligent enough to make good decisions about how and when to use it. A few years later, I would find myself cutting up pieces of DNA to insert into murine leukemia virus as therapy for osteoporosis in mice for the government. Animals don’t really get out of test facilities, and there are a lot of protocols in place to make sure that doesn’t happen. Many of the animals used for research are genetically engineered and so we need to keep them from the wild populations of animals. People in PETA don’t understand that, let alone the damage their precious vinyl does to the environment over the more sustainable leather that was good enough for the people who came before us. Letting genetically altered animals out of lab facilities undermines the work they are doing to protect natural species. Given what I knew, I figured a lab worker probably contracted the virus. There are a lot of ways to goof as a lab worker, including accidentally sticking oneself with a needle. But I sure wasn’t going to say anything to push forward any conspiracies because the government at that point had no ability to make a calm and cool decision about anything. I’m pretty sure I am right about that.


Furthermore, I understand how the scientific community works, and also that if we looked hard enough, we would probably find information tying the intellectual property back to the United States somehow. We invent a lot of technologies, and we also educate people from many other countries. Scientists work in multi-center global teams. Most of the people I encountered in my career as a molecular biologist were Chinese. Many of them had gone to medical school in China. I don’t know how it was at other research Universities in the United States, or if this was a phenomenon that Colorado, Louisiana, Ohio and California shared. This is not some sort of conspiracy on the part of the U.S. intelligentsia; I know from having worked as staff in a molecular biology department that American citizens just weren’t applying for grad school positions in science 25-30 years ago, because it was a job for nerds.


Nevermind that beyond the stigma of it being a job for nerds, if one doesn’t do a postdoc position, many jobs pay so poorly that a job at a convenience store sometimes pays more. That was my experience. Even after I had found a “good paying” job, it still was barely enough to cover childcare, and that is a big reason I left the profession. And, I realize now that most of the time I was working with volatiles I needed to be using a respirator, but at that time we weren’t aware of that. I never had one until I begged for one because I was pregnant, and that was only because I called the California Teratogen Registry to ask specifically about the things I was working with. There were no specific advisories for the things I was using at the time, only the advice to take precautions if the mother was feeling unwell, which I think was probably the reason I called, even if I wasn’t aware of it at the time.


That all being said, I want to make sure that I say that the effects of long-haul COVID are much, much worse than the vaccine. Yes, I wish we had something better than vaccines, too, for sensitive individuals. There are so many problems with relying on vaccination to protect ourselves from infectious disease. For most “vaccine preventable illnesses” the burden has mostly been on developing children, whereas adults can carry disease silently as immunity from vaccines is usually not permanent. Only people working in the healthcare industry might bother to get titers done to see if boosters are needed, because they are costly. So with COVID, the shoe is kind of on the other foot - the elderly population at risk has to be protected by the voluntary actions of people who would otherwise be unaffected by the disease and develop natural immunity. Getting compliance out of the adult population is extremely difficult, as evidenced by our sub-50% COVID vaccination rate in the United States. Vaccination only ever worked because children are not given a choice. The symptoms of autism and spectrum disorders are subtle enough that it would be easy to attribute them to something else.


I understand this perhaps more than most people because I took the time alone to really comb through my perceptions. Essentially, I took up the study of phenomenology which is the in-depth study of consciousness. I studied my perceptions and how they changed, and I learned how to control my consciousness to feel happier. I paid attention to the things that altered my perceptions negatively and how they altered other aspects of my health. I learned a lot about how our environments conspire to produce different states of consciousness. My sensory issues are greatly affected by metabolic stress, which includes toxic exposures, emotional stress, and illness. They were absolutely affected by the vaccine, but as I am addressing my mitochondrial health, I am slowly improving.


What our government needs to understand is that we will never get COVID under control relying on vaccination alone, because of the impossibility of adult compliance. Until people understand that the vaccine reaction is preferable to long-haul COVID, and children are vaccinated, we will continue to be bothered by COVID, and its effects will burden our society and our healthcare system.


Leave it to me to figure out how to voice several unpopular opinions at once! I might as well put a target on my head.


Here is the most recent paper I could find on what we know about vaccine reactions. The researchers do state that a significant number of cases of vaccine-induced epilepsy (which is rare) were in people who had "pre-existing neurologic or neurodevelopmental abnormalities."


COVID shed an interesting light on these things for me. Early on I, along with many other scientists, were keeping a close eye on the discovery of the mechanism of the virus’ action. I wondered if we know it binds to the ACE2 receptor and we know the sequence for that, why we didn’t come up with some therapy taking advantage of that knowledge? Preventing viral entry into the cells in the first place, while giving the immune system a chance to recognize myriad targets on the native virus would mean the body would be given a chance to develop proper immunity, before the virion were ultimately phagocytosed and eliminated. I’m willing to bet an approach like this would have actually addressed most of the symptoms, too.


Theoretically, we should be able to come up with a safe biologically-based substrate to block the entry of any virus into cells, rather than having to work with the complex immune system and exposing so many scientists to native virus. If it’s furin that is helping COVID enter cells, why do we not have some furin-based technology to block entry?


The Salk Institute has found that COVID ultimately does its damage by causing mitochondrial fractionation. The mitochondria are what make energy in the cell. The part of COVID that does this is actually the spike protein itself. The different vaccines contain different portions of the spike protein. Pfizer is the mRNA encoding just the spike protein. Moderna is a few fragments, and also mRNA. I had the Pfizer vaccine, and my post-vaccination reaction was very similar to having COVID. I had more psychiatric issues, however, which I think has to do with the nanoparticles helping the spike protein cross the blood brain barrier.


When I say psychiatric issues, I am going to broadly say that it made me anxious and afraid. More than just the background COVID situation was making me. I’m not exactly sure what was making me anxious or afraid, but I had to meditate all the time. My sister is a doctor who ended up with long-haul COVID and she was telling me she was pretty sure it messes with the autonomic nervous system somehow. When she said this I had been reading about Polyvagal Theory and was trying to be more mindful of my autonomic state.


I need to explain what the “nanoparticles” are, because my next door neighbor was totally brainwashed by conservative propaganda. It is possible to make fake cells using fatty acids. We call these micelles. They are “fake” because they don’t have any cellular machinery like mitochondria, ribosomes, or golgi apparati, so eventually they will just degrade. With the fake cells, it is possible to insert different augmented cellular components and see how it affects the concentration of various things inside and outside the micelle. Essentially, the mRNA in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are packaged in these micelles. The lipids they used in the micelles for the vaccines were man-made, and not a lot of testing has been done on them. I am wondering if some of the symptoms I had from vaccination were actually from those man-made lipids because I am sensitive to oxidizable lipids. There shouldn’t have been that many, though. It really puzzles me how such a tiny amount of something could make me feel so crappy. But anyway, these lipids do end up being eliminated through the liver completely after 40-60 days.


Anyway, I’m really thankful for the vaccines. I read the paper the European Medicines Agency prepared for approval of the Pfizer vaccine, and it’s nothing short of miraculous that it came together the way it did. I do hope we do not use this as an excuse to discontinue research on other methods of prevention, because the virus is surprisingly small and elegant, and it has given us a good model to work with which might benefit our approach to other infectious disease. It’s pretty clear that at least in the case of COVID, mitochondrial support is critical. I think if more people understood what this was, our population might actually become healthier overall, and we may be less susceptible to infectious disease.


The whole reason we have vaccination is to protect the weakest among us. But what if it’s not doing that? What if it is doing further harm to certain people, overall? We really need some alternatives, and we need to be more understanding about people’s concern about consent. Neurological illness is life altering. I have seen people use vaccination as an excuse to behave fairly recklessly, specifically around the flu season. In Asia, it is customary to wear masks when one is not feeling well, and it’s not cool to show up to gatherings sick. But people here have a runny nose and write it off as allergies, because we’re too proud to admit we may have gotten a virus. This strange American ethos we have around hiding our weaknesses, casting blame, and failing to listen when others are hurting is just going to perpetuate divisiveness.

Reconciling Materialism

Everything is weird. It's strange to see so many people panicking about having to live the way my family and I have been living anyway. It's not without its challenges, sure. Coexisting in a home can be difficult at times, and sharing the workload is one of the major challenges. My own generation has some odd issues in that regard. We grew up in bedroom communities - in houses which were largely vacant during the workweek, so it's hard for us modern folks to know how to relate to our families during that time. It's one of the challenges families face when they first begin to homeschool.

I remember when growing up, we were all tired in the evenings. My dad had a job he really enjoyed, thankfully, but my mom worked for the school district and as terribly underpaid office staff, a person who had to interface with "the public." I had a lot of homework, but not the amount the kids have now. As my sister and I grew older, it was difficult to feel the togetherness we had as a family when we were younger. We all became a lot more independent, and so to foster togetherness, and take some pressure off my mom, we ate out a lot. We had a small kitchen, so it wasn't practical for everyone to help cook. But if we went to a restaurant, we could talk about what was happening in our lives as a family and reconnect somewhat.

We weren't big vacationers in my family when I was growing up. I know people now who fill every single federal holiday and school vacation with exotic trips, and I think about how hard they work to earn money to maintain a home that they never really want to be in. Maybe these people will be finding out right now, during quarantine, why they haven't wanted to be in their homes. Hopefully they are really little reasons that can be addressed easily!

I confess, I did my fair share of running around, until the Universe put a halt to it. I got sick from it! I actually needed to stay at home to get better. And in that time, I was able to gain a new appreciation for the home I had made, and care for it and myself better.

Our house is probably too big. When I was looking for it, I was looking for a home in our budget that would provide space for solitude for each family member, and also space for creation. I didn't want the yard to be too big, but we wanted privacy. The yard we have isn't too big, and grass is relatively easy to care for, but mowing in general is a waste of resources. I feel like I actually chose pretty well, even though because we have all this space, I have the tendency to forget what we already have and hoard things. So, after I rested and recovered enough last summer, I started tackling my overabundance of stuff. Over time, as I went through the various rooms in my house, I realized that I was essentially reconciling my relationship to the material world.

My mom was raised by her grandmother, who was born in 1901 and lived through The Great Depression. My impression of my mother's childhood is that she didn't have a lot. Her "mom" was a bookbinder, and her "dad" was a house painter (there were a couple house painters in the family, actually). When she has spoken of this time, she tells me that she did not have her own bedroom. She slept on a convertible sofa in the living room. I know at one point, she had a turtle named Tippy, and she also had a small teddy bear, and she has also mentioned quite a few times that she had a Toni doll, which she would sew clothes for. Sewing was an important part of her childhood - a skill she learned from her great-grandmother, who was a constant presence. It sounds like it was a pretty simple, non-dramatic childhood, and they didn't have an overabundance of things. They never owned their home.

My dad's parents were born in the 1910's, so they also lived through The Great Depression. I get the sense that his family had a lot of ingenuity. His father spent time as a brick layer, an electrician, and a house painter, depending on the era. I don't know if he had his own bedroom or if he had many toys. I am sure they had a lot of tools around, and I know my Mom's dad did, too, because we inherited a lot of them. My dad said he spent a lot of time at the library. His parents actually did purchase a house, and it sounds like it may have been pretty large for the time, but was in a small town with not a lot of work, so his father was away quite a bit.

So all of that is to say that sewing and tools have always had importance in my mind, and that making things, without some of the difficulties I had growing up in our smaller inner city home, was important to me when I was purchasing this house. The kinds of things I collected in abundance over the years were largely books and art supplies, and I was a bit of a clothes horse because my weight can change so drastically. There's too much stuff in the kitchen, and a lot of that was gifted to us.

I have a hard time throwing broken things away, because I imagine some day I might make something with them. When life isn't going at the speed of light, sometimes we even fix things! Some people might see this as a problem, but what with all this apocalypse stuff, I'm seeing a lot of my trash as treasure, again.

When I was growing up, the spaces we had for making things were the partially unfinished basement where my mother keeps her kiln and wheel for throwing pottery, the small area at the end of the basement stairs where she keeps the sewing machine, and the small one-car detached garage which back in the day was storage for a lot of things that might otherwise walk off in an urban setting. That meant that some of my dad's projects were done in places my mother really didn't like, but they were usually projects that were improving our lives somehow, so she learned to deal with it, and now he has an old wooden picnic bench he can work on and a clean garage.

Our accommodations for making things in my house are a lot more elaborate, and we still don't use them as we could, because up until now, we always had too much stuff, and not enough time.

*****

I don't really know where all the time went. I spend a lot of time wondering about that, actually.

I'm currently smack dab in the middle of my 40's, and something kind of frustrating is happening. I am losing a lot of days to hormonal issues, and my doctors haven't been a lot of help. In retrospect, I think this has been going on for quite a while, but because I was so socially active and had lots of distractions, I didn't see it. When one's life gets pared down to its basic components, suddenly, one becomes acutely aware of how one is feeling.

Take, for example, the certainty I felt that I was coming down with coronavirus the other day. Saturday, I started getting a headache, and then by the evening, body aches had set in. And then I got a sore throat and felt feverish. In the past, I have described how I feel around ovulation and the end of my menstrual cycle like I am getting the flu. Also, I have allergies to some things that are popular to grow in Colorado yards, and it's that time of year again. I have been largely home bound for quite a while, and frankly haven't been exposed to many people. None in the last two weeks, from the onset of my symptoms, in fact. Everyone else in our house seems okay so far.

My hormonal symptoms can vary a lot, and when we're not in the midst of an apocalypse, I have a pretty good handle on them. During my isolation, I was actually able to figure out some significant factors which make them worse. Stress is a big factor. I have PTSD and a brain injury, so sometimes little things can stress me out, particularly if I am dealing with other larger stressors not under my control. And, I generated a whole bunch of karma by getting married and having children, so larger stressors not under my control are occasionally a part of my life.

Right now, there's obviously a lot more stressors. We all have a lot more stressors, now! As if there weren't enough before! Right now my family is trying to stretch our food further, and that causes metabolic stress. It's harder to think straight, which means it is harder to feel confident. I'm having to learn new ways just to go to the toilet because of the "toilet paperpocalypse." I'm having to get more creative with feeding us. For example, I knew people would balk if I fed us tuna sandwiches again, so I cut up the dregs of the celery and rescued a turning cucumber to make a tuna salad instead, and served it with toast points and some fruit that really needed to be eaten the day before. Ordinarily I am not good at catching food before it is too far gone. But when I was growing up, we ate a lot of stuff that was "going bad," because since we ate out at restaurants so much, it was a thing that was always happening somewhere in the refrigerator.

I do cut the mold off cheese, and apparently my daughter did not know that this is okay. A lot of things I have done over the years in the name of sustainability, I didn't make obvious to the kids, so this is going to be a real learning experience for them.

On the financial front, it has been a little scary. Our revenue stream comes from Southeast Asia. But our customers went to a work from home model, suspended travel early on, and have otherwise encouraged their employees to be safe, so that is encouraging. My partner was supposed to travel, but that got canceled, which was a great relief to him and us.

This situation is easier for one kid than it is for the other. My son had been attending a local University, but was struggling with his health because of the food on campus. So we had already discussed with the University what we could do if for some reason he couldn't live on campus anymore, before this whole coronavirus thing happened. And now all 30,000 students can finish the semester online, anyway! So now he's having to do college amidst all the distractions we have here, but he has some practice with that because he already has his Associate's Degree.

My daughter, however, has been sitting tight for a long time while my son was getting his 2 year degree, and was ready to start taking classes this summer. She was ready to not be at home all the time, so I really feel for her. We were hoping she could get out and meet some new people. That's what you're supposed to do as a young person, right?

Other than my health issues and trying to keep the house supplied with whatever we might need, my biggest challenge is our insurance. It is a policy I found before the Affordable Care Act, which got grandfathered in. I kept it for a long time because although it is high deductible, the deductible for a single person is the same deductible as for the family, and after that, 100% is covered. The only hitch is that mail order prescriptions aren't covered, which I felt was an okay compromise when I chose the plan, but during this pandemic it is proving to be a real hassle. I would really like to be able to get my prescriptions by mail right now, or at least only have to go to the pharmacy once every 90 days, rather than once every 30 days. When I call my insurance company, the person I talk to on the phone is just the messenger, not the person in control of the terms of my policy. At least they decided to cover COVID-19 testing.

Sometimes I wonder if it would be better if we made a lot less money so that we could have socialized medicine, because my friends who are less economically privileged have a lot less stress about seeing the doctor than we do. A doctor's visit used to cost us $172USD, without any tests or prescriptions. We don't get compensated for benefits like a traditional employee does, so there's no Social Security, disability, health insurance, pension or 401k matching. We do have an odd situation where we get time off, but that's been really difficult to quantify and use effectively the way the arrangement works. I read somewhere that these benefits are about $40,000USD per year, so if we actually purchased these things ourselves, it would be like we made $40,000USD less. Our health insurance cost actually went up a lot last year, despite the fact that we have avoided going to the doctor for many years, and the plan hasn't improved.

What this means is that I had an exceptional amount of pressure on me as a mother to also be a healer, and that we also have to take extra care not to get injured in order to save us money, so that maybe, someday, we can retire. Talk about stress! This takes a lot more time than one would think, especially in this day and age, because one has to be fully educated about the risks to health that exist in every day life. This cuts into my time and energy for creativity and friendship.

*****

There's a great article in the Atlantic, written by Rebecca J. Rosen, Money-Rich and Time-Poor: Life in Two-Income Households covering a 2015 Pew Study of division of labor in families with children. My very favorite part is the end where she references a 2013 article about tranquilizer use in the 1950's by housewives, which has been taken down, but can still be accessed using The Way Back Machine. I find it particularly interesting, given my observation early in parenting that most of my stay-at-home mom counterparts were on some sort of antidepressant, and I have struggled with depression off and on for most of my life, and more recently, anxiety. Betty Friedan wrote about educated women who lost their minds in the 1950's while trying to stay at home in her epic work The Feminine Mystique, which was quite eye-opening.

But anyway, along the lines of Rosen's article, it became pretty apparent to me early on that my role as a stay-at-home parent was to essentially "patch holes in the ship." The special benefit of me staying at home was saving us both time, and money. Over the years, through observation, I became more aware of where the biggest holes were. They were medical costs, car repairs, and overdone birthdays and holidays. (Should it cost $500USD to barbecue for extended family at a child's party? This happened more than once). Beyond that, we got a lot of our furniture used, and don't remodel or move much, and that saved a tremendous amount of money. We never got involved in club sports, and for many years didn't use much in the way of cosmetics, so that saved more money. I cut the boys' hair for many years, until I decided I wanted a break and that it would be good for my son to get used to someone else touching his hair, because we were so isolated from the touch of others. For a little while I made my own cleaning products from things like baking soda, borax, vinegar, club soda, and "natural" liquid soaps, and used simple alternatives for things like shampoo (baking soda wash, vinegar rinse) and lotion (coconut oil).

Elizabeth Warren made a compelling argument for single income households, or at the very least basing a family's spending on just one income rather than two, so that if there is job loss, the effects are less disastrous. While my income after staying at home for 18 years may never approach that of my husband, we have tried to live such that if I had to go to work, I could make enough to support us, albeit more meagerly. At this point, if we sold our newer car and got a roommate, I feel like we could weather whatever happens to the US economically with mindful use of our resources. We all have marketable talents, too.

I am not a coupon clipper. I feel like coupons are inhumane, and I don't like to play inhumane games with my intellect. I feel like couponing in general has a sexist history, and is used to market products to people (specifically women) which may not even be good for them. I feel like wealthy people who play into the game are hurting us all, to boot, by creating demand for things there might not otherwise be demand for. Coupons, in my mind, feed the green-eyed monster.

Someone may have asked me once if I was a prepper. I really was just trying to get the best bang for my buck, so I bought things like grain in bulk, and even used to have a grain mill, until I discovered that I have big problems with whole wheat (not celiac). I gardened for a few years, but had a lot of frustrations with it, and ultimately decided that for the number of calories I was expending on the garden, I wasn't getting enough in return. In the face of this pandemic, I am re-evaluating that, and am considering planting more root vegetables for their nutrient and caloric content, as well as their ease of storage.

The only low-calorie things I am considering gardening are peppers (because I have had tremendously good luck growing them hydroponically) and herbs, because they make everything taste better. If I plant squash, there is a good chance I may be murdered in my sleep, but I haven't had good luck with these anyway, and I suspect there will be an overabundance, as there always is, on both the COVID-19 and non-COVID-19 local gardening trade markets, since gardeners in general seem to plant way more of this awful stuff than they actually want to eat. Okay, I don't think it's that awful, especially if it is in a nice muffin. But weeks on end of sauteed squash at the hottest part of the year is... yeah. No thanks. That's one of the things I would like to leave behind on the Old Earth.

There is just a lot about domesticity that feels kind of hellish to me, like a never-ending Groundhog Day. I really don't know how some people do it.

*****

A wonderful article by Dr. Raymond Peat about the Dark Side of Stress and learned helplessness, offers a timeless look at how forced boredom and busyness affects us on a neurobiological level. It is an argument for enriched environments and autonomy, and I feel, important in the context of the above discussion on the frustrations of being a stay-at-home parent, but also existing, as we all do, in an increasingly institutionalized society. An excerpt:

"Geneticists used to say that 'genes determine our limits,' but this experiment shows that an environment can provide both limitations and opportunities for expanding the inherited potential. If our environment restricts our choices, our becoming human is thwarted, the way rats' potentials weren't discovered when they were kept in the standard little laboratory boxes. An opportunity to be complexly involved in a complex environment lets us become more of what we are, more humanly differentiated."

Besides collecting a lot of books, art supplies and tools, we also collected a lot of media over the years. We got the game consoles, and many of the games for both those consoles, and the PC. I collected a small number of our favorite movies, too. There is always something to do. Despite having collected many books, I haven't read a lot of them. In my mind, it's a really luscious collection, a complex environment of its own. When I was growing up, the most interesting people I knew were makers who had cluttered environments. I have trouble relating to people who don't read and who aren't interested in creating things. It seems like discussions with these people tend to circle around discussing purchases and politics, and I prefer a different kind of show and tell.

Relating this back to being stuck at home and the use of substances, I'd like to bring up the work of Bruce K. Alexander who did the famous "Rat Park" experiments on addiction. For those not familiar with his work, he also raised animals in either standard laboratory conditions or enriched environments, and found that animals raised in enriched environments were much less likely to self-administer addictive substances. For those who like cartoons, here is the famous cartoon explanation of his work.

As a side note, the majority of animals used in experiments for behavioral and medical studies are not in enriched environments, so the validity of such studies as they apply to a human being with free will is debatable. They may be more applicable to potatoes.

Anyway, the whole point of this is that staying home with kids, or even being stuck at home can be a real challenge for mental health if our environments are too sterile. So moms, you might want to take that Real Simple magazine with a grain of salt, and embrace a little weird.

#metoo

I was just barely 16 when it happened. For the last 27 years, I have gone back and forth between wondering if he had been a stranger, taking me at knife point, would the experience have been less traumatic? Maybe then, the effects would have been limited to just being afraid to walk alone at night. But this was someone I knew - who I thought I knew well. He was the first person I felt safe opening up to about my childhood trauma. He was 19 and was volunteering by helping our creative problem-solving team, so we stayed up late many nights, building things together, talking about all manner of things. I was attracted to him, but never imagined he felt that way about me. So when my friends warned me about him, I did not listen.

There was, in my mind, no reason he would think of me like that. Certainly not, because my ballet teacher had shamed me when I was 5 or 6 years old for my abdomen, which stuck out much more than the other girls'. Certainly not, because in elementary school, several boys called me "Amy McBunnyfreak" for my large incisors and love of rabbits. Certainly not, because my close friend's mother had expressed concern for her daughter's weight when we were in middle school, and I was even heavier. Certainly not, because that one guy in middle school called me fat in front of my peers. Certainly not, because just the year before, in dance class at school, a classmate had asked me if I was pregnant. Certainly not, because I was one of the only girls in my high school with braces and glasses.

I have wondered, over the years, if he knew the full effects of what he did, because I was not the only one. He liked virgins. Someone told me there were 14 before me. I knew two of them. Did he get to know the soul of every girl before he degraded and discarded her? Did all of them say "no" like I did, under the influence of alcohol, and unable to defend herself? Did he prey on the ones with insecurities?

*****

I remember the day when the #metoo movement started. I remember thinking that it was great that women were finally speaking up, and also thankful that I had left social media, because I didn't have to concern myself with solidarity over an issue that was still actively eating me on the inside. A few months later, I would tell the only male friend I have had in twenty-five years, in the context of a discussion about the movement. It was terrifying being this vulnerable, even though it only took a minute. I am sure I was shaking.

The details I shared of my life with this guy - my hopes and dreams - my personal struggles - I had never shared with anyone before. So, when he used me for whatever validation he was looking for, and then discarded me - the effect was that I felt fundamentally broken. Fundamentally unlovable. Fundamentally worthless.

*****

Last week my husband was walking alone in the park by our neighborhood at dusk. He came home sad and upset that two women he encountered on his walk were clearly uncomfortable when he passed them. One had stepped off the path to dial on her phone, keeping a close eye on him. The other stepped well off the path with her dog and watched my husband pass. For years, my male doctors kept suggesting that I walk several times a week not just to lose weight, but also combat depression. It took a hypertensive crisis on January 11, 2017 to get me to face Fear of Walking Alone Dragon. Two weeks later, I began attending community college with my son, and so I felt safe walking around campus by myself when he was in class.

I still had trouble wanting to walk around my own neighborhood - one I chose for the safe feeling it gave me - by myself. So, I started walking regularly with a girlfriend. One day, I thanked her for walking with me, sharing that I realized I was afraid to walk alone because of several things I witnessed over the course of my life.

The worst of these was when I was 17 years old. I was fueling up my pickup truck at the Conoco station a few blocks away from my house when a homeless man offered to wash the windows on my truck. Well, he didn't so much offer as he started to actually wash them. I told him, "No, thank you," but he continued. I barely had money for gas, let alone money to pay him for washing my window.

"Leave her alone!" I suddenly heard. I looked up from the pump and saw another man, pointing a gun at the window washer. A gun. I can't remember if I paid for the gas or not, honestly. I got in my truck and drove down Colfax a few blocks, where I knew I would find a police officer. He immediately called dispatch and left for the Conoco station, so I don't know what happened after that.

That was the closest call, but I also witnessed two assaults from the front windows of my homes - one as a teenager, and another as a young mother when I first moved back to Colorado. For some reason, people yell when I'm walking, even if I am with my husband. Maybe it is not at me (although it has happened enough when I am all alone, I always wonder).

So, just walking alone feels like an act of bravery to me. This fear has impacted both my physical and mental health in a profound way.

It was interesting, last weekend, seeing my husband finally "get" how it is to walk through the world in fear. As a woman.

"Are women just always afraid?" He asked.

"Yes," I said. "I am, anyway."

After a few months of walking on campus, I felt confident enough to walk around a nearby sculpture park while my son was at class in Windsor. I walked there weekly on Sundays. Sometimes I would call my friend on the phone while I walked, and other times I would enjoy the sound of nature. One week, I became aware that there was a man walking fifteen to twenty feet behind me. I tried to walk faster to stay ahead, but quickly realized that I couldn't keep his pace. We were in an area with no other people, and no cars. If I could just keep up the pace until the trail came out onto the main road, I would be okay. There would at least be witnesses, I thought. I walked on the main road, passing two women and their children taking photos on the bridge. I rushed through their picture, apologizing. Then, I got to a fork in the road where I could either turn to continue the trail loop, or stay on the sidewalk along the road. I looked over my shoulder.

"I'm not following you," the man, who was now only about 10 feet away, said.

"Oh," I said, feeling like a tremendous idiot. "Sorry - past life experiences!" I shrugged. My mind was swimming. What if that man had been my son?

Or my husband.

Neither one would intentionally hurt a woman, I am sure of it. They are both acutely aware of the extent of the damage done to women by men.

So, for years, I have avoided men as much as possible. It's not hard, really, being a stay at home mom. Exposure to men occurs so much less - the ones I see with any frequency are my friends' husbands, and ones in a professional capacity (doctors, dentists, mechanics, store clerks).

For some reason, I didn't worry about older men. If they looked like my grandfather, and worked with lots of people physically every day, certainly they must be safe, right?

*****

I have gained and lost weight over the years like the tides. The first time I lost a lot of weight was through walking and counting calories, over the course of about two years from 1998-2000. Then I became a mother. I then slimmed down again through breastfeeding from 2004-2006. The weight came back as I threw myself into cooking nourishing meals for my children, and so in 2009 I lost it all again with a regimented exercise program and a low-carb diet. The weight came off so fast that my hair was falling out, and an extreme depression set in, so I added back carbohydrates in order to heal, and in the process, got up to my highest weight ever.

This time, I decided, I would take a moderate approach. The word "sustainable" became the cornerstone of my health routine. It has been challenging, where I live (everyone is on a diet and belongs to a gym, it seems), to dig my heels in and defend my sustainable approach. If I am tired from not enough food, lack of sleep, injury, too much drama, or because I am getting sick, I take a break from exercise. I try to walk 3-6 times a week, getting at least 6000 steps a day. Six thousand isn't very many, but it's enough that I have to put some shoes on and get out of the house.

I think often of my female ancestors who didn't have gym memberships, knew nothing of intermittent fasting, and lived to be at least 80 years old, despite exposure to significant lifetime stress and lots of second-hand cigarette smoke. They weren't concerned with what their long lost acquaintances from high school were thinking.

After my moderate routine was fairly well established (it is difficult to maintain over the holidays and the hottest months of the year), I found a physical trainer to give me a routine.

I chose my trainer specifically because I knew she and I would see eye to eye on nutritional requirements, but also I knew that she was not in the business of getting people "jacked" but trying to help people heal. Still, though, I expected she would give me a routine that would keep me busy while my son was in class, so I could use the rec center. What she gave me was so sustainable, it was ridiculous. The first time I did my exercise routine at school, it took me 45 minutes to change into my clothes, do the routine, add interval training, shower, and get dressed again. So, I decided to just do it at home, to make it a lifelong habit.

The struggle here has just been eating enough, and getting the right food, and feeling strong enough to do the very simple routine. Last spring, I made the mistake of pushing myself to do it when I was frustrated about something, and I hurt my shoulder, badly, trying to work out some stress.

My personal trainer helped me deal with the shoulder pain using some energy healing and hypnotherapy, but it was stubborn and kept coming back. So I went to see my chiropractor, who I hadn't seen in years.

This is when I would learn that even Grandpa sometimes isn't safe.

*****

I thought I was asking a professional question when I inquired if the size of my chest could be causing the shoulder and neck pain I was experiencing. I mean, he's a doctor, right? The weight had melted off the rest of me, leaving my breasts larger than they had ever been, so it seemed like a reasonable question.

The conversation got weird, fast.

He started talking about his own chest, and the chests of his friends. He asked me if I was thinking about getting a breast reduction.

And then, he sat down beside me and put his hand on my upper thigh.

"What?" I thought. "Is this really happening? This isn't happening. It's all in my head."

*****

A female friend recently talked to me about responding versus reacting. I had never really thought about the difference between these two things, because I realized I do neither. I realized, when she was explaining the concept to me that, "Oh, I am a freezer."

"A freezer?" she asked.

"Yes, a freezer. I do nothing." I explained.

In talking to other women about what happened with my chiropractor, they were all surprised that I did not do anything. But this response, or lack thereof, is common for survivors of abuse, I learned. Furthermore, the personal and private nature of most abuse makes survivors end up questioning their sense of reality. I now see a therapist at least once a week so I can tell her about my life, what happened, and how I responded, in large part because some of the things that have happened to me are so unbelievable I worry that it is all in my head. That's why they call it "crazy making."

In the months since this has happened, I realize how my silence over the years has enabled abusive relationships on many levels. And, thanks to therapy, and witnesses, I know I'm not imagining these things.

I looked at my silence as a way to remain easygoing and likeable. Maybe, on some level, it helped me feel lovable, at least consciously. But I wasn't loving myself, so I really wasn't lovable.

*****

The Universe is funny. Sick funny, I think, but still wise and wonderful. One of the ways I have been able to work through this tremendous pain, and still accomplish anything, is by being a life-long learner, and looking for lessons in my experiences.

When I was born, my mother was sure I was going to be a boy. She knew that she would name me "George" after my two grandfathers, George Graves, and George Robert McMullen. I always felt like I had escaped a fate worse than death since I didn't like the name George. But now I see how I have a little bit of St. George in me, and it probably would have been a great name for me, had I been male.

So many times in my life I have had the sensation that in following my intuition, questioning the status quo, I have been both foolish and brave. When this happens, I feel both exhilaration, and terror.

Writing this is one of those times.

*****

The last two years have been the most psychologically difficult in my life so far. One of the things I learned during my homeschooling years is that keeping busy helping others is a way for me to avoid facing my Dragons. Since my inner St. George actually loves the business of slaying Dragons, I am really good and finding unsuspecting Dragons to slay.

But when I finally slowed down a few years ago and had to be content just being for a while, the Dragons got a lot bigger, and a lot scarier. Like this #metoo Dragon.

Several situations, all at once, would force me to look at how focusing on pleasing everyone else was robbing me of my self worth. I made the decision to speak up. I spoke up for my kids, so they could see how to advocate for themselves. And, over time, I finally started speaking up for me.

I lost several friends, with whom I had abusive relationships. In trying to please these people, I gave them all the power in the relationship. There was a common thread - if they needed my help, they were aggressive and even forceful in their use of my time, which I enabled. But when I needed reciprocity, they were nowhere to be found. The relationships were slowly eroding my sense of self worth. My own needs were unimportant, it seemed, because their problems were worse, and I was not even deserving of an answer when I would reach out for connection.

I have thought, "I should have been voted most likely to be ghosted when I was in high school."

It was just a pattern, right? Sharing myself completely with someone, and then being ignored. Actively ignored. Avoided. Sometimes silence can be violent.

In these friendships, I constantly felt like that fly in the blue guy's soup on Sesame Street. An annoyance to the blue guy, and to Grover (the most lovable monster - who wants to annoy the most lovable monster?), and to the kitchen staff, and even to the contents of the soup, which were going to be wasted.

When I feel like that, I know it's time to speak up and let go, and that that is also an act of love, because letting people behave in abusive ways without speaking up lets them continue behaviors that absolutely make them hard to love, and make it harder for them to love themselves. Life is full of difficult discussions. I think it's important to have them.

*****

I developed early, so the comments about my breasts also started early. My middle name is Elizabeth, after my biological great-grandmother who raised my grandmother and mother after her husband committed suicide during a very long battle with tuberculosis during the depression. Adah was a gentle-hearted woman, standing not even 5 feet tall, with a generous chest. Her mother, Edith, for whom my sister was named, was slender and tall. My sister and I resemble our respective namesakes.

In high school, my sister was popular, always had a boyfriend, and a very close-knit group of friends.

I kept myself busy with clubs and after school activities, on the periphery of the various groups. I had one close friend from most groups, and was rarely invited to things, unless a friend needed a sober driver.

I was Miss Congeniality. For real. I participated in a pageant in high school and won Miss Congeniality.

So it is interesting to me that the majority of my body image issues have nothing to do with my relationship to men, and everything to do with my relationship to women. Being around women all the time for the last 12 years has done a real number on my self-worth.

Why?

Because, I swear, women hate their bodies. It is almost impossible to spend time with a woman socially without her complaining about how she has recently gained weight, or how she is bloated because it is her "time of the month." Discussions of what constitutes healthy and not healthy food is always a favorite subject. I have been very careful about what I say about myself around my daughter because I do not want her to have the same insecurities I do. But I have two family members who would regularly discuss dieting, juice fasting, and one of them even refused to eat anything but celery for a whole weekend while visiting. I was always nervous that my daughter was in earshot, and I worried that she would pick up their insecurities and hold herself to some ridiculous standard the way they did. They are both thinner than I am by several sizes, and so when that was going on regularly, it was nearly impossible for me to come away from being with them without totally hating myself, because in my mind, they were way more beautiful than I was.

Here is the really disturbing thing. Like I mentioned before, I am used to being ghosted, being treated like I am invisible. I mean, who wants to spend time with a pathetic SAHM who doesn't know how to have a good time? Everyone clearly wants a MILF! During the times when I lost weight, the craziest things happened. People I had known for a long time didn't recognize me. Certain people seemed intimidated. They called me beautiful. They wanted to know what I was doing to lose the weight. The cashier at NAPA hit on me when I was buying washer blades. The tire guy flirted with me. Women were kinder than usual. The tour guide in Prague suggested a kinky rendezvous under his breath. A guy bought our couple friends and us several rounds of drinks, while going on and on about my dimples in front of my husband. An older man in Australia in a bar went to a liquor store and brought me back a bottle of wine from his home town. I hadn't even exchanged words with him. Everyone was flirting with me, telling me how nice I looked. It was weird, because I was the same person on the inside. I can see how if one was accustomed to this treatment, it could be quite confusing if the treatment suddenly stopped. For me, all the attention made me confused, and a little sad. That is the hardest thing to accept about life, I feel - that ultimately people subconsciously treat you in proportion to how beautiful they think you are, and could care less about who you are on the inside.

And so we do this to ourselves - judge ourselves by our outward appearances, rather than by loving our whole selves. It is a terrible shame.

*****

So, to deal with the burning junkyard of existential crises in my mind (thank you, dragons, for setting everything on fire), and also my screwed up shoulder, I turned to contemplative yoga and meditation.

Soft woolen blankets, Indian meditation music, and my instructor's soft voice would help my soul, breath, and body finally relax. For a while.

My instructor looked at my website and decided to ask me if I would do line drawings of the yoga poses for her. I was flattered, and it seemed like an easy task.

We got together before meditation class to take photos of the poses. I thought maybe she would do the poses, but when we got there, she was wearing her baggy pants, and my fear was confirmed when she asked me to set up in shavasana.

"I must not look that bad." I thought.

Later in the week, she sent the pictures, and I was mortified. Mortified.

I was laying there, spandex-clad, little left to the imagination. None left to mine, that's for sure.

"I cannot do this." I thought. "No way. Is this a test? This must be a test. She must know. She's a guru. She wants me to push through this pain and fear." She probably had no idea.

Several other really difficult things happened that week when I was bloated and needed to be alone. The week before, I had been contacted about the acceptance of some of my writing into a book, but the pain of having to face the reality of pictures of my body in spandex, and several other intense psychological developments overshadowed any joy that brought. As the moon became fuller, the shadows took over my mind.

The funny (not funny) thing about mental health issues is the tremendous amount of guilt associated with just having those issues. Anything hurtful I have ever done has been at a time when my Dragons have hold of me somehow. Those Dragons - Fear of Failure, Fear of Rejection - tend to rear their heads when I haven't been taking care of myself. They really like to come out and play at the end of my menstrual cycle when I need most to care for myself. Because I am a caregiver, I desperately need this time to be alone. Maybe if I had a red tent tribe to sit around with, eat ice cream, and watch sappy movies with, I wouldn't need to be alone. Being alone allows me to have a little heart-to-heart with the dragons. It helps me to accept they are there, and that they are not all of me. If I don't get time alone, the worst dragon of all comes out, Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids. This one is the worst because it tells me that my mere existence is screwing them up. When Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids comes out, I know that I am in the state I call Not Fit for Public Viewing.

Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids Dragon is much, much less likely to come out to play if I have been doing things that make my heart happy. When the Obligation Meter is near full, and the Satisfying Experiences meter is low, Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids is ready to burn the whole house down. Feeling rejection while simultaneously having committed oneself to drawing pictures of one's own body falls squarely under Full Obligation Meter territory. So, I did not handle extended family obligations on top of all that very well. Lets' just say that Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids Dragon was like, "Let's do this thang! You have some kerosene, right?"

So, instead, I sat with Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids Dragon, and we had a little heart to heart about how whenever it shows up, when I win, I am stronger for my efforts. Ultimately, I feel tremendous guilt for bringing kids into a fundamentally screwed up world where they will be judged for their looks and used for their kindness, and think how great it would be to clock out, but then realize that each second here is a damn gift, and that with the great pain is always great joy. And I have so much left to learn. I locked myself in the guest bedroom for a whole day and studied something new, spent lots of time laying on the sofa in the quiet, and also meditated. When I felt strong enough, I worked on some art. I know, when I can bring myself to work on some art, that everything is going to be better.

*****

Having vanquished Fear of Permanently Screwing Up My Kids Dragon again (thankfully its arrival is not a regular thing, since I keep a close eye on the Obligation and Satisfying Experiences meters), perspective fully restored, Fear of Rejection and Fear of Failure Dragons were way easier fights.

"How do you eat an elephant?" a friend once asked me. "One bite at a time."

Humor often helps me feel a little braver, so I thought of something funny to draw to help myself feel better. A yoga hippo. I drew it in my head, doing warrior pose. It made me happy. I imagined Martha from the children's books George and Martha, doing yoga.

Then, I realized, a line drawing abstraction like what my instructor wanted was not going to give away too much. I just had to open the files again in my art program, swallow my pride, and start.

I told a few good friends what I had to do, and they responded in ways that let me know it would be very difficult for them to do. I am pretty sure they aren't survivors of sexual assault, but I know most of them have body image issues of some kind. One friend asked me, "So, what are you going to do?" And I said, "Well, I am going to have a good stiff drink and get to it."

So that's what I did. And, most importantly, I breathed.

It was terrifying. Every step of it from opening the file, to selecting the tool I was going to use, to tracing the first curve of my body. This body, that gave life to two people. This body that has known both pleasure, and pain, and nearly died twice.

But with each line I drew, I saw a beautiful me. I saw the peaceful me, who loves herself, who cares and feels deeply. I saw the me who will drop everything to be there for a friend when that friend is experiencing pain. I saw an Empress, The Divine Feminine, in myself. I was a freakin' Fertility
Goddess. Take that, Fear of Failure and Fear of Rejection!

I realized that the rejection, the ghosting, and the abuse I experienced over the course of my life are not a reflection of who I am. They are a result of the insecurities of others - those behaviors are how other people protect themselves from rejection, ghosting and abuse. It's a power play, an act of self-protection, for them, and they don't realize how it propagates that same behavior through society. And, I saw that the way to break that cycle is to learn to love myself. Loving myself makes it easier to let go so I don't fall into the same behavior pattern.

As long as a person is actively trying to better him or herself, in the attempt at self-love, I can forgive them for mistakes of all sorts. But if the relationship is like Einstein's definition of insanity (doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results), then I have to honor myself. Otherwise, it is just a dragon-feeding exercise.

And I'm here to slay dragons, not feed them.

That's what makes me worth it. That's what makes me lovable.

#metoo

Namaste.