Lamaze Fun

I'm at the Lamaze Conference in Kentucky and am having a BLAST! I'm sharing a room with my two best buddies and my sort of boss from one of the hospitals I sort of work at. I got to see Orgasmic Birth last night and tonight we watched Pregnant in America. I am loving being around like-minded women. Two more days of birth-love bliss!

Child Care

I have spent the last 4 hours searching for child care. I should mention that 3 of those 4 hours I spent reading ads on two different sites and clicking on profiles only to find out that I have to pay almost $100.00 to have access to the person's email address (and for only 30 days). Then I looked at different nanny agencies in Columbus, Ohio. Ha! One place wants a $500.00 application fee AND also charges $1000.00 after you sign a nanny. Dude, I just need someone who is kind and gentle to watch my kids 20 hours a week. No cooking (except maybe pouring milk into a bowel of cereal or buttering toast), no cleaning, no running errands, easy-breezy stuff. Why the hell does this have to be so freaking hard? And what the hell do people with even less money than us do for childcare?

ARRGG!!! I need to work to make money for childcare but I can't work because I have no childcare. Sigh. I know this will work its self out sooner or later...I'm hoping for sooner.

Hillary Clinton Supporters, WHAT ARE YOU THINKING?!?!?!?!

Really? Really?!?! You really are going to go from voting for HRC to McCain? And as if that isn't enough, you are in an ad telling others to do the same?!?!?! I hope your proud of that ad when Roe v. Wade is overturned. When your son (if you have one) is drafted to fight in more war. When you loose your job due to our economy. And don't give me that crap about holding Roe v. Wade over your head. I am sick of hearing HRC supporters say they are being held hostage by the DNC using the argument of Roe v. Wade. It isn't holding you hostage! It isn't holding it over your head! If McCain is the next POTUS, we've lost our right to choose! And with that, the last of our birthing rights will go down the drain too. This is a truth! This is a fact YOU HAVE TO FACE!!!!!!!

She lost. She did not run the best campaign. She assumed she would be the nominee and didn't really work to ensure it. What is that old saying about assuming things? You make an ass out of you and me? She didn't loose because sexism in the media; hell, they declared her the nominee in freaking 2006!* She didn't loose because of the DNC. She lost because she didn't plan on running a campaign after "Super Tuesday".

I'm sick of hearing about how they got the same amount of votes. NO THEY DIDN'T! In PRIMARIES they received the same number of votes. This does not include caucus states. Their individual votes aren't counted in the popular vote. And you CANNOT count MI and FL. Obama's name was not even on the ballot in MI. And while Hillary did "win" in MI, she received 55.23% of the vote. 40.07% of the vote went uncommitted. 238,168 people showed up just to vote AGAINST her (266,089 people if you count those who voted uncommitted and votes for Dodd, Kucinich, and Gravel). Not to mention the fact that Hillary herself said MI WOULD NOT COUNT! On New Hampshire Public Radio on October 11, 2008, HRC said "You know, it's clear, this election they're having is not going to count for anything."

I am angry and I am freaking scared to death that McCain could win this thing because of HRC supporters. Come on people, think about the reason you vote for the person you vote for!


*I am not saying that there was no sexism in the media, please understand this.

This one's for Lindsay (and anyone else who has thoughts on the matter)

OK, this is going to be a long one so grab some popcorn and a drink 'cause here we go!

On "Digital Scrapbook #8" Lindsay commented:

Do you think there is an order to Kasl's human value list? it is stated as "gender, race, class, position, religion, age, appearance, ethnic background, physical ability" i recently had a theory about this list and if they are treated equally or if some have more privilege than others and it was based on the outcome of the democratic presidential campaign.

Let me start by saying that I have not read all of Kasl's book. We read chapters from different books throughout the quarter. The list stated above is from chapter 3 "Is Addiction Inevitable? Patriarchy, Hierarchy, and Capitalism" in the book Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond the 12 Steps. Any quotes from Kasl in this post are from this chapter. Also, I'm just guessing and giving my point of view; I am not an expert on this subject by any means. Now that I've gotten my paranoid disclaimer out of the way, I can give my thoughts on the matter.

In terms of a certain order to Kasl's human value list, she has created an illustration of hierarchy and patriarchy in the United States. I don't have an image file for it so just know that it looks like a triangle and at the top is are white men with images implying power and authority. The men are separated from everyone else by a chain-link fence. Below the fence we see everyone else (I didn't type these in any particular order): the white wives of the men above the fence, athletes, criminals, divorce, singers, teachers, the elderly, gay and lesbian couples, single mothers, those on welfare, drug dealers, Native Americans, etc. Here is what she writes about the illustration (emphasis at the end is hers, not mine):

If we look at our illustration of hierarchy and patriarchy, we see people of different genders, ages, colors, races, classes, educations, or economic situations. To survive this system, all of them have been conditioned to lose, bury, or not develop parts of themselves. it could be their ability to love, cry, show tenderness, feel pain, express anger, experience their fear, be assertive, or pursue their personal hopes and dreams. The part that gets lost or buried or never developed depends on where they are in the hierarchy, their particular childhood circumstances, and their personal empowerment. This ties in with our discussions of the human energy system--chakras--that follows.
For example, the white males at the top get to set the rules, but are cut off from their sensitivity and love because they must blind themselves to the fact that they are living off the backs of the people below them. The people who live below the chain-link fence spend a lot of time figuring out the rules of the people who live above them because they have to survive in their world. Thus they may have insight into the workings of the people above them, but they may not have a lot of time left to understand themselves. And the ones on the very bottom are exhausted simply trying to survive. This hinders them from experiencing the luxury of self-exploration and personal growth.
When we have parts of ourselves buried or undeveloped, we feel out of harmony, empty, or off-center, and often experience a sense of alienation that results in an inner void fueling both compulsive and addictive behavior as well as codependency. Gotta fill up the emptiness, gotta get rid of the pain and desperation. Give me money, sex, drugs, food, status, a wife, a husband. We engage in compulsive or addictive behavior so we don't have to feel what's inside. Patriarchy/hierarchy maintains and perpetuates addictive and dependent behavior in order to cover up the incredible losses of self and separateness created by our system.

I type all of this out to show that there does seem to be an order to this list as it relates to addiction. Within the context of the primaries for the Democratic Primaries, I think there are a couple of ways of looking at a potential order to the list. Kasl stresses that "the motivating force behind the white men at the top is often fear of losing their control over others" (73). Keeping this in mind, here are my thoughts.

In her illustration, the image of "two Black adult men being admired by a little boy" is farther down in the hierarchy than any of the images representing middle or upper-middle class white women. For the image of Black men, Kasl says that "by the age of eight, this inner-city boy realizes that he is unlikely to have access to the mainstream United States privileges of education and respect, so he is finding his heroes. Who are they? The local drug dealers." (70). Because of Obama's race and his admitted issues with drugs, one could argue that he would be more oppressed. If he is able to climb over the chain-link fence, he might give other Black Americans the idea that they could too, thus threatening the status quo. On the flip side, because middle and upper-middle class, white women are closer to the chain link fence, they could be perceived as a bigger threat to the men above the fence. Some of these women are directly below the fence, specifically the wives of the men in power. Therefore, Clinton would face more opposition as she grew up as a white, middle class girl and she is also the wife of one of the men above the fence, making her the bigger threat.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am an Obama supporter and have been since the end of February. I started off as an Edwards supporter.

Before the primaries got underway, my only problem with Clinton was that, for a majority of my life (all but 7 years), there has been either a Bush or a Clinton in office. This just doesn't sit right with me. As the primaries started, I began to actually dislike Clinton. When I would listen to her or her supporters speak, I felt like she had a sense of entitlement; that the Presidency was somehow owed to her. The tactics she resorted to sickened me. I felt like she was willing to risk a Democrat loosing in November if it wasn't her name on the ballot. And I feel like her behavior and actions hurt women more then it helped advance us. But these are my issues with her. Do I think this is why she didn't win? Perhaps it played a role in it.

I don't think she ran her campaign as well as Obama did. Again, going back to the issue of entitlement, she was the presumptive nominee before a single ballot had been cast. She didn't campaign as much as she should have in the months running up to the first primaries because everyone figured it was in the bag. It seemed like her campaign didn't even have plan beyond February 5th (Super Tuesday).

In the end, the thing that bothered me the most was her insistence that, including Michigan and Florida, she had more popular votes than he did. The problem here is that the popular vote count doesn't include the caucus states, which mostly went for Obama. So, every vote should count, but only for states who hold primaries and not those who hold a caucus? And her including Florida and Michigan after she herself said their primaries shouldn't count? Of course this was when she thought it was in the bag, there was no question she was going to be the nominee.

This is not to say I think Obama is perfect, I don't. But he ran a very different campaign because no one assumed anything. And, perhaps because he didn't need to, I don't feel like he resorted to the type of dirty tactics that she did. He was certainly doing his fair share of mud slinging, but Clinton went several steps farther. In the end, Obama ran a better campaign.

Did she loose because of sexism in the media? No. I'm not saying the media wasn't sexist in some of its coverage, certainly there were sexist remarks made. Just as there were racist remarks made. But this same sexist media is the very same media that declared her the presumptive nominee months before the primaries started.

I think I'll end this here for now but I would love to hear what others think, regardless of if you agree with me or think I'm full of shit. I love talking politics!

When Doulaing, College and Motherhood Collide

Any one of these things on their own can be stressful. And when they collide into one another the results can be overwhelming. To make matters worse, I am a procrastinator. I try not to be, really I do. I try to look at my week and spread things out and then, all of the sudden, it's 3:30PM on Friday and I have a blog due at 5PM and my kids are begging for some attention but the 13 year old won't play with them, the phone is ringing, people are hungry, the dogs are barking, and I'm wishing I had one of those "easy" buttons from Staples, but one that actually works. I guess my point is that I realize much of the stress of this week was my own doing by procrastinating and I own that.

This was my final week of summer quarter. I have one final next week then I'm done. The final week of the quarter is often when final papers and projects are due. Typically it is a good idea to not schedule too much else for this week, and, because I know this, I didn't schedule anything else for this week. Apparently I forgot that you can't schedule life, 'cause it just happens whether you want it to or not.

After working all day on Sunday, I came home to a very upset husband. He and one of his daughters, the very same one who watch Cole and Lydia during the week for us, had an argument about babysitting and other chores. In the end, it was decided that she would no longer be watching Cole and Lydia, leaving us trying to find childcare for 8:30 the next morning at 10pm Sunday night. I guess God thought we did such a good job handling the situation because it was only the beginning.

Apparently, allergic reactions from an allergy shot, which requires racing your 13 year old to the ER, don't care that you've got a project and a paper to finish. When you are the 7th & 8th grade volleyball coach for the non-competitive team, you don't get much of a say for when to hold tryouts. To be fair, none of the coaches do, we are all at the mercy of the gym the tryouts are being held at. And then, as I was just starting to get caught up with school work, my last doula client went into labor early Thursday morning. Again, I take full ownership on this one. I didn't have to take a client who was due at the end of the quarter. Maybe I was hoping that because she was a first timer and not due until the 24th I would be pretty safe. I was wrong. So after struggling to find someone to watch the kids (Jim had already taken two days off this week and had a meeting in Dayton he couldn't reschedule) for a couple of hours I headed to be with my laboring clients. I brought my work with me in case I got the chance to get some of it done but that was wishful thinking. The labor and birth was awesome. Mom did an amazing job, as did dad. Their birth was was just fan-freaking-tastic! But shortly after the baby was born into the hands of his mom (with help from the doc), he started having trouble breathing. He ended up going to the nursery for oxygen and further evaluation. The doctor and nursing staff debated on if he needed to be transfered to Children's Hospital. Side note: the hospital mom birthed at has a nursery and the ability to stabilize babies who aren't doing well, but they don't have a NICU. This means if their son hadn't started to show any signs of improvement within a certain time frame he would have to go somewhere that could do more for him. By midnight baby was doing better, not great, but better. After convincing mom and dad to go to bed and get some sleep, I too went home to get some sleep. After tossing and turning most of the night, I got out of bed by about nine this morning to hungry kids. Made them waffles for breakfast as I called my clients to check in on them and returned some other calls. After breakfast I sat down to finish my paper for History. My kids had other plans. They were being wild and crazy and driving me nuts. Now don't get me wrong, I totally get that they were acting this way because they were in desperate need of my attention after not seeing me much for almost two full days. I knew and understood why this was happening. But that doesn't mean my history instructor who has already given me an extra day because of the birth will understand. We finally work something out and I get my paper finished a little after 3 this afternoon. Thinking I'm done, we run out for some Chipotle. When we get home around 4 I check my email and see a reminder about my final blog post for Women's Studies that is due in an hour. I start working right away but still have the kids to deal with. An hour and a half later I publish the post just in time to take one of my stepdaughters to crew practice.

And now here I sit, doing something just for me for the first time this week after snuggling with my little ones until they ran outside to play with friends. I didn't get all of my school work done but I believe I did the best that I could with what I had. I'm short two digital scrapbook postings for Women's Studies and one reading response for History, but it isn't the end of the world. Regardless of my grades in these classes, I learned so much from the classes themselves. Grades are just letters and numbers, knowledge is way more valuable.

Final Blog for Women's Studies 326 Women and Addiction

I want you to reflect on your experience in the class-- How has your understanding of addiction changed? Are you able to integrate what you have learned in your real life or your major? Has the way you talk about, feel about, empathize towards addiction/addicts changed?

Before taking Women's Studies 326: Women and Addiction I though I understood addiction, maybe even a bit more than the average person. Now, after almost 10 weeks of reading and discussing addiction, I realize just how little I knew and understood about addiction, especially the relationship between addiction, patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism. Without a doubt, Charlotte Kasl's "Is Addiction Inevitable? Patriarchy, Hierarchy, and Capitalism" and Dr. Northrup's "The Patriarchal Myth and the Addictive System" are my two favorite readings from the quarter. Both of these readings are from the first weeks of the quarter, when I realized just how little I understood. I don't remember if I really even had an opinion on why people resort to addictive behaviors before this class. I think I felt like the reasons were mostly personal. Now, nothing seems personal to me. Everything seems so much more connected to the world in which we live, even how people behave and interact. Kasl's piece really helped me to see this. She writes (emphasis mine):

"Patriarchy, hierarchy, and capitalism create, encourage, maintain, and perpetuate addiction and dependency. Patriarchy and hierarchy are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear. This fear is expressed by the dominators through control and violence, and in the subordinated people through passivity and repression of anger. The external conflict of hierarchy between dominants and subordinates becomes internalized in individuals, creating personal inner chaos, anxiety, and duality. To quell the inner conflict people resort to addictive substances and behavior."

Kasl's talk of psychic numbing and dissociation really helped me to understand how people with addiction issues don't see that the problems they face in life are caused by the addiction and not something else. While listening to the news or hearing other people talk about the problems we face as a society, I find myself thinking of her illustration of hierarchy and patriarchy and I've even yelled at the TV "outside solutions don't work for inside problems!" (yes, I know the people talking on the TV can't hear me).

Dr. Northup's writings really spoke to me as well, probably due to her talking about how women don't trust their bodies anymore, especially in relation to birth. Every time I teach, my main objective is to get women to trust their bodies and their inner wisdom.

I could write for hours about these two authors but since this blog was due 7 minutes ago I won't. I do want to end with an example of how my deeper understanding about addiction helped me at work.

Last week I took a young woman expecting her first and her mother on a tour of labor and delivery. The pregnant mom was very quiet and seemed very uncomfortable. While showing them a postpartum room the soon-to-be grandmother asked how long after delivery her daughter would be able to go downstairs and smoke. Ten weeks ago I would have been appalled. While I would have done my best to hide it, I know my feelings would show on my face. But I wasn't appalled. I answered the mother's question. The young woman then opened up a little bit and said she had tried to quit but wasn't able to give it up completely because everyone around her still smoked; her boyfriend, sisters, and parents. I told her that her situation makes it that much harder to quit. She seemed to perk up a bit more and said that she was able to cut back quite a bit. Her mom told me she was really surprised at how well her daughter was taking care of herself since becoming pregnant and that she was proud of her. I excitedly told the pregnant mom that she was doing awesome; that her cutting back was helpful, and, in taking better care of herself and eating healthier foods, she may be able to minimize some of the risks associated with smoking. We continued the tour and the pregnant mom seemed so much more comfortable with me. She even starting asking questions about the rest of her pregnancy, labor and birth. Had I not reacted the way I did to her mom's question, I think the situation would have been very different. But I didn't judge her and I didn't blame her, which is so often what I see others in the medical field do. This class did changed that for me.

Thank you, Ms. Genetin. Your class was awesome.

Digital Scrapbook #8

"Shroud" by Ani DiFranco

I had to leave the house of fashion
And go forth naked from its doors
'cause women should be allies
And not competitors

In our patriarchal and capitalist society women often find themselves competing with each other, which only serves the maintain the status quo. Charlotte Kasl's piece "Is Addiction Inevitable? Patriarchy, Hierarchy, and Capitalism" explains that "because patriarchy assigns a secondary position to women, it creates a hierarchy, in which human value is determined by gender, race, class, position, religion, age, appearance, ethnic background, and physical ability" (55). These groups can either unite or compete for the highest position available. Kasl identifies the weapons of patriarchy to be "segmenting, separating, and isolating people" (60). When trying to escape isolation we may have to rely of self-destructive behavior in order to dissociate from our inner wisdom, what Kasl describes as "short-term relief from pain is exchanged for long-term destruction. This follows the model of patriarchy and capitalism, which is short-term economic gain at the price of long-term destruction of the ecosystem and people's spirits" (60). In the context of the this song, women are destroying other women to feel better about themselves.

And I had to leave the house of god
Because the cross replaced the wheel

This refers to the destruction on non-Christian religions, specifically pagan faiths.

And the goddesses were all out in the garden
With the plants that nurture and heal

Kasl refers to this as the Patriarchal Switch. She writes "historically, between 10,000 and 3,00 BC there is considerable evidence that we moved gradually from a Goddess-worshiping culture that revered life, nature, creation, and harmony to patriarchy" (60). The reference to the plants references the movement to modern medicine and away from maintaining health naturally.

I had to leave the house of privilege
Spent Christmas homeless and feeling bad
To learn that privilege is a headache
That you don't know that you don't have

Capitalism can only exist by "making people feel insecure, unlovable, and ashamed in order to have them purchase all kinds of things to make them--allegedly--attractive, lovable, and powerful" (Kasl, 62). But all of this stuff can't make us feel happy or loved, we only think it can.

And I had to leave the house of television
To start noticing the clouds
It's amazing the stuff you see
When you finally shed that shroud

We've become what the media wants us to be. Because so much time and energy is spent watching TV, we aren't allowing ourselves the time for reflection within ourselves.

I had to leave the house of conformity
In order to make art

In class, while discussing the drop in self-esteem when girls reach adolescence, we learned that their art work also changes as drawing is now seen as childish. Even girls who really enjoy creating art may feel pressure to fit in with the other girls and walk away from her love.

I had to be more or less true
To learn to tel the two apart

I think this means that life isn't black and white or absolute. There are shades of gray and periods of uncertainty.

And I had to leave the house of fear
Just about as soon as I could crawl
Ignore my face on the wanted posters
Stuck to the post office wall

In order to live life one cannot fear life. This is contrary to patriarchy and hierarchy as they "are based on domination and subordination, which result in fear" (Kasl 53).

I had to leave the house of self-importance
To doodle my first tattoo
Realize a tattoo is no more permanent
Than I am

The ability to realize you're not perfect nor will you ever be perfect and realizing your own mortality.

And who ever said that life is suffering
I think they had their finger on the pulse of joy
Ain't the power of transcendence
The greatest one we can employ

We have the ability to go through life with a positive or negative attitude. But if all we see is suffering, then we will only ever experience suffering. This doesn't mean a person with a positive attitude never experiences pain or suffering, they do, they just navigate through it with a brighter outlook.