I know things are crazy now with the holidays and this neverending pandemic, but we can’t forget. We need to remember; today and always, the lives that were lost eight years ago at Sandy Hook.
I’ll never forget where I was when I heard the news–I was happily driving around town shopping for Christmas presents and had to pull in a parking lot because my eyes were too full of tears to see the road. I immediately called my son because he’s my North Star. As soon as I know he’s OK, I can breathe again.
Like a ship that runs aground because of low tide or unseen rocks or fog or navigational errors, our beautiful heart can be damaged when blood flow is restricted or when it flows unregulated.
Heart/wrecked.
I grew up hearing the term, “Stress kills.”
I was never quite sure what that meant, but then I did when it happened to me.
After a seemingly nonstop barrage of a personal stressful situation–like a ship hitting the rocks over and over again–it all finally took an undeniable toll on my physical health.
One of my favorite places to live is in the state of Denial, but I’ve been forced to temporarily move to a new town called Reality. Hopefully, I’ll just visit there for a bit until I can come home again.
After experiencing some intermittent and strangely terrifying heart pains, I went to the doc who took my blood pressure and was concerned about the results. It was super high. I had always had enviably LOW blood pressure since I exercise regularly, am vegan and never smoked, so this raised concerns.
Over the course of a couple weeks, my BP was checked daily and it stayed consistently high; dangerously high, which only made me more anxious and more stressed, and at one of the office visits, I started hyperventilating and had a panic attack. (Super embarrassing for the doc and absolutely mortifying for me.)
This led to an order for an Echocardiogram along with all the other heart-focused tests. The echo was done at a local hospital–a definite trigger. No one wants to go to a hospital at any time, but especially during Covid. It seemed like I was being admitted, with a wrist band and lots of little stickers, and I was devastated.
I almost bolted out of the front door at that point, but I persevered. I can share with you that it’s a scary time when you have to figure out why you don’t feel great. I’ve been a medical advocate for several loved ones, but it’s radically more difficult when you have to care for yourself. Poor me.
The technician was amazing, especially considering I tormented her with a million questions. I know enough about medical stuff to see that she was concentrating on a certain area of my heart. I really appreciated her patience with me and her detailed explanations during the hour-long ordeal.
The results showed a dilated aortic root valve and regurgitation of the mitral valve.
What this means is that the accumulation of stress and panic attacks and PTSD that I’ve endured during the last four years manifested medically and physically and caused structural damage to my heart.
“Severe physical or emotional stress increases blood pressure to the point where the tensile limit of the aortic tissue is overwhelmed, causing the rupture.”
“Over time, certain conditions, such as high blood pressure, can cause your heart to work harder, gradually enlarging your heart’s left ventricle.”
“Mitral valve regurgitation can cause complications such as atrial fibrillation, in which the atria of the heart don’t contract well. This leads to increased risk of stroke. Also, elevated blood pressure in the lungs (pulmonary artery hypertension).”
Hypertension makes the blood push harder against the valve and causes it to dilate, enlarge, and that’s pretty much the same scenario for the mitral valve, which seems to be the cause of the intermittent chest pain.
I’ll need to be monitored regularly because if I can’t control the stress/blood pressure and the valves stretch to a dangerous size, the only solution is surgical intervention–or death.
Reducing stress and hypertension can possibly keep the valves from enlarging any further, but the damage is done–nothing will make them reduce in size back to normal, except surgery.
Let me tell you that it’s true. Stress kills.
Now I’m off to change course, take some magnesium, eat more beets, meditate, calm down and regulate my breathing so that I don’t have a stroke or an aneurysm.
That’s the question (with apologies to William Shakespeare).
Quick post:
There’s a lively discussion on NextDoor about a woman who was walking on a local trail with her nine-year-old son when he needed to relieve himself and did so a few feet off the trail in the bushes.
This is not a remote trail, it’s pretty much in the city, paved and well-traveled.
Apparently a woman stopped to stare and made the boy feel uncomfortable. There were quite a few negative comments directed toward the woman who (allegedly) was looking, comments like “mind your own business”…
Mine seems to be the ONLY comment that talked about the possibility that it might be inappropriate for a boy that age to urinate in public.
In my opinion, I think this would be a different story if it was a toddler in the middle of toilet training, but a nine-year-old is too old for that behavior.
Normally I don’t respond to NextDoor because it’s a dark hole like Facebook, but I felt compelled to share my thoughts.
What if it was a nine-year-old girl? Does that change anything?
Obviously, they were in plain sight. I wouldn’t want my son or my grandkids to see someone else’s body parts or something that should be private.
What if there was a predator around?
I’ve hiked a lot in many different wild places and had to find a secret spot myself, but this location isn’t a forest or a remote mountain trail. It’s a mile-long walkway paralleling the railroad tracks with houses and windows all around.
From Dan Rather: “This is a win for decency and democracy. A new chapter in American history begins today.”
I’m writing this with tears in my eyes. It’s a very emotional time for us. We’ve been holding our breath for four years and can finally exhale.
We can breathe now.
The nightmare really is over. The planets have aligned.
Decency, integrity, and honor has been restored to the people’s White House.
The United States of America has been saved.
Democracy is back on track.
It’s OFFICIAL. They called it.
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris will take over the helm and repair the damage of the last four years.
We are finally seeing the healing light at the end of a long, dark tunnel.
No fighting, no lawsuits, no rioting by his racist cultists can change the outcome. It’s a mathematical impossibility for them. In addition to winning the popular votes, at this time Electoral College votes are 284-214.
We have been led out of the heart of darkness.
I think we’re gonna shut down our street and have a socially distanced block party.
The nightmare of the last four years is almost over!
While the election hasn’t been officially called for Joe Biden as of 6:00 a.m. today, November 6, 2020, I have faith that it’s just a matter of time. The terrible black cloud we’ve been living under here in the United States for the last four years is dissipating, and there’s now HOPE on the horizon.
Democracy has been saved.
After we celebrate, we need to fix the Supreme Court and restore women’s right to choose what happens to our own bodies and hurry to repair the damage to our wildlife and our climate and our pristine wilderness. Get rid of the Electoral College!
Maybe the worst part of the last four years is the knowledge that there is still so much systemic racism here. It’s like a certain segment of society can’t get over the fact that the Civil War is over. Equal means EQUAL, no matter the color of our skin or religion, or whom you choose to love. It’s obvious there needs to be a lot more education. Racism and fascism shouldn’t be tolerated.
I’m here in California and we voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but I want to take the time to express my appreciation to Georgia’s Stacey Abrams for tirelessly working to uphold honor and decency and integrity and to fight the good fight for all of us.
My parting words for that failed reality show sociopath… “YOU’RE FIRED!”
Here’s a few words from the late great John Lewis that seem especially appropriate right about now:
“About fifteen of us children were outside my aunt Seneva’s house, playing in her dirt yard. The sky began clouding over, the wind started picking up, lightning flashed far off in the distance, and suddenly I wasn’t thinking about playing anymore; I was terrified…Aunt Seneva was the only adult around, and as the sky blackened and the wind grew stronger, she herded us all inside.Her house was not the biggest place around, and it seemed even smaller with so many children squeezed inside. Small and surprisingly quiet. All of the shouting and laughter that had been going on earlier, outside, had stopped. The wind was howling now, and the house was starting to shake. We were scared. Even Aunt Seneva was scared.And then it got worse. Now the house was beginning to sway. The wood plank flooring beneath us began to bend. And then, a corner of the room started lifting up.I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. None of us could. This storm was actually pulling the house toward the sky. With us inside it.That was when Aunt Seneva told us to clasp hands. Line up and hold hands, she said, and we did as we were told. Then she had us walk as a group toward the corner of the room that was rising. From the kitchen to the front of the house we walked, the wind screaming outside, sheets of rain beating on the tin roof. Then we walked back in the other direction, as another end of the house began to lift.And so it went, back and forth, fifteen children walking with the wind, holding that trembling house down with the weight of our small bodies.More than half a century has passed since that day, and it has struck me more than once over those many years that our society is not unlike the children in that house, rocked again and again by the winds of one storm or another, the walls around us seeming at times as if they might fly apart.It seemed that way in the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement, when America itself felt as if it might burst at the seams—so much tension, so many storms. But the people of conscience never left the house. They never ran away. They stayed, they came together and they did the best they could, clasping hands and moving toward the corner of the house that was the weakest.And then another corner would lift, and we would go there.And eventually, inevitably, the storm would settle, and the house would still stand.But we knew another storm would come, and we would have to do it all over again.And we did.And we still do, all of us. You and I. Children holding hands, walking with the wind. . . . “
I’m not talking about tRump this time; I’m referring to Covid-19, formally called the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV2.
I remember back in February when I heard some chatter about a new virus first noticed in China, more virulent than the common flu, and my ears perked up. With my chronic asthma and reduced lung function, I’m pretty careful in the best of times, and this seemed to be something else entirely.
I’m glad I listened to my inner voice and stopped going to the gym in March weeks before the official shut down, a preventative measure on my part because it’s normally never very clean and the air never smelled fresh.
During the shut down when everyone was hoarding toilet paper and Lysol spray and hand sanitizer, I asked my doc what I could do to protect myself.
Besides wearing a mask in public and staying away from crowds, her suggestion (and what she does) was to add zinc and Vitamin C to what I already take: D3, K2, turmeric, magnesium, and a B complex ‘cos I’ve been vegan for such a long time. I also take Carditone for cardiovascular health.
I’d rather eat healthy and take a few supplements than fall victim to high blood pressure meds, statins for cholesterol imbalances, and a compromised immune system.
I think probably the most important supplement we can take is a D3/K2 combo.
Years ago, my doc checked my D levels and was concerned that it was 24, way below the recommended healthy levels of 50-60. I started taking 5000 mcg daily and three months later, my levels were up to 40. Now they’re at the optimal number of 60, and I feel much better than I did in the beginning.
It’s been suggested that there’s a link between low levels of D3 and depression, and I believe it.
It’s a good idea to take D3 with K2 as there’s a synergistic relationship between vitamin K2 and vitamin D3 for bone and cardiovascular health. Vitamin K is essential for the proper utilization of calcium.
Separately, K2 regulates normal blood clotting, while D3 supports a healthy immune system and muscle function.
So far, I’ve been lucky not to have been infected by Covid, but I still wear a mask when out and stay away from crowds or gatherings of any kind, and wash my hands often.
This year, October 10 is known as Columbus Day. Some states have proposed legislation to legally replace the holiday, but as of today, none have passed.
I don’t acknowledge Columbus Day because it’s more of the same; entitled males making unilateral decisions without regard for anything but their own selfishness.
They continually attempt to push candidates and legislation that will eventually completely strip women of any right to autonomy over our own body.
Even the grandkids know what this day really is all about: good for my son/DIL talking TRUTH.
I saw an abundance of crows; not sure why, but quite a few of them joined me today.
Hello, friend!
This sign was posted a few blocks away; not a very nice person! I hope she’s caught and the dog is found unharmed.
Poor grammar; incorrect use of “they’re”…should have been “their”, but I’ll allow it this time.
When I got to the beach, I was astonished to observe how many people were walking so close to each other in public and absolutely defied the “Wear a Mask” order.
I encountered no one during my walk but I wore a mask when I crossed the street to stop at the restroom. I observed many non-compliant people huddled together on the seawall and sidewalk, pretty much 90% were NOT wearing masks, so I turned right around and went home. My own mask didn’t seem like enough protection and I didn’t feel like yelling at them.
They are not being good neighbors or visitors to our city.
The County of San Diego requires face coverings to be worn anywhere in public where you could come within 6 feet of someone you don’t live with. Face coverings should be worn in addition to, not instead of, all of the other health precautions.
At last, a couple photos of early morning surf before I walked back.
The term Wetiko is a Cree term (windigo in Ojibway, wintiko in Powhatan) which, to quote Forbes, refers to “an evil person or spirit who terrorizes other creatures by means of terrible evil acts.”[ii] Wetikos are the human instruments for the transpersonal ‘spirit of evil’ to terrorize the world.
There seems to be a collective query rising up from the huddled masses of humanity who search for answers to everything from Trump to climate change, deadly natural disasters to senseless murders, and a pervasive lack of empathy and compassion.
Is there an epidemic of broken, undeveloped frontal lobes, of dysfunctional, maladjusted, deteriorating, and infected amygdalas?
Narcissism and Cluster B psychopathy run rampant in our culture, feeding on those who still have that innate ability to feel empathy and compassion, who possess a real soul and a kind spirit.
Those dark and toxic parasitic Wetiko entities are cannibalistic, predatory, soul-LESS, selfish, and hostile: a cancer of the soul; a shapeshifter.
How sad.
“Just as viruses or malware infect a computer and program it to self-destruct, Wetiko programs the human biocomputer to think and behave in self-destructive ways.
Covertly operating through the unconscious blind spots in the human psyche, Wetiko renders people oblivious to their own madness, compelling them to act against their own best interests.
People under its thrall can, like someone in the throes of an addiction or in a state of trauma, unwittingly create the very problem they are trying to resolve, clinging desperately to the thing that is torturing and destroying them.
People taken over by Wetiko are suffering from an autoimmune disease of the psyche. In autoimmune deficiency syndrome, the immune system of the organism perversely attacks the very life it is trying to protect. In trying to live, it destroys life, ultimately destroying even itself. In the same way, once Wetiko has insinuated itself into a living entity, it acts like a perverted antibody, treating the wholesome parts of the system as cancerous tumors to be exterminated.
From Psychology Today
This problem is being collectively acted out on the world stage. Humans are destroying the biosphere of the planet upon which we all depend for our survival.
Wetiko is at the bottom of the seemingly never-ending destruction we are wreaking on this biosphere. One example is the destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, the lungs of the planet. Another example is the terminator seeds that are genetically engineered not to reproduce a second generation, forcing farmers to buy new seeds and making life impossible for many poor farmers. If the planet were seen as an organism, and people seen as cells in this organism, it would be as if these cells had become cancerous or parasitic and had turned on the healthy cells, destroying the very organism of which they themselves were a part.
Our species appears to be enacting a mass ritual suicide on a global scale. Paul Levy “Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the Curse of Evil” Quest 102.4 (Fall 2014): pg. 146-151.
Also from Paul Levy… Wetiko disease is an expression of the convincing illusion of the separate self gone wild. Bewitched by the intrinsic projective tendencies of their own mind, full-blown Wetikos are unconsciously doing the very thing they are reacting to while simultaneously accusing other people of doing it.
Projecting the shadow onto others, they will accuse others of projecting the shadow onto them. To use an extreme, but prototypical example, it is like someone screaming that you’re killing them as they kill you.
If their insanity is reflected back to them, they think it is the mirror that is insane. Suffering from a form of psychic blindness that believes itself to be sightedness, full-blown Wetikos project out their own unconscious blindness and imagine that others, instead of themselves, are the ones who are not seeing.
Governed by the insane, self-perpetuating logic of fear and paranoia, those taken over by the disease fear that if they don’t attack and rule over others, they are in danger of being attacked and ruled over themselves.
In their convoluted, upside-down, flawless illogic, Wetikos’ act to their own projections in the world as if they objectively exist and are other than themselves, thinking that they themselves have nothing to do with creating that to which they are reacting.
Photo by Miguel u00c1. Padriu00f1u00e1n on Pexels.com
In Wetiko disease, the psyche takes the ‘terror’ that haunts it from within, and in its attempt to master it, unwittingly becomes taken over by it, thus becoming an instrument of terror in the world.
We have then become the thing we most feared, ‘creatures of the European nightmare world,’ as we psychologically terrorize ourselves, as well as terrorizing the world at large.
Because full-blown Wetikos are soul murderers who continually recreate the ongoing process of killing their own soul, they are reflexively compelled to do this to others; for what the soul does to itself, it can’t help but do to others.
In a perverse inversion of the golden rule, instead of treating others how they would like to be treated, Wetikos do unto others what was done unto them. The Wetiko is simply a living link in a timeless, vampiric lineage of abuse.
Full-blown Wetikos induce and dream up others to experience what it is like to be the part of themselves which they have split off from and denied, and are thus not able to consciously experience – the part of themselves that has been abused and vampirized. In playing this out, Wetikos are transmitting and transferring their own depraved state of inner deadness to others in a perverse form of trying to deal with their own suffering.
Paradoxically, Wetikos both try to destroy others’ light, as it reminds them of what they’ve killed in themselves, while simultaneously trying to appropriate the light for themselves.
The disease itself is now demanding that we pay attention to it, or it will kill us.”
“An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind”. – Ghandi
Native American author and philosopher Jack Forbes further adds:
“This disease, this Wetiko (cannibal) psychosis, is the greatest epidemic sickness known to man.” We, as a species, are in the midst of a massive psychic epidemic, a virulent collective psychosis that has been brewing in the cauldron of humanity’s psyche from the beginning of time.
Like a fractal, Wetiko operates on multiple dimensions simultaneously — intra-personally (within individuals), inter-personally (between ourselves), as well as collectively (as a species). “Cannibalism,” in Forbes’s words, “is the consuming of another’s life for one’s own private purpose or profit.”
I don’t read much science fiction…I’m a chicklit girl, but my research about Wetiko led me to this article about the (deceased) sci-fi author, Phillip K. Dick (you might know him as the author of Bladerunner.)
This isn’t the post I had planned for Saturday but we have all heard the devastating news.
On Rosh Hashanah, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Supreme Court Justice, died at the age of 87 from metastatic pancreatic cancer.
I think a lot of us had the same first thoughts; “Oh no, not HER” “Not now.””NOOO!!!”
We surely don’t need her gone, not now, not during this shitshow of a year that 2020 has become.
Hearing that horrible news (tragic for her family but tragic for our country and democracy, too) brought me back to the morning my mom (the original Charlotte) died of the same disease, metastatic pancreatic cancer.
Thanks to medical advancements, RBG was able to live a lot longer after diagnosis than my mom.
Hearing about her death brought up all those same traumatic feelings of loss that I felt when I found my mom had died. She lived with us and we had cared for her during her illness with the help of a great hospice.
I had checked on her at around 5am and she was fine, not in distress, still asleep, so I did a little cleaning and made my son’s breakfast so it’d be ready for him when he woke up ‘cos it was a school day. I don’t know what prompted me to check on her again so soon, but I did. She was still in the same position; she LOOKED like she was asleep, but there was a subtle difference. I had never seen a dead person in my entire 32 years on this earth, but I knew. I knew.
I checked her carotid artery and called the hospice nurse. I woke up Angel Boy (almost 7 years old) and managed to tell him all the right things. Hospice had suggested that I ask him if he’d like to kiss his grandma goodbye, so I did. And he did. That pretty much broke me, but I’m a stoic girl and you wouldn’t know I was broken. I can break on the inside but you won’t see it. Things had to be done so I did what needed to be done. I always do.
I miss my mom. Forever.
But this is about Ruth Bader Ginsberg, a brilliant woman whose entire life was inspirational. Her loss is an epic tragedy.
About RBG’s life, the film “On The Basis of Sex” featured a song written and performed by Kesha. Here’s an acoustic version. It needs to be the anthem of our revolution. First we mourn, then we fight.
Here Comes the Change
One day I’ll be gone The world will keep turning I hope I leave this place Better than I found it Oh it’s hard, I know it’s hard To be the lightning in the dark Hold on tight you’ll be alright You know it’s time Here comes the change We’re comin’ of age This is not a phase Here comes, here comes, the change Is it a crazy thought? That if I had a child I hope they live to see the day That everyone’s equal Oh it’s hard I know it’s hard To be the right inside the wrong Hold on tight we’ll be alright You know it’s time Oh here comes the change Oh we’re comin’ of age This is not a phase Here comes here comes the change Hope there’ll come a time when we We can live in and die free I hope…
Enchanted Seashells | Princess Rosebud 