The Morning After

I'm ashamed of my country today. Yes, you, America. I'M ASHAMED OF YOU.

It's not, as you might believe given my left leanings, that the House went red last night. Whatever on that. Not my choice, but I'm not angry or ashamed of it.

No, I'm ashamed of HOW and WHY it went red.

Last night, political commentators were discussing how a LARGE MAJORITY of people, in exit polls, said that they pretty much voted straight Republican. One of the commentators summed it up by saying that, "In this election, the color of the jersey was more important than the name on the back of it."

Say WHAT?!?!?

America, it is NEVER ok to just decide to vote straight ticket. It's not. It's how we get awful people in the government. It's how we get people who are easily seduced by special interests. It's how we get elected officials who are total crazy people (I'm looking at you, Rand Paul.)

I won't even get started on Prop 19 or the judges ousted for voting for same sex marriage, except to say that we are worrying about all the wrong damn things if pot and gay marriage are our huge concerns here.

That all said, I am interested in seeing what happens with all the turnover. Put your money where your mouth is, Republicans and Democrats and WORK TOGETHER. Do SOMETHING.

Untitled

Hi, I'm Star. And I could already be dying.

I wish that I could laugh now and say that I'm joking. I'm not.

My grandmother, on my mother's side, had a disease called Huntington's. You may or may not have heard of it. It's a degenerative brain disease. It usually starts out with involuntary movements and leads to dementia and ultimately death. There isn't a really decent treatment. There is no cure.

If your parent has it, you have a 50% chance of having it as well.

My grandmother had it. She died from it. My uncle currently has it. And my mom? Well, we don't know for sure. She seems ok. But who knows if she is or not? She tends to repeat stories - is that a degeneration of her brain, or just a normal "people who are getting older repeat shit a lot" thing? When she talks about insomnia, is it a sleep disorder like the ones commonly attributed to Huntington's? Or is it just because we've had some really stressful shit in our family this year?

So I'm currently in a Schrodinger's Cat situation. Until my mother is diagnosed or I'm tested, I both do and don't have Huntington's. And as I get older, this terrifies me.

You see, I watched my grandmother degenerate with Huntington's. She didn't recognize us. She was utterly unable to take care of herself. She couldn't dress herself, or go to the bathroom on her own. She would get into her adult diapers and smear fecal matter all over her room. She would randomly yell at us. She would call us names.

And we were young, my sister and me. And while looking back on it now, I realize how heartbreaking it was, and how scared and confused she probably was, my young self was bitter. Or embarrassed. Or one of 800,000 other negative emotions that shame me terribly now.

And I'm so scared.

Huntington's generally begins between 35-44. You have maybe 20 years after that. And most of those really aren't wonderful years. They're years where you lose your mind, lose your bodily functions.

Lose yourself.

I'm 28 years old. I'm almost 29. That gives me, if I am carrying this disease, a scant 6 years of having full hold of myself.

And it's not just losing myself that I worry about.

Remember how I told you how I felt about my grandmother? Yes, I'm ashamed of it now. Totally. However, those memories are so strong that I have a hard time remembering my grandmother any other way. Her as a demented, dying woman has colored everything about her in my mind.

If this happens to me - if I have this disease - is this how Shane and the kids will remember me? That is my worst fear. Being a burden to my family. I don't want Rhi, or Keira, or Shane to remember me as the crazy bitch who painted the walls with poop, or the woman who came in with her clothing inside out and only one fake boob in to their party. If I were to die, I would want them to remember the good things I did. But if I have Huntington's, is that even possible?

I'm sure right now you're all thinking, "Jeez, Star. Get tested. Then you're not unsure. And you can cope."

Here's the issue with that. Again, if I do have Huntington's, I will get demented and die. The end. There are no other paths in my choose your own adventure. So why find out? Why have that hanging, daily, over my head for what could be my last good decade?

Also, it's hard to get tested. Because Huntington's is a death sentence, you must go through psychological testing. It can be very lengthy. And expensive. Remember how I'm a broke college student/part time peer counselor?

And what the fuck difference will it make? If I get the test, and I'm positive, it's not like I'm Queen Latifah in the Last Holiday. I can't suddenly pack up everything and travel the world, see all the things I'll miss out on later. Can't go follow my dreams all crazily. Not like there's a Make a Wish foundation for low income moms.

And I don't trust myself. I don't trust myself to take knowledge of impending death and use it wisely. I'm worried that I'd use it to justify selfishness. Or that I'd wallow in self pity. If I'm gonna go nuts and die, I don't want that to happen. I don't want to be that person. But I can't say for sure that I wouldn't succumb to that. :/

Why I'm (apparently) not a lactivist

Today, I was on one of my favorite breastfeeding support Facebook pages. The moderator of the page posted a link to this article. I read it, and agreed wholeheartedly.

Then I read a comment that basically said that you can't be ok with any kind of formula feeding and still be a breastfeeding advocate or lactivist.

Most of you know by now that I work as a peer counselor. And I advocate breastfeeding every single day. I think breastfeeding is normal, and should be encouraged. I think more companies should allow babies at work, so that breastfeeding continues longer. I proudly nurse in public. I'm all for extended breastfeeding. I want to make sure that every woman has the tools she needs to meet her breastfeeding goal. I want to stamp out every silly breastfeeding myth out there.

But there are exceptions.

I myself had to supplement with formula. Several times, with Miss Rhiannon. It sucked. I had been so sure that everything would work out well that I can remember standing in the formula aisle in tears, feeling so judged, like I was a terrible, terrible mother. I hated every second of supplementing. I worked so, so, so hard to get Rhi back to just breastmilk. But I did it. Know why? Because, in the end, formula feeding didn't make me a terrible mom. But NOT feeding my child so that I could keep some silly ideal alive totally would have.

And before anyone scoffs at that, yes, that *has* happened. I remember reading of a vegan family who were so against using any animal products (including breastmilk) that they used a homemade formula and killed their child by malnutrition. Killed their baby. The cause was so important to them that they allowed their child to DIE for it.

I see moms daily that want to breastfeed. And most of them do. But some of them don't wind up being able to. Sometimes a well-intended bottle turns into horrible nipple confusion. Sometimes they're victims of a sexual trauma that makes breastfeeding a horrible experience for them. Sometimes they're simply low income and working at jobs that make it next to impossible for them to pump.

It reeks of over-privilege to say that all mothers need to breastfeed exclusively unless they literally cannot produce milk. Because, you know what? There are a multitude of factors that lead to women using formula. And not all of them are as cut and dried as some lactivists want us all to believe.

I am a proud breastfeeding advocate. I am pro-breastfeeding. I am a future lactation consultant. I am, and will remain, committed to helping moms breastfeed and normalizing breastfeeding. But if being a lactivist means shoving all moms into groups based on hasty generalizations, well, then, lactivists can suck it.

9/11 Nine Years Later

I remember the horror of that day. I woke up like any other, decided to be irresponsible and skip my first class to get some extra sleep. Pushed myself out of bed, took a shower. Turned on the news. A generic anchorman was talking about a plane having hit the World Trade Center. It was speculated that it might have been an accident at that point - faulty navigational equipment or something. But even as he was saying this, another plane streaked in from the side of the screen and smashed into the second tower.

It was immediately apparent that this was no accident.

I remember calling my father - he travels a lot for business and I was a typical 19 year old, paying next to no attention to what this schedule was. So, for a moment, I was terrified that one of those planes could have contained my dad.

He wasn't, thankfully. But not everyone was as lucky as me. So many people lost fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, cousins, lovers, friends, grandparents...people they loved...that day.

The worst part of it was that these people were innocent. They weren't military personnel. They weren't people who were in the business of putting themselves in a dangerous position, knowing that there's a possibility of injury to them. Nope, these were just normal people, going on their daily routines.

I didn't go to class that day. Instead, I watched TV. I watched as stories unfolded. I watched as shell shocked New Yorkers wandered around covered in ash, as people jumped or fell from buildings. I watched the buildings topple. I watched people die, which was a pretty terrible thing. I felt powerless, and sad, and frightened, and afraid.

But I watched something else, too.

I saw stories unfold of average people working together to help others. Firefighters and police and aid workers putting themselves in peril to help rescue those that could be rescued. Citizens pitching in, even though there were many, many inherent dangers. I heard about another plane, which had crashed far from the location it was supposed to impact and heard the moving, heroic story of the passengers who stood up to the terrorists. Their heroic actions ensured their deaths, but also kept the death toll from rising further.

People all over the country did what they could. They sent money, they gave blood, they did everything they could to personally help out with the tragedy. Maybe they couldn't be in New York, but they took the steps they could to help.

I remember being so proud to be an American that day. I was so impressed by how people were working together, in spite of differences, to help their fellow countrymen. United We Stood.

But it's nine years later, and we are divided again. We have let our differences define us, without letting our similarities bind us. We not only define ourselves, seeming almost proud to break away into small, neatly labeled groups - we do it to others, too. Bleeding heart liberals. Muslim terrorists. Crazy Tea Partiers. Blacks. Whites. Young. Old. Republican. Democrat. For the mosque. Against it.

We will always, as a country, have differences. No one will ever agree over everything.

But nine years ago, we all pushed our differences aside to show everyone what we could do as a country. We showed everyone that we had a backbone of steel, and that, when it came down to it, we were a country united. A country that would help and love their fellow citizens, no matter what labels they had.

We need to find that again. We need to find our ability to compromise and agree again, our ability to work together. Because when it comes down to it, we're Americans. The other categories don't matter when we all want the country to succeed. When we look first at our similarities, our differences are less important.

To those who lost their lives and loved ones in 9/11, we have not forgotten. We will never forget. To those who are still here, I leave you with this quote:

"I know that there is strength in the differences between us. And I know there is comfort where we overlap." -Ani DiFranco

Let's find the strength and comfort in the country again.

Hey, everyone

So there's this place called bumbleweenursing.com, and they have AMAZING nursing clothes. Seriously, they're gorgeous. And today the contest is for a nursing top, and I need new shirts, as my boobs have eclipsed the ones I currently own. But I'm also poor. Soooo...here's the link to the giveaway. If you enter, please put that you were referred by me (the e-mail is star.rodblog@gmail.com) Then I get 10 free entries, woot! Thanks, folks. :)

UPDATE

It's a new thing every day, so I'm going to post each day's one here! This is the next one, here. 9/8/10

The WBC

Sometimes, when I hear the outrage over the WBC protesting at funerals of soldiers, it makes me a little sick.

It's not that I think the WBC is in any way a decent organization - I think they're proprietors of hatred - and it's not that it doesn't completely sicken me that they protest at military funerals. It does. They're probably the biggest douchebags on the planet for what they do. I can't imagine, as a parent, how ridiculously upset I would be at someone protesting my child's funeral. I can imagine launching myself at the nearest WBC member and trying, in grief fueled rage to take them down.

I begrudgingly give them that they have the Constitutionally protected right to be such asshats, but, really, I wish they would just stop.

However.

The Westboro Baptist Church has been picketing funerals since something like 1995. It's hard to find an exact start date, because, quite frankly, prior to them picketing military funerals, very few people gave a damn.

What? Why wouldn't people care that an extremist group picketed funerals and said horrible things and disturbed the mourners?

Because they started out picketing funerals of gay people. Or people who had died of AIDS. And we, as a country, turned a big old blind eye to it, for the most part.

Even in 1998, when they protested the funeral of murdered 21 year old Matthew Shepard (whose gruesome story can be found here if you're not aware of it) and drew national attention, there wasn't the huge attention paid to them that there is now. Hells Angels certainly didn't go to the funeral to counter protest, although some of Shepard's friends did. The WBC even had plans to build a monument to Shepard entering hell. And put it in a park. Nice, right?

And there were several other funerals they picketed, of dead gay men and women, many who had been murdered, that went pretty much below the radar. You know, until roughly 2006, when they protested a military funeral and all hell broke loose. The Respect for Fallen Heroes Act was signed that year, counter protests sprouted up in droves, people suddenly gave a shit.

People should have given a shit before, too.

Phelps got almost as much media coverage after the Shepard protest - where the fuck were the caring people of America then? Why weren't we stepping in then to make sure that bereaved family members weren't suffering from the picketing these asshats were doing? Because these people weren't soldiers, they weren't worthy of respect?

Screw that.

Look, I hold in high esteem fallen soldiers. I recognize what they do for this country, and I have a lot of respect for the job. And the Westboro Baptist Church should be drowned out at these funerals. There should be legislation keeping them a few hundred feet back, in respect for the mourners.

But that should apply to *all* funerals. Not just military ones.

A funeral isn't for the dead. The dead are just that. They don't care what their funeral is like. It's for the people left behind. For them to lay the person they loved to rest, to have some closure, to grieve. And that should be respected. Across the board. Military families don't grieve more than the families of anyone else who dies and leaves loved ones behind. Pain isn't less intense for a family even if the circumstances of the death were less tragic. Death is still death, and it still brings heartbreak to the living.

So, yes, counter protest the WBC. Sign legislation protecting the mourners. Give support to the parents and family and friends. Let them know that the WBC is a small, small minority of people gladdened by their loss, but that most Americans are sane, and rational, and can empathize with their pain. But do it across the board, not just for military families. Do it for everyone that this awful group wants to protest.

"I'm afraid of Americans"

Not all of them, of course. But there's an element, a group that terrifies me here.

They're all over the media lately. They talk and talk and talk and talk. They spew misinformation at best, blatant lies at worst. They infect the brains of even the most rational people I know. The only thing they bring to the table is hatred, and I'm quite concerned that some of their more extreme followers will resort to violent actions.

And I don't mean Muslims.

I could write an impassioned blog detailing all of the misinformation about the "Ground Zero Mosque" (a misnomer if I ever heard one.)

But it wouldn't matter.

People masquerading as concerned Americans, wolves in patriots clothing, have spread so many lies so far and so wide that most of the people who really, really need to hear the truth wouldn't listen. They can't handle the truth, to be cliched. They can't handle it because they've been whipped into a frenzy of anger, hatred, emotion.

A frenzy of lies.

I worry for America, I really do. I love this country. I think I was very very lucky to be born here.

But we are on the cusp of something very very bad.

People are more and more and more angry. And all too often, that anger is misdirected, stoked by misinformation. We let politics separate us. Worst, they're not even our true politics. They're what two groups blow up and distort in a bid to get our vote.

Granted, that's not new. People have disagreed with politicians as long as there as been government. And misinformation has been spread for just as long.

But this is 2010, people. If you can read this, you have access to a wealth of information from many, many different sources. You can fact check. You can educate yourself.

There is no reason that in the age of the internet, that anyone rational should still believe that Obama wasn't born here, or that Bush plotted 9/11, or that the "mosque" is Islam's way of flipping us off.

But we're lazy in this country. Physically and intellectually. We like our food fast, our news pre-slanted, our enemies painted with bright red by whatever pundit we're listening to that day.

This has got to stop. If we don't start caring, if we don't stop being lazy, if we don't educate ourselves and at least try to find a common ground...

Right now, the US is chaos theory personified. And we're either going to move to a higher order or disintegrate.

I encourage everyone to look into the Coffee Party which is all about people coming together, being civil, and being united instead of divided despite differences.

But don't take my word for it. Seriously. Don't. Educate yourself. Check your facts.

(And please god stop saying that Barack Hussein (always emphasized, of course)Obama is a non-American Muslim. Honestly. It's not third grade, stop allowing a fucked up game of telephone to control what you think.)