Child abuse, Sobriety, and Triggers

   

 In January of 2019 I made the decision to quit drinking, it wasn’t the first time I made that decision, and with the exception of one stressful, temptation-filled, night a few weeks later, I have been sober since then. Sobriety is an interesting place to be after my life, a slice of happiness, calmness, contentment, and innocence that I have never really experienced. 

    My problem with alcohol didn’t develop until my only child died, and I was severely injured by a surgical mistake a few months later, and while before that I was just a social drinker, after those losses it changed, alcohol because more of a need than a want. Something inside me changed, perhaps chemically, or perhaps emotionally, but for whatever reason, alcohol became my crutch to get through the days. 

    I didn’t tell anyone that I had quit drinking, I didn’t post a sober day count on the social medias, as I had seen how that works… sometimes announcing your intentions to the world brings all manner of chaos around, like a light turned on the in dark, the moths will come. So I quietly, secretively even, went about getting myself sober. 

    It was easier this time than the others, it was almost like God reached down personally to take all the longing, pain, and angst away, and I was doing an awful lot of praying. I felt light, clean, inspired, and uplifted, completely foreign to what I referred to as my depressed normal. And thankfully, after a lot of hard work, my life, and lifestyle, is set up to maintain and support a sober, healthy, life. I’m sure my way is not the way for most, but for me living simply, with nature and prayer, has given me a new perspective and a new life. 

    The thing about being given a new life, though, is that the old one is still there, it still exists whether I am participating or not, people gotta people, after all. 

    What never really dawned on me was that the alcohol was just another symptom of a deeper issue. They say addiction is a disease, and I do think there are some genetic components to it, but I feel it is mostly just a symptom, one of many used to avoid a deeper pain. 

    I realize now that I had been full on running since I left home at seventeen, running to avoid feeling some uncomfortable and ugly truths. Running like the devil was on my heels, piling fresh traumas onto the old. There was literally no calm oasis from ages seventeen to thirty-six, no time for my body and mind to relax, but going into a deeper level of thought, running was the only way to escape the deeply ingrained fear, shame, and hatred of myself. The pain all abused kids feel, I imagine.    

    When my son, Steven, died, I hit a wall. I couldn’t function, and then the surgery threw me so low there was nothing but the bed, my thoughts, and me, and that was a terrifying place to live. When I recovered physically, Chardonnay and Merlot were my new best friends. I had successfully gotten up on my running feet again without looking down into the deep abyss inside, I had simply shoved some more stuff down in the hole, and took off in a new direction. I am nothing if not resilient. 

    You can only run so long, though, you can only stay so busy, and I know how to stay busy… Thankfully God has been quite gentle with me this time, no bruises, no concussions, no open wounds, no terrible tragic events, just a strong, loving man, gardens, flowers, trees, water, and animals. And you know what? I still didn’t look; I buried the abyss under a hundred things to accomplish everyday, and knew I was healing and on the right path, still blind, but not self-injurious besides a few pulled muscles. 

    I always thought the word “triggered” referred to some entitled kid who became offended by a flag or a sign or a statue, it was never a part of my vocabulary, but then a text came, and I looked at the word triggered in a new way. It’s funny how your body reacts sometimes, long before your mind or emotions catch up, and I suppose that visceral physical reaction has saved my ass more than a few times in my life, but it’s different when there is no real, physical, threat. 

     I had an anxiety attack, followed by what can only be described as a complex posttraumatic syndrome event. There was nothing to fight, nowhere to run, but my body sure reacted, and I’ve learned that the word triggered is more of a psychological term to describe the reawakening of repressed traumas. Suddenly the rug was pulled out from under me, and I wasn’t just peeking down into the abyss, I was swimming in it. 

     Repressed memories are not forgotten memories, it’s more like the memories are all there, you just don’t look at them all at the same time, you look at one, occasionally, if you have to, and avoid the others. You compartmentalize them; you divide them into smaller, manageable, pieces, and set them back in the furthest corners, out of sight, out of mind. And once they are placed on the shelves, way in the back room of your mind, you slam the door, lock it, and turn forward while putting on your running shoes. 

     For the last weeks those memories, all of them, have made themselves known, in what could be described as vibrant flashbacks, or what is definitely known as nightmares. I’ve not been tempted to drink them away, though, which is a real blessing. Suddenly, it seems, God has given me the strength to face them head on, and deal with the issues that have kept me in self-destruct mode for all of my life. 

    What I am finding is that a lot of the definitions I’ve used to describe myself are not my words, and are not the truth. I feel like I’m unburying the person I was meant to be, and burying the person created through violence, brain injury, dissociation, trauma, and fear. 

     I also know that the world doesn’t accept personal change well, those flapping butterfly wings disturb the darkness in the universe and in people, and I know by speaking openly I will be inviting chaos, and I pray that I am indeed strong enough, but it is time… It is past time for me to start the healing process. 

    My life seems to have been divided into sections, eighteen years a child, eighteen years a mother, eighteen years a grieving, suicidal, self-destructive, mess, and I am really beginning to look forward to the next eighteen years. Things are looking up, but first I just need to turn on the lights and trudge through the abyss for awhile. 

 

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I Do Not Consent

 

I’ve spent the last fifteen years stepping away from medical practice, sick, scarred, and in daily, constant and changing, pain, I said screw it, enough is enough. I was tired of being poked, tested, and drained by the medical experts, who always had multiple vague answers and lots of pills and surgery. Medical “care” had left me at death’s door, mildly schizophrenic, suicidal, fat, weak, dependent, broken, and scared. And it dawned on me when my doctor wanted to do more, and more frequent, tests on my colon, suspecting (or perhaps praying for) cancer, that they were going to kill me. 

 

It dawned on me in a complete moment of clarity that it was insane to give any person so much control over my life. It was insane that I allowed any person who I spent mere minutes a year with to instill such fear and sickness in me. It was insane that I was listening to people I don’t know, and I was only getting sicker and weaker, and still going back for more. Doctors are human beings who spent a lot of time in school, and they are human beings with the same issues as everyone else. Going to medical school does not make one a saint or a genius, and it was all ridiculously insane how much control I had given them over my life and my health.

 

I spent my years from birth up to age forty-one listening to doctors, I took the pills they prescribed me, had the surgeries they recommended, and frankly, always felt poorly. Being born with a birth defect I encountered surgical intervention at an early age. I spent a lot of time with doctors over the years, had a lot of surgeries, a couple horrific and debilitating, and my son developed a neurological disorder at 9 years old that required surgical intervention many, many, times. So many surgeries, and some in such quick succession, that I literally lost count. Through the years I have seen the best of doctors, and the absolute worst.

 

In our society we tend to idolize our medical providers, and that comes from a lot of television programming. Exactly how many medical dramas, soaps, and comedies have there been over the years since everyone put a flashing box in their homes? And how many were on radio before that? They are the miracle workers and heroes that we all respect, when they talk, we listen. And some doctors truly are miracle workers and heroes, but they are few and far in between, and the system is set up to weed them out. 

 

The truth is that pharmaceutical drugs, and medical “care” are the second and third cause of death in this country, and literally hundreds of thousands of people die every year due to their direct influence in our lives. Medicine is a business, a multi-billion dollar business, and buyer beware.

 

We have been trained, programmed, to believe that doctors are benevolent. We are trained, programmed, to ignore the giant corporate machine that doesn’t make money if we are healthy. We are trained, programmed, to be sick, to ask our doctor before we do anything, to think and worry about our health continuously. We are trained, programmed, to believe that a stranger in a white coat knows more about our body than we do, and we allow them to commit almost any atrocity on our person in the name of good health.

 

It is my belief that doctors are wonderful in emergency situations - broken bones, car wrecks, head injuries - yes, you need a doctor, but in that moment of clarity I decided to remove the middle manager between me and my health.

 

It wasn’t easy as I wasn’t starting from a fresh slate, and I was injured. I could even say I had been brutalized by a surgical mistake for which no one was liable as I had signed my rights away listening to medical advice, so I had to figure out my healing and recovery on my own. And it has been a long, hard, journey to bring myself back to health.

 

Not only have I gotten the pharmaceuticals out of my life, I removed fast and processed food, sodas, alcohol, fluoride, MSG, dyes, harsh cleaning supplies, and toxic soaps, lotions, and cosmetics. I cook from scratch everyday, and have removed most unhealthy carbohydrates, breads, white potatoes, chips, cereals, etc. And I started researching things for myself, and experimenting on myself. As I had been letting the medical establishments practice on me my entire life, I found I was a much better doctor to me than they had been.

 

Stepping away from the scheduled routines of medical poking and prodding changes your perception of those events. I didn’t realize the power the medical community held over me until I was so ill by their mistakes that I couldn’t even get out of bed and go to the bathroom, tubes and bags carried my waste away, and the only movement I could make without excruciating pain was turning my head.  I have never been as weak, sick, and broken as when I put my health into the hands of another, and I shudder to recall giving my strength and power away.

 

I learned my lesson, though, and I stay away from medical “care”, but now I am being told that I have to accept medical practices in my life, and in my body. I have to take their drugs due to a virus with a 99.5% recovery rate, I have to take their drugs in my blood despite the fact that I have had the virus, recovered, and am now more protected than the shot takers.

 

I am being threatened that if I don’t partake of their medical sorceries (aborted fetal RNA and chimpanzee adenovirus, to list a couple ingredients) then I may not be able to travel or as some have suggested, go to the supermarket. I am being told that I am ignorant and dangerous, and that I do not understand the science of being healthy.

 

Well, I do not consent. I’ve worked too hard on my health to become a guinea pig for Big Pharma. I do not consent to a witch’s brew of dead babies and monkey shit (*tips hat to an acquaintance) as well as other unknown agents and chemicals to be injected into my blood. I do not consent because I have seen first hand the damage the medical mafia can do to the body, and I keep a delicate balance after the injuries I have overcome.

 

I do not consent to allow man (and the world) to come between my spirit, my health, my mind, and me. I do not consent because this body is mine, and mine alone, and as a survivor of sexual abuse it took me a long time to reclaim my body, and I won’t now be needle raped by some perceived authority figure. I do not consent to going backward.

 

I do not consent because I am made in the image of God, and I am not going to trust man to begin making alterations to that creation. I do not consent because we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. 

 

I do not consent because in the last fifteen years I have grown to see the pharmaceutical makers as witches standing around a cauldron, tossing in the strangest, and most disgusting, ingredients. When I discovered that the sorcery the Bible warned us to avoid comes from the root word pharmakeia I was not really surprised. And reading this passage in Revelation makes a lot more sense to me now than it did in the past: “And the light of a candle shall shine no more at all in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee: for thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries (phamakeia - Strong’s concordance #G5331) were all nations deceived.”

 

I do not consent because I place my faith in God, not man.

 

 

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Why I Started Writing Fiction ...

(Author's Note: More than a decade ago I wrote for an online newspaper. There was no money involved, but it was the age of exposure, and my various articles received well over a million views in a short span of time. I enjoyed doing it because there was a lot of research involved and I wrote about anything that captured my attention or my imagination.

I would get excited when I saw my articles picked up by bigger websites and the view count would jump by hundreds in just minutes, and I would read every email sent my way (it is amazing how many people write to the authors of articles).  I tackled serious subjects - 9-11, medical care, psychological care, and politics, but I also covered conspiracies. My article on chemtrails received over 25,000 views in less than 24 hours and was picked up by Jeff Rense’s website, going on to receive well over 100,000 views in days.

At the same time as I was writing for that now-defunct “paper”, I was the drummer in a duo with my husband and we traveled the southeast performing approximately two shows a week. We put out CDs, did You Tube videos, and competed in a contest on The CBS Early Show for upcoming musical acts.

All was going along fine until I wrote the article that I will post below. I don’t even recall the title I released it under, but in my files it was called simply “missing kids”. I also can’t recall how I stumbled into the subject or what string I pulled that twisted up in my mind, soul, and imagination, but life changed after I released the article.

When Nietzsche warned of staring into the abyss he knew of which he spoke and it’s no wonder he died crazy and alone. After the article was released I had strangers at the door, people on the phone when I tried to make a call, and a deluge of email. The notes ranged from sad stories of victims, veiled threats, and odd invitations. I was overwhelmed and terrified. When conspiracy theorists speak of the rabbit holes, I truly felt as though I had stumbled into the main thoroughfare.

What I figured out is that the abyss isn’t just the things of man, the abyss is also that supernatural force that we learned about in the Bible - the literal fight of good and evil. I also learned that once you’ve opened the door you are forever changed, it is impossible to unsee what has been seen.

I’m leaving the article as it was when I originally released it, and not fixing the dead links. When people ask me what inspired the books “Kicking the Goat Silly” and "The Thing Inside Lucy Doyle" this will give you a good idea.)

 

 

Do we only see what we want to see?  Or do we only see what we are shown?  Many admit to knowing there is both good and evil on this earth, but it appears we feel that evil exists only in individuals or small pockets of like-minded people. Never can we conceive, it seems, that evil may be pervasive, systematic and organized.  I know, in this day and age, the debate about evil is long - does it exist? And what constitutes evil versus lifestyle choice? I’ve always figured in the end it is only my own actions I will have to be responsible for, so I try not to judge others, but I have to state that I find the ritual torture, molestation and often, murder of children to rest fully in the realm of evil.

According to the reports from the US Department of Justice 797,500 children (18 and younger) were reported missing in a one year period studied, resulting in an average of 2,185 being reported missing each day.  National Center for Missing & Exploited Children This is an shockingly high number, considering those numbers only represent the United States and only the children that are reported missing, not the throwaway kids that exist in every town and city across America.  So where are all these children going? 

It seems in the 1980s we received a few clues from the mainstream media about what may be happening, but the stories were called hoaxes and disappeared from view, dismissed and supposedly debunked.  Where this sordid tale begins and ends is still a mystery for me, but I will start with the disappearance of Johnny Gosch on Sept. 5, 1982, one the country’s first milk carton kid.  Johnny was a good-looking 12 year-old boy when he disappeared from his route delivering the Des Moines Register Sunday paper.  At the time of his disappearance police did not immediately begin searching for him and waited a 72-hour window before considering him officially missing. 

Ms. Gosch maintains that Johnny was taken as part of a huge and well-organized human trafficking ring used for the purpose of satisfying pedophiles for profit.  In recent years she has received photographs in the mail, made at the time of Johnny’s disappearance, of he and other boys tied and gagged.  She has had contact with Johnny only once since he was kidnapped, when, as an adult, he turned up on her doorstep late one night and explained that he was involved in something too deep and dangerous to ever escape.  She is the author of the book, “Why Johnny Can’t Come Home”.  Johnny Gosch Foundation

In 1984, a woman accused employees of the McMartin Preschool of molesting her young son when he came home bleeding from his rectum. A doctor verified that the child had been sodomized and thus became the longest criminal trial in American history.  The story made headlines for years, as hundreds of preschool attendees came forward with stories of satanic ritual sexual abuse, animal mutilations, and tunnels under the school, which whisked the kids off to unknown locations to participate in sex with adults.  Shock and outrage swept the country, but the defendants maintained their innocence throughout the long years of investigation, hearings, and trials.  Eventually, charges against all defendants were dropped, except for the son of the owner, Ray Buckley, and after two juries deadlocked, he was released. 

We, across America, relaxed knowing that justice was served and that no satanic, occult or sexual rituals had occurred. Many believed that the McMartin family deserved an apology, despite the claims of hundreds of children who had stepped forward.  The newspapers declared it was a witch-hunt brought on by mass hysteria. Many books and documentaries were made siding with the McMartin family and headlines like “Indict the Children, Jail the Parents” appeared across the country, including The Wall Street Journal.  Although a task force was created, little media attention was given to the fact that the McMartin Preschool was not the only school in the area under investigation.  7^th Fire

During the investigation, 460 children reported being sexually abused and 80% showed physical symptoms including vaginal and rectal scarring, anal bleeding, and sexually transmitted chlamydia infections.  The children’s stories were remarkably similar concerning the nature, location, and perpetrators of the abuse.  Although the media held our attention, the public was never informed that teenagers and twenty-year-olds, former students of McMartin’s Preschool, had also come forward confirming the claims of the children, but were not allowed to testify due to the statute of limitations.  The judge in the case ruled that the children (aged 2 to 11) could not testify on closed circuit television, but had to face the attorneys and face them they did, each child was grilled by all the defense attorneys, one after another.  And as the parents of the children next in line watched, they decided pull their kids from the proceedings. 

Nor was it brought to the public’s attention that a couple key witnesses died suspicious deaths before they could testify.  Judy Johnson, the first parent to raise concerns of molestation was declared a paranoid schizophrenic by the media, although she had no such medical diagnosis and was later found naked and sprawled out in her kitchen floor, dead of alcohol poisoning.  And Paul Bynum, a prosecution witness and private detective hired by the defense was found dead of a single gunshot wound the morning he was scheduled to testify.  His death was ruled a suicide, although friends and family declared it was not something he would do. McMartin Preschool Revisited

"Neither side is going to like what I have to say," Bynum told a reporter before he died.  Bynum wanted to know how his citation books, the official police records kept from his time as a detective, had turned up in Ray Buckley’s desk when he was arrested for molestation.  And he could corroborate a key point in the children’s testimonies.  The children had stated their attackers killed turtles and other small animals to scare them into silence and Bynum, while retained by the defense, found numerous turtle shells and other small animal bones buried in the yard of the preschool. 

According to the editor of the Los Angeles Times, Noel Greenwood, the widespread media coverage was “a mean-spirited campaign” organized to discredit the kids and their therapists.  Besides the ridicule the media heaped on Judy Johnson before her death, they also belittled the children’s claims, deeming the idea of a tunnel under the preschool impossible.  But when the parents hired an independent excavation team and that team found the back-filled tunnel system, the media issued one short paragraph mentioning “evidence” of a tunnel and promptly quit covering the story.  The discovery of the often-ridiculed tunnel was also not admitted into evidence at trial due to a myriad of reasons.

Due to the fact that the preschool had recently changed hands and was set for demolition, the excavation team was given little time to complete the dig, but discovered that tunnels ran under several of the classrooms and uncovered the larger “secret room” that the children had described.  An additional tunnel was also discovered leading out from under the preschool, to the triplex apartment next door and coming up into a bathroom under a moveable tub.  Archaeological Investigations of the McMartin Preschool

In a interview on L.A.’s Pacifica Radio, Jackie MacGauley, mother of a McMartin student, said, “It was interesting because a lot of the child development specialists, psychiatrists, and therapists across the country thought that it was some psychological phenomenon that the kids would talk about tunnels. Somehow that idea got 'planted,' and they had all these theories as to why all the kids would talk about something like this. It obviously couldn't be true. And the district attorney at the time just flatly did not believe it, and really didn't want to look.”  History now states that the McMartin Preschool ritual abuse case was nothing more than a hoax perpetrated by deceitful therapists, lying children, and mass hysteria.  And interestingly enough, of the hundreds of children who came forward and were interviewed, only one has recanted his story.

In 1988, Franklin Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska was raided and upon examining the books it was found that close to 40 million dollars was missing.  The credit union was run by Larry King (not the talk show host), who at the time was a fast moving Republican star and sang at the Republican conventions in 1984 and 1988.  Not only did investigators discover falsified books, they also found a large cache of child pornography.  Due to newsprint publicity (television news didn’t touch this event), eighty children came forward with stories of ritual sexual abuse by high-powered community and political leaders.  The Boys Town School featured prominently in the claims and was said to be a hunting ground for rich and powerful pedophiles.  As the strands of this scandal reached all the way to Washington DC, John DeCamp, former state Republican senator, was sent to disprove the case, the results of his investigation, and an attempt to save his life after many threats is the book, “The Franklin Cover-Up: Child Abuse, Satanism and Murder in Nebraska”.  Alex Jones interview with John DeCamp

As the witnesses came forward stories of children being transported across the country to exclusive parties where they were molested, auctioned off, and even murdered came to light.  At these events where orgies, satanic rituals, and endless drugs were available many photographs and videos were made, later to be used for blackmail, to ensure silence or for profit.  John DeCamp had his doubts when he began investigating the allegations, the claims seemed too wild to be true, but then he met one of the victims, Paul Bonacci, who had kept a very detailed journal from the time he was 12-years old. 

Bonacci’s diary contained information about locations, events, and named high powered leaders, not just politicians, but heads of banking, publishing, and from the entertainment field.  As Bonacci described a particular Washington party, DeCamp was amazed; he had attended the same party as a senator and remembered that children had been present at the event.  Of course, DeCamp didn’t witness any of the ritual abuses described, because those, Bonacci explained, happened after the party, when the crowd had slimmed down considerably. 

In 1989, the front page of The Washington Times screamed a shocking headline, “Homosexual Prostitution Inquiry Ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush” the subtitle states, “ ‘Call boys’ took midnight tour of the White House”.  The Times confirmed that Washington lobbyist Craig J. Spence had arranged for four midnight tours of the White House for young boys.  The Law Party Paul Bonacci stated he had been on two of those tours and was able to describe rooms in the White House that are not typically seen by the public.  Bonacci clarified that he did not have sex in the White House, but afterwards he was taken to party and forced to have sex with adults.  Craig J. Spence was later found dead, the death was ruled a suicide.

Gary Caradori, an investigator for the Nebraska State legislature, met with Russell Nelson, a former photographer for Larry King, in Chicago.  Nelson handed over video and photographic evidence to support the claims of ritual abuse, but on the return trip home Caradori’s plane disintegrated in air killing both he and his 8 year-old son.  A local deputy, the first on the scene, claimed that the crash site was littered with photos of child pornography, but soon federal agents appeared and retrieved all the evidence, warning the deputy to keep his mouth shut.  The deputy had trouble keeping quiet about the strange events until he had a head on collision several months later, he survived, although severely injured, his wife did not.  The Gunderson Report

Four victims eventually agreed to testify, Paul Bonacci, Alisha Owens, Troy Boner and Danny King.  Danny King, often described as “pathetic” he was so broken by the abuse, recanted his story and Troy Boner also recanted after his brother was found dead, it was ruled suicide after it was decided the boy had lost a game of Russian roulette.  Boner insisted his brother was afraid of guns and never would have touched one, he also confided to friends that he had to “lie or die”.  After recanting before the grand jury he disappeared, it is rumored that he later turned up in a mental institution in 2003, was sedated and found dead the next morning. 

Alisha Owens did not recant, despite the fact that her brother was also found dead by yet another suicide.  Due to Owens testimony that she had sex with the chief of police at 14-years old, as well as other allegations, she was convicted of perjury and sentenced to 9-27 years.  The grand jury threw out all allegations of child abuse and declared the charges “a carefully crafted hoax...scripted by a person or persons with considerable knowledge of the people and institutions of Omaha”.  No conspirator was ever named and no further investigations were undertaken.  Wikipedia

During Owens’ imprisonment, which began in 1991, she was kept in solitary confinement longer that any other woman in the history of the State of Nebraska.  Owens was released on parole in 1997, but then the show “Inside Edition” aired an episode discussing the idea that Johnny Gosch may still be alive and she was picked up a week later, she was informed she had to complete her sentence in jail.  During pre-trial interviews, Owens stated that she had seen Gosch, as well as several boys from Boys Town, at the exclusive parties where she and others had been abused.  Owens was released in 2000 and said she only wants to lead a “normal” life.

Larry King was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to a 15-year prison sentence.  In 1999, Bonacci sued King in civil suit in which he alleged child abuse, mind control, satanic ritual abuse, and sexual abuse.  Bonacci was awarded a $1 million dollar default judgment because King did not appear to defend the allegations.  All told, 14 people connected with the Franklin cover up have died, including DeCamp’s friend and mentor, William Colby, former CIA director, who was discovered floating in a pond in 1996. 

In 1993 the Discovery Channel contracted a British documentary team to investigate the story, Yorkshire Television spent 10 months in Nebraska interviewing witnesses and reviewing taped testimonies.  The documentary, Conspiracy of Silence, was slated for air in 1994 and was listed in the TV Guide, but it was never shown.  It is said that influential and connected people put pressure on the cable industry, fully reimbursing the production company and the Discovery Channel and that all copies were destroyed. Luckily, an unfinished version later turned up on John DeCamp’s doorstep. Conspiracy of Silence

And in a stranger twist of an already strange story, a young reporter appeared in White House briefings in 2003 going by the name Jeff Gannon, he caught the attention of the other reporters for the “soft” questions he asked the president or his press secretary.  Controversy was stirred when it was discovered that the name Jeff Gannon was a secret service approved alias for James Guckert, who had been granted remarkable access to the White House.  Gannon/Guckert claimed to be a reporter for Talon News, but at the time he made his first appearance in the briefings, he had never published a single article. The Raw Story 

It quickly came to light that Gannon/Guckert advertised himself on pornographic gay websites as an escort charging $200 an hour.  Washington Post And then rumor and speculations began flying on the Internet that Gannon/Guckert was really kidnap victim Johnny Gosch.  Whether or not Gannon is actually Gosch, no one seems to know, but I understand that Gannon has refused DNA testing.

Both Gannon and his business partner, Bobby Eberle, owned the now defunct and admittedly partisan Talon News.  And in another coincidence, a couple named Eberle were some of the most outspoken defenders of the McMartin family during the preschool scandal.  They have published two books, “The Politics of Child Abuse”, about false allegations of child abuse in day care facilities, in 1986 and “The Abuse of Innocence”, supporting the McMartin family, in 1996.  Since the publication of the books the Eberles are considered experts in the field of childhood sexual abuse.  Interestingly enough, the Eberles have also published many hard and soft-core pornographic magazines. Excerpt from 1988 Ms. Magazine In a book review of “The Abuse of Innocence”, a writer for the Tampa Tribune stated, “For a period of time during the 70s, Paul and Shirley Eberle were the most prolific publishers of child pornography in the United States.”  Wikipedia Whether or not these Eberles are related, I have no idea, but if not, it sure is a curious coincidence. 

There you have it, the tip of a very complex and dangerous mystery.  So do we choose not to see evil in our society or does the media simply do a fine job in hiding the ugliness from us?  Dozens of some of the most powerful people in America were accused and identified in these cases and never charged with a single crime.  Hundreds of children told the same or very similar stories, displayed physical and emotional symptoms, and evidence was presented confirming their claims, yet somehow, the courts and the public decided they were all lying.  We want to believe that the pedophile is the lone stranger that we can warn our children about, we want to believe the abductions and molestations of our youth are just disturbing, isolated events, but the truth is, it is a huge and lucrative business. 

If we choose to believe what is written in this article and within the many links provided, many will assume that the scandals from Nebraska and California could never happen in their town, in their neighborhood or with their children, but how do we really know?  The pedophile, child pornography, and human trafficking networks are organized by well connected people, working in unison with other seemingly upstanding community leaders and backed by more money and resources than most of us, struggling to pay our bills month to month, can imagine. 

Are we forgetting that just recently Mark Foley, who was once considered a crusader for abused and exploited kids, was caught propositioning and writing sexually tinged emails to teenage pages?  Are we forgetting the Catholic Church scandals?  The truth that no one wants to accept and the media makes easy to ignore, is that this is happening all across our country, remember those 2,185 children that disappear everyday?  And in the McMartin and Franklin cases, the children were mostly just used, threatened, fondled, raped, filmed, brain washed, and returned to their homes and most parents had no clue.  I think it is time we begin looking at the real evils in this world and learn to recognize it for what is it, because if we cannot or refuse to see evil, then how can we protect our children and ourselves?   

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Social Media Over 50 Part IV

Social Media Over 50 Part IV 

I did not expect to have to write a part four of my social media rant, but the events over the weekend have left me knowing there is more to say. Honestly, since Sunday morning I have been aghast and dismayed at the happenings in the mainstream media and social media. I have watched in horror as the world turned against a teenage boy because of a facial expression in an edited clip with no context.

I have read the words of acquaintances expressing that the context of the supposed racial attack (a facial expression in a short clip) does not matter. The boy is guilty enough of being a racist that he should be expelled, his parents should be fired from their jobs, and threats of death and violence are completely justified and even encouraged.

The students and parents are having their personal information shared across the Internet, and the school is closed for an undetermined amount of time due to security concerns, threats, and protests from groups like Antifa…. because of a facial expression.

The young man wearing his MAGA hat and waiting for a bus did not say mean words to the elderly man with the drum, and he did not hit or punch the older man. In the full videos, the context is clear. The two hours of video - the before, during, and after - make the situation perfectly clear, and yet the world has lost its mind over seconds of a facial expression.  The videos make it clear that the high school boys were not aggressors, were not chanting “Build the Wall”, and were not harassing the Native American man. The videos show the situation clearly and in context, but so many have already judged the boy to be a racist and condemned him.

I am not sure if this is willful ignorance, or just plain stubbornness to cling to first impressions and close the mind to the whole picture, but this clarifies the power of social media and it is terrifying. It is mob mentality. What I am seeing is that these young men are having their lives ruined by a facial expression - for a facial expression that was deemed so offensive it required life-altering consequences as punishment. Hundreds of thousands of people turned their hate toward a group of teenage boys due to a facial expression taken out of context. 

On social media, we can all be judge and jury. On social media, we can be vigilantes. On social media, we can right the wrongs we perceive in society through threats, violence, and hate. On social media, context and the truth are not important, only our self-righteous rage matters.

I think we’ve reached a new level of insanity. Are we truly to a point where a facial expression is enough to unhinge our society? If so, those with resting bitch face better watch out, you may find yourself on the wrong side of the social media mobs.

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Social Media Over 50 Part III

Social Media Over 50 Part III

I suppose I am cynical. I laugh at that thought because I knew in my 20s, as a single mother, I would never be surprised again, and that I was cynical. My cynicism has reached a new level in the last ten years on social media.

I am grateful social media didn’t exist when I was a child, working through the trials and heartaches and awkwardness of adolescence. When I was a kid, I lost a friend each year of high school; one in a hunting accident, another by playing with baseball bats on mailboxes on a rural road, and the third from an undiagnosed heart issue. These days kids lose their friends from suicides, or being abducted or lured away by pedophiles met on the interwebs. 

Studies have shown over again that social media leads to depression, and my own experience shows me this as well. Typically, I would get my coffee in the morning, look over the media, and even if I woke feeling great, I would soon descend into a lesser state. I do wonder if the same thing happened as we had our coffee and perused the morning paper, perhaps it did, but the paper was actually a paper, easily thrown away, burned or recycled. The paper did not have a pulsing blue light behind it with an instant response to your opinion.

When I was in my 20s and 30s, there was no such thing as revenge porn, where a lover could record you and send it out to twenty thousand people, who copied and reposted and sent it to another twenty thousand. When I was in my younger years no one sent me dick pictures because they would have to take the film to be developed – I laughed at the thought of the person handing the pictures over the counter. When I was younger I had a couple friends who I’d talk to on the phone, old landlines, now I have over 300 friends and I’m not sure if I’ve had a real conversation with 90% of them, or if I would even know them if I met them in the grocery.

An interesting thing about social media is that we get our news in memes, some funny, some truth, some lies, but after seeing so many posts it becomes hard to discern the truth. And on social media the need/wanting to be accepted by your peers is even stronger than it was when we were young. On social media we post our selfies - look how great I look, look how happy I am, look at all my friends.

I do recognize that I am odd. I’ve never been one for “girls nights” or lunches, I have never been popular, I’ve never been a bridesmaid, and I don’t have a “tribe”.  I am one of those folks who like to read books, write them sometimes, and think about the “what if” things.

Before you call me a hypocrite because I’m still on social media, I will say that I have met some nice folks on the board that I would not have met without it. Some of those folks are close to my heart, and we have had real conversations, and sometimes phone calls. Also, I will say reconnecting with old best friends from elementary school and seeing what they did with their lives, and how they followed their passions have been inspiring – one name stands out, and what she’s done with her life and passion almost makes social media worth it. She and I lost touch after high school, but she is living the dream she always wanted.

On social media I am inundated by memes about love, light, and acceptance of every-damned-thing. But the love is marred, the light is muddy, and the acceptance is mostly not acceptable. On social media, I think too many times that someone is protesting too much - and after the tenth post how they love their new “hook-up”, and then they are broken up and hate each other three months later …  yes, I am cynical.

Social media is mentioned in a third of all divorces these days. 

Yes, I have grown cynical after ten years on social media, and I’d wager that most of us have, although we probably don’t talk about it as we post another picture.

I know that I miss the times before when we lived our lives, however grand or normal they were, and didn’t require the attention and opinions of 300 or 1000 strangers to comment upon them.

On social media, we are all stars. On social media, we are all important. On social media, our lives are fabulous.

I guess, in hindsight, I miss when we knew that fact on our own and didn’t need likes to prove it to us. 

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Social Media Over 50 Part II

Social Media Over 50 Part II 

I cut my Internet teeth on forums, before social media was popular among the middle aged. On the forums - I was always drawn to conspiracy or alternative ideas - the people weren’t nice, but the ideas were explored. On the forums, it was no big deal to be called an asshat, a moron, or an idiot, and people took it in stride.

I also had a freelance position at a now defunct Internet newspaper. I wrote under my own name and scoured the back pages of Google to give enough information to help the reader consider a different view than the one on the mainstream media. Something changed though, a change of administrations, and suddenly those back pages began disappearing. 

Sites that I used to rely on to give and share the local news from their hometowns began being censored. I suppose the new word is shadow banned, but in reality their sites were just shut down due to a myriad of reasons, and then even on the back pages of searches you’d still find the same approved articles that were on the front page. It began to be harder and harder to do my little, unpaid, freelance job.

On the forums, and lots of sites I used to visit you could be anonymous, which I found led to greater truth. You could speak your experience, without fear of censor, and pick out a cute picture (or a terrifying one), and give yourself a name, but then the media began pushing the bullying aspect, and the anonymous thing began to disappear.

Even though I had read the books about fascist societies, I was shocked to see it happening in real life, in my lifetime. Suddenly you had to register on a site, and use your real name, give your phone number, and the real time information flow began to slow down. I remember watching videos of happenings in this place or the other and the video would disappear, cut from the flow in real time – censored.  Suddenly, people could proclaim that an idea, thought, or fact was offensive and it was gone in minutes.  

I quit writing for that international paper shortly after a change of administrations. In one I could tell the truth as I saw and researched it, but in the other I understood I could no longer do that, it simply wasn’t worth the risk. Around that time social media became the big thing among us old folks.

And with social media, we began self-censoring. No longer can you call someone an asshat, and challenge his or her thoughts. On social media, everyone is kind, and those who are not must be mentally ill.

On social media, everyone has a good day. On social media, everyone is beautiful. On social media, we seek validation from our “peers”.  On social media, we lose part of ourselves trying to please and impress our “friends”.

Before you call me an asshat, moron, or idiot, which I undoubtedly am, let me state that I am just as guilty as anyone else and that is exactly why I’m writing this blog. 

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Social Media Over 50

Social Media Over 50 

I was late to the Internet. Dabbled with it in the late 90s at home, and learned systems as work dictated though the 2000s.  As a drummer in a band I worked on MySpace a bit to get followers.

In 2005, we killed cable in the house (mostly due to the coverage of Hurricane Katrina), and then, seeking information, I found some sites I still consider home.

In 2009, I was introduced to social media…

At first I was confused why the people who bullied and threatened me in high school were sending me “friend” requests, and I cried, reliving the memories of how hard school was for me.

Then I started getting messages asking if my husband and I were swingers, they’d seen us somewhere playing together as a band, and were just asking if they could have sex with us.

My Internet experience at this point was on conspiracy sites where you were challenged, and insults were steady, but ideas were hashed out.

Then I started writing, and sometimes I cried when an article would receive 20,000 views in a day.

Perhaps I am odd, but it scared me - so many people seeing me, and my thoughts, but not really knowing me. I felt like a target. I was not a trained journalist, but I could disseminate many articles on a subject down to the pebbles of truth. And I was threatened, not just with lawsuits, but other things …

And then social media happened.

At that point I had figured out that writing non-fiction was very dangerous for my health, and began writing fiction.

Social media …

Now, I hesitate to post or write the truth as I know and have researched. I think twice before stating an opinion. As hard as it was getting 20,000 views in a day, and responding to a hundred emails, these days on social media I’m worn out by six or twelve responses.

Social media is a new concept in a relatively old world. It used to be the newspapers worked out the editorials, but now every reply is instant and in your house.

On social media I have been more attacked than when I was just writing a blog; on social media I’ve been hit on more than when I was young, cute, and hot in the bars; on social media I am even more afraid of opinions than when I was in high school.

On social media my husband received several private messages to calm his wife down from a (former) mutual friend because I challenged his “facts”. On social media another friend, a married friend, suggested we should be friends with benefits with no strings.

The thing about “social” media is that I never would’ve spoken to these folks again after high school, or after a single meeting. I would not have sought out anyone from the past unless I was still talking to them on a regular basis, and I wouldn't be in touch after an art show. Some could say I am anti-social, but I’m not, I’m just confused.

I’m confused why suddenly I have friend requests from people who were not actually friends wanting to see my life. I am confused why I accept their requests. Do I want to see their lives?  And honestly, at over half-a-century, does it even matter anymore?

I’m confused why I barely know my family’s phone numbers but can reach them on social media.

I am 53, and I remember when we used to know our friends phone numbers, and we knew who our friends were, but now we have all these “friends”. 

Do we have any real friends anymore? 

As usual, keep seeking, and for the love that all is good, keep asking questions.  

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Kari's New Job

 Kari's New Job

Kari opened her laptop, booting it up, and grimaced as she saw her own reflection on the screen. She noticed that the piece of tape that usually covered her webcam was gone, and she studied her pale and blemished countenance on the screen. “I look like shit,” she muttered, grateful that she was mostly alone in the coffee shop. She pushed her unwashed hair away from her face, taking in the contours, and wondering if her jaw line was beginning to sag.

“Ugh,” she said, moving closer to the built in camera to look at her eyebrows, and trying to remember the last time she plucked them. “I look like a sasquatch, an unwashed, smelly bigfoot.” She lifted the neck of her sweater, and sticking her nose into the opening she took a deep breath. “Damn,” she sighed.

She tried to stop the camera using the little icon on the screen, but it wouldn’t close, and finally minimizing it, she went back on her job search. She scrolled through the options, sending her resume when she thought she had half the experience and could fake the rest.

Two months without a job had busted not just her bank account, but also her self-worth. She sent another resume, and sipping her cup of cheap black coffee, she couldn’t remember the last time she showered. She had enough money for rent for one more month; she’d already cut the cable, the internet, the gym, and the only expense she afforded right now was sitting in the coffee shop, with the free Wi-Fi, and drinking cheap bitter brews as she searched for a new job.

She still didn’t understand why she was fired. She’d worked at a publishing house, and her job had been to read new incoming manuscripts and pass them on to the higher ups in the company. There were rules, of course, most of them stated and clear. Things about misogyny, racism, misspelled words and grammar issues, the owners of the house knew that they would have to deal with the writer, so they had set simple rules into place. 

Looking back, as she sent a new resume and waited for it to upload, she realized the manuscript Time To Get Out Of Dodge had been her undoing. It was beautifully written, lyrical, and there was no misogyny or racism despite the fact that it was placed in a Southern town in the 1880s. It was a beautiful story, the characters rich, and reminded her of a blend of Steinbeck, Harper Lee, and Hemingway. It was a story about a civil war vet finding an orphan, and the life they attempted to live in the city as father and daughter. The ending, though, was what made it so amazing as they realized that they could never be free of social constraints living in a big city.

Kari stood up after the resume had been uploaded, and carried her cup back to the counter, ordering another black coffee, pulling out her wallet and counting her few dollars, she grudgingly handed them over. Waiting for the coffee, she thought about her meeting with her boss the morning she was fired.

“They don’t have sex?” she asked, throwing down the manuscript.

Kari shook her head. “Of course not, she’s eight, and he’s in his fifties. Why would they have sex? He’s trying to do the right thing after the war, that’s what the whole book is about.”

“Kari, I thought we’d talked about this. Books these days have to have at least one sex scene, did you see the sales on the 50 shades of whatever? You keep sending me things that won’t sell. We can promote this forever, but no one wants to read a boring story about an old man saving an orphan. That not what publishing is about anymore.”  The older woman tapped her polished nails on the desk. “I hate to say this, but we can’t keep you on. You’re wasting time and money with the novels you send up. You’re fired, clear out your desk.” 

Kari accepted her coffee, and even threw a couple quarters into the tip jar before returning to her table and laptop. The camera was on again as she sat down, and she saw the little blond hairs on her chin. “Crap,” she muttered, holding her chin to the camera, and looking at the screen. “Am I growing a beard?”  Between my eyebrows and chin I could be the hairy lady in freak shows, she thought, and then remembered the circuses and fairs no long had freak shows. “Well, damn.”

She looked at herself in the screen again, her face bare of makeup, her hair tangled, and wearing an ancient wool sweater she’d bought for three bucks at a thrift store. She gazed a few minutes more, missing her stylist, when she noticed that the background of the video stream was green and looked like woods. She felt a small breeze and saw the leaves on the screen tremble. She turned to look behind her, and saw paintings on a burnt orange wall.

“The hell,” she muttered, looking back at the screen. She was still there, looking as awful as she felt, but the background was woods, a wooded place, and the leaves lifted, twisting, and slapped together in the breeze. She glanced over her shoulder again to see the orange wall, and turned back to the computer to see herself in the woods, the wind increasing, and her hair now blowing in her face.

She looked up at the vents in the ceiling where little tassels hung to see if the heat or air conditioning had come on, and then to the door to see if anyone had stepped inside. She pushed her hair behind her ears, glancing back at the computer. It was her again, now her tangled hair behind her ears, while behind her in the scene the wind calmed, and she could hear birds in the trees.

She closed the laptop, and the bird song ended. She glanced back up at the vents, the little, stringed tassels still, and shook her head. “What in the hell?” she muttered, unplugging the computer and sliding it back into the case. She slung the bag over her shoulder, picked up her drink, and left the coffee shop.

She walked toward home, taking the long route through the city park, and avoiding the little apartment she once thought was affordable, but no longer did, and stopped at a bench.  She sat down, setting the cup beside her, and pulled out the laptop, opening it again.

There she was on the screen, but the scene behind her was not a brick wall, but a creek. She turned, making sure there was a brick wall behind the bench, and turned back to the screen. “Wait a minute,” she said, holding both sides of her head with her palms, “I recognize this.” 

She stood, placing the laptop on the bench, and stepping out into the path. On the screen she grew smaller, the creek grew louder as it rushed over old rocks, and she waved her arms to make sure it wasn’t a trick, some weird app that had appeared on her laptop camera. She looked behind her again, and just saw the city park, but looking back at the screen she saw herself standing beside a creek, and she could smell the minerals.

She looked up and around, she knew there was a creek in the park, but it was a couple blocks away.  She looked back at the laptop, and there she was standing in wet sand. She glanced down at the concrete path. Back on the screen she was under red leaves that bespoke of fall, she glanced up to see the trees above had already donated their leaves for the season. She tried to remember the date.

An old man sat on the bench beside the laptop. “Is this yours?” he asked, pulling out some nuts from his pockets to feed the pigeons.

“Yes, sir,” she said, looking back at the screen to see a shadow behind her.

“He’s calling, you know?” the old man said, scattering peanuts on the ground.

“Who?” Kari asked, looking from the screen to her surroundings.

“The man in there.” He nodded his head toward the computer, as the pigeons began flying down. “You recognize that place, don’t you?” 

“Yeah, it was my grandparents place, but it was sold long ago.”

“Maybe you should go visit it, don’t have much else going on, do you?”  He reached into another pocket, scattering birdseed.

She laughed, and it almost sounded hysterical. “Someone put some weird app on my camera, this isn’t real.”

“How many people have you seen since you lost your job?” the old man asked as a few pigeons landed on his legs. 

Kari thought back, stepping slowly through the birds so not to hurt them. After she lost her job, no one called, she’d not been invited to any parties, and her laptop rarely left the bag unless she was trying to find work. “None,” she finally answered, reaching the bench.  She glanced over at the old man who now had pigeons on his arms, lap, and head as he fed them seed by hand. She smiled. “They really like you.”

He smiled, showing crooked, tobacco stained, teeth. “It’s not me they like, they like the food. That man, in the screen, though, likes you.”

Kari glanced back at the laptop, and caught her breath. On the screen was still the same scene of the creek behind her grandparents’ house, but a man stood, centered, on wet sand. He looked familiar, but she couldn’t place him. He certainly wasn’t anyone she’d met in the city attending cocktail parties. He wasn’t anyone she’d ever met at book signings, or on the dating site she tried.

She leaned closer to the screen, looking at him. He’s nice looking, she determined, very handsome. She turned away from the screen to tell the old man, but he was gone, in his his place were a dozen pigeons pecking at the bare wood of the bench.

Kari caught her breath, and recognized the black dots dancing in her eyes. She closed the laptop, and shoved it down in the bag. She walked home slowly, still trying to remember the last time she showered, and what the hell was going on with her eyebrows. She stepped into the quiet apartment, turned on the music, and took a long shower, trying to figure what had happened in her day out.

She plucked her eyebrows, tending to stray hairs, and applied make-up for the first time in two months. She checked her bank accounts, and threw some into checking. She packed a small bag, and stepping down into the parking garage she was happy her car cranked on the first turn. It took her an hour to get out of the city, and she had to stop again to fill up, and buy some more crappy coffee.

As she hit the two lane roads leading her to her grandparents place, she rolled down the windows, turning up the music. She didn’t know what she was doing, it had been an odd day, and if she had had some episode, her mind encouraging her to do something crazy, at least she knew she had enough money for a motel room before heading back to her apartment in the city. “At least it’s a night off,” she muttered.

She slowed in the old town, seeing the disrepair, and remembering walking with her grandparents on the wooden sidewalks to do Saturday morning shopping. She stopped at the sign, exhaling long pent up worries. “Whatever,” she said, remembering the pigeon man who disappeared in a blink, leaving his pigeons behind. “I’ll take a chance,” she exhaled again, remembering the computer screen showing the woods she’d grown up in, and the creek.

She pulled on the dirt drive, seeing lights in the house. She hit the brake. Her parents said the house had been knocked down after it had been sold. She lifted her foot, the car moving forward, and she almost wondered if her grandparents would meet her on the porch as they used to every visit. She parked, and pulled her coat out of the backseat, wondering what she was doing, and what she would say when the new owners stepped out after she knocked.

Throwing caution to the wind, she stepped out into the cool wind, looking at the colors in the trees as the sun began setting. She slid her arms in her coat, zipping it against the wind, and looked at the porch, and the lights in the windows.  “What the hell?” she said, walking up the stairs.

As she stepped on the porch the door opened, and the man smiled.

“Wait a minute,” she said, “I do know you. You wrote that manuscript that I loved, but got me fired.”

He smiled. “Adam Moore, at your service.” He was dressed in jeans, and a high collared white shirt covered with a brown leather vest. He bowed at the waist. “Ready to get out of Dodge?” he asked. 

She nodded, shivering against the cold. He was more handsome that his black and white picture on the manuscript, and even more attractive than he looked in the small screen of her laptop.

“Well, come in, and warm up.”

She stepped inside the old familiar house, looking around at old artifacts. “I figured I was crazy coming back to my grandparents house. You own it now?” she accepted a mug of coffee with cream and sugar, and a mug she made when she was eight-years-old at camp.

“Yes, ma’am. I do.”

“This is crazy,” she said, moving closer to the fire and shivering.

“Yes, ma’am. It is.” He settled on the couch watching her beside the fire. “I appreciate you sending my book up the chain, sorry you lost your job for doing it.”

Pulling herself back, and turning from the flames, she said, “It was the best novel I’ve ever read, and I read a lot.” 

“I know,” he said simply, lifting a cup to his mouth and looking into the fireplace.

She didn’t know what to say, so she turned back to the fire, sipping good and sweet coffee. “I tried,” she finally admitted.

He sat up, setting his empty mug on the coffee table. “How many books have you sent up? How many books that were pushed down, and thrown in the trash?”

“The rules have changed,” she began, and sighed. “In the beginning it was grammatical mistakes, and then it was misogyny … your book had none of the things, but got me fired.”

He nodded. “Do you need a new job, Kari?”

“I do, and how did you buy my grandparents house?”

“Can you read the new manuscripts, and send them up, disposing of the trash, and giving us the best ones?”

Kari turned back from the fire to face him. “I can do that.”

“Are you ready to get out of Dodge?” he asked, smiling.

“Yes, sir. I am.”

*

The phone woke her at 5am, and she struggled to find it under the covers. “Kari, wake up. It’s number one!” 

“What is number one?” she asked stupidly.

“Time To Get Out Of Dodge” is number one! You are part of this, you sent it up, and Adam Moore, the head of the company, is giving you all the credence for getting it done. We have a breakfast to celebrate in a couple hours, get up! Celebrate!” 

Kari crawled out of the bed, looking out the windows, and seeing that although summer was done, autumn hadn’t fully arrived. She showered, tending to her face, applying make-up, and stepping out of the apartment, she walked to the party, looking at the newspapers and drinking mimosas. 

“Good job,” the boss, Adam, said pulling her into a hug.

Kari pulled back, looking at him, and shaking her head slightly, she said, “Feels like a dream.” 

“It probably was, that’s why you’re sending the best novels up. We’re giving you a raise, and a better office.”

Kari pushed her recently cropped hair from her eyes. “I need a couple days to get out of town.”

“Absolutely! When you come back you’ll have a better office, with windows.” He smiled.

“Thanks,” she said. She went home to pack a small bag, and checking her bank she added more to the checking account. She was happy her car cranked on the first try and pulled onto the street. She stopped to fill up the tank, and then stopped for a nice latte with steamed cream and rolled down the windows, turning the music up loud.

She turned onto the small two lane road, remembering her grandparents, and drove through the town. Her car bounced over big holes where the street was no more, just a rutted path. She came to the stop sign, where she usually turned, but the sign was gone.  The trees either leaned down on the road, or fell on the road, and the road was no longer a piece of blacktop, but turning back into the old dirt roads she’d learned to drive on at twelve-years-old.  

She turned, driving slow, and catching her breath as she avoided deep holes. “What the hell? I just met Adam the first time out here, just a few days ago.”  She found her grandparents driveway and turned in. Trees had fallen this way, or that way, and she couldn’t drive in further than twelve feet. She stopped the car and reached into the glovebox to pull out a flashlight.  Reaching into the backseat she pulled out a coat, and stepping out of the car she slid her arms inside, zipping it against the wind. 

She shivered, stepping over the trees with the flashlight.  Finally, she found the old house, or at least the remnants of it. The beam of her flashlight showed her that her parents had told her the truth that the house had been knocked down. She remembered stepping into it just a few days ago. 

She looked at the flashlight, and then up at the sky, the sun, under the clouds, was at noon. She turned off the light. 

  

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Doctors Vs. Health

Doctors Vs. Health 

I’ve had a lot of exciting and wonderful things happen this week, and the worst part of it was that I couldn’t enjoy it as I wanted to because the body went into protest.  I don’t often talk about my physical/health issues, and I quit going to doctors about ten years ago because they were only making them worse.

I used to, like many of us, think doctors had all the answers. I expected what they show on TV with the doctor being the hero, diagnosing and curing right away, but I have found that doctors rarely cure, mostly treat symptoms, and generally aren’t a big fan of questions or information that counters their schooling (designed and paid mostly by pharmaceutical companies).  

Recently a relative said something along the lines of - “You’re sick again??” And although it hurt my feelings, I recognize that I am not as sick as many who have suffered through my health traumas. Back in my 20s and 30s I listened to all the doctors, I took the pills they gave me without question. If they said I needed surgery, well then I had the surgery. I believed, almost a religious belief, their education meant they knew my body better than I did. 

I’ve had some strange experiences listening to their guidance and trusting. I went a little crazy when the experts had me on three anti-depressants, one because my son died, and two others to help me sleep. They were the experts, although it was my body and mind being manipulated. 

Listening to doctors, I had several unneeded surgeries, one of which landed me on my back for months with open wounds, a mistake in the reconnection of bowel left me with peritonitis and sepsis, and I nearly died, did die, was brought back, and nearly died again. I had transfusions, and infections, and near death experiences. I have scars that make both doctors and tattoo artists cringe.

I’ve given up all faith of the perfect drug that will cure, and have decided to get most of the chemicals out of my life. I do all right if I pace myself, don’t overbook, and don’t give myself too much social interaction. I do all right if I can breathe deeply and relax. I do all right if I eat clean food, and cook for myself. I do all right if I clean with baking soda and vinegar and throw all the chemicals away. 

So for those “you’re sick again??” folks, I am a small handful of people who have had shit bags glued to their belly, have met and dealt with their intestine sticking out of their belly, that hasn’t had another surgical episode in nearly 15 years. I am a small percent of people who have survived peritonitis and sepsis, and although the biggest part of my immune system - my belly and bowel - was ravaged by drugs, surgery, radiation, and radio active chemicals for months on end I’m still here and getting by, and often quite active. 

And by the way, I’m not sick again - I am still recovering from a tragic accident (and trust of doctors), which left me with nearly half of what some know as a digestive system.  

As usual, keeping seeking and questioning.  

 

 

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