Yesterday

I get all sorts of wierd and wonderful sensations going on as well. I think since discovering my prolapse I am so tuned into my bits and pieces that I feel everything. I get pains in my va-j-j, my rectum, and as you know from a previous post my shoulder is agony at the moment. I spent an hour last night with a hot pack on it and then my husband massaged it today and it still feels just as bad. Its like its in spasm and nothing is easing it up.

Like you I wish I knew why these things were happening but sometimes we never get the answers we so need.

A

Dear Kit,
I'm a little better today and was a little better yesterday. But had a desperate tearful day, the day before.
Am trying to come to terms with my life coming to a dead and difficult stop - for days at a time. And I'm
supposed to be "Grateful" (?!?) that my worst episode has lasted less than a week ? Now I'm just glad to
be able to be on my feet washing the dishes.

And so we redefine our lives.
Hugs to you girl -
Zelda

You are so good with words and writing such beautiful poems for others. I didn't do a good job of cheering you on with my last post did I? I feel distracted by my doctors appointment earlier and I am not finding helpful words. I really wish I could take yours, mine and everybodys pain and discomfort away.

I wish you better and send you my love and healing vibes.

((((HUGS))))

A

Hello Kit,
Goodness - no- not gratitude for pain, I meant grateful that it's not as
constant or long-lasting as some of us are dealing with. I find that "relative
gratitude" to be a slippery slope.. that I am fearing a gradual worsening in
my condition is part of it, but also in my overall health as my activity level has
changed so drastically.

Like being grateful to stand and be able wash dishes without purely suffering.
Sorry if I'm so dark. My whole life is in turmoil.

I'm a lousy cheerleader right now because my bright spots seem so small
relative to my angst and a looming loss of my home. I feel like the tower
is falling and can't seem to find any genuine words to express cheer.

My ability to interact with my family is back though ! When I'm super
uncomfortable I just want to be alone.
There's my cheer. My son is my champion, and is so lovely with his humour
and his helpfulness. My husband gives me these little pats and lovingly
re-arranges my "furniture" regularly.
My dog lays at the bed until I get up. Even when my husband is up first.
I'm glad I'm not living alone.
My cat adores the fact that my lap is much more available...
I try to fill my senses with these blessings. Hip Hip HooRay !
Zelda
P.s - And I'm making the most wonderful rag rugs. Tearing up fabric so Gestalt.

I haven't found it yet ! and HAVE to get back to butchering this deer.
but back soon !
Gosh I'm so touched.
Zelda

You'll find the poem under my self pitying post "feeling so sad".

A

I don't have the pain-in-the-leg that you have, but YES I've had my days of wanting to crawl under a rock.
sometimes it gets overwhelming and you can't see anything other than the pain and the fear.
I find that I have to let it wash over me. like when I was a kid in the ocean and a huge wave would wash over me, getting saltwater in my eyes, choking me. I'd panic and then it would be gone, I'd wipe my eyes, cry a bit and then go on to enjoy the sun.
so cry a bit {{{{{{{hugs}}}}}}}} and hopefully tomorrow will be a better day

the ocean really is my happy place in my mind
and really life looks alot like the ocean, seemingly endless expanse of rippling water. you never know when a big wave will knock you down and the tides are always changing, and yet there's something predictable and soothing present too. I dunno, just the way I feel. maybe growing up 3 blocks away from the atlantic ocean has something to do with that.

I know what you mean about the 'here I am again' feeling. try learning to jump the waves. so yeah, here you are again, but you're getting good at it, lol

anyway, I'm glad to hear you had a better day : )

I agree and thought I would add my little 2 cents... My Mother ( she used to be Mom but now that she's disowned me - I guess she'll be "Mother")
has lived on the Oregon coast for some 5 yrs... I have had the joy of witnessing that coast under a variety of conditions.
We spoke often of the Ocean. The vast array of moods that she exhibits is one of the things I came to really be in awe of. Something that really
amazed my Mother was the changes that happen to the coast line, at first it distressed her to be fond of a certain beach and then to go back and
find it so re-arranged. I found it comforting that change... like it made the changes in my own life seem more O.k. somehow.
And here I am grieving my changes so very much.
So maybe I need to redefine them as changes instead of losses ?
Zelda

Zelda,

I hear you about mothers. Christine's got one too. You're not alone, but no matter what someone says to you, it's tough to be disowned.

I grew up on a beautiful island in the San Francisco Bay, and even with all the possibilities in the world, I have been scorned from childhood and treated like the servant's help although I've given my mother her only grandchildren and great grandchildren; she never cared. Didn't visit for 20 years.

Most recently, my mother moved from Santa Fe to Tampa Bay where she found herself at 85 not wanted by my illustrious brother who she has doted on for nearly 60 years. She pulled up stakes and moved here buying a house up the street from me. Within six weeks she had once again disowned me and took up with another family who fed her enough alcohol that she had a stroke.

Because I was the ugly adopted child nobody liked, my brother got power of attorney long distance and sent my mother into a nursing home without even her panties or her wedding band. To this day she thinks my father, who is dead, divorced her.

I visit dutifully simply because it's so sad. Things do change. The ugly unwanted daughter is my mother's only familiar in her life now. I ended up with everything and she ended her very privileged and selfish life with nothing. The only thing you can do is live well and love much.

I hope your story ends more happily than mine. Here's wishing you a cup of tea and a beautiful little dessert on a champion Sunday. Is it snowing there yet? Do you have any good deer recipes?

Blessings always,

Judy

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

I can't even imagine the reasons to disown a child . My mind has explored the darkest of transgressions and still can't
imagine ever telling my kids I was done with them. I would always see some goodness in them and still love them.
The child in me often wonders what I've done to deserve this...
As much as my rational mind knows this is a form of heart-sickness on her part... and is coaching me to forgive her,
for my own progress. I do believe it will not include a renewal of friendship. I am repulsed at the idea of trying to trust
her or feel safe with her, and have lost some very fundamental respect for her.

It's sad that someone who should define "safe" in our lives should fall so short. I guess I should be grateful that when
I was small and forming my sense of self-worth , she liked me, but with my denial glasses off now I see that she has
always been self-serving in a way I don't understand. Her "generosity" shown with the gift of things, but with a price
of being at her call. She has lived extravagantly off of various people in her life and never earned her way. She turned
her nose up at my home and was scathing when I gave her a glass of water in a canning jar.
For a couple years she worked as a drug/alcohol counselor, but hasn't worked for years. When I had my Dad's sizable
inheritance, she couldn't have been more doting - or calculating. Now that my brother is showing signs of potential wealth
- her focus shifts.

I feel a little foolish and Naive to have not put the pieces together sooner. Perhaps the wedge between my husband and
myself may never have had a chance. And we wouldn't find ourselves here... ah, the path untaken. But I AM stronger and
and independent now. Just a few more parts of this whole woman.

I'm sorry for your loss of Clonmacnoise, they can be such soul-mates our dear little cats... I've got a most marvelous small
sleek black boy with a white throat and large gold eyes named Raj, but more often just called "Kitten". I brought him home
against all better judgement as I wasn't able to fly it by my husband ( who dislikes cats) because he was off hunting and because
the little guy was SO sickly. I nursed him and struggled to keep his will to live going . We have a bond between us that is so strong.
I am glad for all the love in my life and will continue choosing loving and kind people. And - Yes ! BEing loving and kind.
Zelda

…amongst a host of other pathologies, like jealousy and greed. I think it’s fair to say that their generation was much less spiritually inclined and far more materialistically bent. I never got who the “Me Generation” was supposed to be, but thought it suited many of those born in the twenties and thirties. Coming in on the tail of the Great Depression caused a pendulum swing in the opposite direction of scarcity, and philosophers like Ayn Rand had great influence as an entire generation became focused on power, building, spending, acquiring, and tossing away whatever was too messy or difficult.

My mother has total “twoness” about her, which was beyond difficult to grow up with. It took many decades to be able to function without second guessing everyone in my life – constantly. She is very cunning and would never have given herself the social burden of having outright and honestly ended our relationship. Instead, she drove me crazy with innuendo and brilliantly subtle intimation. I accidentally called her “mommy” one time – it just lovingly popped out of my mouth – and the next conversation we had, which was our last, was at Christmastime. Squint your eyes, bare your teeth, and in your witchiest voice say, “Hello, this is mommy.” Hearing that was like God tapping me on the shoulder and telling me it was time to move on. I put down the phone, repackaged the obligatory Christmas gifts she had sent, and shipped them back to her with a hand-written letter that tore my heart out as sure as it severed my relationship to her forever.

I understand how essential it is to forgive and also get to a place where we no longer have to say “too much”. But just as a little child has to scream and cry FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES, so it is with us.

Christine

Christine,

People ask me why I write. I always smile and say, because I'm inclined to. But actually, I write to understand these painful pasts. I'm not the only one with a painful past, but I can say it didn't happen to my children or my grandchildren, and I'm sure you and Zelda can say the same. As an older woman with 4 grown kids and six grandchildren, I can say I am loved.

To put a happy note on this, I will say I'm deliciously enjoying this new novel called Romancing Rachel. It has a wicked mother named Florence and a spirited young woman named Rachel. It's been very cathartic to bring to life the insidious women of my past and finally have control.

My own parents were part of the jet set - lots of money, lots of advantages. My mother never relented, but my father told my Aunt Gert that if he could re-live his life, he would have adopted two more children and things would have been different. Then he died.

As for me, I'm with Zelda and the canning jars. To this day I use canning jars for everything. They make excellent gift jars for things like sour dough starter and homemade salad dressings.

I've always found happiness in the love that comes from doing, making, producing and rescuing. My mother never understood that. Love to her meant sizzle and glitz. Now in her wheelchair, it's all a scattered memory. My memories come alive with little hands slipped into mine, and big eyes that say, "What now Grandma?"

Hold a child today if you can and squeeze. It's the miracle life is all about.

Blessings,

Judy

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

We have a few cups and saucers...and a kitchen filled with canning jars. I use them for everything.

I just finished my precious grandbaby's red wool Christmas cape and have a loving and true relationship with the most beautiful daughter I could've ever hoped for. I am loved!

Thank you with all my heart, Judy...I cannot describe this freedom I feel.

Christine,

With all you do for everyone around you, I'm sure you look down and see that your feet are six inches off the ground - those wings are holding you up. I know - bad theology, but I couldn't help saying it,

Judy

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

Some women never should have had children but if they hadn't then we wouldn't have wonderful women like Christine,Judy, Zelda and many more. My Mother and I had many differences and harsh words but underneath was love.
For me having my children was the greatest blessings in my life. I wouldn't change them for anything or trade them in for all the gold in the world. I don't see them as often as I would like but keep in touch by phone. I also have two wonderful step children that I adore.
These mothers are to be pitied as they will never know the joy that children can bring with their smiles and hugs. I think thru the centuries there has always been mothers and some fathers like this who disown their children for some stupid reason or another but that is their loss. Terrible that the children have to suffer but many of them come out the other side stronger and more compassionate than their parents were ever capable of being.
Sorry to hear about your cat Judy. I had to put my 17 year old cat to sleep a couple of months ago and unfortunately the next week my dog died. I was a mess for awhile mourning and missing them. My husband is in a care home so live alone.
The apartment got so lonely and empty I was going bonkers. Got my stepdaughter to drive me to a local cat rescue facility and adopted two cats. They have brightened my life tremendously and now when I go out I look forward to coming home.
Life does have many compensations for all the harsh things that happen. We just have to recognize them when they come along. One of them is love.
Regards to all
Flora.

It's been a bitter pill. I have had countless nightmares of her -full of anxiety. She has become
a bogey of sorts. I think you are all helping me move through this, like you all help with so
much of my tough spots these days. Thanks for helping me process.
She was born in the middle of the bombing that was done in Mainz Germany. Tough times,
a withholding Mother, and a hard, stingy Grandmother that ruled with an iron fist. But I think there's
more nature than nurture in the last three generations of women in my maternal line. I know others
there of this generation that are so much different.
I would like to think that the chain has broken but my daughter has a tough as nails streak and is
angry with me for the choices I made that in her mind made this financial mess we are in. I keep
hoping she'll grow some team-spirit. But I guess being a self-absorbed, judgemental little snit
is part of the separation that teenagers negotiate.
Sharing all our wisdoms, experiences and insights. It's like being in a tight -knit village, and to
think we are all so far apart.
Zelda

Hi Zelda

My kitchen too, is full of recycled glass jars full of all the foodstuffs that come from the supermarket in plastic bags.

Teenaged girls are a breed apart.

1 My daughter was an alien between the ages of 12/13 and 20/21. Do not think of them as having any characteristics that define them as human. Even their bodies are not the shape of the adults they will become.

2 Do not take their criticism personally. My daughter was so self-centred that I felt like persona non-grata for those years. She was in love with her Dad, who was fortunately in love with both of us, though you could have fooled me at times! She could wrap him around her little finger, though DH was not able to do the opposite to her. It wasn't his fault. He is male, and some recent research I saw the other day suggests that girls who have a close and affectionate relationship with their Dads have a later time of first sexual experience, so maybe this was God at work, and she really was in love with her Dad. She is now 22, has a lovely boyfriend, and we all love each other very much.

3 You both have to get to the other end of this process alive to reap the fruits. Sadly, so many mother-daughter relationships fall foul of the motivations of women who really do not understand why they are like they are or how deeply they hurt each other. As mothers, we have only one mother to compare ourselves to, but as daughters we are so often compared to other daughters, either our sisters or other women's daughters. All we can do with our difficult daughters is be very patient, raise them as well as we can, being aware of the ways in which our mothers' ways did not work, be a good example to them and bite our tongues appropriately until they grow up. This is the only way I can see of preventing the continuation of the abuse and preserving the relationship for later. I think you are probably going OK, though it probably doesn't feel like it!

Cheers

Louise

Zelda,

Interesting that your mom grew up in Germany and had to suffer the bombing. You wonder if some of this war - depression stuff was just too much for some.

My mother grew up in Yonkers, NY and suffered through the depression. She was the oldest of 10 children and her mother died in 1931 leaving them all with my grandfather. My aunts say that she was always selfish and wouldn't admit to belonging to their family. Her dad was an engineer - both parents well educated. Mother lied her way through her life claiming this and that until she got caught and then there was a terrible fight.

When she found out she couldn't have children, she adopted. She abandoned me at age 4 bored to death with caretaking. She took up with a 1950's jet set in San Francisco and didn't settle down again until she hit the nursing home.

On the other end is my Aunt Gert who is a saint. She was the perfect mother, and I always tell her, "If I had had a mother like you, I could have conquered the world." I was not allowed to know my relatives as a child. I had to sneak when I was a grown woman.

I'm glad most of that is over now. I think, looking back, that my mother wanted to think it was just not important because she failed so miserably. Maybe your mother thinks this too, and is afraid and too proud to admit it. It's hard to admit total failure on the cusp of selfishness and mean spiritedness.

You say she gravitates toward the child with money. My mother did that too, but since I never had any, she never gravitated here until she ran out of places and people. My wealth has always been my hands and my heart but she never understood that.

What about that deer?

I have forty kids waiting!

Prayers,

Judy

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

Judy, I think it is a little ironic that we are only 22 sleeps from Xmas and you are scouring Wholewoman for recipes for cooking deer. What would Santa say about this? I am surprised that somebody hasn't lynched you. It is like wandering around Disneyland asking if anybody has any mouse recipes!

Or perhaps I just don't get it (sigh). No, we don't go deer hunting in West Oz. Plenty of kangaroos though!

Cheers

Louise

Louise,

Yes, I heard you guys eat Kanga - what about Roo?

I come from Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett country. We eat deer and possum and raccoon and squirrel and anything else that moves.

Funny what people eat - my son ate a sea slug and my grandson ate jelly fish soup - in China, but we hesitate to eat Bambi. BTW - Santa's coursers were reindeer not dear deer!

And then you come along and eat Kanga and Roo!

I have a hillbilly recipe book that includes muskrat, crow and other varmints. I also have a Civil War cookbook that includes some really terrible stuff - interesting reading.

There is a word for rat as a food aboard ship - not sure what it is or which of the three rats it is.

Have a brilliant day,

Judy

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

I saw a show on tv that said we only eat something like 1 percent of all the available food on the planet. That counts things like bugs.

Anne,

I'm a firm believer that what you eat will either make you feel really good or really bad both in the long run and the short run.

Deer has no fat. I'm always glad to get one although I'd probably have a lot of trouble shooting one. I had a pet one once with 18 points who used to eat marshmallows out of my hand. I'm a care taker and will fix your food, but it kinda stops there.

My neighbor was an entomologist who said lots of bugs were edible.

Interesting.

Change what you can change; be happy with what you cannot.

I believe it would be in our best interest to expand our tastes and learn to eat a wider variety of things that nature offers, and also to get back to obtaining our own food ourselves whether it is growing gardens or killing our own game. The way we have become dependent on grocery stores and the big industrial food production complex terrifies me. I know it has brought an abundance of cheap food to us and made eating very convenient so we have time to spare for other things, but it has also made us completely reliant on it for our survival. It has wrecked our health and made us extremely vulnerable to natural or manmade disasters.

When I was a child our neighbors went out and shot a squirrel, i watched them skin it, and they made a stew and ate it. Nowadays if I tried to do that I would have PETA all over me. But that is the reality of animal protein. Why is it OK for Tysons to slaughter zillions of chickens a day but if I tried to wring a chicken's neck like my grandmother used to do I would probably get arrested. But that is what humans did for millions of years... individually kill their own food. But modern civilization has made it wrong - incredibly - just in the last century, made the fundamental food-hunting mandate of our species WRONG. Instead we are told to be completely dependent on the huge corporate oil-driven industrialized food production machine. This applies most to the urban population but more and more people are leaving the rural lifestyle. We have transferred the power to kill and butcher our own food to a massive conglomerate, and become docile receptors of its largess when we go to the grocery store. The most frightening thing is that in small but many ways this is gradually becoming legislated and regulated so that it is becoming more and more illegal for us to be our own primary food producers.

Likewise we have forgotten how to garden! Even when we do dabble in it we go to the store and buy seeds, fertilizer, pesticides, gasoline driven machines and who knows what. Left to our own devices without power, cars, or artificial help I doubt many of us could actually grow anything much. Don't get me wrong; it's great in a lot of ways. Life is no longer survival on the edge and it has allowed everyone, even the very poor (at least in the U.S.) to have plenty of cheap food. But the price we pay is the risk we take that something will go wrong and we will for whatever reason be cut off from fuel to drive to the store, to drive the trucks to get our food TO the store, to drive the huge farm equipment, or someone will sabotage our food supply, or disaster will physically block roads to get our food to us, and so on. How many of us could survive on the land immediately around us? How many of us would know which insects we could eat, which weeds are safe to eat, how to test unknown plants, how to trap small animals? How many of us would dig up grubs to eat? Many of us would starve to death without making use of all the abundant food sources mother nature has put all around us.

This is a very hard trend to fight and I admit to being dependent on the grocery store myself. Unless you live on a farm you almost have no choice. But I wish we as communities would start returning to a lifestyle where we are closer to our food supply, more directly involved in producing it. The Amish have it right in my opinion. For starters, I am trying to buy locally grown produce whenever possible, and organically grown food. I prefer free range poultry and I've read a book about how to live off the land. I just can't make myself actually go out and eat a grub though.... ha ha ha ha....

I'm probably not telling you guys anything you don't already know. If you live in an urban area and have ever had a power outage or disaster of any sort you should have this same knowledge bugging at the back of your mind too. A few days disaster is bad enough... imagine if we have a month cut off from grocery stores, or six months, or a year. Terrifies me. But even without the specter of disaster looming, eating a wider variety of natural, unprocessed foods is simply HEALTHIER. I am really glad to see the pro-organic trend I'm seeing in stores and the movement to buy locally grown food. I hope it continues to grow and I hope hunting for deer and other game stays a strong and supported activity. I think there is a small but serious trend to try to reverse this gross dependence we have on technology and cheap oil to feed us but I don't know if we are too far gone.

Rant off. :-))

I totally agree with everything you just said. It is my firm opinion that CRIME SCENE TAPE SHOULD BE WRAPPED around everything in the grocery store except those items that are organic!!! The pollution of our food is the biggest crime of the century! I have spent 11 years researching chemicals in our food and skin products and am so bent out of shape over how this has happened with no thought to human health - just profit. In my humble opinion, I think 90% or more of all the diseases we now have come from the corporatization of food. We have been "trained" by the media and "spin doctors" to adhere to rules set down not only by the medical profession but by the food giants who pay big bucks for us to be led like lambs toward any thought, action or consumption, that will be dollars in their pocket, regardless of what it does to us personally. Another thought here, when you hear the statement "the benefit is worth the risk", you can just bet what that means is "you take the risk and they put the benefit in their pocket!" And this includes pharmaceuticals - though there are a few that we do need.

There is a program on BBC called "You Are What You Eat" that really is a fantastic show to watch. The Naturopath actually targets people who are overweight but absolutely everything she says is good for everyone, regardless of size, age or gender. I encourage all of you to try to watch it just to listen to the advice she gives her clients. And don't let this thought get in the way - "oh that doesn't apply to me, just to the overweight people" - most if not all of what she says applies to all of us.

We can all change our lives by continuing what we are doing and using the info on this site. Maybe, each of us should really look at our situations in a smaller way instead of looking at the big picture. And, the big picture is - we want to be back doing the things we've always done without a POP, no problems and freedom from worrying about it. All of the advice here can be looked at "just for today" - we do it and we find we've made it through this day with less anxst than we thought. Every building was built one brick at a time. We will rebuild our bodies one step at a time, one idea at a time, one exercise at a time, one movement at a time, one moment at a time and be grateful for each moment.

I wish you all well.

Grandma Joy (the Green Grandma)

See the Food Forum

I am reading a fascinating book called "The omnivores dilemma"
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in this topic. Very enlightening.