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Health WellbeingCategory Archives

The right to life – I have it.

The Way It Was | Mother Jones.

This article has made me angry. So angry, i am going to open very far too fresh wounds.

I don’t miscarry. Five times, the fetus died. Five times, this longed for child died before twenty weeks. Some early, two, very very late.

Once I gave birth to a little girl I grieved over, too tiny and perfect for life.

The rest of the time, I had a D&C. The fetus, long dead, had to be removed, as my body was not letting go, as my heart was not. It was killing me. I could have died of septicaemia.

With the law changes in the US, I WOULD have died. My subsequent miracles, my youngest children, never born. My equally cherished older children motherless too soon.

The pious arrogance of the anti abortionists. If they are all so pro life, why are they so willing to sacrifice mine? And my youngest two children, who would not have even had a chance to live? 

And all the women who must make the terrible, awful choice, whether the fetus is viable or not, to end a pregnancy. What cruelty is there in choosing for them. Choosing a way of vast expense and pain. Of almost certain death at the hand of backyard butchers. For these desperate women, often trapped in violence and poverty, frequently trying to protect other already born children, unable to access affordable contraception with the obscene lottery of health insurance (unless for the gift of Planned Parenthood, who do far more to prevent unwanted pregnancies than to end them), or perhaps young, vulnerable and scared, with parents who would not understand, or who would rage and throw them out, or with the consequence of death and revilement from their community, hard lined with religious intolerance, mocking the very words of their religious ethos – how dare ANYONE condemn women to this? Their children left motherless, often already fatherless, consigned to foster homes that may scar them in too many ways. The women dead or broken, from one awful episode left unable then to ever have that child they may have wished more than anything they could have had, who perhaps died, or meant the death of them? Or that they could have had if older, supported, or not abused?

People like these so called right to lifers make me sick with their sanctimonious hypocrisy. They seek only to preserve the narrow definition of life. All life is not sacred to them. ONly that which gestates. 

Those people have blood of far more on their hands than any abortionist. Those people are murderers far more vile.

Disabled in Australia, 2011.

I can walk, but not much, or far, before a spinal injury incurred in an accident that was not my fault decides that no, one step too far – stop. Pain. Pain like you can’t imagine. Like you don’t want to imagine. Sometimes it means my leg doesn’t work, the sciatic nerve screaming in agony, the muscles of my lower back spasming beneath my hand as I desperately try to settle it somehow, supporting the aching expanse of pain that has become the lower right hand side of my torso.

So I am mobility impaired – as I believe is the current term. I will also say crippled, because I am. I am not differently abled. I use a walking stick for small distances – my current limit is halfway down my block  - four houses – to the shop and back again. Then a lie down to settle the back a bit. But I keep trying. The rest of the time, a wheelchair. New in my arsenal, a scooter. Currently an old model, I am looking at buying a new one to replace the wheelchair. Because then – then I am independent. With the right model, and some clever ramps and devices, I can get it in and out of my power steering blessed automatic station wagon and get myself up that steep ramp, through the length and breadth of the shopping mall. Cope with the travel I do for work.

Because I have not let this stop me – as a matter of fact, I am doing far more than I could have dreamt of – starting my PhD studies, travelling overseas every two months Okinawa, Hong Kong, and Atlanta in the US under my belt in last three months already:) ) Working and studying and living. Like any normal person, I want to be able to strive, to work, to dream and dare, to live.

And when I use normal, it is different to many. Normal means anyone self aware. We all, as  humans, wish to strive and work and attain and hope and dream and do, and most of all, to independently achieve, not rely on others helplessly, feel a burden.

But I have to say, society often makes it damned hard. Oh, it isn’t deliberate. The world isn’t made for us, really. So things like this register. And I know, I know. We are supposed to be grateful for any advance. We are so often voiceless, or disempowered or disenfranchised, that any advance is good, right? Hey, you people never had it so good.

Yeah. Thanks and all. Really. Thanks for thinking we might want access to entertainment. Or planes. Or taxis. Or doors we can open. Little things you tend to take for granted – unless you are disabled in some way.

I know I sound ungrateful. I just am not grateful. If you think about it for a while, you may understand why.

 

This week’s Angry Cripple column is written by Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes. It’s a celebration of all the great work done for, by and on behalf of the disability sector as well as a slap across the face for all those who could and should have done more for the cause.

via Disability 2011: The good, the bad and the patronising | Article | The Punch.

How to learn from a tragedy – 10yo girl suicides over bullying

And here is an endless grief story where nobody wins.

This poor little girl, suffering until driven to desperation.

Her traumatised family, asking themselves why they didn’t react sooner, why…

Little girls who, (like big ones), can be so cruel – but often don’t intend to be so cruel, they are just fitting in themselves, trying to work out the mores and ways of the culture they are in, a pecking order that all socialised creatures have. They will carry (except potentially in a few, sociopathic type cases) a dreadful guilt, learning too harsh a lesson.

If anything that we hope they would be, her teachers and prinicipal, wishing they had intervened earlier, not dismissed as ‘just kids’ scenario.

And all of us parents, the sad majority of which wince at recollections at how intensely felt the bullying was when we were recipients, (and shame if participants at the giving end), how we want to protect our kids, wondering how to do that without knee jerking into overprotectiveness so that our children are wrapped even further in paranoia and cotton wool, learning nothing but fear…

We need to ask if this is a big picture we are missing, or single incident? Media is of little help in this, the pedophile around every corner has gotten us terrified tolet our kids out to play, restricting their capacity to socialise independently with their peers in a way few groups have historically known.

And in the meantime, if you will excuse me, I am going to hug my 10yo daughter and 8yo son (and think about my other more grown daughters), and hope I know enough to have given them what they need to not face an abyss that this sad little girl could not get beyond.

Parents in a small town in Illinois suspect their young daughter took her own life after enduring years of bullying

via A 10-year-old’s ‘gut-wrenching’ suicide: Is bullying to blame? – The Week.

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Power and abuse

Map of Texas highlighting Aransas County

Image via Wikipedia

I know people who have struggled to have a child, and your heart aches for them, you know what amazing wonderful parents they would be.

Then there is this utter douchebag – a judge beating the hell out of his disabled daughter with a belt – then coming back to do it a second time. With the collusion of the mother. Damn.

He is bitching now that the daughter, who secretly videoed the ongoing abuse, has ’caused trouble for him’. There are no words i can use in public for the depth of my loathing for people like him. Let us just say i lose my normal live and let live approach and turn old testament about it all.

Those who abuse the powerless, especially their own family, are evil, vile monsters. i can sort of understand snapping once (just) and living with the regret of that, trying to be a better person, but this sick b*st*rd really got into this. Sick doesn’t cover it, actually.  And she has a younger sister still living at home, so i can understand her releasing it.

Watching this video breaks my heart. It should break everyone’s heart. And i bet this evil man gets away with it – after all, a Texan judge?

The Internet is blowing up with a video allegedly posted by the daughter of an Aransas County judge that she says shows him beating her.

Someone who says she is the daughter of Judge William Adams posted the 2004 video only recently. The hard-to-take clip shows a man whipping her with a belt because she was downloading music from the net.

“Bend over the fucking bed!!” he screams as he belts her while she tries to squirm away. At another point he threatens to hit her “in your fucking face.”

At another point a woman, who the poster says is her mother, comes in and tells her to bend over “like a 16-year-old and take it.”

via Texas Judge William Adams Allegedly Beating Daughter: Horrifying Video (UPDATED) – Houston News – Hair Balls.

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Where does the crisis lie? The bingo of destructive practices..

Ironically, while populationist groups focus attention on the 7 billion, protestors in the worldwide Occupy movement have identified the real source of environmental destruction: not the 7 billion, but the 1 per cent, the handful of millionaires and billionaires who own more, consume more, control more, and destroy more than all the rest of us put together.

via Population crisis: blame the 1 per cent – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

Get on your bike and ride…

Out at a fun event with a bunch of mayhem custom bike madness magic peeps from our own beloved gang –  La Lengua Del Fuego (and the equally funky epic wonder grooviness that is Boneshakers). Downhill from Mt Lofty to city run. The two youngest (small lad age 8, littlest princess age 10), made it a fair way down on their custom freak tandem – then car pooled with mummy. Ms almost 17 fanged all the way down. Himself, as master of freak bikes, had loaded a trailer of fun bizarre bike options for those without, so i got to be in charge of that for a bit too.

The reality is, the car accident that gave me spinal injury took many things. The hardest one to lose was my avid bike riding ways. So as much as i adore these people, and have a blast – i am sad in some ways for what i felt i couldn’t participate in.

But my beloved, wonderful, unselfish, magic bloke, being master of mayhem and brilliance, has decided i SHALL go to the ball. He is converting a number of old electric wheelchair into a frankenbike for me, a recumbent of motorised bliss and bikeness:)

Tonight, he put together two of these wheelchairs

Wooden wheelchair dating to the early part of ...

Image via Wikipedia

and gave me – one working one! Now, while i wait for frankenbike, i have much more mobility than i had dreamt of. We just went for a ride down to the beach – three kids and himself on bikes, and me – me on pooter the scooter (he just poots along). Wonderful thing. So much freedom. Independence. Just fang down to the shop, yeah…to the beach, no probs…go for long walk with kids and larry the terrier – i am mobile woman!

So, everyday will be standard Kermit the wonder wheelchair, but for just local stuff, i can now join in:)

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Skittle and horror movies as an answer to depression – this is a wonderful thing.

Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression.

Death of this innocent means death of social innocence?

Well, indeed…this one has torn me up. That poor child. But don’t we all feel a twinge before robustly denouncing the Chinese, before claiming it would never happen here, wherever our here may be? Can any of us be totally sure?

How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts?

The death of the two-year-old run over as passersby ignored her is symptomatic of a deepening moral crisis

via How can I be proud of my China if we are a nation of 1.4bn cold hearts? | Lijia Zhang | Comment is free | The Observer.

It is called loss. It is an agony.

Having lost five children at various stages of pregnancy – i cannot share more than this woman’s story, because i can only agree. I have encountered some compassion, but so much more of a callous system, with overworked and indifferent staff. But to the very few who helped – you helped me survive my own hell. Between you and my dear support friends, i made it.

LOSING a baby through miscarriage is a traumatic experience, but one Adelaide woman says her treatment in hospital made everything much worse.

via My fight for dignity in an uncaring system | Adelaide Now.