Personally, I'm glad for days when families have a good excuse to get together. Sharing good food is another favorite of mine. I like to make pies in particular, and the savory dressing, moist juicy turkey and ham, cold sweet and sour cranberry sauce, comforting mashed potatoes and warm gravy, candied sweet potatoes, etc. is something my mouth waters for at least once a year. I like making homemade crescent rolls, seeing kids put olives on their fingers and contribute to homemade centerpieces.
After years of the above traditional cooking and cleaning up, my children couldn't understand why 'Mom' just wanted to go to the coast, get a motel room, get pizza and Chinese food and just hang out together. It seems that nobody has time for board games any more. I remember my grandson Joe playing checkers with my 80+ yr-old father in the Scappoose living room while the woodstove kept us warm and cozy. Many times I'd see my kids falling asleep on the sofa as they read a book. Home is about spending time together, the wonderful smells of home cooking, enjoying a clean house, and feeling the warmth of the stove and our time together. Like my own mother who had ten of us, however, the shock of seeing her serve a heated ham, mashed potatoes made from dried flakes, peas from a can or frozen bag, and powdered Crystal Light lemonade, though horrifying, after more than twenty years of service, was understandable.
I moved to Vernonia to downsize from my large home in Scappoose after all the kids were gone, and my father was in the process of dying. My plan was to stay for a couple of years until I wrote a book I'm working on, and then find someplace with more sun in the winter. I also thought of just leaving for winter, visiting my Texas grandchildren and traveling to explore some of this country, and maybe others. I have been slowed down by remodeling, the suffering and death of my father, and watching the learning curve of my family of children, trying to be available to support them when needed, to the best of my ability.
I think I am ready to return to my social work practice, where I specialize in sexual abuse healing, and enjoy facilitating groups for women and those going through transitions. I am also interested in creating support groups for caregivers and persons with different forms of dementia and their families. I always offer sliding scale for part of my practice, for those that need it. I try to honor those who need support and are financially struggling, like part of my life where I struggled as a single parent. Those with financial means pay regular fees for their counseling, and help others to be able to afford help, also. Paying it forward, making a difference and helping others is always rewarding. I do this daily helping those I meet- and their children -regain or reach optimal health with food supplements, water filters for clean water, and non-toxic cleaners and skin care with vitamins to absorb instead of disease-causing chemicals. See: www.leangreencafe.myshaklee.com
I also am interested in starting a detox center for women that will include a residence offering healthy cooking and cooking classes, nutrients to support and facilitate physical detox, a dry sauna to help with removal of toxins, and massage and acupuncture/acupressure, in partnership with Holistic Medical Professionals. Drug treatment is only successful when supporting the whole picture, including sexual and physical abuse counseling, individual and group counseling to address underlying thinking/behavior, guilt, esteem and grief issues.
I have watched our growing Corrections system, making money off the misery of our sons and daughters too long. My Bachelors is in Administration of Justice and my Masters Degree is in Social Work, which is being an Advocate for Social Justice. I spoke with a parent recently whose daughter does not want to take the psychiatric drugs that prevent her from feeling human and healthy, and create psychotic breaks when she stops taking them. She is being forced to get injections by her Parole Officer, seen as being 'out of compliance', and put in jail. Healing options and real medicine is not offered her. She will die early, an absolute violation of her trust in her 'village' and against her birthright. We are spending too much money in the wrong places and are a part of criminal behavior as a society for allowing this type of story to go on.
I have seen personally with relatives, and professionally, what psychiatric drugs have done to the human body and to human lives, and I am absolutely opposed to this 7-11 attitude and behavior of treating people. Anti-depressants and anti-anxiety drugs cause many horrific homicides and suicides. Instead of the money-making business of prisons, mental health institutions and impotent drug treatment centers and foster homes, wasting taxpayer money and violating their intentions, we need safe havens for abuse, grief and life counseling and education, with healthy food, kind and compassionate treatment and safe, warm beds. The Quakers long ago in our American history did exactly this with prisoners, and were far more successful than any 'modern' Corrections systems. We have tried the lazy way, where the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Doctors have colluded for profit and convenience, and even the Drug Clinics and Foster Homes with mainly sexually abused populations do not offer the sexual abuse counseling needed to heal the children we have let down and left unprotected with our laws and institutions. We have created a profit-making cycle of unprotected chidren populating our prisons.
Our 'professionals' have let us down, with their DX-diagnosing, so they can RX-prescribe drugs of all kinds, which we pay for. When the school killings started, and the lines of kids being given fraudulent diagnoses of 'learning disorders' were herded and given life-altering drugs, where were we? How easily some are manipulated into vaccines, which suddenly go in short supply after the virus is spread, or is it part of some population or control experiment like so many others inflicted on prison and military persons? I am a big supporter of Shutting down the Televisions. Only when the propaganda is quieted, can more people actually think rationally. Can you count the drug commercials now? I can't, as I have not turned on the television in three years.
So, in this season of Thanksgiving, though I am grateful for much that I enjoy, I want to express that there is much we need to do to correct our communities and our country. Some think it is too late, and probably would welcome the Hollywood Solar Flare Theme or 2012 End of the World Discussion, but we live in the here and now, and our children and fellow human beings are suffering and waiting for our attention and action. Only we know in our hearts, if we are creating healthier lives and planet by our presence, and if our lives will count toward the greater good of mankind. I personally believe that it is our first duty to protect each other. Our innocent children who are growing up to populate the prisons, in a country with the highest rate of incarceration in the world, and who turn to drugs and crime, need our guidance and support, justice and healing. With my educational background, it is difficult not to acknowledge what has helped to shape our social conditions, like the CIA dropping crack cocaine into certain neighborhoods which has fueled our prison population, the FDA approving toxic foods which keep the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Doctors profiting, and the FBI removing detox herbs but not pot from Jamaican shops, benefiting the prisons, drug treatment clinics, and the medical/military/pharmaceutical matrix.
We do not have to be perfect, but we need to have a perfect intention of protecting and giving to this world.
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