My son will begin middle school this year at the middle school I attended. It’s the same middle school my brother, my eldest daughter, and two of my nieces attended. My son will likely be a fourth generation graduate of St. Joseph High School. And it is on that beautifully renovated and fully updated stage where I, and some 160 others from the 1950s through the 90s, will return this weekend for our ENCORE Variety Show to benefit the St. Joseph Public Schools Foundation. I’m among the very proud alumni of a school system in which I staunchly believe, and for which I am a proud advocate.

I haven’t sung in ages except for the occasional family wedding or funeral and alcohol-infused Karaoke. I’m mortified each time I recall when Jeff and I attempted to sing Islands in The Stream after neither of us had even heard the song since we'd rehearsed sufficiently and performed it with a band backing us for Showtime thirty years ago. There’s a reason neither of us volunteered to revive that performance for ENCORE. If you saw Sunday’s Herald Palladium, you are as excited as I am that Jeff is appropriately reviving a comedy skit, The Old Prospectors. He performed it back in the 80s with Jim Bartalone, and will again, hopefully to a welcoming and supportive full house.

Though he didn't graduate, Robin Williams was classically trained at Juilliard. Times are hard and cuts are prevalent for performing arts programs in schools across the country. Whether or not we shine brightly or fizzle hopelessly on our old stage this Friday and Saturday, it’s only a small piece of what this week means. It’s about supporting the future of St. Joseph Public Schools. It’s about continuing to provide programs that are sometimes the only lifeline for kids who desperately need to succeed and to shine and to have control of something when they often have so little control over what happens in their young lives.   

2014 has been a turning point for me. I wanted to stop being angry. I wanted more, so I decided, and I got it. I put myself “out there,” owning the title of Writer. In the winter, I took a train to Montana to attend a writers’ retreat. In the spring, I auditioned and won a spot reading one of my pieces for Listen to Your Mother in one of thirty-two shows across the US. This summer is almost over, and I am at the editing phase after completing a draft of my first GANE Possible Publication for release late this fall. I accomplished that through the #Write2TheEnd program I co-facilitate with my friend and fellow writer, Ami Hendrickson. We can’t wait to begin our fall session September 15th.  We hope you’ll join us and claim the title of Writer for yourself if that’s something you’ve always wanted to do. In 2015 I plan to learn to play the guitar my husband bought me over a year ago.

The idea is to stop dreaming, stop worrying about failure, and start doing. A foundation of my #MOREin2014 philosophy includes going back to my roots, to the things I enjoyed when I was young; before poor choices, responsibility, jobs, family, kids, new friends, or a spouse with different interests allowed me, little-by-little, to push my passions aside. Before I knew it, I'd allowed myself to make the choice to stop doing what I once loved: singing.

I can’t wait to grace my home stage with old friends and fellow alumni. The idea is thrilling. It’s exhilarating. And I especially can’t wait to honor the many years of Showtime and the teachers who made the spotlight, writing, comedy, music, and drama possible for generations of kids who desperately need the outlet and pure joy performing was and will be again. Whether it’s with us or at us, take time out to laugh this weekend, and do it while supporting a great school. 

Tickets are available online or in person at Edgewater Bank at the corner of Broad and Main streets. Get yours today! 

I began my freshman year of high school as a girl from a seemingly solid Midwestern family who regularly sang in church, and ended it as a girl whose parents were divorced, who no longer attended church, or believed in anything.  I was instantly re-imagined from protestant good girl to hapless promiscuous girl.  So it came as no surprise when I was barely out of teenagerhood, and I suddenly had to reinvent myself as a single mom.  Later on, I met the man who would become my husband and my daughter’s daddy, and then I had to learn to co-parent, and to be a step-mom.  Some years later, my husband wanted to open a restaurant, and I became a restaurateur, and too soon a solo-restaurateur, when he accepted a job offer in his field that took him on the road for much of most weeks.

Then a new reinvention came after we closed our restaurant and I became a somewhat (OK, maybe radically) possessed researcher of holistic healing which helped me to overcome my infertility and finally have the baby I’d longed six years for.  That success brought about another reinvention when I had to learn how to parent teenagers and a high needs infant at the same time.  All my thinking had to shift when I had to parent that infant in very different ways than I’d parented my girls.

Reinvention isn’t anything new in my life, though its process never occurred to me until recently with the ultimate reinvention:  Midlife Crisis.

Many of those previous reinventions occurred as reactions to the actions of others or to situations.  They didn’t happen from a place of self-discovery, and they weren’t in the least motivated by any sense of seeking, or of finding myself.

Looking inward began when we moved across the entire country from both of our daughters, and from any of the female support system I’d enjoyed and relied upon for much of my adult life.  Moving from Michigan to California wasn’t anything I ever imagined I’d do, and it wasn’t anything I wanted to do.  I pouted and I wallowed that first year away.  I was so desperately alone, and because transition of any kind isn’t easy for me, my brain got confused and I forgot how to function.  My son got sick, and I couldn’t remember what to do to make him well.  I couldn’t grasp the brands of my favorite supplements, foods, any semblance of an action plan wherein I could see myself ever feeling normal again. 

I was completely mired in this dull, marine layer version of my life.  

I had no confidence, I knew no one, and no one seemed to care to get to know me.  I couldn’t fathom what I might tell anyone about myself anyway, because I lacked any identity there, or frankly anywhere.

My marriage was at its most difficult point ever, I disliked myself and my husband, and I was barely worthwhile as a mother to my son, let alone as a human being in the world.  When I couldn’t stand myself any longer, I began to think about reinvention from within.

No one knew me in California.  This was my chance to become anything I wanted to become.  There were no labels, there was no family history to define me, and there certainly were no expectations, never mind the fact that absolutely no one cared or gave me a thought anyway—they were too mired in their own version of survival, too stuck in their own traffic.  

How did I want to be remembered, and how did I want to impact the future for my children beyond their day-to-day care and feeding?  I could no longer survive as that person who put herself down and put herself last and who disbelieved in herself, and my deepest fear was that my husband and I wouldn’t survive at all. 

I wanted to go back to Michigan, but I didn’t want to do it without him.  I didn’t have a choice.  I had to make a life for myself in California.  I didn’t have many friends, so I needed to be my friend, and I hoped that would allow me to once again be my husband’s.  

For me, the answer was and remains writing. 

When your soul is that of a writer who isn’t writing, the stories are swimming in your head, whether you write them down or not.  You feel like a crazy person.  You talk to yourself, you talk to your dogs; you can’t get your bearing.  Even if the lake or the ocean is always west, you get off on the wrong exit on the freeway because your mind is cluttered with all the stories--you forget to pick up your kid, or you forget to clean dog puke off the carpet.   

I seem to have lost my funny from when I first began blogging, in part because a dual midlife crisis while raising a young boy is hard, but also because I’m not as afflicted with self-diagnosed ADD anymore, so I simply don’t screw up as much.  I’m focused and I’m driven.  I have a purpose and I have goals.  The stories don’t fester in my head as much, because they’re alive and breathing on my computer screen.  I wish my sense of humor wasn’t the thing I had to give up…but perhaps when life gets a bit easier, I’ll find it again.  And even though life still isn't easy, I feel more fulfilled and more content within myself than ever before.

Tell me in the comments, where are you on your path to being your own best friend?

Happy Back-to-School with the #JudyBlumeProject!  This started with a special surprise, even to my partner, Dana @thekitchwitch, of a four-part series that began last Monday with installment one, and continued last Thursday with installment two.  Monday's post represented installment three, and today marks our final installment with part four!  It has been delightful to see this story evolve and grow, and I hope you've been reading it with your upper elementary and middle graders.

I am thrilled to present this amazing guest post in four parts by author, Jim Denney, of the Timebenders series.  I became friends with Jim on Twitter, my son has read (LOVED!) the first book in his series, Battle Before Time, and Jim thinks the world of Judy Blume, and our little #JudyBlumeProject (GAH!).  As a MG author himself, he thinks so much of Judy Blume, that among his many projects, he took time out to write and share this riveting story, Martian Girl, with US!  GRATEFUL!

I'm certain you'll enjoy this ode to seemingly everyone's favorite, Judy's Margaret.  Check out our Facebook page, we now have a PROJECT PAGE, and you'll see that nearly every post to date includes AYTGIMM among the most meaningful and life-affirming of Judy Blume's prolific works for generations of tween girls during the angst-ridden onset of puberty.  And rightly so.  I hope this shows that any manner of respect you'd like to pay to Judy will be considered, and I hope this will inspire more men (young or young at heart) to contribute their thoughts and memories to our wonderful little project that one day hopes to be published as an anthology to honor our Judy.  

Without further ado, I'm thrilled to present...drum roll....

        Something's wrong, God.

        I woke up and heard alarms going off. I don't know what's happening, but Dad left our cabin to find out. I'm huddled under my covers, talking to you on my Amulet. I wish they'd turn off those horrible alarms.

        All kinds of thoughts go through my head. Is there a fire? Did something go wrong with the Ares? Are we losing power? Are we leaking air? Are we going to die here in space?

        Wait--

        Dad just came in.

        I'll see what he found out.

                                                                                    #

        Oh no.  Oh no.

        Please, God, no.

        Don't let it be--

        Dad came back and said that something happened to one of the passenger sections. He called it "explosive decompression." A whole passenger section just split open and all the air blew out. It might have been a meteor strike. Or maybe the hull just failed. They think everybody inside was killed—two hundred people.

        Mom said, "Oh, how awful!"

        I asked Dad what settlement the people were going to.

        He said, "Why do you ask?"

        "I just want to know."

        He said, "They were going to the Pacifica settlement. What's wrong? What are you crying about? You didn't know any of those people."

        I said, "I'm going to the library." And I ran out.

        Oh no, oh no, oh God, please don't let it be Salvino.

        The whole time I was running to the library, I tried to call him on my Amulet. He didn't answer.

        Now I'm sitting here in the library all by myself.

        Please, God, let Salvino walk through that door. Please, let me see him again.

        Please, God, let him be okay.

        Please, please, please.

                                                                                #

        I don't know what to say, God.

        I don't know what to think.

        I don't know what to feel.

        I made one friend on this trip, and now he's gone.

        His name is on the list of the "missing." It's been two waking periods and a sleep period, and he hasn't called me. I know he's not "missing," God. I know he's gone.

        I keep looking at the picture of him, the one I took after I hugged him. I look at his grin and his dark, smiling eyes. I want him to be alive again. I want to read to him again, and I want him to read to me.

        Why did you let it happen, God?

        I believed in you.

                                                                                #

        Hello, God.

        I'm sorry, but I've decided I don't believe in you anymore.

        Here's the thing: If I believe in you, then I have to be mad at you for letting Salvino die. I'd rather not believe in you than be mad at you.

        Dad's right. I have to quit talking to you. I'll miss talking to you, God, but I just can't do this anymore. I thought you were my friend, but you let me down. And you let Salvino down, because he believed in you, too.

        Please don't think I'm mad at you, God. Really, I'm not mad. I'm just very disappointed. So I've decided you don't exist.

        If I'm wrong and you really do exist, I hope you won't be mad at me. Try to understand it from my point of view. Try to understand how much it hurts when someone you really, really care about dies.

        I have to go now.

        Goodbye, God.

                                                                                  #

        Hello, God, it's me, Zandria. Remember me?

        I wouldn't blame you if you forgot who I am. It's been a long time since I talked to you. More than a hundred days, I think. And last time I talked to you, I said goodbye forever. And I meant it.

        But I've been wondering about something. I keep thinking about what Salvino's mother told him before she died: "A soul that loves God is never lost."

        I want to believe it, but I'm not sure if it's true or not.

        I wish I could feel your voice in my heart, the way Salvino felt his mother's voice. Sometimes, I think maybe I do, but I'm not sure. Sometimes I think I feel a voice that tells me everything is going to be okay. Is that your voice?

        Is it true, God, that a soul that loves you is never lost? If it's true, God, could you help me to feel it? Could you help me know it?

                                                                                    #


        Hello, God. It's me, Zandria—the loneliest girl in the universe.

        It's been a week since I talked to you last. I haven't felt like talking to you.

        Some days I'm mad at you. Some days I'm sad because I miss Salvino. I never have days where I'm just normal and happy. Mad, sad, mad, sad—ugh! I'm sick of those feelings!

        We're getting close to Mars, God. Dad says the next two weeks will be very busy. We have to go through some sort of training for when they drop us down to the surface. I may not have much time to talk to you until we're down on Mars.

        If anything goes wrong, and I die on the way down, would you do me a favor? Would you please take care of my soul? Would you let me see Salvino again? There's a lot I never got to say to him.

        One more thing, God--

        I mostly believe in you again, if that helps any.


                                                                                      #

        Well, God, I made it to Mars.

        That's right, it's me, Zandria—Martian girl. I'm talking to you from a tunnel deep under the surface of the Red Planet.

        The trip down from orbit was even scarier than they said it would be. It was noisy and the landing capsule seemed like it would shake itself to pieces and burn up. I really thought I was going to die this time.

        We landed hard, but we all survived.

        Mom and Dad and I are in the Utopia settlement. Everything's crowded and cramped compared to Earth, but very roomy compared to our tiny cabin on the Ares.

        I have chores to do, helping take care of the hydroponics garden. And I have schoolwork to keep me busy.

        This is my home now. I'm a Martian, just like Salvino said.

        Oh, no. I'm starting to cry again. Sorry. Just saying his name makes me miss him. I still don't know why you let him die, God, but I've decided that what his mom said is true: A soul that loves you is never lost.

        So I've decided to love you, even though at times it's not easy.

        Today, in the garden, I was humming that song Salvino taught me. It helps me feel close to him--

        The water is wide, I can't cross over.
        And neither have I wings to fly.
        Give me a boat that can carry two,
        And both shall row, my love and I.

        Well, that's all for now, God. Talk to you soon.

        Love, Zandria.

__________________________     The End ... or is it ... just the beginning ...?   ____________________________

I was working in our restaurant when a customer burst through the door and asked if we had a TV.  We did not, so he ran to his shop and brought us a little black and white one, the kind with the old rabbit ears.

It was the quietest that restaurant had ever been, the most food ever left on plates, and the tips were sparse.  The only hollow sounds were those of burners clicking, ventilation blowing.  Even the newscasters left many silent spaces between their attempts to speculate and explain.

There was no explanation.  Nothing could make sense of anything we were seeing.

The laughter and the joy and the community camaraderie you could always find at our restaurant were gone in an instant.  Like a giant vacuum had come in and sucked it all away, and it never did get its life back.  I’m sure there are others that were much more closely impacted that still feel like they’ve never gotten their lives back.

The restaurant industry was hit particularly hard, however, when (what felt like, and in some ways probably was) the world decided they wanted to hold on to whatever hadn’t been lost, eat at home, be with their children, gather close around the family table again.

Our restaurant was too young and couldn’t bear the sudden downturn in business that shut off the summer season so soon and so finitely.  Sadly, we had to close the following April, almost exactly three years after we’d opened.  We should have closed the previous November, and to this day we feel the financial ramifications of not doing so.  But we were worried about our employees through the winter, and it was so hard to let go of the dreams, the intentions, the maybes, the what-ifs.

Had we not closed when we did, I believe with every piece of my soul that my son would not be here.

Infertility was a battle I fought every day we owned that restaurant.  I had a miscarriage on a morning that no one was coming in to open and cook and be ready for customers at 6 a.m., but me.  I was bleeding.  I knew it was happening.  But I couldn’t leave.  We’d been trying four years at that point.

The month after we closed though, after my pH was suddenly, magically in balance absent the daily stress of operating the restaurant, which has an adverse chemical impact on the body, I saw my bluebirds, and I was given hope.

We traveled to England for my husband’s work.  That’s what the UK was called when I was a little girl, and it was the homeland of both of my maternal grandparents—there was no question, I was going.  Even amid all the money troubles we had like so many other restaurant owners across the country, I felt such a connection to my heritage and like my personal healing had truly begun.

Just a few short months later, after six long years—72 some months of disappointment—I had reason to take a pregnancy test again, and it was positive.  Even though we lived in a world that was broken and crazy, for us the Universe had finally aligned, and I knew it was meant to be.

Because I believed so deeply in the omen of those bluebirds sent by my Gramps.

Because tragedy and struggle happen, but life is for the living, and it goes on.

And every day that we wake up.  And we throw off our covers.  And we set our feet on the floor.  Has the potential to be beautiful.

God bless this one.

An army of supporters waits with them, each of us going about our own lives.  I am writing this post, because I agreed to do it, and because there is nothing more beautiful than a woman mothering through her pain.  There is nothing more beautiful than a wife who is there for her husband for all the moments before and all the ones after a traitorous piece of her is cut away.  There is nothing more beautiful than a woman who comforts and cries with and prays with her children and reassures them, even as she reassures herself, that everything will be OK.

I was still living in California when my first close friend underwent the same surgery, double, that my friend today must endure; must survive; must press on through for all the days that follow.  I can’t fathom what might be beautiful about those days in between—only perhaps the other side.  After the scars begin to fade, and the hair grows, and the beauty and blessing of mothering lives once again in her children’s classrooms, reading and making crafts, and checking papers, instead of mired in each moments’ survival. 

My job will be to find ways to help make some of those days beautiful for my friend and her family, even as I continue to be the mom, the wife, the writer and businesswoman I’ve come to expect myself to be. 

Now that I’m back home where I belong, the beauty of my dear friends, all of us different ages, but with children the same age; changed on the surface and deep inside though we have in two short years, is that we’re still here.  Even if we can’t comprehend the choices, or fully appreciate the experience without having had it ourselves, we’re still here and we’re still friends.  We still have each other's backs, and we still hold one another's families in our hearts and in our care when one of us is down.

My friends, my posse, still forgive clumsily chosen words; we still vote for and cheer one another on, hold each other up and help each other succeed.  We still give the benefit of doubt in most cases, and accept apologies when offered.  We hope for only the best in life for our friends, and we’re there to help them survive, overcome and learn from the all too common snag, or plod through a monumentally difficult time. 

And through two years in California I made new and equally beautiful friends that now span the country, and who will remain so forever.  And through this process of releasing my inner author and sharing my soul with *the world*, I’ve made a myriad more friends across tundra and oceans.

Whether an instant of soaring brilliance, or in the worst of life’s moments—even if it’s spent unproductively, staring at a blank page, and praying like I’ve never prayed before, for mercy, for deft hands, for beauty and grace, and for another day to hug my friend, gently, or just to be there if she can’t stand my touch, even if it’s not a particularly beautiful day—there is no place I would rather be than among these beautiful women who became my friends through a MOMS Club playgroup.  We’ve seen children born and children married, and we’ve watched our brood of fifteen kids grow through everything in between. 

This week reminds me what is beautiful about being a woman that has nothing to do with weight or height or skin or hair or breasts; and none of it is more striking than the beauty of women friends. 

[And what a difference 48 hours makes.  Update: my friend came through her surgery bravely and valiantly, and so did her family, and so did I.  Amazingly, she came home the next day.  She is where she belongs, recovering with her family and friends surrounding her.  And my first friend gave us all hope when she received news recently, as her hair begins to grow back, that her doctor considers her in remission.  On to the next step:  Fight like a Girl, my beautiful friends!  Fight like a Girl!]

Thank you to August McLaughlin for inviting me to participate in her second annual Beauty of a Woman Blog Fest.  Please check out what are sure to be more fantastic posts over on August's page, where she'll be linking up a bunch of us to celebrate the beauty of women tomorrow, February 22, 2013.

This post that I wrote quite feverishly the afternoon that I was waiting to hear about my friend's surgery absolutely suits the spirit of @HeatheroftheEO 's #JustWrite exercise over at Extraordinary Ordinary.  It's all about capturing moments.  Happy ones, heart wrenching ones, poignantly beautiful ones...those that give you pause, that make you notice life and appreciate all it has to offer, the good and the bad.  It's one of the best writing exercises I've participated in, and I highly recommend it.  Be sure to follow the directions, because that's what makes it ROCK so beautifully.  

The funny thing about our world these days is that Social Media vehicles like Twitter and Facebook have made it much smaller than it once was.  Due to the recent events in Newtown, Connecticut and the immediacy of shared information, other countries are suddenly offering their input and participating in a dialog that was once uniquely American.  I’m new to Twitter, but I’m becoming more and more aware that I could be talking to someone across oceans, and certainly across thousands of miles of tundra.  I could be talking to someone who isn’t American, about a topic that concerns Americans, because suddenly it weighs heavily on the hearts and in the minds of the world.

Such was the case last evening when a dialog began about gun control and mental health between two mothers in two different countries.  In the shorthand that is unique to Twitter, we only whispered at the surface, but I am building a great deal of respect for her views on success and failure, and we and the brilliant minds at Leadership Voices agree on the need for an urgent global discussion on mental wellness.  Irene Becker is a business coach and consultant with Just Coach It in Canada, and I am actually working with a business coach, Nancy Kaye, of Define Your Destiny in San Diego, California.  These women and others like them share a vision of the potential that can be reached by many who may have previously seen themselves as failures.  And it’s quite possible these two fine, smart, beautiful spirits who are trying to heal the hearts and the minds of the clients they work with, one at a time, may share some other similarities in their views on gun control.

I have a unique perspective on the issue of gun control, in that my husband is an ex-police officer/ firefighter/ paramedic and is a nationally recognized security expert who specializes in Business Continuity Planning that encompasses active shooter and violence in the workplace programs. 

We’re from Michigan, and we tend to be prepared sorts.  That being said, neither of us is against federal mandates for stricter gun control policies as they pertain to the consistent vetting (across the country) for past criminal and mental health issues, right to privacy be damned—I would not be opposed to such background checks on all members of legal age in a prospective household, a waiting period not to exceed a week, for example, safety checks and required safety courses.  With his background, my husband was part-owner of a gun store in our town for a time and served as gunsmith and armor to many of the local law enforcement agencies.  On occasion I worked in that gun store, and thus had to go through the extensive training and testing and obtain a Concealed Pistol License (CPL) myself.  I understand there are those who have very differing views on and feelings about guns than many of the rest of us in the US, as I’m sure we do on other issues.  Much like the taboo of mental illness, this wasn’t something I often felt I could talk about in California, as I imagine it wouldn’t be in many circles in Canada and other countries.  I must tell you, however, as a 5’0” woman who has been the victim of date-rape and who spent years as a single mom, I rather enjoy feeling competent and prepared; less scared and less like a potential victim all the time.

I suspect the incidence of all crimes is lower in Canada than in the US.  But here we are, and suddenly taking guns away from law-abiding citizens while leaving them in the hands of criminals and psychos who don’t abide by the laws of the land, amounts to piss poor planning.  However, Leadership Voices, Irene and Nancy are definitely onto something when they speak about the amount of stress under which our society lives and functions on a daily basis.  I’ve seen it first hand, having lived in Chicago for a time when our daughters were young, and more recently having lived in San Diego for two years.  We have chosen to return to our small, Midwestern town, where the pace and the demand and the traffic and the competition and the stress is far lower than what we experienced in either of those two bustling metropolitan areas, and frankly where I’m less afraid (and better prepared) to walk the streets.  There was a school shooting at Kelly Elementary School in Carlsbad, California, not fifteen minutes north of our house when we first arrived there.  There were two incidences of highway snipers that occurred in the short time we lived there, the 2nd one ending with an incident AT our freeway exit.  There were robberies in malls, there were home invasions, there occurred two murders of cab drivers two exits to the south of ours in an area we frequented with out of town guests; all and much more in the short time we lived in California.

In our experience and in fact, the problems don’t stem from those of us who legally and responsibly own guns for the protection of our homes.  The problems tend more to come from those for whom guns have been purchased by others, or from those who illegally possess guns.  My hometown in Michigan sits on a stretch of highway that runs between Detroit and Chicago.  There is a great deal of drug running that occurs, and there is plenty of gun violence that occurs in the socioeconomically depressed and welfare dependent town that sits right across the river from ours.  We cross the river to go to the movies, and we cross the river to do our Christmas shopping.  Thus, we are occasionally the victims of muggings and other crimes, particularly this time of year, and shoplifting and petty larceny is rampant. 

Among the difficulties of the recent events in Newtown, CT, for me, is the fact that it has taken away an insular sense of security I once treasured here in my hometown.  Mine is very like the town of Newtown: lakeside, quaint, picturesque, we parent and love one another’s children without restraint; we look out for our neighbors.  Sandy Hook Elementary is a school very similar to my son’s.  The staff and the children who lost their lives, and ALL of the town’s and the nation’s and the world’s parents and citizens who grieve them, look and sound very similar to those in our town.  And even while I grieve my own and my children’s loss of innocence in such times, I have a strong sense that the past several years of economic destruction in many American families has left us heartbroken and emotionally, mentally, and financially battered.  Those with the capacity for hope and the mental stability to do as Irene so aptly describes in her essay, Winning the New War, to use our Constructive Discontent to Fail Forward, will survive and with the help of people like Irene and Nancy use our skills to grow and perhaps even to excel in these times.  It is the perpetually poverty-stricken, the sick and the tortured, the ones who suffer from undiagnosed and untreated mental illness, PTSD, and even chemical imbalances that can sometimes be attributed to something as simple as food sensitivities, who are clearly more susceptible to urges that lead them to take their pain and their anger out on innocent victims.

But patting them on their heads and holding their hands and telling them that it will be OK and being afraid to discuss mental illness or to reach out for help that isn’t there; caring more for their civil rights than for their mental health and the safety of others, clearly isn’t doing enough to ensure the health and safety of the public at large, and it must be immediately addressed. 

Americans will always feel differently about guns than Canadians and those in other countries do, because Americans have had to fight hard for our freedoms, and Americans have had to fight for the weak and for those who have been inhumanely treated by their own governments.  But what of our own?  We are the self-appointed and globally-appointed protectors of freedom and justice in this world, and that ideology isn’t likely to change any time soon.  Now we just need to find a way to heal our own troubled nation and protect the children in our own backyards and schoolyards, classrooms and hallways.

Taking the right to bare arms away from law-abiding Americans is akin to “changing the minds” (a la Paul Ryan in the vice presidential debate) of Middle Eastern nations or changing women’s minds about the right to choose—from either perspective.  That’s a war nobody wants to take on.  Perhaps we can, however, come to a reasonable compromise about important things like background checks for all persons of age in a prospective household, waiting periods, trigger locks, safety checks and safety courses.

I wouldn’t be GlutenNaziMom if I didn’t relay the fact that much of the anger and the malcontent that exists in our country can be attributed both to what is lacking (vital nutrients/ variety) and to what is present (GMOs, sugar, chemicals and additives) in our Standard American Diet—S.A.D.  And there’s a reason the acronym is so very, very SAD.

We must realize that all of the pieces and the parts are connected.  I am a sometimes reasonably liberal and sometimes reasonably conservative chick—founding member of the Enlightened Middle Majority—who occasionally likes to very safely shoot guns, who has chosen both life and otherwise, and thus could never presume to “choose” for another woman, and who has pulled herself out of the depths of poverty as a single parent and for a season contemplated suicide, and who believes that Health Care Reform as it sits is faulty, at best.  How can it support itself if NO ONE is paying a copay?  The math simply doesn’t work.  And what earthly good can it do if we don’t address mental health in the process?  If we continue to fail to address or even discuss Welfare Reform?  Mind, Body, Spirit; it’s all interconnected, from an individual standpoint, and from our nation’s. 

Guns and the right to bare arms, religious freedom as well as the freedom not to worship are organic and fundamental pieces of the ideology on which this country was built.  Mr. President, you may have won the election because for just enough the alternative was unpalatable, but you have a long way to go before you win over and heal the hearts and the minds and the pocketbooks of the Greatest Nation and of the world.  And until we as a nation come together, support one another, and collectively do so, unthinkable and unacceptable horrors such as the one in Sandy Hook Elementary school last Friday, such as the one in the mall in Newport Beach, California, three days before, and the one in the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, before that, will only continue to happen and likely continue to escalate.  I think we can all agree that nobody wants to see that happen in their corner of small town America, or anywhere.

I've struggled with April's NaBloPoMo Poetry on BlogHer.com; as I've stated, an on-demand poet, I am not.  But the month is almost over, so here's one I wrote back in 1999 in honor of our little nephew who died just days before his fourth birthday.  For little Casey Edward Harrison, July 13, 1995 - July 11, 1999:


Our little angel sleeps tonight;
'Neath Heaven's gaze, his star shines bright.
His mother's arms held him dear,
His brother whispered in his ear,
His father's strength shed a tear.
Amid a lullaby of humming machines,
His cries are quiet, but not his dreams.

Our little angel sleeps tonight;
'Neath Heaven's gaze, his star shines bright.
Eyes that couldn't can now see rainbows.
Once weak limbs run and jump and catch and throw.
The wind in his hair, the sun on his face,
        he'll relive his first boat ride, last week at the lake;
This time at the bow, arms spread wide, face to the sky, whooping with
        laughter, not the least bit shy.

Our little angel sleeps tonight,
'neath Heaven's gaze, his star shines bright.
A child so fragile, a life so short, can touch so deeply those in his heart.
We who loved him would swear today, we could love him no more,
        were he perfect in every way.
When next you meet a disabled child, look in their eyes and return their smile.
Touch them and do not look through, do not pity and pet and shake your head,
For their priceless smiles light our lives,
        their hard-earned laughter, a precious prize.

--Loving aunt,
Kimberly J. Gane, copyright 1999, all rights reserved.