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I suppose since this is my blog I can say whatever I want on it. And because of that I'll say that I'm personally quite liberal. I'm pro-choice, pro gay, pro anything that keeps people minding their own damn business and staying the hell out of mine. Politically I'm quite conservative, which is odd since conservatives want smaller government in every area EXCEPT people's personal lives. And liberals don't like executions (which I happen to think are awesome) but are in favor taking out an embryo. Whatever. It's all a load of horse shit distractions used by politicians to keep us busy while they ass root us via education, social security and medicare. They can pick our pockets and keep the free loaders happy by sending them a measly monthly check. Not enough to really live off of, just enough to make them think twice before voting for a conservative for fear the wretched "Right" will take away their hand out.
I babbled for a moment to bring me to my topic of choice tonight: A "Don't Kill the Babies, Sterilize the Parents" proposal that I believe should keep the masses quite content. A masterful plan to appease both sides of the abortion argument and still keep us all from being able to make too many personal decisions for ourselves.
I'm pro-choice for one reason and one reason only. I don't think an 11 year old who's raped by her stepfather, should have to give birth and get stretch marks and play Mommy or have her kid taken away and be destroyed as a human being all because some Mr. Mr. couldn't control himself (and will likely only serve 2 years for his crime - if that, anyway). I agree it's an over used procedure but I'd rather read in the paper that 1,000 women had abortions last Saturday than even ONE child was found like the 4 year old in Texas who was starved, dunked in ice water, beaten beyond recognition and hog tied. Then stuffed in a dresser drawer and was foud dead and stiff and had to be buried in that position because he couldn't be moved without cracking and breaking his body. TRUE STORY
So you tell me, which story did you prefer? Hog tied, dead toddler or a bunch of women terminated their pregnancies? If you prefer the dead toddler, you're sick and I don't want to know you. Never come back to this blog or come near me again :)
So! My proposal is this... There is obviously a large portion of the population that thinks they should have a right to tell a woman what she can and can not do with her own body and child. So in an effort to appease them I suggest that we outlaw abortions and opt for mandatory steralizations. If you have one or more children in the custody of the state or even a relative, you no longer get to procreate. If you're a stupid crack head loser who doesn't pay child support for the 8 kids you already have, then we'll de-activate your sperm. If you receive welfare benefits and can't support the children you already have then you should be forced to adopt a birth control method and have your benefits stripped if you get pregnant again. If you're caught exposing yourself to children or found peaking in windows, or convicted of any sexual crime against a woman or child then you should be chemically castrated and made to wear a tracking device.
This proposal keeps polticians and do-gooders in control of what others do and eliminates abortions. The pro-choicers like me have a majority of their issues resolved and it's a win-win. A way to get this idiotic topic off the table so that we can move on to more important things in the upcoming debates. Things like the cost of war, the ginormous deficit, sky rocketing health care costs, the piss-poor economy and junk like that. It will free up space in the minds of people who can't rationalize that pregnancy isn't a damn dream come true for a child who's been molested since she was six.
I hope that even if this post has offended the shit out of you that perhaps you'll take away a bit of a different perspective.
THE END
“Maturity is the ability to think, speak and act your feelings within the bounds of dignity. The measure of your maturity is how spiritual you become during the midst of your frustrations.”
I found this by accident this evening and given the day's events - I have to acknowledge that stumbling upon these words might not have been accidental at all...
I've always tried to be introspective, honest with myself. I'm not always successful of course. I'm a bumbling human and have a great tendency to place blame anywhere other than on myself (especially when that's the likeliest place it belongs). But in all sincerity I try very hard to examine and re-examine my actions and my treatment of others and take corrective steps where there is fault in my behaviors. Again, I don't always succeed, but I make a great effort.
I've never found peace in solitude, never liked being alone for long periods of time either. I've had tremendous difficulty ending relationships that I knew were toxic and bad for me, but in recent years I've learned to break ties, burn bridges and put up walls. I've been a "yes" person, always answering a call or an invitation, even when there was an obvious absence of reciprocity. There are people in my life who still only text or call when they have a favor to ask. I don't hear from these people when my parents are ill or I'm facing difficulty. I hear from them only when they want something from me. It's the course I've laid for myself with them and so I expect it and move on, helping when I can but feeling no great compulsion to fulfill their request at anything other than my leisure. That is the nature of our relationship. I've also cultivated friendships with people who I'd never have thought I'd have found common ground with. People who offer a kind word and encouragement when I can scarcely find the time to offer them the same. Relationships are funny aren't they? They bring us to the most amazing places... Then there are those that we take for granted. The relationships that we rely on and turn to and expect to always be there. A spouse or a best friend, a parent or a sibling... The binding blocks of our mortar that we would surely miss if they were gone. These are the places where we should take the most care and often take the least. I find myself in that same situation, even as I type this. But it was mutual. No one person was entirely at fault. It's where we place the greatest expectations that we find the greatest disappointments I believe. And where we feel a great expectation that we are most likely to disappoint...
I say this all with tremendous purpose. Because at the end of each day we lay down our heads with our whole hearts. All of our insides pour out onto our pillows... And who we are is evident in the chatter of our minds. Each day I hope to "speak and act my feelings within the bounds of dignity". If I am not always successful, it is certainly my desire to be. And the best that I can hope for is that that also is the desire of those who say they love me in return. I am not perfect and can not expect perfection in return. But it is the desire to achieve, to do better, to love greater, to be more in the presence of those we adore that should drive us to find "spirituality in the midst of our frustrations".
In this chapter of my life I aspire to cultivate relationships that bring me to a better place. I want to grow and be more in the presence of the love I'm given. I hope that I inspire those I love to do the same. There's no such thing as a perfect relationship. Only perfect love between imperfect people...
In recent years my mother has developed a series of complicated heart problems, the least of which has been heart disease. She's had many many procedures and tests as well as a cardiac defibrilator implanted. It goes without saying that all of these things have had a dramatic impact on her daily functions and quality of life. For years my mother has run circles around my sisters and I. She could always accomplish things, she always got things done! And for the last four years it seems as though her life has become one long list of things she'd like to get done.
Tomorrow morning at 8:00 am she'll have open heart, valve replacement surgery. It's made us more than a little bit nervous but we're very hopeful that it will be what she needs in order to resume a somewhat normal existence again.
With that being said, this post is in loving tribute to my always loving, less than normal, extremely wonderful and mostly adorable mother, Jennie.
My earliest memories of my mother begin when I was about 18 months old. (These are not recovered, associative memories, they're real. I have an almost photographic, uncanny long term memory that quite literally begins when I was a year and a half old). My memories are distinct and clear. My mother was always there. She held my hand, styled my hair, polished my nails, read stories to me, played games with me, held me in her lap, carried me in her arms, and administered more love and compassion than any child could have asked for. She has taught school for 30 years and is in my opinion, the only reason that my overly ADD ass made it through school. She taught me how to find main ideas, important points in texts, she taught me how to count dots on numbers and multiply without memorizing. She is the reason I love Valentine's Day and Easter. And she's been my greatest supporter for all of my life. She never bragged on me or critiqued me. She watched me with loving kindness and never stood in judgement. She didn't put me up to competition, enter me in beauty pageants or demand that I ever win at anything. She always told me that she didn't have to win anyone's approval of me. She loved me entirely for who I was - and I'll be damned if that didn't turn out to be enough! She's the reason I'm not sitting here today at 32 years old, wondering what I have to do to gain my mother's respect or love. I knew all of my life that I was loved... I've never had to look further than my mother to find all of the guidance, reassurance and protection that I've ever needed.
I am lucky to not only be her daughter but to be one of the three Gariepy girls who will know complete misery and misfortune when she leaves this Earth. I can't conceive that there is another woman who may be as mourned or as missed as she will be (years and years from now) when she leaves. How lucky am I that I get to love her so?
This post is going to be a confession of sorts... A brutal, but truthful confession of what I've discovered to be very real about Heather.
The last couple of years have been an inward journey for me. I've confronted many of my weaknesses and stared down what I've come to dislike about myself. I've been determined to work on all the things I had decided were wrong with me. I've confronted deamons, excommunicated toxic people, worked on building patience, tried harder to keep time committments, tried to be less of a control freak and know-it-all, and I've even stopped verbally assaulting unsuspecting morons (in most cases). I've been consumed for years and years with what was wrong with me and have neglected to identify what was right with me and impove upon THAT. And today it hit me - instead of working like a plumber to fix all that was broken in me - perhaps I should have spent a little time expanding upon what was good, improving on what's right, shining brighter what was light inside of me. And then I had the horrible realization that I couldn't proudly exclaim very many things about myself that I actually liked. It was a painful, very private and dismal moment that solidified a lump in my throat and it made me as sad as I have ever been. Even as I type this I find that lump very difficult to swallow.
The older I get, the more convinced I become that I'm really not half as smart as I thought I was. I use to think I knew stuff but come to find out - I don't. I know a little bit about a lot of things but I dont' know a whole lot about very much. But I do know that people who join the United States Military have balls the size of Texas. I realize that they're not all the most amazing people on Earth and that they're human, just like the rest of us. But they commit to a job that I can't honestly tell you I myself would do if the pay were actually worth it. So with that being said I'd like to elaborate on something that I'm not sure I know that much about: the assassination of Osama Bin Laden...
"In general it has been the men who have done the raping and the robbing and the killing and the war-mongering for the last two thousand years... and it's been the men who have done the pillaging and the beheading and subjecating of whole races into slavery. It has been the men who have done the law making and the money making and most of the mischief making! So if the world isn't quite what you had in mind, you have only yourselves to thank!" - Julia Sugarbaker *aka-Dixie Carter*
On a rare occasion I'll succumb to what my husband refers to as my "man hater phase" and nothing Biblical can pull me out of it. It's usually spurned from too much exposure to testosterone, sporting events, Lifetime Movie Network... or all of the above. When this happens I must purge it from my soul by talking smack about the opposite sex - as I pose no great physical threat to men and attempting to beat one up would just get me laughed at.
For the most part, I love men. I am reasonable enough to understand why they exist and what makes them so desirable. A lot of them are really cute, cuddly, they fix things, kill pests and give great back rubs. (Mine even cooks, remodels, buys me fancy shoes and takes care of me when I'm sick :) But what stumps me is the fact that my own sex can be so misguided by men. I see women day in and out who fight tooth and nail for bums, who call each other names and catfight over sleezebags and try to get knocked up by jobless half-wits so they can claim they had "So and So's baby"! We claw one another to bits and turn our backs on each other. We turn a blind eye to domestic violence and sexual abuse and accept that because men are stronger and meaner that we are somehow unable to defend ourselves. Women in the Congo and Darfur have survived war, gang rapes, miscarriages, fistula, beatings, and atrocities so dark the mind can't conceive of the anguish! And yet these surviving women sit idly by in a hut shaped hospital, having their vaginas sewn back together, carrying babies on their backs, picking flowers trying to figure out how to pick up the pieces. It infuriates me that if I had a penis I could make $5 more an hour. I hate knowing that when I go for a run - if someone wanted to stop their vehicle, kidnap, rape, torture and murder me - I'd have damn near no way to stop it from happening. I hate that I'm raising a daughter in a world where more than 50% of it's countries still practice female genital mutilation. I despise the fact that religion touts virtue as a reason to treat women like dogs and keep them cloaked and docile, put to death and stoned for adultery. It's only the sickest and most twisted of man that can dream up something like having her father kill her for having sex before marriage. And yet droves of men have adopted and accepted this mind set and treatment of women.
When I hear a man say that women should "cover up" and not show too much leg or cleavage I automatically wonder what he's hiding. I realize that men are visual creatures and can often be stimulated by just about any amount of exposed female flesh. It's part of their charm... I too believe we as women should be somewhat discreet and help our daughters to understand the differences between sensuality and sexuality (i.e. it's alright to be confident and feminine, to show a little leg and be flirtatious - it's not alright to show everyone everything all the time because no one wants to see that shit). But if as a man, you can't handle seeing a woman in a dress without thinking sinful thoughts, then maybe the problem isn't the woman in the dress, but the man with the sin-filled head.
This rant is going nowhere and will likely offend... everyone. But it's my truth, my thoughts, be they right or wrong. It's what fuels me and makes me want to arm those Congolese women with machettes and watch them hack their brutalizers to death. I want women to pick up their battle axes and demand better treatment for themselves, for each other. By nature we are not violent. We are nurturers. We water flowers, raise babies, smell daisies and bake pies. But every now and then it would be nice if we could all, collectively say "We've had enough and will no longer stand for being made to cover up, keep quiet and take abuse." But until we demand respect for ourselves and show it to one another, how can we ever expect it from men?
Thirteen years ago tomorrow (April 6th) my daughter, Valerie was born. I was 19, jobless, living with my parents and scared to death. I had never even contemplated having children let alone having a real life. It all seems as though it was 100 years ago and yet hardly a day has passed in my heart. I've never thought of myself as the "motherly" type. I didn't come already programmed with a desire for children or any idea what in the world to do with one. But it just so happened that the first child I had was just the one I needed to help me figure it out. The night that Valerie made her entrance into the world was as ordinary as any other run-of-the-mill Wednesday evening. I am as ordinary as any other mother who's ever tiptoed through the halls of BMH. But the world stopped turning - for a heartbeat of a moment when I laid eyes on Valerie for the first time and then it resumed it's spinning. I'm sure the moment was undetectable to anyone in the world but me... It was our moment, our first meeting. It was the blink in time that rearranged my world.
I don't know what, if anything I've given to Valerie by being her mother, but I know what having Valerie as my daughter has given to me. All that I've ever wanted or dreamed of being is realized because she's here. At the end of my life, if all I ever was was Valerie's mother - then you should know that's all I ever was meant to be.
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