Entries from May 2009 ↓

I find it very interesting how the health care money making machine has instilled fear, and guilt into women’s feminine power to give life, thus making us believe we aren’t capable of giving birth without the machine.

The Business of Being Born is an amazing documentary look at birth in America. It addresses the fact that childbirth in America has turned into a corporate business machine leaving us with one of the worst infant mortality rates in the world. This film also probes the reasons why women in America feel they must deliver in a hospital setting with massive, and often life threatening, interventions. Birth is not a disease, but somehow (primarily male) Dr.’s have convinced most U.S women that their body’s are not capable to the most basic of human functions…give birth. Ricky Lake and her friend Abby Epstein created a beautiful and poignant film about the power women hold, how it was taken away, and how we are slowly gaining it back.

You can watch it free on Netflix, and see the trailer at The Business of Being Born.

Thanks to Jen Lea from Jlogged for the post.

Jen Lea is one of my BFFs in real life. She writes Jlogged where she’s super-passionate about the Earth, her boys, especially securing healthcare for her Lucas, and getting the best value for her dollar. Her best quality though is her comedic timing. This story showcases a  deeper side, but if you visit her blog she’ll keep you laughing till a little pee comes out.

My mom owns 43 acres of land in a small, rural community out in the middle of Nowhere, Tx U.S.A. She inherited the land from my late Grandfather. He mentioned, before his passing, an old “black” cemetery somewhere on the property. When we were going through my grandfathers things several months after he died we came across an antiquated hand drawn map of her property. The map, we assume, had belonged to my great-grandparents and possibly someone else before them. We aren’t really sure of the origin, but on the dusty, yellowed, paper we noted a small rectangle in which was scrawled “negro cemetery.”

No one we knew of had ever seen this supposed cemetery.

But last week, while out riding four wheelers, my cousins found the the place by chance, when one of them wandered off the path. So, two days ago we took the kids on a hike through the woods to see if we could locate the cemetery ourselves.

We were successful in our short trek. The graves where marked with huge iron ore rocks, and some of the rocks where piled in heaps on graves. Others were marked with a single large rock for a head stone , and smaller one at the base. You could scarcely tell it was a cemetery.

Only one simple tombstone stood, reading M. Spearman Born 1897. Died Jan 2, 1917. Gone but not forgotten. The marker was broken in half, and barely legible. I would venture to say, this person was the last to be buried there, but there is no real way of knowing.

Hulking tropical plants that were clearly placed on the grave over 90 years ago had somehow survived, and thrived, through crazy East Texas weather. Aside from the one proper tombstone, the plants were the only thing that seemed out the ordinary.

Massive pine trees had shot up all around the cemetery, and had grown right through many of the graves.

As I stood in this once sacred place, where all those men, women, and children were lain to rest, I tried to wrap my mind around the fact that in a mere 91 years all of them were forgotten. Who were they? I imagined they lead lives of back breaking work building the (now abandoned) railway that runs through my mom’s property. Some of them were likely slaves in their lifetime. I whispered out loud “a black man may be the next president of the United States. I wish you could see it.”

We sited a tiny grave encircled in small rocks-obviously a child’s grave. Thoughts of a funeral precession through the thick, hilly woods filled my mind. I could almost hear the soulful hymns, and wails of these long ago people. I could see them here dusty, and threadbare from a grueling day of work at the smelting factory, or in the fields, as they turned out to bury a precious member of their tiny community.

Now, this place is just a blip on the radar. Almost unrecognizable to the unknowing eye that it is anything other than an ordinary part of the land.

The cemetery forced me to think of how we all are just passing through, and the physical of this life dies and turns to dust, sooner or later. We can fight it, but that won’t change the fact that one day our bones will be forgotten. All of the things and stuff we work for will be lying in a landfill, but not our words, knowledge or legacy. The unknown people in this place are only unknown to me. I feel positive that they all left a part of them in this world with their living actions; a part of them that lives on in their ancestors today.

This truth stared me down. It made me question what lineage I will leave for my children, grandchildren, and beyond. Will mine be a legacy of the physical that will, all to soon, not matter at all? Or will I live a true life fighting for what I believe in, by constituting generational knowledge that will outlast the physical and live, possibly forever?

Chew on that. Think about it. What are you leaving behind? Are you spinning your wheels for physical things Or are you leaving something real? Something worthy?

You all know That Girl or Ashley from the comments section of The Girl Revolution. She writes a funny and insightful blog, Hey You, Remember Me about being a teen in the 1990s. She’s incognito, so she can tell everything. Thanks Ashley for letting me use this great piece about adolescent body image.

Hey y’all, remember me? Of course you do. We were the best of friends huh? Knew each other inside and out? Yeah, but here’s something you didn’t know about me. All that time, all those years you made me feel like crap. Your beauty made me feel like crap. No, I know, it wasn’t your fault. I would compare myself to you in a completely self defeating way. My mother would look at us all dolled up and ready to go out and she would comment on how cute we looked. “You complement each other” she would say. “You look good together.. the best of both worlds” But I couldn’t see it. All I knew was that you were beautiful and I was the opposite of that.

I look back and remember your effortlessly tan skin, your silky brunette hair, and your dark shiny eyes. I wanted so badly to look like that. But it was something I could NEVER have achieved. I look back and wonder why I even tried? I wish I could have just embraced ME. MY unique qualities. I was the tall, thin, pale, freckled, blue-eyed, naturally curly blond. “Naturally curly?” you think. “Thin? ..Tall?” Is this a joke? (the Internet balks) Is this girl teasing us? I know, I know, you’re muttering all kinds of I’d give anything!’s and ungrateful bitch!’s in your head. But here’s the really pissy, frustrating, tragic truth of it. I was surrounded by all you dark, sexy, brunette, normal height’d beauties (really – you had the rhinestone crowns to prove it) and I felt really, really ugly most of the time. I struggled to get a tan, to straighten my hair – and this was before the chi iron people! My rudimentary techniques usually resulted in a somewhat wavy/shiny do that would morph into a frizzy, unhealthy looking mess the minute I walked outside into the humidity. The styles that looked great on you, made me look as shapely as a coat rack. Why didn’t I just shop for MY body? “Fashion” boiled down to whatever y’all were wearing – not what looked good on me. By trying so hard to be wonderful ol‘ you, I created a mediocre me.

Sometimes I wonder what a knockout I could have been if I’d embraced my own strengths? What if I could have seen myself out of context? As an isolated entity instead of compared to you? What if I had shopped for MY body and MY coloring? What if I had let my hair do it’s thing? What if I had decided to enjoy the way we contrasted each other? What if I had combined all of my youth and beauty and sprinkled a little Samantha Jones confidence on top? We’ll never know.

What I do know is this: Since I’ve found my own style, embraced my own look, learned to LOVE my curly hair and play up my pretty, blue, almond-shaped eyes, since I learned that my long, long, legs are sexy and that my fair, freckled skin is striking in anything black, I would much rather be me than you. My confidence is much more Samantha Jones than Ally McBeal. I feel beautiful (most of the time). I still believe y’all are beautiful. And I’ll even admit that sometimes I still longingly glance at your dark, olive skin and wish I could snatch it off of your body and paste it over my own. But when it comes down to it – I would rather be me than you and I’m so proud of that. I wouldn’t trade my body or coloring or hair for anything in the world. Each time I look at my pale, blue eyed, blond children I fall in love with myself a little more. I make a much prettier woman than I did teen.

Oh, Lord how am I ever going to get everything done? I asked. I need some kind of miracle. A Course in Miracles says I am entitled to miracles because I am your daughter.

Then this guy showed up and asked if he could come in my house and clean the tarnation out of it.

I can’t buy a vacuum, I told him.

Lady, I get a bonus if I get asked in for enough demonstrations. Don’t you have a spot I can clean? he asked.

I have a pee hall. Where the toilet-training boy marks his territory, I shared. Only Monday I had resolved to wait to get down and scrub it out when Zack was finally potty trained, so I didn’t have to do it twice.

He cleaned my couches and chairs, sucked 50 years of grime out of the grooves of my fireplace, sucked the allergy causing dust mite poo out of my mattress and steam cleaned the pee hall.

The trick is to recognize and accept a miracle when it comes your way. Sometimes it’s a Kirby Vacuum salesman who needs a bonus. I prayed in gratitude the whole time and then I slipped him a $20 based on the principle, Give and You Shall Receive.

As if that wasn’t enough, I found the floor buffer I’ve been hunting since I moved at a garage sale for $1 this morning.

I’m going on vacation tomorrow. We’re driving our wonderful minivan across the country to Utah, through Denver. On the way back, we’ll stop and visit a good friend who found her bliss way up in the mountains around the four corner’s area of Utah. My sister is getting married and I’m expecting two weeks worth of miracles. I know how to see them now and that, my friends, is half the trick of getting them.

I sent out an invitation for guest posts and received a wonderful batch.  You’re going to love these ladies and what they have to offer. Follow them back to their own great blogs. It’s my pleasure to showcase their work.