I have found myself skirting the edge of a mild depression. Life has been growing and filling up over the last 6 months (almost to the point of overfilling!), but also holding a void.  We have been in a place of limbo, grief recovery and anticipation.

We just passed the one year anniversary of having matched, visited and had the girls move in with us.  Last year, Halloween was the first weekend that the girls were here to stay and we took them trick-or-treating for their first time.  I had a blast, we went up to Temescal where the merchants were giving out treats, hosting music and crafts and generally entertaining adults and children alike.  It was the first time that we shared in a ritual, publicly as parents, with other parents and kids.

It was hard not to think about this year as I talked with my friends about what their kids were up to.  We had about 30 kids come to the door, but our street was too quiet.  75% of the houses had their lights off, so many children ignored our block to stay on bigger or more lit up streets.  I did have fun, but I wished that I were in Temescal.

About a week ago, we got a call from A- County letting us know that the P.R.I.D.E. classes will be offered in January. This fits nicely with J-’s winter break, so we expect to take them in order to get back in the process.  Yes, we do basically have to start from scratch…I know, I know…we were perfectly qualified a year ago to get kids from multiple counties, but now suddenly, things are different. Don’t get me started.  But honestly we don’t mind, this does feel like the right path for us, as winding and rocky as it has been.

In a sense, T-7 prepared us for getting an infant. She taught us that parenting a baby could not possibly be any harder than parenting her.  We were often sleepless, we felt the shock of losing our own individuality and freedom.  Additionally, dealt with tantrums of a 2 year-old in a 7 year-old body. I have spoken to a number of professionals and folks that have found my blog that say they work in locked facilities, with the kids that have the worst possible behavior problems, and nothing is as difficult as parenting a RAD kid.  With T-7, we had no idea at any given time what to do and honestly, we really didn’t want to do it.

T-4 showed us that it isn’t all a horror show.  It is possible for an older kid to succeed with a new family.  She endeared us to the wondrous age of 4.  She taught us that kids are resilient and regression is surmountable and demonstrated with an amazing amount of development within 6 months.  She gave me joy in the intertwining of our lives. I loved seeing her drink up her surroundings and experience life by my side.

We understood the fear taking older children and we were scared of behavioral problems.  We were assured that it didn’t have to be so bad.  I am sure it is possible to find older children in the system that don’t have major behavioral problems, but we haven’t met them.  We have heard of kids with less extreme problems than T-7, but I have yet to hear about one that did not have violent tantrums for less than a period of 6 months after placement. We thought this level of problems were the exception and not the rule.

Now we know that social workers cannot be trusted to know, or to say.  We are now the people that we heard about before, the ones who disrupted, who had such an awful experience that they couldn’t finalize the adoption. We And now all of our friends of friends will hear about us if they consider an older child… The reputation comes from a real place.  And now, we are scared, too.

Since the disruption, I have been softening (and getting attached) to the idea of a younger child.  Preventing a kid from experiencing neglect by getting them young is something we can totally get on board with.  We understand what a hard age 6 and 7 are and what a hard spot T-7 was when she moved in.  I look back at my very different levels of patience and understanding with T-7 and T-4 and I see my own need for bonding and interdependence to build a positive relationship with my child.

We are preparing to start over with completely reorganized or criteria around a future adoption.  We plan to stay local, consider children ages 0-4 and only parent one child.  I am humbled and sad, but also more confident and strong.

I know that any kind of parenting is the hardest thing that any of us can do, it triggers all the crap from our parents and our own inadequacies. I see from my friends, and know in my heart, that no matter how easy or tough my kid is, I am going to have days that I loathe my life.  But I also know that I miss being a mom just about every day.

I have been going through a bit of a gluttonous stage lately.  For me this translates into starting new projects that I am excited about, planning trips and spending money on pampering things.  It is hard for me to go to these decadent places without harboring some guilt.  It feels good, but I am not sure that it comes from a place of my highest self.  It is a bit reminiscent of when my  friend, V-, took this to Ayn Randian proportions when he went from being a grimy bicycle tourist/messenger to buying a turquoise mini-truck.  He said, “Everyone else is driving the environment into the shithouse, why should I be sacrificing myself to try and save it.”  Well, I never really thought this was his best period, but luckily it didn’t really last long.

I am not a huge traveler, but a combination of factors has made the call of a few places that I have always wanted to go too loud to ignore.  The fact that J- and I will likely be parents again sometime during the next year and will not be able to travel for while after that, cheap air prices and an accumulation of flyer miles has me doing my small-town-girl version of jetsetting for the next few months.

I also have a theory that some places are going down.  The economy, the environment…they may be irreversibly changed and I want to see them now:

Glacier National Park

Well, okay, in this case, it isn’t actually MY theory that Glacier National Park is going down, it is pretty well supported scientifically that the glaciers are melting.  And even the most conservative folks are now pretty much on board with this.

Actually, it looks like I missed the heyday of seeing the glaciers of Montana.  Even my parents did.  Still, I have had several reports from friends over the years that this is one of the best places that they have seen and it has long been on my list of places to see.

Enter my caching friend Binky del Mar, who moved to northern Idaho not too long ago.  Binky is one of my few female caching partners and I love that about her.  It takes a special kind of lady to cache. One that is comfortable on her hands and knees, looking under dumpsters. One that is more interested in 1) finding the cache and 2) the story she will be able to tell later than 1) how difficult it is or 2) how dirty and gross it is.

Visiting Binky is the perfect opportunity to head up to this great area and visit 2 states that are new for me.  Binky and I are going on a caching extravaganza between Spokane, WA, Sandpoint, ID and Glacier National Park, MT for 4 days.

Las Vegas, The Strip

It is a bit ridiculous

that I from California and have never been to Las Vegas.  I can’t even tell you how many times that I have been to Reno.  Because I don’t know, I’m not sure that I would be able to count.  Being from Sacramento, that is what we did…we went to Reno.

The draw of Las Vegas has grown in the last 10 years as it has become more upscale and I have become well, uh…more upscale.  Hearing about the art, architecture and shows, seeing Anthony Bourdain’s pleasure while eating at Buchon were all part of the draw. The lights and fireworks and the fake Venice and Paris. I know, it’s kitschy, but it’s fun!  Not to mention that they have caches, like every other place on the map. And it is yet a whole other state that I can add to my “states cached” map.

I began looking at air/hotel packages and seeing deals because I just needed a getaway and didn’t want to deal with a long flight or drive.  Then, I heard about the decline in business there and realized that I have no faith that the economy will get better any time soon, and places like swanky Vegas hotels are going to be some of the first to go down, bigtime.  After a few months of looking, I decided to take the plunge and prices had dropped. I couldn’t imagine them going lower.

Vegas is so overdeveloped, with no solid basis for the economy of decadence, other than some weekend traffic from LA.  I know that Vegas will always be there, but in what condition?  Already many of the more “family-friendly” attractions have disappeared, what will go next?  When will it sink below the level of seediness that it was when I was a child? I am imagining a ghost town of these posh hotels, turned vacant, hauntingly empty, guarded and almost post-apocalyptic.

So, this is how my few months of somewhat opulent splurging has come about. I want to get it while the getting is good.

This is a fabulous book that dissects the use of television and video media by children ages 0-5.  Guernsey holds equally the voice of a diligent researcher, looking at existing scientific evidence, and of a concerned parent. It calls to question assumptions that have been made.

On one side, in 1999 the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommended no screen time for children under two with little research to back it up.  On the other, we have seen an increase in television shows that value education and development.

She divides parents into two categories, the “whatevers” and the “worriers”. She sees that these often fall along lines of class and privilege. While most of her own inquiries are done in the middle and upper-middle class, she does visit the homes of poor and immigrant families. She sees that in poorer families may not have as much flexibility to keep their children away from media since they often share smaller spaces and may rely on the television for cultural connections.

Research on baby videos (such as Baby Einstein) that are marketed as products that will help your baby’s brain develop is just beginning, following strong market demand that led Disney and Sesame to create their own products.

So far, what they have learned it that small amounts of screen time will probably not help with brain development for children under two.  At that age, babies do not have the perception skills to interpret what they are seeing.  The author says that they will probably get more out of watching a parent fold laundry and much more out of being spoken to.  But it probably won’t hurt them, either and for some parents, it may be the only way to safely occupy their children to make dinner or take a shower.  What they may be negatively affected by is background television.  In this case, the active engagement of parents tends to decrease and also the children will simply hear less because of the background noise.  Because of these two factors, children’s learning opportunities are greatly reduced.

For older children, some television shows and video games fare better as tools to build learning, reasoning and social skills.  Most interesting findings, in my opinion are that the age appropriateness of a show has as much to do with structure as it does content. Those of us that have nostalgia for Sesame Street and the Muppet Show will be disappointed to hear that children 3-5 respond the most positively to a short show with a linear, structured and interactive plotline. Some of the shows mentioned are Dora the Explorer, Dragon Tales and Blues Clues.

Additionally, she warns parents to be wary of anything that contains violence.  There is some evidence that children who see violence are less cooperative.  Surprisingly, even violence that results in resolution is problematic.

“…they came to realize that the “be nice, be good” messages at the end of some children’s programs were not getting through to young viewers.  The resolution was drowned out by the usually more-engaging scenes of conflict that drove the plot.”

Ultimately choosing the media in the family is really tricky, particularly if there are young children of varying ages.  A show that may benefit and be age appropriate for a 6 year-old will most likely not be for a 2 or 3 year-old. And in the end, it is parent interaction that is always going to benefit a child the most.

Although I have done my best to summarize many of Guernsey’s findings, I highly recommend this book for those interested.  The book provides an inroad to understanding how kids learn by looking at the ways they do and do not respond to screen time.

She delves deeply into the studies and describes them in minute details to help the reader picture exactly what is happening, which I found fascinating.  Additionally, she does a good job of incorporating her own experience and is very practical about using television as a respite.  She supports the studies through follow-up interviews to experts in an attempt to address the questions as thoroughly as possible.  Since the research really is relatively new, there are times that she hits a dead end because the findings are just not there yet.

In our foster parent training, we learned that all kids in foster care are special needs.  By virtue of whatever circumstances removed them from their family and brought them into “the system” puts them into a more vulnerable position in our society.  CPS first looks for a relative or friend to take the child so that he/she is not completely removed from their community and the move is less traumatic, but in many cases (including kids that would come to our home), they are often cut off from everything that they know.

That being said, some children are more difficult to place than others because of their special needs may be even more special.  I have heard these cases described as “hard-to-place” children.  Actually, before the middle of last century, many kids were expected to live the rest of their lives in institutions. When I was quite young, I saw a television movie hosted by Henry Winkler (at the time I could call him nothing but The Fonz) about a family, the Debolts, that was campaigning to change all that by growing their family with many special needs kids and starting a non-profit in order to facilitate the placements.  So, by the end of the last century, the future of special needs kids looked very different.

Special needs pioneers changed adoption culture dramatically. Their vision of family defied the claim that adoptive kinship had to be invisible in order to be authentic, insisting instead on the purposeful and open inclusion of difference. This value, in turn, reflected an even broader shift in conceptions of national belonging and citizenship in the United States after World War II. Special needs adoptions symbolized the civil rights revolution within the adoption world. Their accomplishment was not only to offer more different kinds of families to more different kinds of children, but to openly welcome multiculturalism and multiracialism within the family well as within the history, demography, and politics of the country at large.

-Adoption History

The sector of private (non-profit) agencies doing adoptive and foster placements was booming.  Families were compensated at higher rates because they supposedly had better training.  The agencies, themselves are also paid a high rate because they are responsible (along with the county worker) to monitor the children in the home.

This created a self-reinforcing cycle that it became more appealing to foster through an agency since 1) you get more staff support and 2) you get more monthly income.  Additionally, working with agencies has been generally perceived as an easier and clearer road to adoption than working directly with the county.

Because of this, a scarcity of parents working directly with counties has emerged.  Placements have become more expensive because a higher percentage are happening through agencies and social services have been forced to cut costs elsewhere and reduce their own staff.

Unfortunately, in all of this, the kids are the victims.  Money is being spent to outsource when outsourcing is not necessary and is duplicating services being offered in-house.  This is a case where most policies of the welfare system make sense on a policy level, but when translated to the actual life of a child, there best interests are not always what unfolds.

Children sometimes moved from foster care to adoption. Because termination of parental rights was a lengthy process, most of these were (and are) special needs adoptions. Foster children were invariably older and had complex loyalties to natal and foster kin. Their histories of separation and trauma were associated with behavioral and health problems. These characteristics made them undesirable to many would-be parents, and that made their adoptions difficult and expensive to arrange. After midcentury, agencies invested scarce time and money recruiting parents for hard-to-place children. By the 1960s, a few turned in frustration to controversial solutions like transracial adoptions.

-Adoption History

A secondary ramification has been a gap in race and class between adoptive parents and foster parents, and I assert between agency parents and county parents.

Race as well as class marked the growing gap between foster care and adoption. During the postwar civil rights era, poor children of color, formerly denied many services, comprised more of the foster care caseload. Foster parents were somewhat better off economically than the children in their care, but they too were increasingly drawn from minority racial and ethnic communities. Foster parents were licensed and compensated by the state for the work they did, however meagerly, and had fewer legal protections than adoptive or birth parents. By definition, foster parents were not autonomous. They were expected to provide havens of safety and love for children at risk, but they were also responsible for keeping children in contact with relatives and agency workers. Adopters, on the other hand, were more affluent. They paid for the services they received, overwhelmingly preferred babies and young children whose racial identities matched their own, and were legally entitled to manage their families without supervision after court decrees were issued. Adoption spelled permanence, but the price of that permanence was the social obliteration of natal ties.

-Adoption History

My experience is clearly VERY limited, but this supports what I witnessed in the orientations that I attended.  At the county orientation, the room was primarily filled with people of color, immigrants and families of children in foster care that were trying to help them.  In the two agency orientations that I attended, families were of varying races, but primarily white and almost exclusively middle and upper middle class.

A good memoir should do at least one of two simple things: make me laugh or cry. A really good one may be able to do both. I would still consider recommending a memoir that does neither of these if it is an interesting story with good analysis. Unfortunately, Friedman’s book is disappointing on all counts.

I picked up this book on a whim when I saw it in the new arrivals section of my local used book store. I have been thinking a lot about my own diet and exercise recently (and always have historically) and the idea of exercise addiction was intriguing. Certainly the story of someone that has struggled with exercise bulimia – a compulsion to purge calories through excessive exercise – is a solid premise for a useful and engrossing story.

I got off to a bad start with the book when I saw that it wasn’t really a diary (or even a reconstructed diary), while it did use a diary format. Entries ranged from ½ page to a few pages and covered anywhere from a day to a months time. But, even some of the entries marked with a single day were written about a longer time period. Most of the entries are written in the past tense with a reflective tone. Mixed in were what appeared to be entries from Friedman’s actual diary that are printed in computer generated script. The inconsistent style and time jumps lends to a disjointed voice and disconnected this reader. With better editing, the book may have been a much better read.

Immediately after I finished, I picked up Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress, a memoir by Susan Jane Gilman to reread it. I immediately began cracking up, although the substance of Susan Jane Gilman’s life is really thin. She just knows how to write about it with such flourishes that make the absolute most of it. I often feel as if I am right there, relating what she experienced as a child or seeing her through her teacher’s or parent’s eyes. It is this that Friedman lacks. I often didn’t feel present and was instead bored, although not too bored to keep reading.

I impressed by the bravery which Friedman bears herself. She shows a lot of ugly parts of herself in order to tell her story, including rage, vanity and shame. It is these moments that kept me going through the logistical details of her life. Occasionally, you can relate to her feelings, but mostly you are plodding through the motions of her routines and her life changes over the course of 6 years.

Some of these routines are the substance of her eating disorder and some are only tangential. These routines seem to have a significance that Friedman implies, but doesn’t really drive home. For example, she speaks many times of eating ice cream and frozen yogurt. I never really figure out what she is trying to say. Is she guilty for eating unhealthily? Does she use it to rationalize exercise later? Does she feel free of her disorder enough to indulge? Also, she talks about her hair a number of times and it is not clear if she is actually this vain or if she is intentionally pointing out the sort of vanity that leads to eating disorders.

Ironically, I most liked Friedman’s voice in the Epilogue. Here, she discusses the nuts and bolts of her actual recovery, which she gives nods to throughout the book, but doesn’t previously deconstruct. She looks at her own emotional process and what she has learned about eating disorders and culture. I wish that her intelligent analysis had been able to permeate the rest of the book instead of countless details that we are never able to make sense of.

J- just looked over, hearing me listen to a video and said, “Are you writing a political post?”  He was a little shocked because I am not really a conventionally political person.

I recently watched Milk and The Times of Harvey Milk.  I was a bit humbled that I didn’t really know the whole Milk story when I saw it. I knew they Supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone had been killed and that Milk was the first out gay man to be elected to public office in California.  I think that I knew at some point that Supervisor Dan White had shot them.  But, I don’t think I could have said this before I saw the movie, I had forgotten this part of the story at some point.

I was almost 7 years old when the murder took place, but I don’t remember it.  We had recently relocated to Sacramento from Santa Cruz when it happened and I wonder how my parents reacted.  Did I know about it and just not remember or did I not see the news that night?

My first memory of the story was sometime around 3rd grade (around 1980) when we went on a field trip to the Crocker Art Museum.  I think it was a sculpture that had a twinkie that was referencing the “Twinkie Defense“.  I can almost picture it. Bright colors and chaotic lines and a piece of a Twinkie sticking right out of it.  My mom explained the Twinkie Defense to me, but like many things at that age, I was just beginning to make sense of things and be able to understand the difference between imagination and reality.  Dan White and the Twinkie defense was filed in my brain next to the Greek mythological gods that I had learned about. It seemed partly true, clearly important, but it also had an aura of remoteness, something that was before my time.  I learned about the defense, but I didn’t know who was killed or who did the killing.  I was 30 years from understanding how this could be relevant to my own life.

The Milk documentary was filmed in 1985.  Memorable scenes were an interview with a union man that said he was homophobic before he began working with Milk.  He agreed with everything that Milk said, and this is what made him change his feelings about gay people.  But, he straightforwardly assured the audience, most people still feel how he used to, shamefully.  Also, I believe it was Milk’s colleague Jeannine Yeomans, who describes the fear of people at that time.  They saw that things were changing and did not understand what that would mean for San Francisco and their lives in it. They were used to power being one way and power was changing.

Interestingly, when I finished watching The Times of Harvey Milk, I saw this article that the day before, Speaker Nancy Pelosi compared the extremist and violent rhetoric being used today in the debates on health care to late 1978 in San Francisco, the time when Milk and Moscone were shot.  The comparison is striking for the obvious reason that the US now has its first black elected official.  I was struck by this statement because I related to the times portrayed in the movie.  I was really moved by the scenes in the documentary that showed the candlelight vigil, with thousands out mourning the deaths of Milk and Moscone and the scenes of angry riots following the weak sentencing of Dan White.  Although I am not usually very interested in politics, it was impossible to not feel inspired and have some hope the night that Obama was elected.  I walked out to my back porch and in all directions, I heard whooping, music, horns and celebration.

Rachel Maddow discusses Pelosi’s speech on her show.  She shows the clip of Pelosi then follows with Dianne Feinstein’s 1978 announcement of the murders.  The emotional turbulence of both are remarkable.  A bit later, she plays a clip of Republican John Boehner reacting to Pelosi’s comment, in which he describes the exact fear that Yeomans had described in 1985, cinching the similarities of three decades earlier.

I wonder how much of the Bay Area’s queer culture that I love has to do with politics and specifically, the politics of Harvey Milk.  My bias is to think very little.  It is hard to believe that if politics does make a difference, that 30 years later, Proposition 8 still failed in California. Demographics, geography and economics are what have provided the conditions for queer community to flourish here.  On the other hand, iconography, political figures and historical markers are all building blocks for shifts from a subculture to a culture.

So the fact that our tapestry of our dominant culture continues to be rewoven with queer, black and “other” as thread with a new political context does change things. It ultimately forces the change of  the relationship of the “isms” – sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. – to the dominant culture.  The question that I suppose I am consciously leaving unanswered surrounds the compromise that these historically discriminated against groups inevitably concede to in order to play the game at all.  And of course, whether this is really “the game” that any of us should want to be playing.  And sadly, the celebratory hoots of victory from Obama supporters have become few and far between since long before the health care debate began.

I am really into intimacy.  I have plenty of friends that I have casual friends with that I see around, but my close friends are people that I can say anything to. And they can say anything to me.  And we do. I love to be up in people’s business and well, they don’t really have to be up in mine because it is usually spread out on the table.

I was shocked to hear a friend say that her best friend was keeping a secret from her husband for 12 years.  I asked, “Was she keeping it from you, too?” She said, “Well, it’s not all that relevant for our relationship.” I simply couldn’t imagine any of my best friends keeping secrets from me, let alone from their partners.

This often carries over with my clients.  Sometimes I see myself as sort of a bartender, where people can bring their troubles to me, if it feels right. It makes sense since there is such a connection with physical holding and stress/emotions and with massage and emotional release.  J- thinks I should start an advice column, actually.  I think that would be the greatest job (next to being a forest ranger).

So, usually this goes okay for me and I am able to be empathetic, non-judgmental and supportive without stressing myself out or taking it on.  Well, just the right issues came together this week to totally trigger me and it took me about 24 hours to figure out why I was getting so wrapped up in them. Two of my friends are both dealing with the loss of children in very different ways.  I felt so drawn to supporting them and felt their grief as if it were my own.  I saw each one of them on two days in a row and I could really think of nothing else for those two days.

Meanwhile, I am spiraling through PMS and wanting to cry at everything from seeing my dogs play to a cheezy movie.  Luckily, it was my day off and I was able to just take some time to myself, walking with my dogs and such.  As soon as I walked into my acupuncturists office and sat down, I realized that this was all triggering the sadness of my own loss of the girls.  I had actually made that connection with each of the situations separately, but for some reason, recognizing the common thread between the two situations had a huge impact. To spell it out: definitely time to get back into therapy for me.

Knowing Sarah

I met Sarah’s mom before I met Sarah.  We were at an earthquake preparedness meeting where we were discussing, as a community, how to be prepared and connected to people in our own neighborhoods and how to get in touch with people in other neighborhoods if lines of communication go down.  At that point, Sarah “Bean” (a nickname that we all use as a way to differentiate her from other Sarah’s that we know), was practically a legend in my mind.  My friends had been asking me for over a year whether I knew her.  She was roommates with a close friend, but never seemed to be around whenever I was there.

Finally, a few months later, I met Sarah at a party and I adored her immediately.  We decided to  begin trading massage.  I am a professional massage therapist and am fairly picky about who I will trade with.  Sarah’s modality is different than mine (her Tui Na to my Deep Tissue).  Although I prefer deep tissue massage, I have benefited and enjoyed all modalities when done well.

A practitioner can be good with touch intuitively or be mediocre, even with a lot of training.  Sarah is a talented bodyworker because of her ability to connect with others.  She did not have much training when I first started receiving massage from her, but she always had a wonderful touch.  Throughout the year that we traded, her work evolved as she furthered her training and offered more fully integrated sessions.

Like many young people in the Bay Area (and many bodyworkers), Sarah is a person of many hats.  She is a teacher, a thinker and a healer.  Given the opportunities, Sarah’s possibilities are boundless because she is the kind of person that turns everything that she touches into her own.  She was working hard in many apsects of her life, including preparing for her trip logistically and learning Arabic.

Sarah gave me this photo before she left for her trip

Despite her light and easy presence with others, she takes the world and her position in it quite seriously.  I’ve always been impressed by the gravity that she holds the well-being of others, which translates into her politics, her employment and her friendships.  She often spoke of her love and concern for her family and friends and was fiercely loyal and loving to both.

The Hikers

What I really appreciate about the campaign to get Sarah, Shane and Josh released is the focus on the fact that they are hikers.  Of course, this does not comprehensively define them, but is a part of a lifestyle that I share with Sarah.  I can imagine her joy in being able to explore this area. The Free the Hikers website is filled images of them in nature.

Shon Meckfessel, who was travelling with them (but did not join them on the hike) explains their discovery of the area.

Every one of them told us to visit a place called Ahmed Awa. Not one of these people mentioned that Ahmed Awa was anywhere near the Iranian border. In fact, on the wall of our hotel there were three photos of tourists standing near the Ahmed Awa waterfall.  Ahmed Awa seemed the clear choice for appreciating the stunning natural beauty around Sulaimania, far from any sort of risk. However, it may have been unclear to the people who encouraged us to visit Ahmed Awa that we intended to go hiking in the area, rather than simply visiting the waterfall.

News reports say that the hikers may have entered Iran and it is plainly obvious to anyone who learns anything about them (including the involved governments) that they would not spy and also would not have entered Iran intentionally.  Either one would be antithetical to their personalities and life choices.  This was simply an awful, tragic mistake.

I have not followed much of the media, but I was particularly struck by Sarah’s mom reading an email that Sarah had sent just before they traveled to this Kurdish region or Iraq.  She assures her mom that the area is completely safe and pro-american and there is no history of American’s being harmed there.

Helping

Unfortunately, those of us hoping for the release of the hikers are currently subject to a bit of a waiting game. My understanding is that the situation is precarious because the US does not have diplomatic relations with Iran and communication with and about the hikers has been somewhere between non-existent to scarce to not trustworthy.

It is my understanding that what they need most, other than raising awareness for the situation is money.  T-shirts can be bought here (which will do both).  The list of ways to help and ways to follow the situation is being constantly updated here.  I hope that I will be able to plan some sort of fundraiser for them and encourage others to do the same.  I also know that the families are already traveling for meetings and media opportunities and are welcoming the donation of frequent flier miles.

My take is that no one really knows at this point what will help expediate the release of the hikers and because of that, it is difficult for the families to know what to ask for.  Because of this, I am beginning to try and work with the folks involved to support them personally.

Massage is a really wonderful thing to be able to offer.  In times of stress, trauma and crisis, massage can relieve the physical and emotional holding patterns that begin to happen for people.  It also helps clear the mind; “let go” is not the right word, but maybe reorganize a little.  I have been lucky enough to be able to work on some people on their team that cannot right now afford much time or money to devote to their own self-care.

The story actually begins February 22, 2006, but I really didn’t want to ruin such a great title by being picky.  It begins with the day I received a GPS for my birthday and became a geocacher. As a geocacher, I became obsessed with the idea of leaving no cache unfound.  I couldn’t consider passing one up.  I would take my dogs to the hills for hikes and bushwack or do what it took to claim the find.

Enter poison oak.  I had gotten poison oak a couple of times after owning the woods for many years, thinking that I was immune.  Well, you know the school of thought that says the more you are exposed to it, the worse your allergy becomes?  I am a believer.  It started with getting a rash in an area of contact and later became something that spread quickly to areas of my body that were completely covered.  Not only that, but I became so sensitive that I would have no direct contact with it, wipe my dogs down when I got home and I would still get it.  My favorite story is that I did brush against it and got it through my shirt.  I washed the shirt and I got it again.  This actually happened 4 more times until I washed it with tecnu (it was one of my favorite shirts) and could again wear it without consequence.  (Tecnu really is amazing, folks. Apparently, nobody really knows why it works. But IMHO, it is a miracle. If I know I have been exposed to PO and wash immediately with when I get home, I do NOT get a rash!)

In late 2007, I did a bunch of web research about building immunity since I could not imagine giving up geocaching or hiking in the hills.  Being in the hills for long, sometimes all day walks was part of my identity; it is what I did for myself to feel like myself.  I began taking rhus tox homeopathically on my own.

Along the way, I had seen the webpage for a local homeopath who treated poison oak. When I saw his name again in a Sierra Club magazine, I decided to make the call.  He was fantastic, but unfortunately…it didn’t work.  We tried everything and it only seemed to get worse.  I decided the only thing that I could do was cold turkey it. No more hills at all. I wasn’t going to be exposed and neither were my dogs.

Meanwhile, I had several other skin outbreaks that I assumed were  a fungus.  They were itchy and scaly (some areas worse than others). I treated them as such and put anti-fungal cream on. Ate endless raw garlic, grapefruit seed extract and mostly cut sugars out.  It, too ONLY GOT WORSE!  I had treated fungus on my own several times, so I knew something was amiss.  I was at my wits end at this point and went to a dermatologist.  He felt it was a clear cut case of psoriasis.  He took a biopsy (this is now sometime in 2008) and since things like this are never really simple for me, it went through a number of different tests because it did show markers of a rare kind of lymphoma.  In the end, they decided that it was psoriasis and the steroid cream that they prescribed worked. The dermatologist said that psoriasis can run many different courses in people and that it was very common for someone my age getting it for the first time to just go away again.

End of story?  Of course not.

I never really thought of myself as vain until I got a rash on my face.  For most of 2009, my face was somewhere between dry- irritated and swollen- red-oozing.   I was very surprised how much it disturbed me and how self-conscious I became. Using a topical steroid would help, but only for a week or so.  Eventually, my skin became reactive to metal, I had trouble wearing my glasses and my wedding ring.  Although psoriasis typically spares the face, my dermatologist and I both attributed my issues to that, for lack of any better explanation.

I tried a few things to help including changing my facial products and accupuncture, but when my face was better, it didn’t seem to last long and I was beginning to feel more dependent on steroids.  I began to wonder if what I was dealing with was eczema and not a product of psoriasis.  I thought back to all of they lifestyle and diet changes that I have underwent about the same time that I started having issues with my face.  After a bit of research I found this:

The most common food triggers for eczema are eggs, milk, peanuts, soy, and wheat. Among these, eggs are probably associated the most strongly with eczema.

Well, I hate to give such a complicated story a anti-climatic ending, but I think I am allergic to eggs.  About two weeks ago, I eliminated them from my diet almost completely and my skin has been remarkably improved.  It is still too soon to tell whether it will stay improved, but it has not felt this good in some time, especially for this long of a time.