My excellent adventure: a photo essay

Lunch with Katherine, Richard, Jan & others after the panel.

I had a fabulous time at the American Humanist Association conference last weekend. I met so many terrific people it made my head spin. I'll be writing more about it, but I wanted to put some pictures up.




My new friend Katherine Stewart, author of The Good News Club: The Christian Right's Stealth Assault on America's Children & panel speaker. Also a lot of fun to party with.



Dancing badly with Matt Harding of Where the Hell is Matt? fame

View from my room balcony...

   

...room 667 which meant I missed...

                                                


...by one room. Damn!



Sean Faircloth, Director of Strategy of RDFRS & great guy.

Janet Heimlich, author, activist & friend extraordinaire

Some bought, some brought, all lugged through the airports...but ALL signed!!

Life is good in San Diego

 

 

Foreground: Seth Asser, great friend & MD

Amazing. Do I look dazzled? What an honor.

 



I was accosted by a Christian Science practitioner in Old San Diego. Fortunately I was able to out run him.

The link to the panel I was on: RDFRS panel, AHA conference 2013. 

 

For this girl

Day after tomorrow I fly to San Diego to the American Humanist Association national conference. I'll be part of  the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science panel discussing  "How Religious Fundamentalism Harms Children." 

The others on the panel are Sean Faircloth, Janet Heimlich and Katherine Stewart, all amazing writers and advocates for the separation of church and state, especially when it comes to child medical maltreatment and proselytizing in school. Richard Dawkins will moderate.

It's an incredible honor and opportunity to have been invited to join them. It's a chance to literally speak for kids who have no voice against the pain and shame that can result from  the behavior of their indoctrinated parents. The recent case of a Pennsylvania couple charged with the death of a second of their children from choosing to pray rather than seek medical treatment--in other words, fatal neglect--has brought the issue front and center again.  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/24/herbert-catherine-schaible-bail-hearing_n_3330907.html I hate that this is what it takes. But we have to keep talking. We need to educate the public and get the state religious exemptions from medical treatment changed.

I survived untreated osteomyelitis at thirteen (and fourteen and fifteen) because my Christian Science parents and practitioner chose "spiritual treatment" for me.  I lost the use of my knee forever during those years, and six years ago I had my leg amputated when it jeopardized my health. No surgeons were willing to attempt replacing the fused joint. One said he never saw cases like this except in elderly patients who'd had the disease before antibiotics were available. 

But my fused, scarred, bent and eventually amputated leg is just part of the fallout. My life changed from one day to the next when I was thirteen. Not long after my fourteenth birthday, I was in too much pain to get out of bed--for ten solid months. My leg ran with pus day and night. The pain drove me to the point, one summer night, where the only thing I wanted was to die. But again, I had no choice. I lived. And, as happens in post-traumatic stress disorder, my brain changed its own chemistry. It warped into a state to attempt to manage my unreasonable situation, just as it would in battle or as a prisoner of war. These changes are visible on brain scans of people with PTSD. 

But for twenty years more, I just thought I was crazy. My moods could plunge without warning into suicidal despair. My whole being thrummed with anxiety almost 24/7. I lived in fear. I was terrible at showing up on time in a schedule for school, for a job. The only routine that soothed me was taking care of my horses. By the time I was in my thirties, having flashbacks and attacks of claustrophobia that prevented me from working, I really believed I was insane. Being diagnosed with PTSD and learning to manage it have changed my life.

What you need to understand is that part of me never got out of that room. Like a political prisoner, the mattress--the small room--the walls are still under and around me. Right now I'm keyed up in an excited way about this trip, but it reminds me of the stress I lived with  for decades. And it brings the resonance of that fourteen-year-old girl closer.

The hardest thing I've had to come to terms with about that time is her innocence. The most difficult memories are the ones of being in bed only being able to lie on my back or left side, never moving my leg, unable to stand the slightest jiggling of the mattress--and yet being sure I would be healed. The days grew long and hot, the leaves of the hickory outside shaded my window. I could smell the fresh-cut grass and hear my friends outside. All I needed was to have that single moment of understanding, enlightenment that would let me wake from the mortal dream of having an infected leg. I would sit up; the bandages would drop from my leg; I'd stand up and feel the rug under my bare feet. Then I'd run all the way to the barn and hug my horse. I could imagine it vividly. It was just out of reach.

It never happened. I survived and that girl faded into cynicism and shame. She was angry and confused, imploding rather than exploding, for the next twenty years.

How many kids experience that transformation to a greater or lesser extent? Maybe not in similar conditions physically, but emotionally? Refusing to validate a child's understanding of the world--of pain or health--of her personal realm of a body--derails any hope of a normal transition  to adulthood.

I'm able to speak in San Diego because my own daughters have taught me I deserve unconditional love and freedom from pain as much as they do.

I'm going to speak for the girl I was at fourteen, the girl in bed who desperately tried to scrape up a miracle that adults brutally, ignorantly told her was within reach. It's an honor to be asked. It's a tribute to her human grit, the will to live that kept her alive when she was denied any reasonable alternative.

This was the single time a picture was taken of me in bed in 1976. Yes, that's a pet mouse on my hat. Cheers, Liz.

See you on the flip side.  

Shopping with Liz: Dress For Success!

"Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes."  Part of a quote by Thoreau, a fellow who probably dressed the way I have all my life. I've found that horsemen and writers can mostly get by in jeans & T-shirts. Although this was not true when I was in England: I taught, rode, even cleaned stalls wearing  breeches, boots, shirt, tie & sweater or jacket.

(Thoreau trivia: Having grown up in Lexington, Massachusetts, as a kid I swam at Walden pond. I remember it not as Henry David's inspirational hangout but a nice swimming spot remarkable for the crayfish we used to catch . This will be a bonus point on the final.)

The countdown is on for my trip to San Diego at the end of this month: the American Humanist Association's national conference. I'll be part of a panel from the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science along with Janet Heimlich, Katherine Stewart and Sean Faircloth, moderated by Richard Dawkins himself. Talk about your enterprises requiring new clothes...

My daughters bailed like rats fleeing a sinking ship. Twenty-three said, "I think you need to find someone closer to your age to help you."

And when I asked yesterday if Thirteen would go shopping with me: "No, mom. This will end badly."

Huh. I went by myself today. This was a preemptive strike. I have a tentative date with a couple fashionistas who, yes, are my age, thank you very much, kids.

Let me explain how this is a venture so far outside my Comfort Zone as to be off the map. I tried to explain to my wonderful fashionista ladies last weekend: I have issues. Yes, these are the same issues that qualify me as poster child (or "Plucky Survivor" as I like to think of myself). They have to do with my body-image; they go WAY back. Not a few are directly about shopping. To be specific, changing booths, or as I think of them, the Tenth Circle of Hell.

When I was fifteen or so, I was able to stand up and step away from my wheelchair on wooden crutches. My bone infection had been "vanquished"; my family, Christian Science practitioner and I believed it had been HEALED! (Read: outlasted by a Plucky Child Survivor. But I didn't  know this until twenty years later.) 

This "healing" left me on crutches for eighteen months. Eventually my destroyed knee fused itself solid and I could walk on it. Meanwhile, I was a stranger in my post-puberty body. I'd been wiry, fast and strong at thirteen when the swelling in my leg shut down my life; now I was heavier, lame, depressed. I'd missed two years of school. My friends mostly shunned me. I detested my slow, awkward body. I tried to deny its existence as Christian Science dictated.

Meanwhile, the first place I had to go? The mall. Where I came face to face with my reflection in a fitting room mirror.

Shock? Panic attack? Despair? Damn right. I went home & curled in bed in a fetal position. I despised myself, my body, my failure to be healed as I'd been told I could. Lay there a couple days. Until I had to move...because I could. Had to get up. grab my crutches, get a lift to the barn so I could groom my crazy temperamental horse. Because I could move.

I struggled with my body for years. I had an eating disorder during high school, and binged and fasted as I watched the bathroom scale numbers like a Magic Eight ball that would determine my happiness on any given day. I used to walk compulsive laps through my house in the crazed need to force my rigid knee to bend or straighten. I stopped these behaviors on my seventeenth birthday when I threw away my last crutch--and gave in to the depression I've fought ever since. 

When friends look at me as though I'm just being stubborn, I feel twinges of that panic. Because it is so flipping complicated. And I have worked so damn hard to get to this point where I can express myself coherently. When I can write the hard truth of my life. When I might finally (finally!!) be recognized as a surviving voice for all the kids who didn't.

So this afternoon I drove to Ithaca. I paced myself; I was patient with myself; I cut myself a lot of slack when I was faced with the tubby middle-aged chick in the mirror. I forgave myself for being human. I was grateful to be human. Hell, a survivor! Alive, with the chance to represent others. And to speak at a conference.

At the checkout, the cashier said, "Ooh, these are nice."

I felt encouraged.  Yeah, this is unsettling, but it's a sign of my progress that I can describe it. Bring on the fashionistas.

But...cue George Thoroughgood, too. It's true, my preference: I shop alone...with nobody else...

Facebookers, forgive me for I have trolled

...and it's been...well...never, since my last confession. We didn't do that (ahem) stuff in Christian Science. Sure, we were into guilt & shame, but not hell. Or at least not a PLACE, other than the MORTAL UNIVERSE, which of course was only a construct of our own  MORTAL MINDS.

Excuse me. Religion does bring out the caps-lock in all of us, doesn't it?

But yeah, I did some trolling. Too tempting. A friend posted a link to the CHRISTIAN SCIENCE YouTube channel which is rife with such offerings.

(The videos average between a few hundred and a  couple thousand hits. Let me just brag that Sean Faircloth's Interview Formerly Appearing on YouTube of Liz Heywood, Plucky CS Survivor, nabbed something upward of 15,000 hits in the year before it was axed in a copyright dispute between Richard Dawkins & a nameless Disgruntled Former Employee.) 

The CS channel 137 videos and 810 subscribers. Which is to say, the 40,000-odd remaining church members are too old to figure out the InterWebs.

No, I know, I know, they want to SPREAD THE INSPIRED WORD OF WHATSHERNAME. 

(Un-caps-lock.) The CS series of some new, some older videos, is called "Lives Lived." The videos seem to run about a minute or two apiece while earnest folk of all ages & hairstyles talk about praying away their latest migraine, brain tumor, or whathaveyou. The comments, I quickly noticed, were disabled...

...on most of them.

OK, so what do you think I did? Yeah, that's what I did. Kept it short & sweet: Lives Lived, Legs Lost. Believe what you want; take your kids to a doctor. Along those lines. With my little leg/prosthesis/horse legs icon.     :-)  

Found a couple of those earnest I-was-HEALED clips to spruce up with my comments before I had to go get my daughter from track practice. Alas. So much fun, so little time.

By the time I was back the comments were disabled.     :-(     Stephanie Miller (progressive radio talk show host) would say, "See, this is why we can't have nice things!!"

But I bet she wouldn't say it in all caps.      ;-D

Crashing into spring

...in a dying HP pc, hence my unplanned blog-cation. J 

But have no fear! I am back to thrash my way through cyberspace and coax my wheezing and uncooperative machine despite its countless mock-deaths until the gears, transistors, baler-twine or whatever the hell is inside it decides to run a while. A new-to-me computer is waiting in the wings! Stay tuned.

 

In the meantime, I’ve single-handedly vanquished winter, depression, mud season & cold temperatures here at Holy Crow Farm, or at least outlasted them. The daffodils are finally blooming after sprouting from the ground & then holding their breath for two months. There’s even enough sparse green grass on my woodsy hilltop that I let the horses graze awhile today. They have to be eased into grass or they’ll eat themselves sick. Horses feel about new grass the way I do about White Lightning ice cream.

And the daffodils finally outnumber the little plastic fence insulators I nail to trees and posts to keep the electric fence hot. (I accidentally tested the electric fence myself the other day. Just thought I'd mention it works.) The insulators are exactly the same yellow as daffodils and during the Grey Months, I take heart at the bright spots of color in a landscape of neutral shades. In the early spring, I’m disappointed whenever I race towards yellow on the ground hoping for an early bloom only to find it’s a forgotten plastic piece.

 

But hey, it’s always an encouraging sign. Sooner or later, the flowers take the hint and burst into bloom.

Hope is green...

...like the daffodils that have been poking up in the warmest spot in my central upstate New York yard: over the septic tank.  This sounds like some kind of optimist/Erma Bombeck joke, but I'll take it.

Yesterday was the first full-sun, clear-sky , mild-temperature day we've had since...hell, I don't remember anymore. Everyone stumbled into the light, squinting and smiling goofily at strangers.

Why does anyone live in this passive-aggressive climate?? What kind of self-loathing makes us groan and struggle through the winter so we can claw our way, grovelling and whimpering in appreciation, into a plain-vanilla, ho-hum Nice Day? I wasn't a bit surprised to wake this morning to the grim grey that devolved into rain. Of course. Would I expect two sunny days in a row? Yeah, no. What am I, stupid?

So while March slinks out like a wet dog, here's a trip down classic SNL memory lane.  To life!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMZFpf-1wp0

Keep on keepin' on

Haven't posted in too long...three weeks? I've felt like hell. I can blame it on a too-grey February (the Longest Month masquerading as the shortest), on fatigue from scraping though another winter in the Northeast or being worn-out trying not to slip on the ice (the Prosthetic Defense). But it comes down to depression.

I try to write eloquently about living with depression, panic, despair and all the myriad flavors of post-traumatic stress disorder, but when it comes down to it, it just sucks. It's ugly. It stalks me down, seizes me between its teeth and worries me like a terrier with a bone.

Lately I've have good days and bad days; more good since the end of last week, for some reason. My new doctor, not understanding the depth of my PTSD, cut my meds slightly at the wrong time. Thought I'd be OK but after a week or so I wasn't. Barely able to get up mornings. Some days unable to work--or to think--and barely able to function.

In the past I've had stretches where I felt panic drop like a net and leave me curled in a fetal position in bed. I learned to treat it like a migraine: cancel all plans, free up my schedule, assure myself there was nothing I couldn't skip, literally NOTHING. Almost everything in life is a choice. If you disagree, you've never found yourself bedridden. Or in traction.

The last time I felt this bad this long was about fourteen years ago, during a long grey March and April. And I know that while I tell myself now I would feel better if I only had two legs and a better financial base, I had them then. They didn't help. I did work out of it, and I did achieve what I felt I needed.

Of course that doesn't help much now. The way I've been feeling is ugly. Inconvenient. It's the emotional equivalent  of having your water break at the airport a thousand miles from home. I wanted to post clever, thought-provoking blog posts for Atheist Week.  Sorry. Too bad, so sad. Want to call your dad? He might be mad.

But in a way I guess this is appropriate for Atheist Week. Because my fucked-up ugly brain is the souvenir of my religious upbringing. People, and even close friends, see my  above-knee amputation and say Wow! (and/or shudder.)  Well, my leg got off easy compared to my brain.

Think of me as being pegged on Overwhelm. Think about asking a child to do something impossible--literally (and I never use this word lightly) impossible: to usher in her own spiritual healing of the bone disease that ate at her leg for most of a year. Assure her it's rational to expect healing and possible to miraculously wake up perfect. When she survives to limp on a battered limb, let her know that Perfect Healing is still...within...reach...if she tries harder...a little longer...

It's going on forty years I've tried to cope with this mind of mine. It's still snarling to be left alone to concentrate. It's willing to exist indefinitely in a heightened state of pain-endurance with the inside-out logic of Christian Science that This is not happening! A deity can be bigger than this...heal this....

This is how I got to be an atheist. Please don't try this at home.