The TRUTH About Motherhood

Search results for: “gun control”

Antoinette Tuff Saves Atlanta Children from Gun Wielding Maniac & Excuse My Use of Hyperbole
Today I want to introduce you to a real life hero Antoinette Tuff because I decided that the world needs one less Throat Punch today. In light of recent events, I feel the need to clarify that you all know that my Throat Punches are not literal, right? I mean, I am not some caped, unitard wearing crusader running around the streets of the world LITERALLY throat punching bad guys.It.is.Hyperbole. Most of you are writers, you know what this means. I am not the Throat Punching Dexter of the Midwest. It’s a figure of speech people. Okay, now that that’s been clarified, let’s move along to some hero-worship.
I looked at my list and there are plenty of people in the world who deserve to be called out for their bullshit. But today, a common thread in all of these stories is that none of them would exist if there were just a little bit of compassion and human kindness in the world. Today, I am highlighting the caring and compassion of Antoinette Tuff.
Yesterday, a 20-year-old man in need of a mental health intervention, Michael Brandon Hill, allegedly slipped into a Georgia elementary school, Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, with a high-powered rifle and nearly five hundred rounds of ammunition. A terrified but colossally brave, Antoinette Tuff, the bookkeeper in the front office, physically positioned herself between him and the 800 innocent children inside. Then, Tuff called 911 and for 25 minutes, spoke to Hill, like a person not a criminal, and saved the day. I have no idea how she kept her cool but I think she is amazing for doing so.
Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
“He said he don’t care if he dies, he don’t have nothing to live for,” Tuff told the operator. “He said he’s not mentally stable.”
“should have just went to the mental hospital instead of doing this because he is not on his medication”
She bravely spoke openly about her own struggles with depression over the past year and convinced him to remove his weapons and turn himself in. She was the negotiator between the shooter and the police. She never belittled him or tried to run, she showed human compassion and saved a school full of children from being injured or killed. She saved his life too.
I am in awe of Antoinette Tuff’s bravery. I can’t say what many of us would do in that same situation; probably run unless it was one of our own children locked inside in harms way. I’d like to think I’d be able to stand my ground and show some compassion and protect the children, maybe even stop the situation from going any further. But I don’t know that many of us would. I think most of us would run out of sheer terror our legs would be going before our brain could stop them.
This could very easily have been another Sandy Hook. Thank God for good people like Antoinette Tuff. She stopped what could have been a massacre by simply extending some human compassion and quick thinking. This Thursday, Antoinette Tuff is my hero.
We are all human; black, white, brown, gay, straight, single, married, parent, childless or childfree, Christian, Jew, man, woman, pretty, ugly, able, disabled, mentally ill, genius, educated, uneducated, democrat or republican. We share the same fears and insecurities and we all have to get up, live in this world and try to find happiness within our own heart. We all deserve respect and human kindness because we are all just trying to survive the day.
I was going to write a Throat Punch Thursday but I already wrote a post on Tuesday about the asshole neighbor who wrote an anonymous letter to the family of an autistic teen suggesting his parents euthanize him and you all know that I am not the violent type. I’m a hugger not a mean girl. Every Thursday, I just like to call out those who are worthy.
Then I considered giving Forbes Magazine my Throat Punch because honestly, they deserve it. Forbes either thinks very little of women to think that GOMI is a top site for women, they didn’t research at all or they think all women are mean girls. We all know GOMI and choose to, for the most part, ignore it because come on people, we can switch the channel. I believe in freedom of speech. I just hate that Forbes listed it as a great site for women with its success built on reducing women to a punch line. But I won’t write that post because my friend Morgan at the 818 already wrote NO, YOU GET OFF MY INTERNET .
So, what do you think? Do I offend you with my use of the term Throat Punch Thursday? Have you been living in fear that I might show up at a blog conference and karate chop you to the neck? Rest assured. I will not. I promise.Who knew people who lived in glass houses were so sensitive? Let’s move on, my unitard is starting to itch.

Photo

2013/08/22
That Time I Had to Hide in a Bathroom Stall with my Daughter
Ever think about what it really means that we are parenting in a world where it’s completely necessary to teach our children what to do in case someone enters the the building with a gun? Something happened last week that left me more than a little freaked out. I haven’t talked about it on here because I didn’t know where to start. I wasn’t sure that I even wanted to talk about it because then I had to admit that it was real.
But then in the news I read that a couple people had been shot and murdered at our local Texas Roadhouse. It was a Sunday night. It’s a family restaurant. Can you imagine going out for dinner with your family and being caught in crossfire? Can imagine what you would do if you were sitting there with your child?
We’d all like to think that it would never happen to us. That mass shootings, or a madman on the loose with a firearm, happens someplace else; anywhere else. It just doesn’t happen here because then we would have to face our greatest fear every single time we walked out of the door. We’d have to accept that every moment outside the bubble of our home puts those we love most at risk. So we push it down, way down. We throw caution to the win and we don’t let the “terrorists” win (the terrorists being crazies with guns). But sometimes, it does happen here. There. To you. It can happen to any of us.
Last week, I was at the mall with my daughters and my mother-in-law school shopping. The sun was shining. The guys were at a thing and us girls, we were just having a relaxing day of buying things we needed to back-to-school and “mannequin shopping” (as my youngest refers to window shopping) for those things on our wish list. It was a day like so many others but not quite. We had no idea what was about to transpire.
We had hit all the stores we needed to hit and were hitting Sears as a last ditch effort to find the correct size in uniform shirts and shorts for my tall and thin children before we were going to let the girls go someplace they actually wanted to go…Claire’s and Justice. After much searching, we finally found some uniform polos that would work. As we neared the register, the littlest one tells me that she needs to go to the restroom. Of course she does, she always has to go to the restroom. I think she is secretly surveying all the bathrooms in the world. She’ll probably start some amazing yelp like service for toilets when she’s a tween but I digress. This is serious shit and I’m getting off track.
My mother-in-law stays in line with my oldest to pay and the little one and I go to the restroom. In case you were wondering, my girls are 9 and 11-years-old and, no, I still don’t let them go to the restroom unaccompanied because I simply don’t trust people. She went to one stall, while I went to another (hey, that’s progress) and then it happened.
I was washing my hands while she was still in the stall. I was chatting to her, letting her know that I was waiting outside the stall door. She was cracking jokes and laughing, as she is known to do. She is a really silly kid. I love that about her. Then we heard it, something off in the distance outside the women’s restroom door. Something like I’ve never heard before. It sounded like a child tantruming and very agitated but it was clearly an adult man. I could hear the tension escalation and nearing us.
I was really confused because when we had walked into the restroom, through the furniture section, there were three seemingly normal grown men sitting there. Yet, this howling, agitated screaming and shouting was getting louder and louder and I could hear arguing. My heart was racing. Oh my God, what’s about to happen?
These are the moments in parenting where you find out who you really are.
So, I started rapping on my daughter’s stall but I wasn’t saying anything because I didn’t want anyone outside the bathroom to know we were in there. I didn’t want to call attention to our location. Then in a panic, I whisper shouted, “Gabi, let me in. It’s mommy.” She did. I could see on her face that she was terrified. I tried to calm her with my eyes but I knew the voices were getting closer and louder and even more agitated with each step.
I pushed her to the back of the stall. I told her to be quiet and make herself small. Hide as best you can in a stall. I had no idea what was coming through that door. I feared it could be a man with a gun. I was terrified but not for me or my safety, but for my daughter; my littlest girl. All I could think of was those poor men trapped in the bathroom at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
I readied myself for the worst. I positioned myself in between the door and my child and I braced it with all of my weight. I was looking through the crack in the stall when a huge, mentally challenged man came bursting through the door. He was pacing back and forth and hitting himself in the head; clearly agitated. He was hitting the stall door next to me. No one else was in there except for him and us. I wanted to cry and scream for help but I had to stay silent and keep my composure. He was out of control and not in his right mind.
Then, an elderly woman, I’m assuming his mother, burst into the bathroom. She grabbed him and tried to subdue him. Her eye caught mine looking through the slit in the stall. I’m sur she could see the terror in my eyes. She was tiny and he was massive. I wanted to help her but he was twice my size and while her concern was her child, mine was my own child. We stayed in there, silently hiding from this man for what seemed like forever. I’m sure it was only a few minutes.
I heard her talking to him with a mother’s love and trying to calm him down. She pulled him into the handicapped stall next to us. He was still screaming and howling and I could hear him hitting himself. I couldn’t even breathe but I had to stay strong for my daughter. Then, I heard the mom shut the stall door and tell him, “just stay here with me and breathe for a minute,” and I knew it was our chance.
I quietly opened the stall door, checked to make sure it was safe and slipped out with my daughter safely tucked behind me. I was a human shield, just in case, he flew back out of the stall agitated. My daughter was trembling, as I held her close to me. We got outside of the door and finally exhaled.
And there sitting, laughing, were the three grown men. The same men who watched me walk into the restroom with my little girl. The same men who saw this mentally deficient, unstable man flipping out and proceeded to watch him enter the restroom where my daughter and I were at, all the while doing nothing. The same men who watched as a frail, tiny elderly woman went in to face a huge, agitated and angry man. They laughed. My daughter was trembling and they laughed. The only reason I didn’t stop and say something to them was because I didn’t know if that man was going to come running out of the bathroom, still unstable. My priority was getting my daughter to safety. Instead, I went to the cashier and they sent security.
This is the world we live in. The world where grown man do nothing while a child is in danger. A world where no one, other than this man’s mother, thought it was enough to check on him, even though he was screaming, yelling and hitting himself. A world where my little girl cried when we got home because she was too scared to answer the door at first and she felt guilty. A world where my first thought was that someone was coming in to shoot us.
The sad reality is we’re parenting in a world where any of us can become a victim of gun violence at any time.
2016/08/19
An Open Letter to Babble.com in Regard to Fertility Issues

Dear Babble,
What were you thinking running the article about Motherlode columnist, Amy Klein’s fertility issues, titled Should We Be Sympathetic to a 42-Year-Old’s Fertility Struggles? May I ask, were all the editors on vacation? Was there a hiatus on good judgment and common decency? Seriously, wtf were you thinking? Normally, I am a fan of Babble. Many of my friends write there and generally it’s very PG and non-threatening, a great resource for parents, but this particular post was deplorable. I know from her bio that the author is a comedienne but this shit was not funny.at.all!
And in answer to your “question” …Yeah, Hell Yeah! You should feel sympathetic to anyone’s fertility issues because it’s a problem for the person who has it whether she is 25 or 45. Just like you should feel sympathy and compassion for a rape victim, no matter what she was wearing, how drunk she was or who she was dry humping the night she was raped. The same reason you feel compassion for patients with cancer, whether they smoked every day of their life, drank themselves into oblivion or played with radiation!
You are sympathetic because you are human and you have compassion to people’s struggles. You are sympathetic because you have not lived in their shoes and don’t know their story. You are sympathetic because you shouldn’t kick a person when they are down. You are sympathetic because you don’t want to be the mean kid on the playground; the bullying asshole that everyone else hates. But, instead, you chose to let one of your writers pen a condescending post on her thoughts on fertility issues, from her fertile high horse. Nice move; not very Disney of you, at all.
“These are the days of ugly emotions. Infertility hijacks your schedule, damages your relationship with your spouse and unleashes in you terrible jealousy of other women, women who conceive easily, without thought, without drugs, without dozens of days lost to medical intervention. Women whose biggest problems are swollen feet.”
Those seem like fighting words coming from a 42-year-old woman trying to get pregnant for the first time, I thought. Surely this woman must understand that at her age fertility problems are to be expected when trying to conceive for the first time. How could she be so angry? Didn’t she see this coming?
Moreover, like so many people do when confronted with this sort of thing, I thought, ”Are we really supposed to feel sorry for a 42-year-old woman who is doing IVF when she could just adopt?”
My head nearly exploded when I read the above part of the article. Let’s be honest, I know all about link bait and controversy. In fact, I am no stranger to controversy and I know I piss people off with my strong opinions on everything from gun control to breastfeeding but I would never make fun of a person who is physically unable to do something like breastfeeding, I don’t poke fun at the mentally ill and I certainly would never interview a mother of a child who found her gun and shot himself and ridicule her because I have one thing that this article lacks; human decency.
The article began dripping of judgment and condescension, on a parenting website. This should be a safe place for moms, not a place to be shamed and ridiculed. Then the author said she was going to give the woman the benefit of an interview, for context and understanding, only the entire interview read like this; ( paraphrased; these are not direct quotes ) To be fair: I do not know this writer or her story or her issues, I am only responding to how the piece was written. She may be perfectly lovely and may have just been having an off day but this is how I felt the piece came off and many of my FB followers agree.
Amy Klein (Interviewee) : Explanation, explanation, and explanation
Author at Babble: (dripping with condescension) You should have tried to get pregnant earlier.
Author at Babble: Why don’t you adopt?
Author: I married young because I knew I wanted to get married and I wanted to have a family. In marrying so young, I made a choice that didn’t work out and I’m now divorced, but I have a beautiful daughter. It seems that often women are cornered in these ways: wait to find someone you feel truly compatible with and enter a marriage you feel as certain as possible will last but then deal with potential fertility issues, or marry young and take your chances when you’re still quite fertile. Not that it’s always an either/or situation, but still. Based on the way things have played out for you, what advice would you give to younger women when it comes to love/marriage/babies? I mentioned on Facebook a while back that women should take the time they need to try to find a truly healthy love relationship, but that if they don’t find a great partner by their mid-30′s, they should just have a baby alone.

Author at Babble: That’s why I had my baby when I was young and fertile. I am divorced now, but I have my kid. Maybe you should have thought about all of this 20 years ago…when you were still fertile.
Amy Klein (exhausted and demeaned): Goes Home.
Please, Please, Please editors, read posts before they go live. Babble, I expected more from you. We all do. This post has left a bad taste in my mouth for Babble and I am sure it has for other readers, as well. Try a little human kindness when addressing the issue of fertility.
Sincerely,
Truthful Mommy
2013/08/16
13-year-old Latino Boy, Christian Dorscht, Shot at by Off-Duty LAPD Cop for Walking on Lawn
On Tuesday, an off-duty LAPD officer fired his weapon during a confrontation with a 13-year-old Latino boy, Christian Dorscht, who had allegedly “walked on his lawn”. That was enough to set off a chain of events that could have left one child dead for simply being a teenager. As a parent, what would you do if Christian Dorscht were your child? (more…)
2017/02/23
Will Smith Smacked Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Name Out of Chris Rock’s Mouth and I’m Here for It

I know, everyone is disgusted that Will Smith walked on stage during the Oscars and slapped Chris Rock for making fun of his wife (Jada Pinkett-Smith) and the fact that her head is bald. Especially, when everyone knows that she has been struggling and suffering from alopecia, an autoimmune disease that has caused her to lose large chunks of her hair. This situation has caused stress and anxiety for her and her family. Have you ever lived with someone who has a chronic illness? It affects and is taxing on the entire family. Honestly, in my opinion, even if Chris Rock didn’t know, he should have known better than to make a joke at the expense of a bald woman. My assumption is that if a woman is bald and over 30, it’s probably not on purpose…there’s an underlying condition. Chris Rock chose to make the joke anyway and Will Smith smacked Chris Rock for insulting Jada Pinkett-Smith. I believe in freedom of speech but I also believe there are consequences for our words and actions.
I get it. As a child of abuse, who doesn’t spank and is for stricter gun control, normally, I am anti-violence. Violence is, in most cases, overboard and really cringy and triggering for me. But, I have to say, everything has a time and a place and Chris Rock got what he deserved. Everyone has an inner voice that tries to stop them when they’re about to do something monumentally stupid and he chose to ignore that voice along with his common sense. The result is he got what was coming to him on national television for saying something ignorant and trying to get a laugh at the expense of an unsuspecting Jada Pinkett-Smith and her alopecia. If you look at her face when he made the joke, you can see she wasn’t pleased.

Will Smith Smacked Jada Pinkett-Smith’s name out of Chris Rock’s mouth
Yes, Chris Rock is a comedian and they’re known for making witty, often offensive, commentary on audience members and life in general. Maybe it would have been different if this was the Jada Pinkett-Smith roast or she came to a Chris Rock stand-up show but she was minding her business, attending a red-carpet event at the Oscars.
Most of the time, comedians cracking on the audience is hilarious. I’m not a prude. I can laugh at funny situations and, on most days, I can laugh at myself but if someone came for me by getting laughs at the expense of my health and/or mental health, I think that is going too far. Who knows, on the right day, I might slap them myself. My 6’5” Big Guy has been known to verbally shut down anyone who has ever come for me but if someone were to do it on national television, who knows, my usually gentle giant could definitely be moved to slap the taste out of someone’s mouth. And let’s be real honest, Chris Rock really should keep Will Smith’s wife’s name out of his fucking mouth.
Alopecia is a real autoimmune disease that people suffer from that causes patchy bald spots. In patients with alopecia areata, hair follicles release a chemical message that causes the immune system to attack them. This causes the hairs in those follicles to fall out. As long as the immune system is fighting the follicles, new hair will not grow. Oftentimes, those who suffer from alopecia are victimized and bullied which can cause undue anxiety and depression for something beyond their control.
Seriously, is it ok to make fun of people who suffer from Parkinsons or cancer? Do we make jokes about down syndrome children and paranoid schizophrenics for laughs? What’s next, literally kicking puppies and babies to get laughs? Sure, people do make these jokes and worse still and we all laugh or we cringe (depending on our moods) but we all know it’s in poor taste. I’m pretty sure most comedians are smart enough to read the room.
Words have consequences; Will Smith Smacked Jada Pinkett-Smith’s name out of Chris Rock’s mouth
I’ve always loved Will Smith and Chris Rock. But there are jokes at someone else’s expense and then there is going too far. Chris Rock went too far. Some say Will Smith did too. I think Chris Rock took a gamble and lost. He knew there was a chance of getting got when he made Pinkett-Smith the butt of his joke about. I can’t believe he is completely shocked at getting the taste (and Jada Pinkett-Smith’s name) slapped out of his mouth. I hope he’ll remember this the next time he decides to take a shot at someone else’s spouse to their face. Actions always have consequences, good or bad.
I’m sure there are going to be consequences for Will Smith, as well. He could lose the Oscar that he just won. He could be brought up on assault charges. Though according to the LA PD, Chris Rock refused to press charges (because Rock knows he crossed the line). Maybe Rock didn’t realize it at the time, but he certainly knows better now. At the end of the day, Will Smith was just a husband standing up for the woman he loves. I’m not saying violence is always the answer, but sometimes your shitty actions come with shitty consequences and that applies to everyone involved.
What do you think? Do you think it was going too far for Will Smith to slap Jada-Pinkett’s name out of Chris Rock’s mouth? What would you have done if it was your spouse or child? Are you bothered by the violence and the fact that Will Smith smacked Chris Rock for insulting Jada Pinkett-Smith? I can honestly say that if someone came directly for my husband or children who never purposely or intentionally offend others, yeah, I’d smack the shit out of someone too. Making someone feel really shitty when they are already feeling terrible without provocation is a low blow and you get what you get. At the end of the day, maybe it was a skit but the message is loud and clear, don’t come for someone’s family and not expect there to be consequences.
2022/03/28
Road Tripping with Toddlers or Hell on Wheels
Road Tripping with Toddlers is not for the week. We are on a mini vacation/ look see around town for my husbands potential new job, in Virginia. First, let me start by saying, this is one of the most gorgeous parts of the country that I have been to thus far in my life. The weather is awesome, the foliage abounds, large cities are concealed by an enveloping plethora of greenery. Essentially, you have big city life with the look of the country and all the amenities of a Beaches all inclusive resort. So, that is where we are Today!
On Saturday, however, we were road tripping with toddlers for 12 glorious hours. Yes, that is correct, 12 hours with a 4 and newly turned 2 year old.Can you say a little touch of hell on earth. My ,otherwise, sweet loving girls do not like to be confined in those 5 point harnesses on a good day on a trip across town. So, imagine their state at taking their very first long drive trip imprisoned in those wonderful harnesses.
My oldest, rambunctious as ever, insisted on asking, every 20 minutes or so,”Are we there yet?” I always thought that was a funny spoof on parenting but now I realize that it is, in fact, the truth of traveling with children. I never realized how frazzling that could be to me as a person. I thought “those” moms have no patience. Just say ,”Not yet, in a little while.” Why all the overreaction? Then I realized that it can actually bring you to the brink of insanity and make a grown woman, such as myself, cry, almost inconsolably, if asked in the right voice and enough times over a 12 hour period.
While the oldest was hitting us with the barrage of “Are we there yet”s the youngest was freaking out of her ever loving mind about a gnat. Yes, a gnat, that supposedly must have been the scariest, meanest, baby eating gnat you ever did see because , god bless her little bitty heart, she screamed bloody murder for at least 3 hours of the trip.Oh, the humanity! So, to sum it up, my 4 year old is wondering if we are there yet, every single second of every single minute we were on the road, my 2 year old is being terrorized by a gnat and screaming so highly pitched, that all the dogs of the world were seeking her out to eat her and end the misery, I am at the brink of insanity on the verge of losing the battle and my poor beloved husband is trying to plot his course to the nearest gunsmith to rent a gun and buy a bullet.
Then I pull out my bag of tricks because obviously the 1200 DVDs that I brought are not holding their attention. First , we color ( you know those Wonder Crayola colors that magically appear on the special paper but nothing else..that’s what you think, but that’s another story entirely), then we color the glittery ones, then we color My little Pony. We sing, only the songs that they know so we had Bella’s favorites, “Twinkle ,Twinkle” and “Mary had a little Lamb” and Gabi’s favorites “Happy Burtday to you!” and ” Five, Five DOlla..Five Dolla foot long!” Yes, my 2 year old is obsessed with the Subway commercial jingle. Have you any idea how many times they play that thing? I do , because she sings it incessantly. Don’t get me wrong, in the right context, it is absolutely adorable. She is the cutest thing that has ever walked this earth, besides her sister, of course, but everything in moderation. Interrupted only by the “Are we there yet?” inquiry of her sister. OK, so brink of insanity on way to gun shop, we stop at lunch and we try and let them stretch there legs at some wayward Wendy’s in West Virginia. Not my idea, have you seen Wrong Turn?
We get lunch, they have ants in their pants and can’t keep still. We get the food, the chicken flavored whatsamanuggets are not done, still doughy,”EWWWW, gross”, as my daughter like to say. I return them. We wait, I return with nuggets, all is good in the land.
Road Tripping with Toddlers is Hell on Wheels
A ‘fly” dares to descend upon the table. All hell breaks lose. Toddlers jumping everywhere, screaming, crying, running away in terror. I did mention it was a fly and not Godzilla, right? Not a horsefly, just a regular old house fly! In true fix the situation fast fashion, I take off my flip flop and the untimely death of one unsuspecting fly ensues. All is good in the land, and then Gabs, because all of the attention we just received was apparently not enough for her, screams, at the absolute top of her lungs “EWWWW, FAARTED.Stinks”. Absolutely, mortified , I say ” OK, honey, it’s OK.” Then I realize, amongst all of the commotion, she did not have any kind of flatulation incident. Apparently, she just thinks it’s funny and likes to take credit for such occurrence. She is really better than the dog. This is a quirk I am hoping she outgrows.
Bella, my older one starts asking, “Mom, what are we going to do on our vacation?” I say, because I am out of the car and somewhat rational and overly sweet because I am trying to gain redemption from being “Crazy Mommy” from in the car,
“Well, sweetie.we’ll look around the town and eat out, maybe go to Busch Gardens, and we will take you girls to the pool at the hotel.” She look at me with wide eyes,” Even you, Mommy?”
First lets put this into context, I am a Mommy in my mid 30’s, I am a little over weight and a little out of shape, and I hate swimsuits with a passion. I have since I was a teenager. It’s like a taunting suit, it takes every possible flaw you can possibly have and flaunts it to the discriminating eyes of the world. But I do occasionally wear these horrible contraptions to play with my children and because I am determined not to pass my body issues on to them. In response to my daughter, I say “yes, sweetie, even Mommy.” I look at my husband and say ” What the heck, I don’t know any of these people.I’m going swimming!” To which my daughter responds in her most defiant voice “Yeah,I don’t know these people either, so I’m going swimming too!”
How funny, she has no idea about the context but dammit, she’s going swimming!! I’m still in the throes of this mini vacation that teeters between heaven and hell, I’ll post more when we all arrive safely at home, by passing any and all asylums and gun shops…save for that poor Godzilla fly at the Wrong Turn Wendys. The only thing more difficult than Road Tripping with Toddlers is road tripping with TWO toddlers.
How have you survived road tripping with toddlers?
Road Tripping with toddlers Only the Strong need Apply
Photo Credit
2009/06/01
Sandy Hook Always on My Mind
Saturday was the anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre. I was backstage, watching from stage left as my daughters performed their final show. I wanted to be in as close proximity to my girls as possible. I half expected some deviant, somewhere to decide to commemorate the anniversary with his or her own massacre. This is who I have become since December 14, 2012. I am afraid and I can’t shake it. Sandy Hook changed my life. Saturday, my heart was heavy for the mothers and fathers of Sandy Hook. The air was so thick I could barely breathe.
In our world, shootings happen frequently, so much so that it is no longer shocking. A crazed gun man walks into a post office, a disgruntled employee walks into his place of business, a religious zealot walks into a church, a long gunman walks into a mall or a theater, a jilted lover walks into a house…this happens all over the place, all the time but Sandy Hook was different it hit many of us where we live. Adam Lanza made us all feel vulnerable in a place where we already walk around like an open wound to the world; our children. He stole the one place we felt comfortable and safe leaving our children away from us; school.
Every morning when I drop my girls off at school, I am afraid that it might be the last time that I ever see them. Every time I hear a siren, I call the school to make sure everything is all right. If the girls are in a bad mood in the morning and we argue, I always rectify it before dropping them at school. I always hug them goodbye and I always tell them that I love them because I am terrified that something might happen and it might be the last time that we see one another and I don’t want my last words to them to be mean ones. The events that transpired that cold Friday morning at Sandy Hook Elementary did that to me. I know life goes on but my trust in the world has been broken and I am not sure that it can ever be mended.
For the rest of my life, my heart will stop when I hear a siren if my children are not in my line of sight. For the rest of my life, I will watch my children until they are all the way in the building. For the rest of my life, I will remember that my children are the most precious gift that life has given me and I will not take them for granted. For the rest of my life, I will not trust the world to protect our children. That is what Adam Lanza and his shooting spree has done to our world.
Children are not disposable. Human beings are not replaceable. No one needs a gun. Gun violence needs to stop and we need to prevent something like Sandy Hook from ever happening again.No parent should ever have to wonder if this is the last time they will see their child alive at morning drop off. We should not have to live our lives in fear. If you believe that the right to bear arms is more important that the lives of 26 people than we probably can’t be friends. Please pray for peace for the mothers and fathers of the Sandy Hook victims.
How has your perspective on life changed since Sandy Hook?
2013/12/18
A Day in the Life of a Girl with Eating Disorders

Ever wonder what it’s like to have an eating disorder? It’s sad. If the eating disorders don’t kill you, the loneliness will. As I stood there looking in the mirror, facing the truth of my anorexic reflection I realized that I hated what I saw. As long as I could remember, I had never liked what I saw staring back at me in the mirror. Sure, if I tried really hard I could find one thing that was tolerable. One thing that was passable as average, but mostly I disgusted myself. The eating disorders had taken hold of me and now I was down the rabbit hole and sinking faster and faster into some alternative universe where nothing made sense and everything was upside down.
READ ALSO: Are Eating Disorders Genetic?
Logically, I knew that the khakis that I wore to work were so big that I had started wearing long johns under my uniform just to appear larger than I was which was ironic because I was severely restricting what I ate in order to lose weight.
I know what it’s like to have an eating disorder. I knew I was anorexic. It wasn’t a secret to me.
On some level, I knew that I was severely underweight but I wasn’t going to admit it, not even to myself. Admitting that I was at an acceptable weight or below without feeling happy, complete with myself, meant failure; failure at keeping control of my life. I knew that if I lost the tiniest bit of control of the runaway train that was my life, the entire thing would derail.
It’s hard to go full-on all the time. I was going to university full time, working full time, living in a large city away from all of my family and friends. I had bit off more than I could chew but I wasn’t ready to admit that I had eating disorders. I’d rather die than admit failure. Funny how I never knew what that statement truly meant before that very moment.
READ ALSO: Netflix’s Bones realistically portrays life with eating disorders
I’d left behind my entire life; my family, my friends, my boyfriend. I did all of this to run away from my life, thinking that if I got far enough away from it all, everything would work itself out but it didn’t. Feeling out of control and overwhelmed, nothing was working out the way I had planned it to be. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get it all back on track so I restricted and micromanaged in the only place I still had complete control; my food. I clung to my eating disorders for dear life, ironic since they were killing me.
Being a girl with eating disorders became the only description of myself that I recognized myself. It defined my existence.
I’d started restricting a couple of years prior but I’d been caught. It was embarrassing and I promised to stop but I never did. I couldn’t. If I would have let the chaos in for a second, my entire world have unraveled and it was pretty much held together by a stick of bubblegum and a prayer as it was so for 8 years, I hid what I was doing. I felt like a fraud.
It was the one secret that I couldn’t share with anyone because they’d try to save me from myself. I didn’t want to be saved. Or maybe I did but I wasn’t willing to turn my life over to someone else to save. I thought I had it under control. I didn’t.
READ ALSO: Eating Disorders Affect More than Just Your Body
I spent my days hiding the real me from everyone who cared about me. This made me bitter and angry. Why couldn’t they just accept me as I was? Why’d they try to change me? Why must they try to stop me? Didn’t they realize that this was the only thing that had gotten me through? I wore my thigh gap with hard-earned pride, why were they trying to take this small victory from me?
My eating disorders made me feel in control.
I needed to restrict to feel normal and the threat that someone would try to make me stop sent me into personal seclusion, becoming prone to crying inexplicably and blowing up for no apparent reason. Most days, I straddled between the reality of my disease and the delusion that it would all end up fine. Stupidly, I held on to that delusion like I was drowning and it was my only salvation.
READ ALSO: All Little Girls think they’re Fat
To let reality in, to let anyone in, meant to face the fact that I had already lost all control. Then one day, when I was at my bottom, the delusion was sweeping me away and drowning me but reality kept whispering in my ear, “This will be the last time. This is your last chance to save yourself.” That’s when I knew the eating disorders had to end.
I relinquished control. It wasn’t taken from me. I gave it up. My only real choice was that I had to give myself over to something bigger than myself, to be honest, and start fresh. Eating disorders are lonely and isolating. I just wanted to be free of the shackles of the lies. Hopeful, I wanted to live and love and grow old and that was not going to happen if I didn’t give up control of my runaway life. Embracing the chaos and facing my fears was my only option. None of that was going to happen if I was dead.
Eating Disorders will kill you if you don’t stop. Ask for help.
If you know someone who has eating disorders or suspect that your child might be headed down that road, I’ve written a checklist of warning signs that you might not have otherwise known to look for. Eating disorders no matter how inconsequential they may seem at first can quickly spiral out of control. Never ignore the signs because if you do, it may be too late to save your child.
This is just one day in the life of a girl with eating disorders, imagine how hard it is to live that life day after day with no end in sight?
This is what it is like in the day of a girl with eating disorders.
2013/02/27
Throat Punch Thursday~ Hey Ladies, Kevin Swanson Says Your Womb is a Fetal Graveyard
Have you heard of right wing Christian radio host, Kevin Swanson? Well, if you are a woman you may want to commit the name to memory. He is the asshole who has declared war on you for taking the pill. He wants you to know that by taking birth control you have essentially turned your uterus into a fetus graveyard; embedded into your lining are all the babies that could have been. Think of it as the home of babies past; what might have been if you weren’t such a raging, sinning birth control pill popping whore.
Kevin Swanson thinks this is what your Uterus looks like x100
I don’t know how unfertilized eggs become mini babies who are forever banished to your uterine lining to haunt you but apparently this is the flavor of crazy he’s peddling. I’m convinced that at the last right wing rally they served some really bad acid that has turned all the right wingers brains into jello or maybe the dead fetuses inhabiting their wives’ uteruses have reached out during marital relations and usurped their brain; right out of the tip of their penises. Sounds ludicrous, right? Absolutely. It’s about as ludicrous as what this asshole is saying on the radio. Too bad his mom didn’t take birth control, and then maybe he could only speak his craziness to his hundreds of tiny, tiny fetus womb mates.
So apparently, Todd Aiken, Paul Ryan, Joe Walsh, Mitt Romney and Terry England are not where the “we want to revoke women’s rights” right wing freak club ends. There is someone out there who has surpassed all of these men in his stupidity, with the exception of Todd Aiken, in my opinion, Mr. Kevin Swanson.
I’m beginning to get some evidence from certain doctors and certain scientists that have done research on women’s wombs after they’ve gone through the surgery, and they’ve compared the wombs of women who were on the birth control pill to those who were not on the birth control pill. And they have found that with women who are on the birth control pill, there are these little tiny fetuses, these little babies that are embedded into the womb. They’re just like dead babies. They’re on the inside of the womb. And these wombs of women who have been on the birth control pill effectively have become graveyards for lots and lots of little babies.
I take a personal offense to this man’s ignorant statement. I have suffered a miscarriage, I know many women who have had lost babies, women who have battled infertility and have taken babies to term only to lose them and this idiot wants to tell me that even though my own body couldn’t carry the baby that I lost, that we so badly wanted, there are many tiny fetuses embedded in my uterus from the few years that I took birth control in college. What’s next? Is he going to blame me and all the mothers who have lost babies or can’t get pregnant for our inabilities because we took birth control at some point in our past?
Kevin Swanson; He knows Your Womb Better than You
Seldom do I have a Throat Punch that galls me so much and that is saying a lot since I generally reserve throat punches for people who have either monumentally fucked up in their choices or have down right done something evil. Of course, Kevin Swanson is not the first right-winger to try to squash women’s rights and I’m sure he won’t be the last.
There are a lot of ignorant people in the world and I truly thought I had heard the most insulting men to ever speak out against women during this last election but obviously, I was wrong.
Honestly, if you don’t have a uterus or vagina, I am imploring you to keep your opinions to yourself. I don’t need you in my uterus, especially now that I know there is no room in there anyways.
Mr. Swanson, fuck you and all those like you! My uterus is my business. When you can get pregnant, give birth, be objectified and propertied and suffer a lifetime of being treated with no respect and as a second-class citizen, who people like you believe should be seen and not heard, then you can have an opinion, until then here is a throat punch to shut you up. You are by far one of the dumbest and douchiest of right-wingers that I have yet had the misfortune to hear speak. Do us all a favor and please SHUT THE FUCK UP!
What do you think of Kevin Swanson and his theory on your womb being a fetus graveyard?

Photo

2013/02/07
Zara Designs Holocaust Fashion for Kids & Sees Nothing Wrong with It
Throat Punch Thursday is back just for International Clothing designer ZARA from Spain. They are selling a “sheriff” shirt with stripes and a star of David that very closely resembles the shirts worn in concentration caps in Nazi Germany. Talk about low rent behavior.
Look, the world is a cesspool of shit right now. Isis is beheading Christians, African-Americans are being shot dead in the street like animals, mental illness is the silent killer like cancer of the brain chemicals and anti-Semitism is alive and well. See, I learned a very important lesson as a child, those who do not know history are destined to repeat it. Well, not trying to be captain obvious but haven’t we all been here before?
The ZARA shirt is just a reminder of what a group of assholes we can be when we try or just don’t give a shit about other people at all. I’m not going to go on a rant about what a rotten state the world is in because truth be told it’s probably always been in various states of shit depending on who you are and what your perspective is.
The reason this ZARA shirt is so offensive to me is that aside from being blatantly anti-Semitic it lets adults dress unsuspecting children in a sick and offensive garment that is reminiscent of one of the darkest days in history and then send them out into the world like a big Fuck You to the entire Jewish population. Maybe someone thought this was funny but I think it’s sad, hurtful and dangerous. What’s next, swastika print on Bermuda shorts? What are we teaching our children? Isn’t the world messed up enough without reopening old wounds?
Global warming, racism, bigotry, anti-Semitism, the objectification of women, the never ending misunderstanding and stigmatization of mental illness, gun Control, the economy, the hungry homeless on our own doorsteps and just a general lack of empathy and compassion in the world are just a few things going so wrong right now that have all happened before. Were we not paying attention the first 100 times these things have happened?
I’m a pragmatist, I know that the world will never be a perfect place. I don’t believe in unicorns and Utopia. I know that not everyone will always be accepting or tolerant of others. But wouldn’t it be nice if for a change, the assholes were in the minority instead of the majority. My eyes have begun to twitch from the news lately.
Today , I read about a male pediatric nurse who molested the 2-month old preemie baby boy who he was fostering and then video taped and took photos of the whole thing. It went on for weeks. In one video, the authorities said that they could audibly hear the baby crying. What makes a person able to stomach doing something like that to a newborn, or anyone for that matter?
What are your thoughts on this “Sheriff” shirt by Zara?
2014/08/28