Why I, personally, have chosen to NOT vaccinate my son.

I could write a book on this subject, but there are already decent books out there, and I doubt anyone would listen to someone without a PHD in medicine anyway...lol

I am not going to quote statistics or books or articles here...everyone is fully capable of doing their own research.  I will recommend Dr. Sear's book on vaccines because he talks about each vaccine individually, and I know many mamas who have chosen to selectively vaccinate or follow his delayed schedule, which works for them.

So, I'll start by saying that before I conceived my son, I believed what I had been taught - that vaccines were good, and that people who refused to vaccinate their children were either ignorant, or religious zealots, or both.

Then, I met my midwife, and through her I met many happy, healthy families who chose to not vaccinate.  During my journey towards my un-medicated, painless, joyful home birth, I learned to trust my body, to trust my instincts, and to question every belief I held.

My first question about vaccines was, "do they work?"  And the answer I found was, "sometimes."  Booster shots are necessary because vaccinated immunity can wear off, or never take; whereas true immunity, from exposure to the actual disease, usually lasts a lifetime.

Our immune systems are not separate from the rest of the systems in our body.  One of the flaws of our medical system, and of science in general, is that they look at pieces and bits and try to extrapolate what they learn about the bits to the whole.  Another flaw of the medical system is that it focuses on treatment rather than prevention.  Yet another is that healthy people simply don't go to the clinic or the hospital anywhere near as often as unhealthy people do.  Doctors, nurses, and other medical workers live in a world full of disease and damaged systems, usually of anonymous people that they see once a year or less when they are healthy.  They don't look at the body as a whole, they look at symptoms and do their best to deduce a diagnosis and treatment.  And they get it wrong.  Often.

Vaccination is supposed to be about prevention, but it doesn't always work.  The best way to prevent disease, and to recover quickly from it, is to keep the immune system and the body strong with enough sleep, enough water, enough nutrients from whole foods, enough exposure to the sun on a daily basis (approximately 20 minutes plus time for our bodies to absorb the vitamin D our skin produces before showering,) limiting sugar, animal products, and other processed crap, and enough exercise.  The medical world would rather sell insulin pumps than teach type 2 diabetics how to eat and exercise properly, for many reasons, and many people would rather pop pills and even get shots and surgery than change their lifestyles.

Vaccines are dangerous.  That has been proven without a doubt to my mind.  There are far more deaths and serious complications resulting from vaccination than there are deaths or permanent injuries due to the diseases vaccines are supposed to protect us from.

Herd immunity is a dangerous myth.  The idea that every one should be vaccinated to protect the few who can't be is flawed.  First, it relies on the idea that immune people can't carry a disease that they are immune to.  That is false.  Recently vaccinated people are far more dangerous to people with compromised immune systems than an unvaccinated person could ever be.

Even if we did eradicate all the disease that we vaccinate for (which we CAN TREAT,) different diseases would replace them.  We already have terrifying superbugs that we can't treat because of the excessive use of antibiotics, antivirals, and other drugs.

It also promotes the idea that unvaccinated children are disease factories, which is ludicrous.  My son is almost two and a half years old, and over his lifetime so far he has had a stomach bug for 48 hours, and a cold twice for 24 hours or less.  Meanwhile, I've had all of my shots, and before I went vegan, I was sick for two weeks out of every month.  Since I've changed my diet, I have only been sick for 24 hours or less two or three times - still more often than my son.

Unvaccinated children get sick less frequently than vaccinated children, especially if they are also breastfed.  Breastfed babies have their mother's immune system until their own immune system fully develops, around age 2.  That means, whatever we are immune to, they are.  And often, our breasts will give them the antibodies they need even when our own immune systems fail to do the same for us.  Nursing mamas often get sick while their babies remain healthy.

I also learned that diseases were already on the decline before vaccines were introduced, and in some cases, vaccines caused the incidences of certain diseases to increase.  Nutrition, clean water, and hygiene improved before vaccines were invented, and were already helping people's bodies fight the diseases.  Studies that "prove" vaccines are effective don't take other lifestyle or environmental factors into account.  They often are funded by groups that profit from the use of vaccines.

The most frightening thing is the preservatives, known carcinogens, toxins, and things that we don't know exactly what effect they have...in quantities too high for comfort, injected into the bloodstream of developing infants and toddlers, whose tiny bodies and high metabolisms make them much more susceptible than adults to adverse reactions.  And the vaccines we have now have not been around long enough to know what effect they will have in the long term.

From every thing that I have researched, it is my belief that the chemicals in vaccines, combined with the toxins in our foods, our environments, our clothes, our cosmetics, sunscreen, bug spray, soap, our water, the very air we breath, combine to weaken or wreck our immune systems, and disturb the chemistry of our blood and our brains, leading to an increase in every single problem a human can have.  Diabetes, Multiple Sclerosis, Cancer, Lupus, Autism, Depression, ADHD, and diseases we are giving new names to every day are constantly on the rise.  KIDS have all this stuff now!  The amount and frequency of vaccines has increased dramatically in the last twenty years, and so has the amount and frequency of health problems of the children who are injected.

One thing I have learned is that there is never just ONE cause.  But some things, when eliminated, can make a world of difference.  My son and I eat nutritious whole foods, organic when possible, drink plenty of liquids, limit the amount of toxic chemicals in our air and on our skin, get exercise outside every day, and give our bodies enough sleep, keeping them as strong as we can.  That's working for us, as it works for many, MANY other families.

I'm not anti-vaccine - I think they have their place.  In countries with poor access to clean water and nutritious food, and available treatment, vaccines can help.  But this isn't one of those countries, and vaccines have no place in my family.

How did my thesis defense go?

A thesis defense for the MFA in Creative Writing at UCF is a requirement for graduation that can only be performed once.  If I fail my defense, that's it.  Bye bye, eight years of my life, way too many student loans, and all my hard work...and no degree to show for it.  When I started the program, my thesis adviser told me that a committee usually would not let a student defend unless they felt the student was ready to pass.

I couldn't sleep last night because I was so excited and nervous.  After 8 long, chaotic years, and two previous failed attempts at scheduling a defense, I would finally be taking that irrevocable step.  My committee didn't contact me other than to say they received my complete draft, Birth of a Mother, and my adviser didn't even confirm that.  I sent off my most recent revision a full day later than I was supposed to, and I felt like the last two chapters and the epilogue especially needed more work.  Worse, I'd only gotten feedback from my adviser on the prologue and the first two chapters, so my revisions of chapters 3 on were just me, all me, and that was pretty damn terrifying.

I'd also invited everyone I knew to attend my defense, and I worried about embarrassing myself.  I headed to Orlando this morning with my heart pounding, chanting, "They wouldn't let me defend if they didn't think I was ready..."

Aiden had his hat and his blankie, so he was ready.

This is going to be a super long post if I chronicle the whole day, so let's skip to the start of my defense.

I went in expecting my committee to tell me that I had a lot of work to do, but if I could pull it off in a week or so, they'd consider signing my form so I could graduate.

Aiden started us off by climbing on the conference table and saying, "Hmm!"

My committee members laughed and asked if they could have him at every defense.  Satisfied that he had everyone's attention, Aiden then explored the room, occassionally demanding food or assistance from me, but not disrupting, not really.  He was more like an accent, or punctuation.  Which is fitting, since he was the inspiration for my thesis.

My adviser started by saying that my work passed the turnitin.com check, as if there could be any doubt! lol  Then she had me read aloud a selection.  I chose to read the scene where I revealed my pregnancy to my then-boyfriend, and then the father (a different man.)

Then the questions started.  My adviser asked questions about what I found to be the most challenging techniques as well as subject matter, and other questions designed to reveal what I knew about non-fiction writing, writing in general, and what I learned from the program and the project.  My fiction teacher and my poetry teachers both complimented me on my work and asked me how I came up with the structure, what research I did, how I could expand on what was already there, and both surprisingly spent a lot of time complimenting both my thesis as well as my previous work.  My poetry teacher remembered me guest speaking in her domestic violence class seven years ago!

After the question and answer session, my committee sent my guests (my two best friends, my mother's best friend, and a good mama friend,) Aiden, and me outside so they could deliberate.

After a few long moments, my adviser came out and congratulated me on passing.  My fiction and poetry committee members signed off on my form, and my professor promised to sign off on it after I make the revisions we talked about during the discussion.  Then we all exchanged hugs, they gave me marked copies of my revision, and we all went our seperate ways.

My two best friends and I went to Chipotle for lunch, where Aiden ran around, happy to be free of the car and stroller.  That was when I saw the note from my fiction committee member:

"Ashley, let me first tell you that I was absolutely floored with joy reading this.  The life you write about is far from pretty at times, and yet, this is such a life-affirming testament to love that I can barely stand to read it as a TEACHER.  I just want to read it, experience it.  That's a sure testament to your talent.

I told my wife, May, about this and read a short excerpt, and she is dying to read the whole thing.  And believe me, May knows quality better than I.  She sucked at English and is a nurse in cardiac care.  So if your story catches her attention, this promises a great readership beyond the workshop confines.

Bottom line: you are one hell of a writer.  I do think the story could/should be expanded a bit - not too much, but closer to 200 pages I think.  I've marked some obvious spots, but I trust your instincts.

As is, you could send this off NOW and get interest from agents and publishers.  I love it, love you for writing it."

I almost cried reading that!  I walked into my thesis defense expecting to be scolded for turning in sub-par work, and was instead told by all three committee members both aloud and in writing that though my ending could be stronger, my thesis is powerful, compelling, beautiful, and something that needs to be published!

Letters to My Younger Self - Three Rules to Live By

Dearest youngling,

Listen to the words of someone who's gone through things you will hopefully never go through.  I'm going to lay down some ground rules for your life.  If you follow them, your life will be a million times more wonderful than mine has been.  This is just the first three...more will definitely follow!

Rule Number One: NEVER APOLOGIZE FOR YOUR FEELINGS.

Your emotions are the mechanism your spirit uses to tell your mind that something is good or bad for you.  If you feel good about something, trust that.  If you feel bad, something is wrong.

It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks about your feelings...your feelings are yours.  They are your private language with the part of you that is also God, the part that loves you unconditionally and wants you to be happy and healthy.

No one gets to tell you how you should feel.  Which leads me to...

Rule Number Two: NO ONE CAN MAKE YOU FEEL.

No one makes you mad.  No one makes you sad.  No makes you feel dumb.  Thinking that others can make you feel gives others power over you.

But that 2 year old made his mother mad, you say?  Does a 2 year old really have power over a grown woman?  Only if the grown woman decides that the 2 year old should be in charge!  You are responsible for your own feelings; and pretending otherwise is making yourself a victim when you should be the hero.

So if you feel angry, accept that you feel angry, and find the real reason why.  You aren't angry because that person said something mean.  You are angry either because you are afraid that person is right, or because you feel out of control and want to control the other person.  Which leads me to...

Rule Number Three:  YOU CANNOT CHANGE ANYONE EXCEPT YOURSELF.

If you are not happy, figure out what's wrong, and change yourself.  You will never find another person who can make you happier than you can make yourself.  You know you better than anyone else ever can.

You can't make another person care about the same things you care about, but you can find other people who are more like you.  You can also examine those things, and see how important they really are to you.

You will change throughout your life.  The only constant in this universe is change.  So you have to decide whether you are going to change for the better, or for the worse.

Love,
Someone Who Wishes She'd Known These Things Decades Ago

Beacon

During a lovely, fun, feel-good Litha celebration with the other ladies of the house (resident males were on the road, playing video games, and taking an incredibly late nap,) I prayed for inspiration and creativity among other things.

And here is the first poem I have written in many months, nine months I believe, composed mainly in my head as I watched Elmo in Grouchland with my toddler. :D



Beacon
by Ashley Rae Curran (if you steal this, invisible faeries will cause malfunctions in all your electronics until you repent and give credit where it is due. Just so you know.)

Though layers of darkness
block the stars, the moon, the sun;
though the fat, the lies, facades
drape like salted bandages over festering wounds;
though doubt, shame, hate
reflect in every window, every mirror;
I choose to be a beacon,
radiating love without limits,
guiding the willing towards the light;
offering hope,
for peace, for joy.

My Ideal Lifestyle

I am ready to love my life to the fullest, and in that spirit, last week I took my notebook to the park, and between pushes of the toddler swing my son insisted on riding, I wrote a detailed list of every thing I would like to accomplish on a daily basis.

It's a long list, but totally doable.

Every day I rise with the sun, get tea and breakfast started, and perform a devotional followed by daily guidance divination. I want to rise with the sun because sunrise is beautiful. Tea is important because I rarely get enough sleep and coffee makes me jittery. Breakfast is important for nourishing my brain and body. My devotional is my prayer of gratitude, talking to the Divine, and my daily guidance divination is one way the Divine talks back.

Every morning I write until my son wakes, after which I spend time seeing to my son's needs, including a fresh diaper or assistance using the potty, lots of cuddles, food, and drink. Then I take him outside, so every day we get fresh air and have the opportunity to enjoy this beautiful world.

Every day I sing to myself, my son, my family, and the people on the road beside me fortunate enough to also have no air conditioning. Singing is one way I express the beauty of my soul. It heals me, and helps me radiate love and joy.

Every day, I make something beautiful. Maybe a new craft, maybe a poem, maybe organizing stuff in a more pleasing way, or maybe just a beautiful presentation of the food I cook, as long as every day I contribute to beauty in the world.

Every day I nourish my body with plenty of water and delicious, nutritious, vegan food. Every day I break a sweat by working my muscles, getting my heart pumping, and expressing love for myself and joy for life in yoga, dance, or play.

Every day I learn something new, whether from reading, observing, or experiencing something in a whole new way.

Every day I say I love you, and every day I talk to a loved one.

Every evening, I make a delicious, nutritious dinner for my family, and encourage each member to talk about their day. This is my way of showing gratitude for their love.

Every night, I greet the moon, remembering how huge she is compared to me, and how tiny a space she holds in the enormity of the universe.

Before bed, I clean the kitchen and pick up the common room and my bedroom, because cleaning is an act of love, and waking up to a (relatively) clean house is a wonderful thing.

Before bed I clean my body, brush my teeth, moisturize my hands and feet, and rub my neck and shoulders, because I deserve to feel loved and pampered.

Before sleep I do my affirmations, co-creating my world with the Divine. I write and work after getting my son to sleep, and any time I can throughout the day, then nourish my mind, body, an spirit with six to seven hours of sleep before greeting the dawn.

I was spanked, and I'm NOT ok.

Let's start this off by saying if you believe in your heart and soul that there is absolutely nothing wrong with hitting a child, don't waste your time reading this, because nothing anyone says can open a closed mind, even when the mind is only closed off by denial.



I was spanked as a child.

Yes, I am a good person. I am loving, respectful, considerate, generous, responsible, and confident.

No, spanking did not make me any of those things.

I loved and trusted my parents. Like any child, I trusted them to do what was best for me...at least until I was old enough to understand that they were only human.

When they spanked me, I felt powerless, degraded, shamed, betrayed, hurt, and angry.

When I grew up, no matter how much I educated myself, no matter what I believed or practiced, I loved and trusted people who I let manipulate me, degrade me, shame me, betray me, hurt me, and piss me off. I didn't do it on purpose; I didn't even know I was doing it until the end of each relationship. But the reason I did was because from the time I was a small child, I was taught that love was something that happened between a bully and a victim.

The fact that people survive violence, neglect, and trauma and go on to do great things does not prove that violence, neglect, and trauma cause those people to be great. The fact that you were spanked and you are not in jail, or you know someone who was not spanked who DID go to jail, doesn't mean that spanking teaches respect for the law!

Respect is pride in oneself, and recognition of the inherent value of others. Respect is NOT fear of retribution.

Responsibility is self-control and desire for the good of all, NOT obedience.

Consideration is the willingness to work with others to create harmony, NOT the sacrifice of one's own needs in order to make other people happy.

Love is an exchange of encouragement, acceptance, and joy - NOT a power struggle!

I am almost thirty years old. I figured out all of this when I was in high school, I've been trying to heal myself ever since, and I am still struggling to reprogram myself, so that I don't pass on these learned behaviors to my son, or my future children.

Is spanking the only thing my parents did wrong? No, of course not. Someone who spanks out of anger, or worse, while calm, has problems. Spanking is not a technique, it's a symptom.

Spanking is a symptom of feeling a need to control, rather than cooperate; to dominate rather than educate. Spanking is a symptom of believing that children are less than human, and do not deserve the same respect and consideration that their parents expect from them.

To illustrate this concept, imagine you are a police officer, and you witness a stranger in a store get mad and throw something. How are you going to respond?

a) Walk up to him or her, calmly bend him or her over and pop him or her on the butt, while saying in a firm voice, "No! We do NOT throw things. Use your words!"
b) Get angry and proceed to beat the living crap after him or her. Maybe afterwards you'll apologize. Or maybe you'll threaten to give him or her something to cry about.
c) Arrest him or her at once.
d) Roll your eyes and walk away.
e) Ask him or her to clean up his or her mess, and talk with this person until you are sure he or she is calm. Then, teach him or her some techniques to recognize frustration before it becomes anger, how to cool his or herself off before the frustration reaches tantrum level, and make him or her laugh so you know they will remember this lesson.

Okay, there are a lot of other options. the first four options are what happened to me most often when I was a child, and what I witness most often among other parents who do not practice conscious parenting or positive discipline. The fifth option is one example of something I would do for my child. There are many, many other examples of turning conflict into a teaching tool, and into cooperation.

If you believe in treating others how you would like to be treated, and you want your kids to grow up to do the same, then spanking is counterproductive. Unless you allow your children to spank you when you make a mistake. Actually, even that can not possibly replicate the emotional and psychological damage that you cause your children when you hit them, because you will never believe that your children know what is best for you, and even when they are bigger and stronger than you, you will never be as vulnerable to them as they are to you.

Discipline means teaching. What are you teaching your child? What kind of adult do you want to populate the world with? Obedient ones, who will follow all rules without question, and let more powerful people make their decisions for them? If so, you are probably Republican.

Couldn't help myself, sorry. Okay, political jokes aside...

I want my children to grow up able to love themselves, able to give and accept love, able to say no to people, things, or activities that feel wrong to them. I want them to grow up knowing that we never stop learning, that learning is fun, and that growing up is a lifelong process - there is always something new to learn, and that bettering ourselves should be the main focus of our lives. I want them to be happy as their norm, with punctuations of stress, and the ability to understand and trust their emotions and intuition. I want them to accept responsibility for their accomplishments as well as for their mistakes, to value themselves and their contributions to the world, and to know themselves, their likes and dislikes, their hopes, dreams, and nightmares.

I intend to teach my children these skills by practicing them myself. When I lose my temper or make a mistake, I apologize. When I want to change their behavior, I show and tell them exactly what I want them to do and have them practice the new technique, and then make them laugh, keeping in mind that play is how humans and all mammals learn best. I set limits as teaching tools, and as boundaries for harmonious living, and I explain the reasons for the limits at an age-appropriate level. I read a LOT. I talk to other parents, and more importantly, observe their children and their parenting, and see the results.

I don't have to spank my two year old, or put him in time out, or yell at him in order to change his behavior. All I have to do is calm him down and show him what he should do instead, and then show him how happy I feel when he does the appropriate behavior. The times that I have lost my temper and yelled at him proved to me beyond a doubt how useless anger and violence are as teaching tools. He was too scared and hurt to learn anything until I calmed myself down and then calmed him down. He learned to give me kisses when I start getting upset, to make it all better, like I give him kisses when he is crying.

I believe that abortion should be a woman's choice. I believe the government has no business telling adults what they can do to their own bodies, or to force us to to put something into our bodies or the bodies of our children that we or they do not want. I believe the purpose of the government is to keep order so that millions of people can live literally on top of each other with as little conflict as possible - and part of that immense job is to protect us from other people's behaviors that cause bodily, emotional, and psychological harm.

Assault is threatening to hurt an adult. Just threatening to hurt an adult can put you in jail. Why is it legal to threaten and strike children, who can't defend themselves, who depend on us to protect them, keep them healthy, happy, and strong, and teach them so that they can do all of that for themselves when they are adults? How can that possibly be considered okay to a sane mind?

In Memoriam

A few days ago, a former professor of mine died in a car accident.

Chances are, I never would have had the opportunity to speak with her again anyway, had she survived, as she had accepted a position at Louisiana State University in 2008, and I live in Bradenton, Florida. I didn't expect her death to hit me as hard as it has.

For one thing, I see and talk to dead people. I know there is an afterlife, and that it's a good one. I know that we reincarnate or not, as we choose, from my experiences and the experiences of those I've spoken to. I feel death is something to celebrate, not something to fear, when our time comes.

It's not the fact that she's dead that has put me in this depressive funk. Rather, I think it's sympathy for her surviving loved ones, her current and former students and colleagues, who now have a gaping void in the space in their hearts formerly occupied by this wonderful woman's friendship and spirit. Perhaps it's also compassion for the terror and pain she must have felt in her last moments, and the guilt I imagine whomever called the coroner instead of the paramedics probably felt when that person found out she wasn't quite dead yet.

I firmly believe that everyone has a right to their feelings, whether or not society deems them appropriate. Our emotions are guides for us, just like our senses of pain and pleasure. When we hurt, it's a communication to us that something is wrong, something that, presumably, we can fix. When we feel good, it's a signal that things are going good, keep it up!

So while I'm surprised at how much the loss of this person I hadn't spoken with in years, and with whom I may never again have spoken, has affected me, rather than hide my feelings from others or suppress them, I'm choosing to express them and let myself go through the stages of grief, so that I can start celebrating the memories and the next stage in her journey.

Thank you, Jeanne, for being such a vibrant, passionate, funny, wonderful woman, and for being such an effective teacher. My writing would suck much more had I never known you. <3

Jeanne's Death - Washington Post

Here is a video interview with Jeanne, which gives some great advice to writers, and shows the personality I'm talking about: Jeanne's Interview