Health and Wellness

Issue 63, November, 2013

BROAD

Cover Art: Gaby Ortiz Flores

A Feminist & Social Justice Magazine

Health & Wellness

BROAD A Feminist & Social Justice Magazine

Dis(sed)abilities Seeking submissions on the topics of: disabilities, physical /mental/emotional impairments, discrimination, identity, handicapped/handicapable individuals, in/accessibilities, community, health, resources, employment, development, and society Send your artwork, poetry, and writing to

broad.luc@gmail.com by November 30th

A feminist is a person who answers “yes” to the question, “Are women human?” Feminism is not about whether women are better than, worse than or identical with men. And it’s certainly not about trading personal liberty--abortion, divorce, sexual self-expression-for social protection as wives and mothers, as pro-life feminists propose. It’s about justice, fairness, and access to the

BROAD

range of human experience. It’s about women consulting their own well-being and being judged as individuals rather than as members of a class with one personality, one social function, one road to happiness. It’s about women having intrinsic value as persons rather than contingent value as a means to an end for others: fetuses, children, the “family,” men. ~ Katha Pollitt

broad | brÔd |

adjective 1 having an ample distance from side to side; wide 2 covering a large number and wide scope of subjects or areas: a broad range of experience 3 having or incorporating a wide range of meanings 4 including or coming from many people of many kinds 5 general without detail 6 (of a regional accent) very noticeable and strong 7 full, complete, clear, bright; she was attacked in broad daylight noun (informal) a woman.

broad | brÔd |

slang a promiscuous woman

phrases broad in the beam: with wide hips or large buttocks in broad daylight: during the day, when it is light, and surprising for this reason have broad shoulders: ability to cope with unpleasant responsibilities or to accept criticism City of broad shoulders: Chicago synonyms see: wide, extensive, ample, vast, liberal, open, all-embracing antonyms see: narrow, constricted, limited, subtle, slight, closed see also broadside (n.) historical: a common form of printed material, especially for poetry

BROAD Mission: Broad’s mission is to connect the WSGS program with communities of students, faculty, and staff at Loyola and beyond, continuing and extending the program’s mission. We provide space and support for a variety of voices while bridging communities of scholars, artists, and activists. Our editorial mission is to provoke thought and debate in an open forum characterized by respect and civility.

WSGS Mission: Founded in 1979, Loyola’s Women’s Studies Program is the first women’s studies program at a Jesuit institution and has served as a model for women’s studies programs at other Jesuit and Catholic universities. Our mission is to introduce students to feminist scholarship across the disciplines and the professional schools; to provide innovative, challenging, and thoughtful approaches to learning; and to promote social justice.

Health and Wellness This issue revolves around the topics of health and wellness, including physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Inside you will find content on the topics of eating, anxiety, body image, geriatric care, childbirth, racism, healthcare, hospitals, barriers, sickness, social work, and sexual health.

BROAD Team

Gaby Ortiz Flores

Diversity and Outreach Editor

Katie Klingel Editor in-Chief

Emma Steiber

Contetnt and Section Editor

J. Curtis Main Consulting Editor

Cont words are useless

Untitled, Timothy Steinman

tell-a-vision

Sex +, Laci Green Untitled, Anonymous LGBT Elders and Their Caregivers, Charlotte Bishop

Articles Witnessing Childbirth, Charlotte Somebody

madads Colorado’s Affordable Care Act Ad Campaign

Media /Art broadsides

To Many of My Doctors, J. Curtis Main What You Think You Know No Longer Exists, Sharon Caldwell

bookmark here

Life-Size, Jenefer Shute

FROM YOUR EDITOR Katie Klingel

Dis(sed)abilities Ad

BRO

tents Girl Gang conspiracy

Girl Gang Conspiracy Gets Its Heart Broken and Other Feelings, Nina Berman

career call

New Levels

Community Support Specialist, Amy Bolin VP of Senior Serivices, Stephen Steiber

Battling History, Nichole F. Smith

Over the Rainbow

Health, Wellness, and (Challenging With) Care, Patrick Fina

Message Me

Oh Sh*T Now

What are things that get in the way of your health?

Mama Says...

wla (re)animated

Southern Belle & Jasmine Revolution Commitment to Self: The Journey Begins, Karla Estela Rivera

1930-1932: Athletics Tennis

Queer Thoughts

Experiences With My Life Roomate, Anxiety, Emma Steiber

&

Columns radical (self) love

The Breakup Diet, Gaby Ortiz Flores

Microagressions

Inside r out

Shaming Skinny and Scrawny, J. Curtis Main

feminist fires

Talk to andie

Byllye Avery

Deirdre Hade, Andie Karras

ex bibliothecis

quote corner

Why a Citation Manager?, Jane Currie

OAD

Gracy Budrys Peter N. Stearns

BROAD Schedule 2013-2014 CONTRIBUTOR GUIDELINES BROAD MISSION AND PEOPLE

From Your Editor

Dear Readers, Before you dive right into this issue, I would encourage you to think about what health and wellness mean to you. What is “health?” What are the characteristics of a “healthy” person? What encompasses “wellness?” What enhances your “well-being?” I challenge you to think about these questions, and how they apply to you. After putting together all of

the content before you, it is clear to me that personal experience greatly affects our views on this topic.

This issue brings together many different answers to these questions, regarding specific aspects of health and wellness. Many of these come from personal experience, and what our contributors have seen

firsthand.

If we take that personal experience greatly affects what we find “healthy,” and that our views on health and wellness are always evolving, I challenge you to read each piece of content with an open mind, and an in-depth approach. Try to listen to everything that the writer is saying, really take it into consideration. While it might not be for you, and you might not agree, try to see where they are coming from. Maybe your own view on what is healthy will be affected by this issue, and hey, maybe not. The important part is being open to deconstructing our own opinions of “healthy.”

My own thoughts on the topic have developed a lot over the last ten years. When I was 11, my family moved from the Midwest to Southern Florida. What was “healthy” in Minnesota was considered in Boca Raton to be “toxic,” “excessive,” or “wrong,” to name a few descriptors. So, as many people do, our family adapted.

Gone were the cream sauces, frozen foods, and elastic waistbands. We accepted low-fat alternatives, pilates, and fresh produce. While our bodies cleared out a lot of those toxins, other aspects of our health declined. My entire family was affected by the culture of fitness around us, as well as what was considered “successful” in a more materialistic society. The dieting took a more extreme turn, depression set in, all of us felt out of place in this new community.

Our family drifted apart, we were dieting, working, striving for “success.”

We were focusing so much on what we thought was “healthy” that we forgot about the important aspect of our lives called “wellness.” We were emotionally drained, lonely, and lost. Our home was filled with secrets, lies, and disappointment. It wasn’t until we went through some serious family calamities that we really saw how badly things needed to change.

For those in the academic world, this time of year can be the craziest. It’s like that graphic that has gone around the internet: “Good grades, sleep, and

So take that extra five minutes: watch a silly YouTube video. Call up a loved one. Eat a square of chocolate. In all honesty, you probably need it! We all need to smile, cry, laugh, love, hug, and find pleasure in our lives. For me, that’s what this issue is about. Health and wellness are nothing without each other. What’s the point of being healthy if you can’t enjoy it? And you cannot be truly happy if you are not adequately taking care of your physical, mental, and emotional health.

If I can leave you with any advice for how to approach this issue, keep an open mind. Think about ALL aspects of health and wellness, and not only in how they apply to you. Acknowledge the disparities, discrimination, and disadvantages in local, national, and global healthcare. Recognize cultural, religious, ethnic, and gendered differences in what is “healthy” and “good.” Think of the ways in which our views are skewed by hierarchies and oppression.

You know what I find “healthy?” Awareness, acknowledgement, and application. Spending time on self-reflection, forming discourse, and taking action.

This can help you develop healthy habits, and focus on your own well-being. That’s what I believe.

Stay Strong, Katie

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It’s easy to focus on one or two aspects of health and wellness, and forget others. How many times have you thrown yourself into a project, and forgotten to eat, forgone sleep, or holed yourself away from humanity for an extended period of time? These things happen, but make sure to take care of yourself, don’t let them happen too often.

social life: choose two.” While it often feels like we can’t have all three, I challenge you to find ways to make that happen. It’s about balance, as many things are in this world.

Health and Wellness

Untitled

Anonymous

For a vast majority of my life I never really thought of myself as unhealthy. Mental health was never anything I gave thought too, and it took me years to realize the correlation between the amount of stress I carried and how it physically affected me. I was a competitive swimmer for 15 years, never got sick, and always was able to bounce back if I got hurt, always up early and to bed late. It never dawned on me that as I came into my own in my teens and realized that I was gay that the amount of self-hate I carried because of this was unhealthier than all the fast food I ate and drugs I did.

I wasn’t raised to hate myself, or gay people, or really anyone for that matter. I was raised by a wonderfully gifted, flawed, loving woman who liked anyone as long as they agreed with her and her views. Thankfully her views were very progressive and liberal. Her best friend of over 40 years was a woman of color named Theresa, who has been my Aunt Tree all my life. One of her other best friends was Joe, a tall, thin openly flamboyant gay man who was also one of my early teachers. I was enrolled in one of the first magnet schools in New York state which was also extremely progressive, teaching Russian as a foreign language to all 6th graders and taking children to Russia every other year, which for the late 70’s and early 80’s was VERY progressive.

So I don’t come from the type of background that you would think would make me hate myself for a

one of the worst places to live more times than I care to admit. Ma made the most out of all of that and stressed education above all else, eventually becoming a teacher. I thought because of that focus on education and logic, if I just tried harder, learned how to cope better, that everything would be ok. That I’d find a balance between the world I was growing up in and the person I was growing into.

In the mid 80’s there was very little talk of being gay anywhere. My first memories of being attracted to men go back as far as I can remember. I had several crushes on teachers in middle school. At the time I didn’t know what it meant, but I knew it was different than other people and it scared me. I don’t think I knew why it scared me, but looking back I honestly think what terrified me the most was what I “thought” it meant. What I thought it meant was that I would grow up to be a flamboyant “womanly” man, and I saw how the world treated them. At the time there weren’t pride parades, Will and Grace on TV, gay pro athletes, and the level of visibility of the community that there is now. I think subconsciously I was very afraid at that time that I would have to grow up to act that way.

In my teens hip hop went from just some pirate underground break dance and disco records to a more conscious music speaking on society and what its perceived ills were. It’s also when I first started

B

The amount of self-hate I carried because of this was unhealthier than all the fast food I ate and drugs I did.

Growing up we didn’t have much. Buffalo in the 70’s wasn’t a booming metropolis by any means. Despite having the busiest crossing border into Canada, The Peace Bridge, Buffalo was still very small and economically distressed. It was a steel town and when the steel boom busted, so did Buffalo. Over the decades I’ve been alive, Buffalo has been listed as

hearing “faggot” used. To me, being a “faggot” meant that I was basically a woman and I definitely knew I wasn’t feminine at all. I didn’t know what to call myself as I didn’t fit into that category so I let the “faggots” roll down my back by telling myself that they weren’t referring to me. I even found myself using the word frequently. The amount of times I had to remind myself that I wasn’t a faggot was emotionally taxing to say the least. I definitely identified with the lifestyle, and some of the stereotypes, but was extremely confused and lost as to how I would

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majority of my life for who I am. I found a second family when I was young and that family taught me that everything I am was wrong.

fit in to the world given that I don’t live 100% of the stereotypes and I didn’t see people who didn’t live them all. I felt completely alone with my set of issues and saw little to no way to resolve them without my world crumbling down around me.

For a while I thought I was just being weak when it would bother me. “Man up” I’d tell myself all the time. “Quit being a woman, you don’t want them to know” and all sorts of crazy unhealthy trains of thought ran through my head in order to justify watching people belittle me and my new found culture. I hadn’t quite accepted it, owned that part of myself and definitely didn’t tell anyone about my fears or issues, so I did drugs and drank to try to push them away, push them down, push them anywhere that no one would find them.

Throughout my teens and twenties, I grew to accept my sexuality, but became more conflicted. In my teens I ran the streets and got into all kinds of trouble to prove I was “macho” and I was “tough”. I had to do the most “macho” things that the rest of my friends didn’t do in order to prove to myself and anyone around me that I was “one of the guys”. I stole cars, beat people up, was in and out of jail, developed a serious cocaine and crack habit and at 19 was a shell of a person dying with the confliction that I was a gay man who wasn’t effeminate and didn’t know what that meant or how to move forward.

There have been many times in my life I wished I would die so I wouldn’t always be fighting with myself over this issue. Constantly monitoring what I say, paranoid that I would slip up and say the wrong word and be caught. Always making sure I didn’t look at a guy too long, rarely used public urinals, always making sure to at least pretend to hit on a woman so I “fit in”. There has also been more than one time where I tried to die and failed as a teen and in my early twenties. It seems that my constitution makes overdosing on things very difficult, which I’m eternally grateful for now. I was too passive aggressive to actually hang or shoot myself, but I recall several times while doing drugs or drinking that just a little bit more would end all of my confusion. A little more just led to a little more and then usually a bad decision and passing out shortly thereafter. This went on for 15 or so years of my life, well into my 30’s until I almost did really die.

In 2008 I was diagnosed with HIV. It was, I thought, a death sentence and started to pack it in, but it has fueled a turning point in my own self perceptions of who I am, in how I fit into the world, and what I am capable of. I still wasn’t ready to be out to the hip

hop community, but I started to really accept myself and form a healthy self-identity and the panic that I associated with people finding out slowly diminished.

Partially because I was more comfortable and partially because I had something now that I feared more than being gay, being Positive.

It is very interesting to me that the actual threat of death has made me be healthier. I’ve changed my diet, eliminated just about all fast foods, try to eat more greens and leafy vegetables, exercise when I can, but mostly just am much more aware of how I treat myself. The stress I carried for decades eventually eroded my “barriers” that held it in place, and as it’s been released I’ve found ways to deal with it.

I talk about it, I write music, I yell at the wall, I do the things I need to in order to let go of the negative emotions I carry around because I’m a white gay guy who happens to be a lifelong member of the hip hop community.

[HW]

broadside Expressions in poetry via street literature style

What You Think You Know No Longer Exists Sharon Caldwell

i.

My body is not a theoretical perspective, a statistic, or a machine to reconstruct.

You cannot name it, tame it, pin it down under an MRI or postulate it out of existence. ii.

This body is a stranger, a wailing banshee, a thief in the night. stalking off with every Truth I ever thought I knew all those years that I forgot how to listen. iii.

This waiting room is not a sentence, a full stop, la fin de monde.

It unravels like an ampersand, an eternal ellipses, asking “and…and…and…?”

v.

This needle is not a saviour, a prayer, or a tool to empty out my sins.

Filling tubes with my ripe blood, filling requisitions with tests & tears, and I fail each one - results ‘negative’ - as I hold my breath

vii.

This bed is not a Kingdom, a paid vacation, a place to unload the weight of the world.

The bedposts are a cage, the stairs like looming mountains Even the softest sheets won’t stop you from itching to taste the space outside your window. viii.

This pen is a torch, a knife that cuts into a bursting heart, those pulsing rhythms surrendering to the stories we’re handed.

(Re)claiming voice and vice and life that is still worth breathing for. ix.

I am not a void, an empty space, a mere attempt at survival.

This burning in my veins can be transformed into fire crackers, a flame to grow new possibility.

I will write my body back into existence.

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iv.

This pain is not an avenue, neatly lined trees, an empty stretch of open highway.

It gathers in pockets, swirls & festers A cul-de-sac, dead-ended and inescapable it follows me like a Jungian shadow.

vi.

This fear is a catalyst, a castrator, a calibrator of what I can endure without disintegrating. Lodged deep in my bones, It burns me up, keeps me struggling under the weight of “it’s all in your head, darlin’”.

MadAds Busted Advertising, Bustling Economy

• What kinds of stereotypes are being depicted?

• Who are they directed at?

• How does this change perceptions of public heathcare, and how people of different genders, races, and classes use it?

Colorado’s

’s Affordable Care Act Ad Campaign

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Karla Estela Rivera

Mama Says...

Mutinous Musings of an Urban Mami

Commitment to Self: The Journey Begins I have to be honest, when I realized that this issue was about health and wellness I was a little paralyzed on the page. I’ve started and stopped, re-written and deleted.

My brain was overwhelmed with health & wellness topics. I flash to my cousin who reads every label at the grocery store, to my inner social commentary about how women’s bodies are ridiculed on a moment to moment basis, to my post-pregnancy body

and how I really need to start something again soon before I look like a Macy’s float, to de-mystifying mental health help in urban communities of color, to my friend that does Reiki, to GMOs and Monsanto and the 19 things healthy women do on HuffPost (of which I think I do maybe five).

I gave up for a few days. And then I went on facebook and asked, “How do I write about health and wellness when I am neither healthy nor well?”

I have great friends. All of them weighed in with nuggets of wisdom.

My friend Brooksley is the Owner of Valley Ayurveda in Northampton, Massachusetts, which provides comprehensive services from cleansing and changing your diet to alternative medicines. My other friend Yvonne is a Master Reiki practitioner and energy worker. I’ve got a lot of Yoga teachers in my camp. Other friends lean on their faith in religion or the P90X. All of them have a wealth of knowledge and paths. Ways to get better, to heal, be more agile, lose weight. Between them and the internet, there is a vast library of information from which I could provide many paths and advice. But it wouldn’t be right for me to do that. As a writer, I always feel that coming from a place of truth, my truth, is important.

Researching this topic always makes me feel like I haven’t done enough, and then I start kicking myself. And truthfully, it’s been a while since I’ve really put my health first. It’s been a while since I’ve put a number of things on my agenda first. Even with the wealth of information at my fingertips, there’s always something that’s more important in the moment – My daughter, my fiancée, my job, the board I sit on, my artistic life, errands, friends. The list goes on.

Recently, my mother made a radical choice to take

I’m educated, self-aware, smart, connected to a network of people that could help me really get on track, but I haven’t tapped into it. Why? Because, it’s easy not to keep a commitment to myself. It’s easy to use wanting to spend that extra hour being with my toddler to keep me away from the gym. I’m not going to piss anyone off if I decide to eat that bacon donut from Glazed and Infused, least of all my palate. But I have to tell you, it’s pretty humbling when your mom is handing you her fat clothes.

I went to a therapist for a while and the treatment really wasn’t working, mostly because I kept rescheduling, blaming it on a pending work project.

When I would apologize for not keeping regular appointments with him, he said, “You’re not keeping regular appointments with yourself.”

So now, armed with a Groupon to Women’s Workout World, a little more time now that projects have died down, and a support system, I’m going to begin to start making – and keeping – appointments with myself. I’ve read numerous articles about the scientific fact that humans are creatures of habit, and how difficult it can be to break these habits. But I don’t want diabetes, cancer, or to have a heart attack, or any other, preventable, illness in my life. I like my life, and I would probably like it more if I could wear skinny jeans. I just know that I don’t want to be the mom that sits on the sidelines telling my daughter to go play with other people because I can’t run.

So I’m going to draw upon my network of experts who have their own roadmaps to health and wellness and make my own map. I’m going to ask my friends and family to hold me accountable. I’m going to hold myself accountable and hold to my commitment with myself. I’m not sure where it’s going to lead, but it’s better than what I’m (not) doing now.

And plus, I already made an announcement on Facebook about it, so it’s official.

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Commitments to others – It’s not something I blame on the lack of reaching my personal goals.

My commitments actually keep me sane. I enjoy my colleagues at work, my artistic life is as important as one of my limbs, the board I sit on houses amazing brains with passion for social justice and making an impact in Chicago’s political scene, paying the bills keeps the lights on, and my daughter and fiancée provide some of the greatest joys and challenges that I could never live without. These elements are essential. But I admit that I also use them as an excuse to engage in some serious self-care.

care of herself. She packed her things and went to Ann Arbor, Michigan to take part in a boot camp organized by Pete Thomas, formerly a part of The Biggest Loser. For 12 weeks she engaged in some really tough physical challenges. Forty pounds and two 5ks later, she has transformed herself and continues the journey back in Chicago. I have to admit, I’m a little envious. It’s not the haterade kind of envy that leads to my wanting to sabotage her process. It’s the kind of envy that woke me up.

Career Call Learn About the Workplace

Amy Bolin: C Support Spec 1) Describe your job and its duties in one paragraph.

AB: I love my job at Thresholds, a Chicagoland-based community mental health agency. I work with individuals with severe and persistent mental illness with co-occurring substance use disorders.

90% of the individuals I work with were homeless before coming to my particular program, which is a supportive housing program.

That means I work in a residential building with members living in the community and in the building. I assist members with managing their symptoms, medications, substance use and housing through a harm reductionist and person-first lens. My job duties are a laundry list – the main things I do are case management, individual counseling, crisis management, and helping individuals develop natural supports outside of Thresholds.

2) Why did you get the job?

AB: I got this job because I care, I’m eager, and this was the exact population I wanted to work with. I got extremely lucky, as I didn’t have extensive clinical experience prior to working at Thresholds. I had a lot of volunteer and education experience, and that definitely helped. I came in armed with loads of information about my population of choice.

3) How did you get the job (online app, in person, nomination, etc.)?

AB: I met my program director while volunteer on the Chicago Recovery Alliance van. We’re both huge harm reductionists, and after chatting she told me her program was hiring. I sent her my resume, and the rest is history!

4) Did you hear about the job through word of mouth? If so, by whom?

AB: I had been scouring the Thresholds career list for a year with no results. This job came to me directly from the director in charge of hiring, so I lucked out big time.

5) Did you have help getting the job by inside recommendations?

AB: I did not have inside recommendations, aside from the program director meeting and interacting with me for some time before I was hired. She was already aware of my attitude, passions, and personality.

6) Are you using or did you use some of your education for the job?

AB: Oh yeah! My education has played a huge part in this job. Mostly my elective classes, like Drug Policy, Abnormal Psychology, and The Prison Industrial Complex were my most valuable undergraduate classes. I’m currently a graduate student in clinical professional psychology, and I use pretty much all the information to be a better clinician and a better student every day.

7) Is this a job for the long-term? Why or why not?

AB: This job is – at minimum – a three-year commitment for me. Unless something radically changes and some even more dream-like job comes along (which I don’t forsee), I’ll be staying at my current position. I love

Community cialist, Thresholds

my job, and I love the organization I work for. They work with me around my graduate education, and my supervisors and members are training me more than my classroom education ever could. I plan to stay with Thresholds for a long time.

8) Does the job and employer reinforce current social conditions or try to change them? How? Your thoughts?

AB: My employer definitely tries to change current social conditions. Thresholds has a mission of eliminating/ reducing the stigma of mental illness. So do I. 9) What are the strengths of the job?

AB: I work with an incredibly severe population where there is almost always crisis and there is never a boring day. It’s the best teaching environment I could ever ask for. I work a schedule that’s semi-traditional, and get Friday and Saturday off (which I adore). It’s an autonomous job where you have a lot of support in critical decisions around members’ lives.

10) Weaknesses?

AB: It’s a stressful job to be handling the lives of others. It’s frustrating for some to work with a population that doesn’t make a great deal of measurable progress, or makes progress slowly as compared to other populations.

Thresholds really takes care of their employees, so I haven’t noticed a lot of negatives to my position.

11) Would you recommend this job to others?

AB: Probably not. This job is not for everyone!

12) What would you do differently with this position?

AB: I can’t think of anything I would change except our fee-for-service schedule. We’re expected to bill a certain amount of hours of clinical work each day, and sometimes that gets in the way of working on documents and assessments. Less billing expectations would be nice, but they’re doable.

13) What level of survival and comfort did/do the benefits/pay allow?

AB: My salary comfortably supports me. I’m definitely a penny-pincher, and rarely pay full price for anything.

I shop sales, thrift stores, and even eBay to save money. Most of my furniture is free or secondhand.

This allows my salary to go further. My benefits are fantastic – great medical, dental and vision coverage. Thresholds really takes care of their employees as far as fair salaries and great benefits.

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14) Share your most memorable experience(s) from the position; good, bad, funny, and ugly!

AB: The best memory I have is when I forged my first real, strong, deep clinical relationship with a member. Forming trust over time and finally having someone open up to me honestly and trust me enough to be vulnerable in my presence was so amazing. This member was genuinely looking to me as a trusted clinician who could help them. That hit me like a big sappy ton of bricks in the best way.

Feminist Fires Byllye Avery: American health care activist; founder of the National Black Women’s Health Project Major Works: - Co-author of Woman: A Celebration to Benefit Ms. Foundation for Women - An Altar of Words: Wisdom to Comfort and Inspire African American Women (1998) - Produced On Becoming a Woman: Mothers and Daughters Talking to Each Other (documentary- 1987) - Preface in The New Our Bodies, Ourselves: A Book By and For Women (1992)

Inspired by: Avery’s commitment to women’s health and wellness began in the 1970s, when her and other feminists co-founded the Gainesville Women’s Health Center and Birthplace, now known as Birth Center, a midwifery service birthing center. Inspired by the movement toward women’s consciousness-raising, specifically on women’s education and awareness of their bodies, and physical and mental health, she became known as an American health care activist. However, Avery extended this dominantly white feminist movement to include Black women. In 1983, she founded The National Black Women’s Health Project, an organization “committed to defining, promoting and maintaining the physical, mental, and emotional wellbeing of Black women and their families” (Black Women’s Health Imperative). Her passion to promote intersectional wellbeing is further seen in her co-forming the African-American Women for Reproductive Freedom. The emphasis on activism and grassroots work in the 1960s and 1970s has influenced Avery’s own activism and formation of a national discussion and discourse of and for Black women.

Inspires: On a general level, Avery has influenced communities, individuals, and health centers to include intersectional voices, specifically those of Black women. She has influenced such groups and people to talk openly on issues related to the overall wellness and the advancement of health care, especially within communities whose voices need to be heard on a national level. Furthermore, Avery has influenced a more inclusive version of Our Bodies, Ourselves, in which she wrote the preface to.

Personal Life: Avery was born in DeLand, Florida in 1937 and studied psychology at Talladega College. She eventually earned her MA degree from the University of Florida in 1969 and, in 1995, she received a L.H.D. (an honorary degree that stands for Doctor of Humane Letters) from Bates College. However, she has received numerous honorary degrees from other colleges and universities. Avery and her partner Ngina Lythcott live in Provincetown, MA. Importance to Social Justice: Raising her voice within the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Avery has, ever since, advocated for the health and wellness needs of women, primarily Black women. Stated by the Black Women’s Health Imperative, “Byllye has combined activism and social responsibility to develop a national forum for the exploration of the health issues of Black women.”

The many organizations and projects she has formed and led show her continuous efforts to promote and discuss the needs for women’s health and how it is an ever-expanding, intersectional struggle.

tell-a-vision visions & revisions of our culture(s)

“Sex +” - Laci Green Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XhTA4xOxCc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Questions: Who does she include? Who does she exclude? How does this topic relate to health and wellness? What is positive about her discussion? Could there be counter-arguments to this specific video?

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Description: Laci Green is a popular video blogger who has her own YouTube discussion titled “Sex +”, which includes specific topics geared toward women. These topics include discussions on woman’s orgasm, the stigma attached to female menstruation, and more. In this particular video, she discusses “fat shame” and ways to “push back against it.”

Health and Wellness

LGBT Elders and Their Caregivers Charlotte Bishop

We all know that Boomers - who began reaching age 65 just two years ago - are the largest segment of the U.S. population. Aging boomers are expected to total about 71.5 million by the year 2030, but what you may not know is that as many as one in ten of the Silver Tsunami will be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). This is important, because the generations that preceded them who were LGBT simply accommodated the “closet” when they aged.

Never mind the ageism and racism we still find in some quarters, a lot of the institutional providers for seniors may not yet have embraced a welcoming culture for people of alternative gender preferences.

As a geriatric care manager, I see this as a perfect storm with three fronts, a storm which has the potential to create one of the largest threats to aging well - social isolationism. If you are a caregiver to an older LGBT partner or loved one, you will need to be alert to the potential challenges. For instance, there are likely to be limited or no programs for alternative lifestyle older individuals in rural or suburban areas. And the gay male experience of aging is exaggerated among men where there is a more pronounced premium on being attractive or desirable.

Generally speaking being 40+ among gay men can be seen as equivalent to being 80+ in the straight community in terms of being marginalized. The social isolation that is a consequence of “premature aging” and marginalization also increases the gay population’s risk for depression, substance abuse, low self-esteem or even suicide. The rate of suicide among gay men is about six times that of straight men.

are caring for an aging partner, but they also feel less prepared financially than gay men for retiring.

Put all these factors together, and the LGBT community is less inclined to seek attention for health issues for fear of hostile or judgmental providers.

Poor health care translates into even earlier institutionalization in long term care facilities. Also, it is ironic that in national surveys that nearly three in four LGBT individuals anticipate that they will be caregivers to another person, but one in five are unsure they will be cared for themselves when the need arises. Adding to this potential caregiver shortfall, many gay couples simply do not have conventional family to care for them.

If you are a caregiver to an LGBT elder, encourage the following: • They have a Last Will and Testament that is really according to their “will” •With clear advanced directives/living will •Their partner/spouse has Durable Power of Attorney (health and finance) •Informal caregiving arrangements are clear and followed •Priority rights for hospital visitation are followed •There is Joint Ownership of Property with Rights of Survivorship And for us all: Recognize that all humans deserve compassionate care which respects their personhood and their definition of family and their wishes.

LBT women may have it even worse. More than one-third, according to recent surveys, say that they have not divulged their sexual preferences to their health care providers. They also are less likely than gay and bisexual men to have purchased long term care or life insurance. About one in five LBT women

Bio: Charlotte Bishop is a Geriatric Care Manager and founder of Creative Care Management, certified professionals who are geriatric advocates, resources, counselors and friends to older adults and their families in metropolitan Chicago. Please email your questions to info@creativecaremanagement.com.

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The social isolation that is the consequence of “premature aging” and marginalization alos increases the gay population’s risk for depression, substance abuse, low self-esteem, or even suicide

[HW]

Gaby Ortiz Flores

Radical (Self) Love An act you do for yourself is an act of Love.

The Breakup Diet junto a ti creo que aumente mas de 3 kilos con tus tantos dulces besos repartidos ~Shakira, “Antologia

thinking about my own weight gain and weight loss in relationships. During my most recent relationship, for example, my weight steadily increased over the course of the year we were together.

I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships and their impact on health and wellness. A few months ago after my last relationship ended, I was reading the Huffington Post article Weight Gain Could Be Caused By A Happy Marriage, Study Finds and

I don’t really know how to explain how that happened so I turned to the Huffington Post article and in a way it made sense. When you are in a relationship--you eat out more, you cuddle more, you might spend less time at the gym because you want

to spend time with your beloved. Or if they have unhealthy habits, they might rub off on you. My mother always said it’s easier to pick up bad habits than good ones.

I gained ten pounds and while that’s not a lot, when you are petite it tends to show more. I didn’t really realize just how much weight I gained until I came back from Guatemala this summer and looked at the photographs of myself. I looked heavier, fuller. My clothes looked too tight and I can tell you that I felt uncomfortable and unhealthy when those photos were taken.

It seems strange to me that a healthy, loving relationship can produce an individual who is on the verge of getting herself into an unhealthy state. Still, I can tell you that I was happy in my last relationship. It wasn’t perfect but I hadn’t felt that happy in years. I remember telling my ex-boyfriend, as we were discussing the possibility of a breakup, that I couldn’t remember the last time I was as happy as I was then.

Still, all things come to an end and that relationship came to an end and with it, my weight gain. After my ex-boyfriend moved to Spain, I started losing weight. My friend Steve once called it the breakup diet--the period where immediately after a breakup, you go one of two ways: either you eat too much or you eat too little. I didn’t stop eating but I definitely wasn’t eating the large unhealthy meals I had been used to eating with my partner.

Additionally, I started working out like a person intent on doing an Ironman. I would work out at least once a day but sometimes you’d catch me working out two or three times a day.Yoga, pilates, kettlebells, and interval running became my best friends, the coping mechanisms I used to channel all of my feels of inadequacy and failure. Five months later, I’ve lost eight of the ten pounds I gained.

I flew to India to be with my partner who upon my arrival, started talking about “taking a break.” In other words, he wanted to break up with me but retain the financial and the physical benefits of being

The threat of a real breakup lingered in the air at all times. Coupled with his daily rants on what a horrible friend, girlfriend, person I fell into a state of deep anxiety.

I don’t remember sleeping for more than an hour or two at a time the entire three weeks I was there. I remember eating but nothing tasted especially good and somehow despite the fact that I was eating, I was losing weight so fast that I wondered if it was my body’s way of disappearing and becoming invisible in order to protect itself. By the time the end of my trip I weighed a mere 103lbs. At 5’ 1” that still falls within a normal BMI but I had lost fifteen pounds on that one trip simply from the stress of the situation.

After our breakup, after I put thousands of miles between us, after I started sharing my story with my loved ones, I started gaining weight again. I no longer looked like I was in danger of becoming the invisible woman. Instead, I was eating and sleeping well--a huge contrast from my time in India.

Thinking about that period of my life and thinking about my last break up, I can’t help but compare the two. In one relationship I was always unhealthy and unhappy but I was usually able to maintain a “healthy” weight. In the other other, I was happy and, aside from the weight gain, very healthy. I am at loss at what to make of this except to reflect on the idea that weight is a relative number and that health and happiness are much more important than a number on a scale.

That said, I am happy, healthy, and at a “healthy” weight. I feel stronger now as a single person than I ever did when I was in relationships. That’s not to say that I am opposed to relationships but more and more I am starting to realize the importance of really taking care of myself and making that a priority so that the next time I am in a relationship, I can maintain this strength and health and maybe even find a partner who is supportive of my wellness efforts.

Link to the Huffington Post article: http:// www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/22/weightgain_n_2528800.html?

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This weight loss, however, reminded me of the last time I lost massive amounts of weight and it also was associated with the ending of a relationship.

That relationship, however, was an abusive one and the massive weight loss happened just before we broke up.

my boyfriend. I spent the next three weeks in my very own private and tropical hell. Away from my family and friends, he convinced me, for what would be the last time, that everything wrong in our relationship was my fault.

BROAD People

Message Me We Asked, You Answered

What are things that get in the way of your health?

Money Societal definitions of what is healthy A lack of an emotional support system Lack of healthcare Perceptions of general anxiety disorders Public images of what one should look like The politicization of Western medicine

The GOP

words are useless expression/commentary through art

Untitled

Description: Timothy Steinman is a Chicago visual and audio artist. This outsider art sketch relates to the demise of America’s well-being, as well as the demise of America’s socioeconomic support system.

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Artist: Timothy Steinman

Southern Belle & Jasmine Revolution

Oh Sh*t Now Overcoming Toxicity in Relationships

Southern Belle: There were so many moments, some short, some lasting almost days, that I realized our relationship was abusive, that something wasn’t right. In the beginning, in the first two years, most of these moments occurred in my mind—with my emotional and logical response to our interactions and their reactions to me.

I will never forget the first time I had an “oh shit now” moment with my ex. We went somewhere that required tickets. I chose to save some money by waiting in the regular line, while they wanted to save some time by using a machine. I suggested they go ahead, but they were adamant that it was one or the other. We stayed in line. Throughout the entire event, I was not looked at, talked to, or touched. In

the car ride home, the same—no interaction. No matter how I tried to make contact, there was no reciprocation, and when there was, it was cold and distant. It was like I was being punished. Something was very wrong and off. When home, I asked “Are you okay?” I then was told that I very much upset them by spending a few more minutes in line.

I asked why they did not go ahead of me and save me a seat, a compromise. It did not matter. I did not make sense to them; my actions were not what they would do.

We talked for about 20 minutes, and my ex would not budge. They were angry and frustrated and giving me the cold shoulder, no matter my apology or explanation. Something in their eyes was fixated upon their upset. For more than three hours, they

were mad at me, and the anger was intense, all over a dollar and a few minutes. This scared me. What would happen if something more serious upset them? How would they react if I made a serious mistake? This gut feeling and thinking was a warning, a warning that something dangerous was in my life. I wish I had listened.

These exchanges grew in depth and complexity for many more years. I would knowingly or unknowingly upset them, and they would be distant and cold for hours or even days. I would be told that I caused their upset, discomfort, anger, and other negative feelings and reactions. There was a great deal of blame put on me. Often daily, sometimes many at a time. I would be questioned; my actions, opinions, beliefs, approaches to life, outfits, interests, nearly everything about me would be questioned. My ex would share many aspects of myself and actions that they wanted changed, or did not like, or found embarrassing, or thought immature, and so on.

Living with a growing weight of believing that I was incomplete, embarrassing, illogical, and many other negative attributes, stress and anxiety became everyday nags. Then, they became antagonists to living.

Ultimately, they took a toll on my physical health, and it was awful. Jasmine, before I get into details of this unhealthy spiral, did your symptoms of being put down start with concerns and grow to physical manifestations?

Jasmine Revolution: It was different for me. I was already depressed--a veritable mess if you will, when he and I became involved. Yes, there was concern. There was that gut feeling that told me that I would surely get hurt.

I was already hurting and the attention he lavished on me was welcomed because it provided me with a cheap form of validation.

The boundary-pushing, the boundary-breaking never really stopped. He had no respect for my core beliefs or values and I had no strength or self-respect to know that my boundaries were constantly being violated.

I was already depressed when I met him. I was already sick in mind, body and soul. I am convinced that this is what attracted him to me. I am convinced that if I had the strength that I have now, none of that would have happened. Then again, I am strong because of all that happened then and all that followed.

He and I were together for almost seven years and in that time I was never healthy. I was always sick.

Severe stomach issues stemming from IBS, constant sinus infections, migraines, headaches, back pains, mood swings, constant depression and anxiety. I never felt healthy no matter what I did. I quit a job I loved to get health care and despite the access to good care and lifestyle changes I made, I was never fully healthy.

How could I be? I woke up every morning for almost seven years thinking about him and worrying about our relationship. I went to bed every night worrying about our relationship. I was convinced that there was something wrong with me and that it was my fault. Why else would I cry? I had no brain power to think of anything. I was never fully productive at work because all I could think about was my relationship and what I could do to be better so he would love me and be happy with me. I lived in a constant state of fear and anxiety. I was a wreck.

It really wasn’t until he left for India and stopped talking to me that I started feeling better. It wasn’t until a full year after he and I broke up that I felt fully physically and mentally healed. Just a few months ago, actually, I noticed that all of my plantar warts had healed and were gone. I had developed

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The first time I felt that gutwrenching feeling that this was not right was one night when he and I were still friends and he was sleeping over after helping me and my family move. I had a boyfriend at the time and despite knowing this, he started coming on to me. It happened because I was upset. He reached out and before I knew it he was on top of me kissing me and I was confused and scared. I asked him to get off me and he reluctantly did so much to my relief. I felt confused and something deep down told me that this would not end well. I wish I had listened. I wish I had been stronger but he caught me during the most vulnerable period of my life.

He kept coming on to me and because of my weakness I let him continuously push my boundaries.

He told me he felt justified in coming on to me-touching me, kissing me because it “felt” like I didn’t have a boyfriend. There was no respect for my relationship and there was no real respect for me. I did not see it then. I was too weak. I was too confused. I thought he really cared and one day I gave in. I broke up with my boy a few days later. Th guilt weighing me down.

them shortly after he and I got together and no matter what remedy I tried, they would not budge. Instead, they multiplied. Two years after he and I broke up, I am now plantar wart free. It seems like such a minor thing but for me, it’s a sign that I am healed in a way that I never imagined I would be.

Where are you in your healing process? How is your health now that your partner is out of the picture?

SB: I smiled so many times when I read your reply.

To read that you healed in his absence makes so much sense to me; I went through the same. I had bodily issues that, even if I had them slightly before my relationship, became very bad the longer we were together.

abusive relationship has been a different mourning process; one that involves bipolar sets of reactions to both the good and the terrible.

I sleep better, often through the night, which is new to me. Before, I would toss and turn and lie awake.

My ex, I will never forget, got mad at me for what I did with the sheets... in my sleep. I had to explain that I was not conscious of it. And the only way to be mindful of nightly things that they did not like was to not sleep. I remember thinking how awful it was to feel bad for how I sleep. Wasn’t attacking nearly every part of my waking life enough? No. I was made uncomfortable about my sleep state as well, for many reasons.

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I have been to doctors a lot in my life, and the more I go, the more weary and tired I get of going. Entrusting your body and feelings that are attached to it is hard, and that is what doctors need from you.

I have been to doctors a lot in my life, and the more I go, the more weary and tired I get of going. Entrusting your body and feelings that are attached to it is hard, and that is what doctors need from you. I went to a stomach doctor as well and had lots of testing done and lots of medication, and what cured me? Being away from my ex.

Yet, it has been more than being away from my ex. I have had to find a place where their grip on me is not possible and not allowed. Once the physical separation was complete, the mental and emotional detachment that was necessary has felt like the longest ripping, tearing, and gouging of my life. My ex moved me to my core, in the best and worst ways I know so far (beyond, perhaps, what parents can do). Pulling them away from my core and letting go has been so very painful and liberating.

I think about them often, with feelings of longing and love. Then, without trying or even realizing, I shift to feelings of hurt, anger, and abandonment. I had been very much in love before this last relationship, and it took me a long time to stop wanting them. But the

I am glad you mentioned your work productivity.

We would fight over the phone and text regardless of where we were. It was embarrassing and took a lot of time and energy, often away from being a better employee. Hell even finding a space to have an argument at work is problem enough!

When I would receive texts in my last relationship, from anyone, the sound would cause anxiety. I grew to expect my ex’s unhappiness in texts. Some very terrible things were told to me via text, and it was hard because texts can be relived again and again. Even a year after it was over my heart would still sometimes jump when I got a text, any text. Thankfully that has passed, but to think that I feared their texts just seems so fucked up to me now that I am out of that relationship.

When my ex would yell, scream, break things, and come at me, I would freeze. I would try not to make eye contact. I would often sit for 30 minutes at a time and say little to nothing. I would just keep hoping that they would calm down and things would get better and return to good and to love. I wanted to respond, to defend myself, to fight and push back, but

that only made them much worse, so I would keep it inside. Do you know what happened the last three years? First, my muscles began to twitch. My eyelid.

My thigh. My wrist. My cheek. My thumb. Uncontrollable twitching. As soon as they would get upset and I would brace myself for their anger and displeasure, I would start to twitch.

The twitching got worse and worse. Sometimes it would last for an hour. It was only in their company, and it felt odd and terrible. In the last year or so, I know that the twitching was just a small sign of a MUCH larger physical issue in my body: I was internalizing my stress. I tried not to show my ex any negativity, because it fueled them, so I simply kept it inside. Plus, they were adamant I talk to no one about our troubles.

The toll the internalization took was serious. A doctor told me that they could not find ANY physical symptoms, that it was psychological. I was in shock. My body hurt, ached, burned, and in general, was not working well. I was certain that it was obvious. I wanted so bad to mention to the doctor that I was in an abusive relationship, but I was scared to tell anyone, especially those who could help. I was scared my ex would get angry.

JR: I really appreciate everything you said. I remember going to all kinds of doctors as well and getting some help but at the end of the day, like you, what healed me was being away from the toxicity of my ex.

It’s really amazing how our bodies desperately try to tell us when something is wrong. My body breaking down all the time was its own way of screaming that something was horribly wrong and that I needed to pay attention.

I think the other thing that has been really important for me is taking the time to love my body and to really do things for me that are caring. I spent all those years that I was with him trying to “fix” myself and my body but never actually caring for it.

I didn’t know then that I was already perfect with all my imperfections and that what I really needed was self-compassion, self-care, and self-love. I am so glad that we are both finding that now for ourselves.

I will never forget one doctor who cried in response to me sharing how, in general, I felt everyday. All I said was that life was hard, and that things were not well and that I could not say. But I think this doctor knew what was happening. I wanted so bad to tell them everything, but I was so scared and ashamed. My ex did such an amazing job at putting me down, whether or not I was in their presence.

Free, I really do feel liberation. Now, when someone shows interest in me, I listen and feel for any little gutfeeling that tells me that danger could be lurking.

Through all the shit I had to go through with my ex and almost not making it out alive, I have to say, it helped make me a much better person. Isn’t it strange to find such freedom after so much entrapment?

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I feel so much healthier now, mentally, socially, and physically. I don’t drink myself to numbness like before, or lie awake all night worrying about the wrath of the person next to me who claims their deep love for me. I don’t question everything I do and all that I am.

I am happy and productive, quirky and imperfect, and I am more than okay with it. I feel more confident and able, more liked and loved, more open and free.

Career Call Learn About the Workplace

1. Describe your job and its duties/goals in one paragraph.

SS: I am the Vice President for Senior Services with Creative Care Management (CCM). In that role, I am in charge of marketing and administrative functions. I handle web content and marketing communications, and I am the first point of intake and contact for clients. I explain to people what CCM can do for them and their loved ones. CCM helps clients who are injured on the job and helps them in ways, such as gaining some medical improvement and finding the best place for them to be, even if it is not possible to get them back to the same job. We additionally work within the geriatric care field and help those with special needs. We have to make sure their living situation supports their needs. We are not just there to treat them and pass them off like an emergency response team (paramedics).On the consulting side, I do market research in healthcare. I interview all kinds of healthcare professionals, mostly doctors, but not exclusively. I also do web-survey work and design these surveys, which are based around market receptiveness surveys for new devices and products within the medical field. The second thing within this is that I help companies get feedback from relevant customers when they are designing and writing up on a new product. I work on positioning and saying what the benefit is of said product for customers.

2. How did you get to where you are career-wise?

SS: My PhD is in Behavioral Sciences. My first job was with the American Medical Association, center for health policy research. In that role as a senior associate, I learned a lot about the consulting role. It was the first step into health care and I have been working in that field ever since.

3. Are you using some of your education for the job?

SS: Yes. Everyone learns mostly from on-the-job training and everyday experiences, with exceptions of course.

I and CCM as a whole evolve with what is demanded from us. I adapt to my work each day using my basic skills that are constantly being redefined based on the work.

4. What is the most satisfying part of the job?

SS: The most satisfying part of the job is that I am in that part of life in which doing well and, most importantly, doing good are still important. I am helping people who, otherwise, would be left to fend for themselves. I get the indirect pleasure by bringing clients to the care manager within CCM. Although I am not a care manager, I work with care managers who are able to work with and facilitate the helping of customers.

5. Biggest challenges.

SS: People don’t really know what a care manager is and I am constantly explaining to people what they are. Additionally, care manager roles are different for everybody. The most challenging is how to explain what we do and what we can do for clients, based on their needs. We are also there to tell the caregivers that they are not alone in doing their job in helping an older adult or a person with special needs.

Stephen Steiber: VP of Senior Services, Creative Care Management 6. Would you recommend this job to others?

SS: I would say yes because it is a fast growing area (people are getting older by the minute, especially with the baby boomers getting older and the lifespan of people increasing). Also, the older worker is considered 35 years of age or older, so after that the body starts to break down in many ways. Thus, the profession is expanding to the needs of the older worker.

7. What level of survival and comfort did/do the benefits/pay allow?

SS: Someone does not enter this field to make a six-figure income. But it is rewarding and I make a reasonable income because I am doing good in helping other people. The salary and associated benefits allow for a comfortable living. I am in a unique position because I have a high position within CCM and, when you own something, you have skin in the game. I do have to learn to turn it off at some point at night. It is a 24/7 job realistically, but I have to compartmentalize and tell myself when to quit, especially since I am my own boss.

Just because I am my own boss, though, does not mean I get to choose a salary increase and when to stop. I still have to work for it! I can still be fired at any time. It is a lot of responsibility because the customer still has the final say, but I do get to make decisions.

8. Share your most memorable experience(s) from the position you have: good, bad, funny, and/or ugly.

SS: We had a client who we received from a referral from her financial advisor. We had that person in our care, but she had sufficient injury, so that they could not fully recover. She ended up in hospice care and was there until her final death. After she passed away, we had to clean up the left-over items she left in hospice care that were hers, since she had no family. She had been the wife of a gentleman who was previously deceased and had no children. The person in charge of the unit asked us on our way out, after we had cleaned up and collected her belongings, “How are you doing?” They know that I and the care managers can get attached to the client, and wanted to make sure we, on a personal level, were okay. I was just struck by the person’s wonderful, insightful question.

For more information on Creative Care Management, go to www.creativecaremanagement.com.

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9. What kind of relationships/interactions occur in your field?

SS: We’re hear to tell you that, based on Hillary Clinton’s famous quote, it takes a village to care for an elder.

And when you are a part of this, you are the next best thing to family and are very much a part of their life at that stage in their life, most of the time until they pass. It is a privilege to work with people when family is not as available and/or the caregiver is overwhelmed in managing another full-time job, and to make sure they get the care they need. We find that the sibling dynamics become somewhat challenging, so CCM tries to coordinate with the family within the consensus that we can evolve. We work with the clients and their family dynamics a lot of the time. The dynamics that occurred amongst siblings when they were young can still be there, except they are older and the situations have changed. The way one makes a living in this field is to show our value to the customer on a long-term level or until they don’t need our services.

Emma Steiber

Queer Thoughts Turning Theory Into (Inter)Action

Experiences With My Life Roommate: Anxiety The first time I knew I had anxiety was when I would throw up before I went to elementary school.

This did not happen every time I set foot out of my mother’s car and saw the double doors of the school. However, it happened frequently enough, when I thought of the pressures school demanded of me, whether it was the pressures of being social or of finishing a math worksheet on time. Although I eventually learned to battle the anxiety-imposed upchucking in high school, anxiety still persisted. I could not eat a lot during the day, up until I walked

out of the school. Friends of mine asked me on more than one occasion, “Are you anorexic?” No, I am not, just anxiety-consumed. They would look at me with questionable stares that asked, “Anxiety makes you do this?”

What they did not know was that anxiety also led me to emotional tailspins at the sight of the seven-hours of homework splayed out on my bed on a weeknight, that led me to yell at my mother and throw school supplies at her because my homework somehow got

deleted off her computer, and that led me to panic on tests because I could only obsess about time.

However, I also grew up with two parents who did not talk to each other for most of my life, who placed me in the middle as the person to be yelled at for what the other parent did, and who heard of court battles over child support. Most significantly, I grew up with my dad’s own physical struggles—first of his neurological disorder, then of his heart, in which he got a pig valve placed into his heart, and then getting an AED placed in his chest. This increased his anxiety for a few years while I was in high school, and his anger would came out, the steam leftover from his frustration over his path to recovery. I felt belittled at points by these interactions between my parents and witnessing their anxiety. At this point, I felt that my own anxiety was just regular. It came as rage some of the time, and I allowed and accepted it.

Now, how does this apply to my column direction, “theory and (inter)action”? There are numerous theories and discussions on mental illness, including Foucault’s discourse on madness in relation to society and Kate Millet’s discussion on madness in relation to women and society, but I stumbled upon

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During my year and a half off from college, I began taking anti-anxiety medication for general anxiety disorder. Fluoxetine, also known as the Prozac substitute, also known as the medication Christina Ricci’s character represented in Prozac Nation.

However, I was not depressed or bipolar. My panic attacks returned and I was going through a breakup. I was merely going through a lot of transitions.

Some judged me, but others, such as my mother and a good friend, understood. It gave me comfort, yet why did I still feel stigmatized as the “crazy” one?

People told me everyone has anxiety, but mine did not just feel like anxiety. It felt like a constant knot that loosened at points, but never gave way fully like a stubborn shoelace. And even though I found relief in talking to my sister about it, who else experienced similar anxieties, it was there and not going away.

My mother and sister would intervene during my, what I termed, “range anxiety moments,” and it worried me further. I, from the point I first went on medication, would go on and off it, despite its occasional numbing effects, both emotional and sexual at points. And when my partner would ask when the occasion arose, “Is it me?” when I had trouble climaxing, I would say honestly, “It’s not you. It’s me!”

And my frustration dug deeper as my once hypersexual self became dulled.

somewhat of a self-help book, Women and Anxiety

by Helen DeRosis, M.D. I felt that this particular book, not like the stereotyped “self-help” books, signified discourse and practice. What I liked further about this text was that DeRosis applied her steps and overall discussion to men as well. It was not exclusionary. DeRosis describes the fictive, ideal image that women with anxiety establish to avoid unresolved conflict. Me. Based on Dr. Karen Horney’s theory in the 1930s on the unconscious/conscious process of fantasy creation, DeRosis states, “Without a fantasy that directs her feelings, behavior, and expectation, she may be able to gauge her potential realistically and make the moves necessary to work toward it” (52). She must accept her “assets and limitations.” Me?

This process applies to women and men across backgrounds, classes, and professions (stay-at-home parents, blue-collar workers, adolescents, students, and more). Yet each has a unique process, a different process. Women had and still can have the stigmatization of madness and mental illness based on historical and cultural power dynamics. However, now society has deemed, in my view, an overall stigmatization of prescription medication and mental health for everyone.

Whether one seeks feminist-centered therapy or other forms of therapy, or decides to take prescription medication to relieve the whirlpool effects of anxiety or depression, this is okay. I originally took medication because I wanted to dull the thoughts I presumed real of my anxiety. I got turned around in cycles of worrying, a domino effect of one anxiety-ridden thought after the next. And I feel that I still cannot stop sometimes. However, like my school education, I have to remember that I have to learn to pick and choose my worries, my anxious thoughts. Prescription medication is there to help reduce my cycle so that I can do this. I had, without thinking, took on the thought process of normative society and thought prescriptions to be stigmatized.

Thus, if I pretend it’s not in my system, I live on like a “normal” person. But I am not “normative” in many respects. And through my own Loyola education on the destabilizing of normative structures, I too am doing this with my anxiety. I will not be on medication forever and this is not because I perceive it negatively. It’s because I know there are methods I can learn eventually without medication as the supportive aid it has been. It will be tough, but it takes practice.

J. Curtis Main

Inside R Out? White? Male? Feminist? YES

Shaming Skinny and Scrawny That’s right, I am going to write about being skinny.

I am going to share some of my scrawny life experience. Maybe this will be taken as offensive or not politically correct, but this is an account of my body.

Not yours, but mine. And not in comparison to your body or other bodies or some “type” of body; this is a focus on where I have lived for 30 years.

For most of my life, if I lay down on my back, my first few ribs show. Likewise, my pelvis bone sticks up where my stomach meets my hip. At night, if I am bored, I sometimes run my wrists and thumbs over my sharp pelvis sides. Since I finished growing, especially in the colder months, if I nick my knuckles on a hard surface or edge, a layer or more of skin comes off easily. When I need blood drawn, practi-

tioners are almost always smiling when they see my veiny arms that bulge without trying.

People at work call me a foodie, or garbage disposal. When there is food and drink around, I become interested. I eat constantly. Food is an integral part of my happiness; I revel in the smell, sight, discussion, preparation, presentation, and especially taste and texture of food and drink. Some think of me as a food hoarder; it is true, I like to have food available and almost everywhere I might be. I adore buying food and cooking/combining it. It is not a lie when I share that there are only four foods I am not fond of: raw carrots (cooked are delicious), licorice, fennel, and rye. Everything else, yes please!

Loving your body, regardless of shape, type, and so on, can be a life battle. There is no right type of body; there is yours and it is your home. If other people make you feel out of place and shamed about your body, that is violent and dangerous. Maybe you might try and alter your body to better fit what others deem “better,” “normal,” “beautiful,” and “right.”

This is not about fat or skinny. Or more importantly, fat versus skinny. So why did I start my column about living a skinny and scrawny life? Because I am really tired of people thinking that they know my body better than I do. I am honestly exhausted from a life of people telling me what is wrong with my food intake and my body. Skinny does not equal an eating disorder. Skinny does not mean fatphobic.

Skinny does not mean a fear of food, eating, calories, fat, and so on. Skinny does not mean I think I am better or beautiful or right. Skinny might just be skinny.

My whole life people have contributed their com-

One of my favorite pet peeves is the notion that skinny people do not have to try. That most of us just float through life not intentionally exercising nor watching nor restricting our diets. Sure, when I was younger, I pretty much inhaled food. I was always hungry and in search of food. My metabolism does not just scare others, sometimes I am surprised at how much energy I have in just one day. There is a double set of stereotypes that skinny people and large people are not trying to be healthy. I do not mean skinny healthy. I do not believe to be healthy one must be slim or average. Healthy is relative to each body. If this were not true, my grandfather could not have smoked from 8 to 88 years old, with 50 years of pipe smoking, and lived to almost 90.

Sometimes I wonder if the smoking he loved so much actually contributed to his mind and body and even longevity.

But I digress. The past few years I have given this more and more thought, that skinny is frustrating to many. I am not talking about moderately to severaly underweight skinny from lack of food, eating disorders, extreme beauty or cultural standards, or mental illness. I am referring to a thin body size and frame that is what a person knows- maybe they have always been that way, or maybe life circumstance resulted in it.

There seems to be a battle between thin and big, that we all must be between these sizes. I disagree; I believe we inhabit spaces along various sizes and that should be okay. If indeed your body size--thin, medium, large--is contributing to health issues that you do not want, then it is your call to seek change.

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Recently, I did a seven day juice diet. The responses and reactions I got to doing this seemed like I was lighting my hand on fire in public and watching it burn, happily. Often, while on this diet, I received negative responses from people who do not inhabit skinny bodies. “Are you sure that is okay? “Don’t you feel bad?” “That is extreme!” “That is really bad.” “You are ridiculous.” “Thanks,” I would think, “I really wanted your critique of my lunch.” I was not seeking opinions on the diet; people would ask about my meal and I would truthfully respond. I enjoy people’s curiosity about food. But when you are about to enjoy your own meal and someone shares their disdain or surprise that you might like it, well, it can sometimes ruin it a little!

ments, opinions, ideas, shame, worry, embarassament, and disdain regarding my body, diet, and exercise. I do not ask nor invite these responses, people freely give them. It is more and more frowned upon to shame a larger person while they are eating, or directly comment to them about how big they might be. But a scrawny, skinny person who eats a lot? I am a constant target. “You are eating AGAIN!?” “You need to eat more.” “Here, eat mine, you need it.” “Are you getting enough to eat?”

“You don’t need to exercise.” “Ugh, I hate being near you cause you eat so much and stay so skinny!”

The comments are almost daily. I understand that most people mean well, and that they are often joking, or simply pointing out how different our bodies can be in relation. Honestly, though, everyday, getting odd stares while you eat is frustrating when you want to savor food and drink.

There are large people in my life who have always been large, and this okay. Is it crazy to think that some people have a default size of small or thin while others have a default of big and wide? No two bodies are the same, nor should they be, not even identical twins. There is beauty in difference. More than beauty, difference is reality.

I have always wondered what it would be like to live in a bigger body. How would more fat feel? What would it be like to carry more weight? How would more muscle feel? I like to try new things; always have. If you know me you know I am adventurous and open.

Over two years ago, I decided I would try to be bigger.

I would do my best to leave my bony, skinny, scrawny body behind. I was about 145 pounds at 5’10”. I intentionally ate more sugar, soda, McDonald’s, ice cream, meat, and calories in general. Most of the time I enjoyed it, but at other times I ate past fullness.

Gaining weight is VERY hard for me, so I had to try really hard to gain, pound by pound. I lifted weights often, too, hoping to also gain muscle mass.

After a year and a half of doing this, I was around 163 pounds; the highest I have ever been. I felt different.

My body and face looked different. My clothes fit differently. Walking and jumping and running and moving quickly all seemed different. Laying and cuddling required different approaches. For the first time, my ribs and pelvis were not jutting out. For the first time, it was not an everyday occurrance that someone was commenting on my food and body. My body, my home, was different. And I did not like it as much.

For the past 8 months, I worked the opposite direction to get back to around 145 pounds, which is what I consider my default. I can eat a lot, I can eat a little, and I hover around that number, and that is quite fine with me. I like being me. I (finally) like my skinny, scrawny body.

Returning to my previous, “normal” size was often misunderstood by others. Others still viewed me as small and sometimes skinny at 163 pounds, so upon finding out I was trying to lose over 15 pounds, many people responded negatively. I was told by many people that I worried them. Several people commented that I looked great and normal and should not go back to 145 pounds. I tried to explain that I like how I felt and moved at 145 pounds, but that did not seem to increase understanding. 163 was more normal to most people, while 145 was not. Exposed ribs and pelvis and thin waist were threatening to others, but home to me.

I do not take skinny to be more valuable. But if the size I feel most comfortable and healthy happens to be around 145 pounds, then it is valuable to me. I hate that this bothers other people, and I hate more that many feel it is okay to constantly pick and push at my body, eating, and exercise Bigger people are not the only ones harmed by a system that often values one “right” body size, exercise regime, or muscle amount; this approach excludes and shames people who do not fit into what is “normal”. When I am at work or home or with friends, I rarely question their food, exercise, and body choices. If I learn that they desire a different body (and I understand that it is what they want, not what others convince them into), then maybe I talk about what I know and what my body knows. But I tread very carefully when thinking and talking about other bodies. I do not live in their homes, so who am I to judge what works for their home?

I know what feels good to me. I exercise a lot not because I want big muscles (yeah right, with this body!?), but because I like doing things and being able to rely on my muscles, strength, and endurance. I like having energy, and exercise helps. I like being thin, too, because I honestly think it is what I was meant to be; it is my body at its most comfortable. I love love LOVE food, drink, and consuming both. I also like to monitor what I consume and do with my body; it is my home, after all, so learning about it and respecting it makes me happy.

So I am not mad that others have opinions, comments, concern, and frustration with my body, eating, and exercise. I just often wish that they allowed me more space to be in this skinny body, and didn’t often find it threatening or offensive. In fact, I often wish that it was not a problem, but a positive that I like this body, because as mentioned, liking the body that makes the most sense to you (and not everyone else) is possibly one of the biggest challenges in life.

Remember that, even with lots of scientific “evidence” behind human bodies, no one knows their body better than the person living there. Indeed, they spend every moment inside and attached to their body. If you see someone enjoying their body, food, or exercise, even if it doesn’t make sense to you or repulses you, try to find happiness in their fulfillment. If they ask for help, contribute knowledge of your own body, and let them be the expert of theirs.

Going without health insurance can have terrible consequences. The Institute of Medicine estimates that every year about 18,000 Americans die prematurely and unnecessarily because they do not have health care coverage.

If you ask Americans what they think of about our health care system, you are likely to hear a long list of things that are wrong with it.

However, the same Americans are also likely to end by saying that, in spite of al of that, this is still the best system in the world. Sociologists would say this is an example of ethnocentrism.

The matter of medical error came to public attention in 1999 when the Institute of Medicine reported that forty-four thousand to ninety-eight thousand people die due to preventable error per year.

Nurse understaffing is ranked by the public and physicians as one of the greatest threats to patient safety in U.S. hospitals.

- Grace Budrys

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The fatal flaw in the system is that we treat health care as a commodity . . . When health care becomes a commodity, the criterion for receiving it is ability to pay, not medical need

Patrick Fina

Over the Rainbow Exploring a rich and diverse q-munity

Health, Wellness, and (Challenging With) Care

The Loyola University Chicago student promise includes the three main tenets of “Care for Myself, Care for Others, and Care for Community.” I’m a huge fan of the concept of ‘care,’ but one thing that seems to be lacking is defining just what care means to each of us – and specifically, when working in fields that challenge us to grow and examine our own internalized notions, the concept of ‘challenging with care’ is becoming more and more muddled to me as I try to better understand it.

According to Merriam-Webster.com, care is defined as an “effort made to do something correctly, safely, or without causing damage.” And to be honest, this is how I would have agreed to define care in the last few months, but I think there’s some shortcomings with this definition and how we’re using it.

(Confession: I am absolutely biased, my family is from Queens, Philly, and Jersey – some of the most ‘caring’ statements I’ve heard in my life have started with phrases like ‘listen here, you little asshole…’)

Here’s a good example. Often in the LGBTQI community, I try to separate myself from assumptions I’ve made in the past – I carry with me preconceived notions and ideas that lead me to make snap judgments in moments when I shouldn’t. The only reason I’ve been able to start down the path of being a better community member (and still working on separating those assumptions from reality) is because mentors and friends have taken time and energy (which they should not have had to) to challenge me, with what I consider to be care. For me, care is the notion that we recognize the inherent value of someone and do all we can to support them to become the best version of who they want to be.

Those close to me pointed out my words and actions that could hurt others because they wanted me to be a better person, and knew I could do just that.

The easiest way I can describe is that care and growth go together. And without discomfort and

So, the next time I want to show I ‘care’ about someone, I’m going to try to understand just what I mean by care. Rather than the usual college-level-respectful-polite feedback that sounds like a higher education version of the well-known Carnegie Sandwiches, I may be more direct, open, and honest about where I’m coming from and how I’ve been impacted.

Rather than showing someone I care by using those phrases like ‘create a climate that is not conducive to making all in attendance feel welcome, supported, and valued,’ I’m going to try to own my own experiences.

‘What you said hurt me,’ or ‘what you said makes me uncomfortable,’ or ‘that is not okay to say in front of me’ are all ways to show that we care about someone else’s growth. Why do we spend so much time burying our most sincere emotions in scholarly packaging that muddles and lessens the impact of our feelings?

As someone who has been hurt, and someone who has hurt, so many with my own actions, it’s the raw, in-the-moment truthful feedback that has challenged me to grow the most, care the most about others, my community, and myself.

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But – to challenge me and hold me accountable to becoming a better community member, there had to be risk and discomfort. To be honest, not all of the moments I consider caring have been done “correctly, safely, or without causing damage.” How can we learn to be correct, safe, and not cause damage, without someone holding us accountable and challenging us in the moments we aren’t doing just that?

In a sense, being vulnerable and holding each other accountable in shared spaces means we’re inhabiting spaces that are not correct, safe, or damage-free.

challenge, how can we grow? Without growth, how can we learn to care for ourselves, others, and our communities?

Bookmark Here Get Your Read On. Genre:

Price:

Novel

Released:

1997

Pages:

308

$10.00

Review: “With nightmarish accuracy and bleak wit, this first novel chronicles the traumatic hospitalization of 25-year-old Josie, an anorexic graduate student who has starved herself down to 67 pounds. Institutionalized against her will, the first-person narrator is forced to recall her painful adolescence and dissatisfying sexual experiences, while Shute weaves in ‘excerpts’ from glossy fashion magazines and diet books to hint at the sociological underpinnings of this contemporary female madness. But the author is less concerned with etiology than with maintaining a continuous description of the anorexic experience itself. Josie tabulates calories reflexively, sees eating as bestial and shameful, pores over the food sections of the newspaper (‘poetry: the only kind I read’). Her lunch trays glimmer with almost psychedelic imagery, and an orange slice is ‘reptilian rind and colony of pustular sacs.’ The unwavering bitterness, the lurid preoccupation with food and the remoteness of the narrator may make this book too intense for some but also certify its authenticity.”

Pros: With a realistic voice that makes the novel appear to be non-fiction at points, Life-Size sucks the reader into the internal, as well as the very real, external struggles of a woman hospitalized for a severe form of anorexia. With flashbacks and the main character Josie’s consistent and obsessive thought-process interwoven throughout the novel, the novel provides a well-rounded view of anorexia from a woman’s perspective amidst a culture focused on health, dieting, and looks.

Cons: This novel, although it highlights the anorexic struggles of a woman, positions itself from a privileged white female gaze. Additionally, many novels have discussed anorexia from a female-identified point-of-view. Thus, although the writing sucks the reader in with vivid details of the struggle, it does not provide or include a male standpoint or a woman’s voice with other intersectional struggles, such as class and background.

WLA (Re)Animated expression/commentary through art

1930-1931: Athletics Tennis

Description: Tennis group team photo of nine players with coach

WLA Mission Statement: Established in 1994, the Women and Leadership Archives (WLA) collects, preserves, organizes, describes, and makes available the materials of enduring value to researchers studying women’s contributions to society.

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Commentary: This photograph shows the inclusion of women within athletics. It highlights the ability of female students, such as those showed in the above image, to freely pursue athletics as an interest and/or passion. Ultimately, this photograph shows sports as an outlet open to women. Within the WLA Archives, more women are represented receiving athletics awards, participating in horsemanship athletics throughout the 1930s, and more.

Andie Karras

Talk to Andie My 77 Cents with Feminist Favorites

Talking wellness and filtered water with Deirdre Hade, Spiritual Teacher, Master Healer, founder of Radiance Healing and Meditation, Mystic, and Visionary Leader in the ancient arts of the wisdom traditions, and all-around guru of the website dierdrehade.com as well as the popular webinar and tele-class, The Woman’s Mystery School “The Daughters of Miriam, Daughters of Miracles.”

77 Cents: Where is the field of health and wellness headed for women as you know it?

Deirdre Hade: I am chomping to expound (laughs). I’ve been expounding for a long time – 40 years! Today, there is so much opening of new information regarding women, spirituality, how we operate, and what makes us tick. We’re on the cusp of a new shift in the core belief system of what it means to be a woman. Who am I? What I’ve found in 40 years of studies is that we as women (I did my own laboratory [laughing]) is that we are extraordinarily complex, more than anyone wants to cop to. The very essence of our being – where we get it from – is a power which comes through that is so mysterious that it frightens the hell out of men and other women who are asleep.

77: Can you tell me about your training?

DH: My studies are in Kaballah, the Vedas, Hindu, and southern Gospel churches (laughing). That, combined with the uncanny ability to receive information on my own, was where I started. I developed the concept of “The Golden Butterfly,” this is the concept of what a whole integrated, awakened woman looks like, a woman’s full power and in January, 2015, it’s coming out in a book. We’re now at the place where we must take the great work of our feminist sisters that came before us, these territories (work, career) and make them fit our innate mystery into the costume of patriarchy, the lineage of running the world. Our sisters had to break down the doors, so they put on this costume to play a role of a woman in a man’s

world, but women got lost in this role. They think they’re this role and if you lose yourself into this role, you’ve lost your femininity and you become men.

77: Can you say more about these roles?

DH: There’s a great deal of depression, grief, anxiety, and nervousness in women. The soul knows women put on this costume. There’s an inner breakdown. When a woman’s soul isn’t tended to, the soul will SCREAM and you will feel it in your gut. It will look like phobias, compulsions, and addictions. It’s that place inside where women have been disconnected. I’m not saying women shouldn’t be in traditional places: corporations, MBAs, Wall Street, Academia. My mother was six months away from getting her PhD in the Department of Physiology at the University of Chicago. There were 50 men, and 1 woman. They were like, “What are you doing here?” She was a wild woman, and she looked like Mae West (laughing). She went back down under to the rules of patriarchy that says you can’t be both. My father had 2 PhD’s from the University of Chicago, and he always used to say, “Your mother is the smart one.” I saw that grief in her, that she believed she couldn’t do both, be a professor and raise a family. I watched her sink in depression and often wondered, “Was it because her great mind could not be free? Could not fly? To be liberated spirituality, to be exuberated emotionally, to be free – that’s what we’re asking for. Freedom is the fight of the soul, which is why I chose gold (from “The Golden Butterfly”). Whatever that looks like, my hope is that’s where we’re going, that there is less depression, less destruction

Deirdre Hade against women around the world, especially for those who speak out and there’s backlash.

Look at Malala!

What an image for us all! Oppression didn’t win! She is an example of “The Golden Butterfly.” You’d think of a butterfly as fragile, but it can defy gravity. It’s so delicate, but so strong.

That’s who we are. Women are delicate, but incredibly strong. We have to honor that. It’s okay to be delicate.

77: What is the next aspect of health and wellness, to you?

DH: Emotions within us. By having a practice of inner reflection and contemplation, (meditation) you will find the center point within you, a woman’s Supreme Divine Will, this access point is place or a voice inside you. Through the use of guided imagery and journeying, you can find this place. When you lock into it, you want your emotions, you want the river. How do I ride that wave, so my emotions don’t sabotage my life? Or into pain that I can’t function or I say something I shouldn’t? We have this great rage as women, a fierce rage that can birth a child. We need it. It’s just a question of how do we become the MASTERS of the river, not the controllers, not the suppressors. That’s what patriarchy is. Find that clear place of contemplation and meditation. This is “The Golden Butterfly” effect.

77: Lastly, what is the third component to achieving overall health and wellness?

DH: Your spiritual path. I often put emotions and spirituality together because for a woman they are together. Do meditation, morning and night. It only takes a few minutes connecting inward to re-balance you. This special meditation of the golden light will help to bring you relief, to get you on that path where you are a pure spirit. [Women] are built to grow life inside of [them] (growing a child for nine

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77: What are some things women can do to maintain a strong sense of health and wellness?

DH: My recommendations run the gamut. We have to address ourselves from every aspect.

First, there’s the physical. Get plenty of sleep.

Your body is a complex organism, and sleep is where your body heals and detoxifies itself. We want to get toxins out of the body, and sleep is where that happens. It’s here where the soul re-tethers to the source of rejuvenation. A lot of people think sleep is a waste of time. It’s a waste of time to the ego, but not to your spirituality. It allows your soul to travel to the source of energy, light, so that emotionally, you’re more balanced. Also, good water. Most women are dehydrated and don’t know it, which causes a lot of illnesses and disease. Drink 64 ounces of good, filtered water in a 24 hour period.

You’ll be more balanced. Our bodies are 96% water, so we must keep good water coming in. Lastly, eat very healthy. You want to eat healthy, organic food. Stay clear of Genetically Modified Foods (GMOs), stuff found in wheat and different grain products. Your body cannot process that, the way manufacturers put amino acid chains together, you can’t digest it. Eating

food that is REALLY food is key. I’m a huge follower of Dr. Mark Hyman’s books and program. Emotionally, you will be more balanced.

Emotions are a dance between external stimuli that hits a wounded place in our psyche, mixed in with a soup of biochemical, hormonal reactions. All biochemical balance means is that when you’re in the world, you can better handle and navigate it as you rub up against what triggers you. Meditation is vital in maintaining this balance. You can shift your biochemistry through meditation.

months. Whether you do so or not physically, you are still a soul in a woman’s body you are the microcosm of the macro, you carry the womb of creation. We were created in a crystal matrix, of the great womb of mother. You are constantly creating thoughts, dreams and realities. As women we live in stories. That’s how we live. Your hands are constantly creating. If you’re not creating, you’re miserable, you’re dying. Choose creation, don’t die (laughing)! Take the lid off and fly.

healing process and recovery. My work, Radiance Pure Energy is Shamanism built on light, and I was very happy to assist her. She came through. Thank God because we need her.

B

My revolution was an inner one, wresting with beliefs and pains passed down from my mother and grandmother, self esteem came when I found the hidden light inside my body 77: Since we are a feminist publication, who are your favorite feminist (past and present), the women who have had the most impact/ influence on your work?

DH: It goes without saying, Gloria Steinem’s Revolution from Within. It begins with self-esteem, all our changes, our worth to be seen, heard, respected, and loved. She was my guide to go within, discover myself, create self esteem where there was NONE. My revolution was an inner one, wresting with beliefs and pains passed down from my mother and grandmother, self esteem came when I found the hidden light inside my body. Then I new I had to teach and heal other women. This became my passion. Thank you Gloria for beginning the story… Eve Ensler is my favorite present-day feminist because she has laid a path to free us from the taboo of acknowledging and addressing all the values and variables, pains and exuberance of our “VAGINAS”. I see a woman’s vagina as a purely holy, sacred gateway, great freedom of ecstasy, a union with our beloved, carrier of a child into the world. Without our holy vaginas, life would not exist.

77: When I read In The Body of The World by Eve Ensler, I saw you were thanked in the acknowledgments.

I was so touched by this, and I’ve been chomping at the bit to ask, What is she like?

DH: Eve is a true warrior angel. She is pure fierce woman love. She is a river of nature in creation, and really an extraordinary woman. She is a woman to ascribe to. I was gifted and blessed to be part of her

To learn more about Deirdre’s work, visit: www.deirdrehade.com http://www.youtube.com/deirdrehade https://www.facebook.com/RadianceHealingEnergy https://www.facebook.com/deirdre.hade https://twitter.com/deirdre_hade And for anything else we discussed, go here: http://www.amazon.com/Revolution-Within-A-Book-Self-Esteem/dp/0316812471/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1383785963&sr=8-1&keywords=gloria+steinem+revolution+from+within http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=in%20the%20 body%20of%20the%20world&sprefix=in+the+bo%2Caps&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Ain%20the%20body%20 of%20the%20world&ajr=2 http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=mark+hyman&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Amark+hyman&ajr=2

broadside Expressions in poetry via street literature style

To Many of My Doctors J. Curtis Main

You told my grandparents not to photograph your newborn, because she might not live, So there are not many pictures of my mom, when she was an alive baby and toddler.

You and you and you and you and you and you and you and you did not help her, because her sudden paralysis was not understandable or diagnosable, So you told my mom you did not know what to do and tried to give her lots of painkiller, which left her fearful and untreated for decades.

You prescribed me four different antibiotics, because the infection would not leave, So you kept me from seeing a specialist, which caused extensive damage.

You cut my ear open and left it exposed, because you did not know how to treat me but would not admit it, So you sucked tumor out of my ear almost every month, while I was awake and told not to move.

You knocked on wood after saying you could cure my tumors, as if it was all funny and worth a laugh, So I lost more trust in medicine and maybe getting better, when you were my only hope at 19 years old.

You pressed your penis into the side of my leg minutes before operating on me, because you knew I would not get you into trouble, So you touched my body while I was unconscious, when I trusted my body in your hands.

You barely responded to my questions about 15 years of a serious condition, because you had another agenda, So you tried selling me a new medical product I was not seeking nor could afford, which left me with unanswered questions regarding my health.

To all healthcare professionals: Everytime someone walks into your care, Remember that they are a person, Not just a body of parts.

Remember that you are an expert at some of their parts, But they are the expert in the sum of their parts.

So treat them like a valuable person, and please listen, and don’t make them wait hours, and don’t take for granted that they paid hundreds and thousands and sometimes millions of dollars, to be in your hands.

And remember, they have eyes, so look into them.

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You persuaded me that Accutane was exactly what I needed, because my acne was “really bad” and could last a lifetime, So I believed you and took it for two rounds, which left me with cracked skin and bad night vision for life.

You walked in the room and barely spoke after I waited 2 hours, because that is just how you are, So when you said “he needs surgery” and left me there without explanation, I felt scared and powerless and less than human.

By Jane P. Currie

Ex Bibliothecis From Loyola’s Libraries to you. Assisting you in your search for information.

Why a Citation Manager?

Citation management systems allow a researcher to collect and organize research resources. Citation information is imported or entered into the system where it may be placed in folders for individual topics, classes, or projects. As the paper is written, the citation manager can assist in formatting in-text citations, endnotes, footnotes, a bibliography, or a works cited page.

The effort to learn to effectively use a citation manager is substantial enough to not be worthwhile until a researcher is engaged in ongoing research, I believe. However, becoming familiar with the available systems and adopting one before launching an independent study or at the start of a graduate program will likely be time well-spent.

Some citation managers are web-based. Others are browser-based. Still others exist as desktop software.

Loyola provides access to a web-based citation manager called RefWorks. Loyola students may also choose to adopt browser-based Zotero or EndNote Basic. Additional alternatives are available but these are the most popular systems at Loyola and beyond.

More information about RefWorks is available in a HYPERLINK “http://libguides.luc.edu/refworks” library guide and at the HYPERLINK “http://www.refworks.com/content/products/content.asp” RefWorks website.

For details on Zotero, start at the HYPERLINK “http://www.zotero.org/” project’s homepage. You may get started with EndNote Basic by creating a free account at the HYPERLINK “https://www.myendnoteweb.com/ EndNoteWeb.html” website.

Your questions and ideas are always welcome. Write to HYPERLINK “mailto:jcurrie@luc.edu” jcurrie@luc. edu at any time or visit our research help desks in the Information Commons and Lewis Library.

The ideal of slimness was so clear and so widely acknowledged that people who did not live up to it (save for instances of glandular difficulties, which were given less and less credence) must have something wrong with them emotionally.

The fatal flaw in the system is that we treat health care as a commodity . . . When health care becomes a commodity, the criterion for receiving it is ability to pay, not medical need

Aside from sheer absorption of public concern about overweight, was the link between the growing cultural hostility to fat and physician’s often-expressed moral disdain for their obese patients.

New warnings about health and new efforts to make success at work contingent on at least reasonable slenderness undoubtedly spurred people to worry about their weight.

- Peter N. Stearns

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No study of the modern American hostility to fat would be complete without exploring its great anomaly: during the very century in which diet standards have been ever more rigorously urged, average American weight has gone up, rather markedly.

Nichole F. Smith

New Levels Building From the Bottom

Battling History

I come from a line of folks who keep to themselves emotionally. I haven’t experienced grandparents, aunts, or uncles on either side of my family seeking conversation with one another or therapy with a professional when going through a difficult social or mental health issue. My cousins and I have wondered about this, especially when going through a difficult situation and eventually learning that one of our parents has experienced something similar but has not offered any consolence or advice. And when it comes to physical well-being, finding a trustworthy doctor takes more effort than any of us would like. Often, the doctors we see do not get our full disclosure.

This family habit is a cultural silence, a cultural phenomenon that is characteristic of the African American community. As evidenced by stories long told, this silence has existed since the time that African Americans first lived in the U.S. as slaves. Slaves learned to silence their ideas, opinions, beliefs, and feelings in the presence white folks and they did so as a form of preservation. Often, if white folks thought that slaves were becoming too educated, or if slaves expressed disagreement with white folks the slaves would be punished and often through violent means.

In order to maintain their lives, African American slaves learned that the details of their lives and their state of being was not important to the work they were expected to complete.

One example of these events involves a woman named Henrietta Lacks, a Black woman who’s cells were taken without her knowledge by a white doctor, and then reproduced and claimed by white doctors

That Henrietta’s doctors were white is important.

That the Tuskegee Syphilis researcher study was conducted by the government is important. That these events happened during the same times in U.S. history as Jim Crow and the earliest years of the Civil Rights movement is important. These times in U.S. history were times where African Americans were reminded daily through violence and discrimination that their experience and their voices were not worth speaking out about. And as events like this happened in small towns and across the country, African Americans analyzed how to engage with the institutions of health and wellness.

One of my grandmothers was born in the South in 1928. She lived through Jim Crow and was part of the Great Migration to the North, where I was born.

Events like the stealing of Henrietta Lacks’ cells and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study are part of the narrative of her lived experience. These events, and others like them have become part of the cultural consciousness of the African American community, these stories are part of our community’s collective memory. Being a part of this community has lead many African Americans, myself included, to question whether to trust the institutions that committed these medical injustices. Yes, in the time since Tuskegee and Henrietta Lacks laws have been created to protect patients from the unethical and oppressive treatment that happened during those events. And although these laws exist, and procedure to inform patients and require

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Even after former slaves moved to the North and West the trips their descendants made back home to their Southern motherland were marked with this silence. These former slaves and the families they started were silent about the difficulties they faced in the new lands where life for African Americans was supposed to be an experience free from racism, marginalization, and violence. This Great Migration of African Americans away from the south lasted decades, and our community’s culture of silence has lasted even longer. This silence carried on through the Great Migration and has been a coping tool passed down through families ever since. The culture of silence has been reinforced by events throughout history that have proven to African Americans that keeping silent about all types of personal and familial issues could protect them from folks outside of the community who might harm, marginalize, or take advantage of them.

who also sold them for medical use. Henrietta was unknowingly and unwillingly used as a guinea pig toward the medical benefit of many, and also toward the financial benefit of her white doctors and the white medical researchers who worked with her cells. Another well known example of an event in history where African Americans have been taken advantage of and harmed by the medical field is the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. During this study the U.S. government took a look at the impact of syphilis and different treatments for syphilis on African Americans. The government researchers did not tell the African American research participants what they were being studied for or that they may or may not have had syphilis. Some who had the disease were left untreated and some were given harmful and even fatal treatments. (There is so much more to each of the histories of Henrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. I urge you to read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and check out the CDC site on the Tuskegee Syphilis study to learn more details of these events.)

consent of patients exist, these laws do not change history. The memories of these injustices, the feelings of being treated unjustly, and the fear of that unjust treatment happening again, cannot easily be wiped away. Along with those memories, feelings and fear are passed down. For me, although they were not always passed down explicitly, they were often unknowingly modeled by my grandparents and parents.

My grandmother’s move to the North ended in Cleveland, Ohio, home to one of the most well known and top ranked hospitals in the world, the Cleveland Clinic.

Of my grandmother and her 12 brothers and sisters, I do not know one of them that trusts that hospital.

When an illness or injury happens in the family, they prefer to be treated elsewhere. And I have seen my grandmother interact with health professionals. A nurse comes to her home once a month to check up on her, review her prescriptions, and answer any questions she has about her health and her health care.

When the nurse is Black my grandmother is relaxed, openly discusses her health, and brings up questions she has about her medication. When the nurse is white, my grandmother appears tense, does not ask questions, and answers always succinctly in a pleasing, and agreeable voice. To me, my grandmother seems to be intimidated by the white nurse and appears that she does not think it is worth sharing or asking questions because she does not believe the white nurse to be truly invested in her health. The interaction between my grandmother and her nurses is a result of other factors as well including the comfort level of the nurse and the ability of the nurse to coax my grandmother into conversation. And there is also the factor that my grandmother has admitted to me, that she is more comfortable with her black nurse.

I realize this could appear crazy and ineffective - distrusting the care offered at one of the best hospitals in the country, not speaking openly with your nurse because of her race - but the more I consider the history that my grandmother and her siblings have lived through, the more I understand what informs their thinking about health care.

Two generations removed from Jim Crow and the Great Migration, and having grown up in diverse environments very different than my grandmother, and even my parents, I have a different experience with health and medical institutions. However, I have heard my grandmother’s stories of physicians not giving our loved ones the proper attention, of the resulting lethal misdiagnosis. Whether my grandmother’s stories or true or false, what I know for sure is that events like

the one experienced by Harrietta Lacks and the Tuskegee sharecroppers are true. And these are a couple of the reasons I battle my communities collective skepticism when it comes to trusting health professionals.

Because of this skepticism I find myself participating in the culture of silence that makes it easy for me to neglect my health and wellness.

When I have a health issue, my mind races with questions as I decide whether to seek out a physician: Should I look for a black doctor? If I see a white doctor will they treat me appropriately? What about the white nurses and administrative staff, will they be welcoming to me? Will the doctors be afraid that having a black patient will scare off their white patients? Should I “talk white” so that they know that I am educated? If I smile and say hello and they do not reciprocate, does it mean that I am not welcome here? What should I wear to make it look like I should be treated with kindness and quality care? I constantly question the impact of my blackness on the medical professionals and other patience out of fear that I will be told explicitly or subtly that I do not belong there and thus will not get their best medical care. Sometimes I am exhausted with the questioning and the doubt to the point that I do not seek care at all. When I am not in an environment where physicians of color are not easily accessible I often turn to myself to handle my own wellness, because being a Black woman does not come with the privilege of feeling comfortable seeing whichever of the top rated healthcare professionals on Angies List.

I feel frustrated battling the impact that history has had on my ability to care for myself. Reflecting on why I approach my wellness the way that I do is helpful in giving me a place to start, and I take on that responsibility so that I can be part of the community to create a new culture that does not feel silenced by history. Still, I struggle knowing my perspective is not one understood by the doctors I need to trust and who are not required to understand the impact of history or their identities on caring for patients like me.

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Nina Berman

Girl Gang Conspiracy Sounds of the Grrrrrl Underground

Girl Gang Conspiracy Gets its Heart Broken and Other Heart Feelings

8. Heart Condition—The Softies So pretty much The Softies get me and all the squishy and warm and sad and glitterglue collage feelings I have ever had. This song isn’t so much about heartbreak but considering a crush to be a heart condition itself. It’s true though.

9. Miranda—Angel Olsen Local folk goddess Angel Olsen holds court. She treats the end of a love as a trial, reading an ex-lover his Miranda Rights. And yet even though the song starts out like Angel wants a pure “guilty” verdict to make things easier, she can’t help thinking about the messiness and complications of being humans with other humans.

11. Love Spells—Bleached Sisters and two-gal girl gang, Bleached, gets bratty about the love spells that boys tried to cast on them but that don’t work anymore. Bleached is over it! SISTERGIRLGANGFEELINGS4EVER

12. Buried Alive—Veronica Falls “I wanna get sick. I wanna catch everything you’ve ever caught I wanna catch it.” Veronica Falls getting real about wanting someone so bad that you know that they have weird stuff going on and you don’t even care you just want to be with them like woah.

It’s a fine line between being really close to someone, though, and losing yourself in them and getting buried in them and I think this song brings out that danger.

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1. These Days—Nico Nico in her eerie amazing voice singing about how breakups and the passage of time makes us realize all the ways in which we can be so entirely unfair and cruel to one another. Some pretty painful reflections and harsh looks in the mirror going on here. And I can’t hear this song without having some intense heart swelling feelings and also imagining Margot Tenenbaum getting off a bus.

2. I Don’t Want To Get Over You—Mary Lou Lord This is Mary Lou Lord’s rendition of the Magnetic Fields song about how we sometimes want to hold on to our broody clove cigarette-smoking, lovelorn selves and it’s just nice to hear someone else say that they do that too.

3. Nothing But a Heartache—The Flirtations So girl groups are pretty much the professors of heartache, break, and falling in love with the wrong person and The Flirtations are no exception. For a song that talks about lots of heartbreaks and teardrops, it’s pretty triumphant sounding. The Flirtations will rise above their heartaches and so can we!

4. You Are What You Love—Jenny Lewis and the Watson Twins Ok so Jenny Lewis is kind of a guilty pleasure for this old grrrl but there’s one line in this song that still gets me in a pretty big way and I feel like is pretty true and tugs at my heart strings. “You are what you love and not what loves you back.” Feeling so defined by unrequited love…oy. All the feelings.

5. Don’t Say Goodnight and Mean Goodbye— The Shirelles The Shirelles get to the core of that sad moment when you realize that your boo/beau of choice might not be feeling the same way anymore and the kind of paranoia that sets in when you are anticipating having your heart broken and crossing all your fingers and toes that it won’t happen.

6. Kill For Love—Chromatics Love is super powerful and also really good fodder for sleazy disco dancing. So say Chromatics. Also everyone makes mistakes.

7. Only Lonely Lovers—Pure Bathing Culture Silk scarf-waving vibes about the sad things that only lonely lovers know. Sidenote: Pure Bathing Culture is really really cool and please listen to them all the time

Health and Wellness

Witnessing Childbirth

Charlotte Somebody

A few months ago I was in the process of completing my mandatory ambulance shadowing rotations

for my EMT class. Since rotations were typically 6 to 12 hour long shifts, most of the time was spent

stationed for long periods of time in parking lots around the city, waiting for a call from central.

This shift promised nothing out of the ordinary: several elderly patients complaining of dizziness, a child with shortness of breath, a few nursing home-to-hospital transfers, etc. Occasionally on shifts you’ll experience something relatively exciting like assisting a patient with several shattered bones or an epileptic fit. Fortunately, this was not one of those evenings.

It was nearing the end of another uneventful shift and my partners and I were about to call it an evening. As we were pulling away from the parking lot, we received that quintessentially unexpected call from central: a young woman, parked in a car presumably on her way to the hospital, was experiencing contractions between 5 and 10 minutes apart.

The next hour following this call was perhaps the most excitement I could ever hope to experience as a future paramedic: from the moment my team had realized that the ambulance would not make it to the hospital on time, to pulling the ambulance over and coaching our patient through the birth of her first child, I quickly realized how embarrassingly unprepared I was for the unpleasant sights and sounds of childbirth. I watched in a sort of strange and mystified trance as the minutes had passed and the labor pains had completely taken over our patient. After what seemed like hours, the team soon ordered our patient to push, and little by little the crown of a tiny

dried, and started taking its first breaths, the breath I did not know I was holding had finally escaped.

Seemingly straightforward written on paper, words cannot accurately recreate the overwhelming sensory assault one experiences as a witness to the birth of new life. I could wax lyrical for days about the sounds of screaming agony or the smells of body fluids mixing with the already stale scent of the back of an ambulance. And as far as the sights, let’s just say that childbirth videos from high school health classes don’t exactly offer the most accurate visual preparations either. It’s definitely a kind of strange out-of-body surreality that slaps you across the face, leaving you shaking and on the brink of passing out at the same time. Perhaps the only way I managed to remain conscious is through feeling the grip of my patient’s hand around my own. As I felt the sensation in my fingertips disappear, I watched her breath quicken until suddenly it tensed at the final push and then relaxed at exhalation as the baby took its first breath.

We often hear most mothers describing the birth of their children as the most intense emotional undertaking that one could ever experience. Some even go so far as to describe childbirth as the miracle of human existence. I could never previously comprehend how something as painful as childbirth could ever be equated to a miracle until I actually witnessed it for myself. Never are moments such as these presented in one’s life with such perfect timing, and as I begin

newborn head began to emerge, ready to reveal itself after a nine month long slumber. Yet, within a span of about ten minutes, my teammate then placed one hand on the child’s head and the patient’s perineum and, after the chin delivered, slipped the umbilical cord over the child’s head, clamped it, and cut it off.

Once the head rotated to one side, the rest of the body followed from the vagina with an unexpected and almost graceful ease. As the child was wrapped,

midwifery school applications, I remember that sigh of relief of knowing that I contributed to a successful childbirth. Though my patient will probably never remember my name, I will always remember hers, and the way this experience has forever impacted my life.

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I could never previously comprehend how something as painful as childbirth could ever be equated to a miracle until I actually witnessed it for myself

[HW]

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