Her Daily News

Postpartum Support International, (PSI) was founded in 1987 to “eliminate denial and ignorance of emotional health related to childbirth.  I’ve written about this topic before but after reading about another mom and blogger who is a little bit overwhelmed right now I feel this is a good opportunity to once again talk about this unfortunately taboo-topic.

Childbirth can be physically stressful.  It IS emotionally stressful, in most cases it is a good stress, a new and positive life change, but it can take time to adjust to a good change.  I really like the mission of PSI: “eliminate the ignorance” of postpartum depression.  Too often women are struggling, silently and even those closest to them do not know or don’t recognize the behaviors and symptoms.

I don’t like the name POSTPARTUM DEPRESSION. The implications are incorrect.  Sometimes the manifestation is in the form of anxiety.  Depression doesn’t always mean you mope around in dark cloud of sadness.  Some women do.  Many other sufferers are actually well functioning mothers and wives.  They wake up each day and smile at their baby, clean the house, shop for groceries, make dinner for their husband and even find some time to post to their blogs.  However, in silence, in their minds they are often riddled with anxiety, worry, and self-criticism, irritability and inadequacy haunt their minds.  Most women don’t even get close to hurting their children.

PSI has a great website for any new mother or mother-to-be.  The resources are up to date and easy to read.  If you suspect you or someone close to you is affected, please reach out and talk to them, show them this posting or this or this.

It’s been a few months since we last heard about the Mormon Polygamists in Utah and Texas in the news but there are a few books out right now that really give an amazingly heartbreaking and rather informative portrayal of life inside the cult of polygamy.

I am not talking here about the stray and random family who chooses to live in the modern world in a home with one man as husband and several women as “wives”. I am referring here to the large populations that live in a few specific towns on the Utah-Arizona border.

First off,Stolen Innocence is a personal account of Elissa Wall, a most brave and courageous woman who suffered unimaginable abuse of the mind and body for years. Wall writes openly and honestly about her life inside a polygamist family.

I read this book a few months ago as soon as it came out. I read all 500 pages in about three days. I didn’t sleep. It was that good.

Another warrior of a woman, Carolyn Jessop has also written a book about her life. Escape is the story of a mother of eight children, married to a man 32-years her senior when she was a mere 18-years old and her eventual escape in the middle of the night with her children. Neither woman has looked so much as looked back.

I have just started reading this book and just like Stolen Innocence, it is stunning and eloquently written.

Polygamy is illegal in The United States of America. The polygamist sect of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, known as the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, is not part of the more common Mormon Church, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Alaska Governor and Republican Vice Presidential candidate, Sarah Palin has been woefully and shamefully absent from the media in this presidential election.

“MomsRising is working to bring together millions of people who share a common concern about the need to build a more family-friendly America. Started in May of 2006, MomsRising has gained over 140,000 citizen members and is rapidly growing. More than 85 national and state organizations have signed on to be aligned with MomsRising.”

The group organized a petition of over 21,000 signatures, mostly mothers, to deliver this letter to Sarah Palin. The letter emphasizes that they are pleased that a woman, rather, a mother is on the forefront of this election and may very well become the next Vice President of this country. More to the point, this letter lays out specific issues of crisis level importance facing women, rather, mothers and children right now in this country. It asks Palin what she will do to support women and children. It doesn’t challenge her beliefs, her family or any of her personal or past issues. This letter asks Sarah Palin to list her goals for helping mothers and children.

MomsRising intended to hand deliver the petition of signatures asking that she read a letter, which was attached. Palin’s office wouldn’t accept the letter. They claimed that they had no process to receive letters like that and they were not able to accept it.

This story was written about on DC Metro Moms by Devra Renner who also writes here.

The story was also covered on the local evening news.

Canadian blogger and mother, Catherine Connors of Her Bad Mother, was asked to cover-up recently on a WestJet flight from Vancouver to Toronto as she breastfed her four month old son. Connors, not one to take things lying down and also outraged at the treatment of a nursing mother, blogged about it here, and then talked about it here on the CBC news. (skip to minute 16)

We need more women championing for those of us who nurse our children. While I’m not personally a fan of letting my tube-sock boobs flap freely in the breeze, nor would I encourage anyone to do that, the point I make is that it is natural and NORMAL to breastfeed a baby. Most women at least attempt to cover up and are vaguely discreet while simultaneously wrangling a loose boob and a baby.

Sorry guys, but the actual purpose of these boulders is for nursing, not your own entertainment. We’ve gotten far too lackadaisical by giving babies bottles, so much so that we balk and gasp at a nursing mother in public as if that is wrong. What if we chastised women for giving bottles of formula?? I don’t think that will ever happen. If the mother of a three month old wants to go a park or the mall or fly on an airplane she shouldn’t feel any more ashamed to open her blouse than another mom feels to shake-up a bottle of formula.

There are other breastfeeding bloggers out there who keep up posted about their situations and encounters with un-breast-friendly folks. And another one can be found here.

For a complete list of breastfeeding laws in your state, click here.

It doesn’t hurt to know this either. Child’s Right to Nurse Act.

Lucy Noland is a recent addition to the Houston, Texas number one news team at KHOU-11.  She normally co-anchors the 5PM and 11PM news but this past weekend she has reported NON-STOP on the effects of Hurricane Ike on Houston and Galveston.  And she doesn’t even look tired, yet!

Hurricane Ike made landfall in Galveston, Texas last night around 3am CST as a very strong Category 2 storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

Direct TV is airing a live feed of the NBC affiliate of KHOU-News 11.

I live in Maryland and I have been watching the Houston news since about nine o’clock on Friday evening. She was reporting then. And still going at two o’clock in the morning when I last saw the television before falling asleep. She was still going this morning at nine o’clock. And still, now, at almost midnight on Saturday.

Throughout this entire storm Noland has been respectful and professional while conveying as much information as possible to all people in the Houston area.  Her concern is as evident as her reporting talent and professional manner.

Noland was born in Saigon, Vietnam.  While attending the University of Alaska Fairbanks she reported on the college radio station and later made the jump to television where she covered an erupting volcano and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  She has also anchored in New York, San Francisco and Detroit.

Source: Wikipedia, KHOU-TV

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KHOU.COM has current and up-to-the-minute information for those in the path of this storm.  They are asking for person with information to call them and assist in spreading the word.

What do you think ?

NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE

Two years ago Black Belt Mama wrote a very nice memorial to Ronald Tartaro and I vowed that I would make the same type of dedication to someone else when another September 11th rolled around.

Just this week on Twitter it was said that if we aren’t careful enough to remember it the right way we’ll start seeing 9/11 sales at the local big-box stores and that would be, unfortunate.

It was my final semester of college. I had just begun my senior year and the day was glorious really. I walked from my apartment in Rossyln to the Metro and then through the cool-morning-air-filled streets of Foggy Bottom to class and I remember looking at the sky and thinking that it was just a gorgeous day. I distinctly recall the simpleness of my feelings before it happened.

I was sitting in class when the token GW basketball player walked in and announced with dreadful casualness that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center; his mother lived in New York City and had just called him. That was his excuse for being late to class and really no one believed him. Over the course of the next half hour or so news spread and my teacher actually threw her hands into the air and said “I don’t know what is going on but I can’t teach with this happening,” and with that we left class. I went to my office on campus where I worked and soon learned the whole story.

I recall that it was a particularly frightening and lonely time.

I lived one mile from the Pentagon at the time.

Later that night a good friend of mine from High School who attended another nearby University called me and told me her much older half-sister had been on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

Lisa J. Raines was on American Airlines Flight 77.

I struggle to write this today not because of sadness or pain but because her family was private and they never wanted nation-wide recognition. It wasn’t their style. I fear I am doing them a disservice by writing this today, seven years later, but I doubt they will find it actually.

It is important that we not forget the people whose lives ended on this day seven years ago. I’m not one to say that they are all heros because my patriotism doesn’t extend in that way and none of those 2,996 people wanted to be a HERO on that day.

Project 2,996 strives to remember the lives of each individual and not the terrible, public way they were taken from us.

Lisa Raines was an incredibly dedicated pioneer in her field, working as a Senior Vice President of Government Affairs at Genzyme, a biotechnology company. Her untimely death left an irreplaceable void in the lives of her husband, father, mother, two brothers and sister. Not everyone needs a verbose memorial and Lisa’s family would appreciate a brief tribute.

Thank you for taking the time to read this today and to remember one of the lives that ended too soon, seven years ago today.

The reason I don’t particularly like politics, (same goes for religion) is that it has a tendency to be rather DIVISIVE.

There is a blog I have read on and off for years and just today she wrote about Joy Bahar’s comments last night on Larry King Live. I was excited to read her comments but my excitment was short-lived when I saw that she had the exact opposite reaction that I did. I was all, “Oh! So you LIKE her!” and then I closed the window and wondered how I would ever relate to her again. I don’t need to have all like-minded friends, quite the opposite, I just want people to wise-up and realize that I am right. that not everyone is as they seem and perhaps they should inform themselves as voters, not just vote by party or by appearance.

Joy mentioned in a rather off-color way that perhaps Sarah Palin brought a certain sex-appeal to the Presidential election. Okay. Let’s take a step back and look at that. Sex-appeal + Presidential Election? Hum.

Marketing and media attention have taken a very unfortunate front seat in recent elections and it diverts out attention from the actual issues and actual debates of whether or not a candidate is qualified to really deliver and lead in office.

Back to my original point of Palin’s sex-appeal: Of course there’s sex appeal! Look back a mere two decades, Ronald Reagan? George Bush? Bill Clinton? George Bush again? Al Gore? None of those men are any more attractive than the other. Going bald. Going Grey. Physicalities just are not an issue for those men. But BAM! Throw a woman into the mix and suddenly appearance matters or at least, it get noticed. I think as a nation, as a species, we perceive men and women differently and we are much more apt to judge a woman and make comments about her appearance than we are a man. Right or wrong that is human nature.

But! We must move on. FAST. It doesn’t matter what side you are on or how you have voted in the past. While we are busy talking about Palin’s sexy-librarian-style we aren’t discussing how to end the war in Iraq and bring a lot of young men home. While we are discussing her decision to birth a baby with Down’s Syndrome we aren’t talking about how to provide affordable health care for Americans, equal and high quality education for children born in inner-cities, revamping the Social Security system so that it will be there for our children.

We are a nation saturated with media-sensations. It’s time to grow up and stop looking at the book’s cover and actually read the book.

More from Larry King last night:

For more reader opinions about Joy Bahar visit Watching The View.

My dollin’ readers, I apologize for the unannounced absence last week. Two things: I had some house work being done and my home was in total chaotic shambles and I still had to live in it with an eight-month-old-crawling-standing-eating-teething baby. And, the only news out there in regards to women was Sarah Palin and I just didn’t want to contribute any more to the (endless) debate on her record and lack thereof and also her personal life and how much it matters. I am however, writing my thoughts and feelings on my personal site, (as of publication I haven’t completed it yet, but feel free to check back) but I didn’t feel I could contribute anything newsworthy. So, here we are ! I am back!

I think this upcoming election is very important to women in America. I have visited each candidate’s website in search of a list of ISSUES that they feel are relevant to women. I wanted to discuss some of them here.

I make no secret about the fact that I am a Democrat and I will be voting for Obama. However, I’d like to bring to light each candidates stance on issues as they relate to WOMEN. For the sake of discussion and information-sharing.

On initial comparison, my first visit to each of these websites, Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin, Vote for Change versus Country First, what I found there was actually very telling in and of itself.

Obama’s website has a very well marked pull-down menu of ISSUES. One of those issues is WOMEN. Here you will find a brief description of Obama’s goals and concerns as they are related to women in this country. It includes health care, social security, reproductive rights, business issues, education and more.

Then I went to John McCain’s website hoping to find a similar set-up so that I could do a side-by-side comparison of the candidates. I can’t do that. Because McCain’s website not only doesn’t have a clear link to his stance on issues, but when you do find a link to the issues, it DOES NOT INCLUDE WOMEN AS AN ISSUE.

Hear me out ladies, John McCain’s website doesn’t specific any issues specific to women in this country. He isn’t interested in addresses the concerns of women, arguably the largest voting demographic in this nation.

On a slightly more annoying note, when you go to McCain’s website a video starts automatically playing showing McCain as a POW. When I went inside the website to several links once again, the video started automatically and I had to stop it in order to search for the information I wanted. To me this means he doesn’t have the information to back-up his plans and he isn’t interested in giving us (women) voters a sense of his politics.