** Guest Blog about Anorexia

Please take some time and read about this guest's struggle with anorexia. -Nomz & Sazaran.

Tracey Gold: "Anorexia is such a self-consuming, selfish disease. It's all about you. Becoming a mother, all of a sudden it wasn't about me anymore."

When is the age where we start to think that, the girl in the TV needs to be me? You suddenly start to examine yourself in a different way then ever before. You feel the need to be this certain way that society has hand delivered to our minds. I never started thinking about weight until I was around 17. My boyfriend in high school seemed to control my every thoughts. I was 5'5 and at a healthy weight 110. He started to say, God, your so fat. I never even felt that way before he had ever said it. He would tell me over and over and over again. So what's a girl to do that's only 17? I started to starve myself. At first I didn't really see a difference. Then weeks started to flutter by and I took a look in the mirror. I was suddenly at 90 pounds. My jeans hung loose to my hips. A size zero was so big for me. I felt satisfaction, "he'll never call me fat again, I thought in my mind." When I saw myself, I would always find some sort of fat on my bones, and feel the urge to starve myself even more. I started to get so tried all the time. All I wanted to do was sleep. I hardly know how I made it through my senior year.
So, I graduate and guess what that looser I was dating broke up with me for one of my "friends." I was drained from the top of my head down to my toes. I felt like my whole world came crashing down. So I continued to starve myself. By this time my family was getting pretty concerned for my life. I was now at 79 pounds with my clothing on. My life was dangling before my eyes and I couldn't get a grip on myself. I felt like I was in control when I would starve myself. I would think in my mind that food was gross. I couldn't stand to watch anyone eat. As I sit here and write this story I still can't believe how stupid it all sounds. I mean eating ='s life, not eating ='s death.

To make a very long story short I did move to California and I started to get over my anorexia. I wasn't until I became pregnant with my little girl that I found out how wonderful food can really be. I has been a battle to not get back to that thinking again. I look at my body and I know the easy way out of loosing the weight would be to go back to my bad habits. I struggle every day not to be that person and remind myself that I did just have a baby and the weight will come off as long as I continue to work out and eat healthy. Anorexia is something that I hope I will never go back to. I wish I knew what I know now though. I would have never let that kid tell me what I should or shouldn't look like. Not that I'm trying to blame him for my actions but, I probably never would have even thought of being super super skinny with my bones hanging out. If you or someone you knows has anorexia it isn't the end of the road. But, they have to be ready to change.

Self Help Books
Dying to Be Thin: Understanding and Defeating Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia--A Practical, Lifesaving Guide by Ira M. Sacker and Marc. A. Zimmer

Feeding the Fame: Celebrities Tell Their Real-life Stories of Eating Disorders And Recovery by Gary Stromberg, Jane Merrill, and Wendy Naugle


Hotlines
Anorexia Nervosa & Related Eating Disorders, Inc.
(541) 344-1144

Eating Disorder Referral and Information Center
(858) 481-1515

National Eating Disorders Association
1-800-931-2237

♫ Nightmares 101

“Nightmares are anxiety attacks while dreaming.”

I had a nightmare last night. A bad one. One that gave me tremors, chills, and anxiety. The kind that had me reaching for my phone and going through my list of contacts trying to think of who’d be awake at 3:42am to tell me all is well. My glass of water empty-and I was too terrified to make the short walk to the bathroom to fill it up to make it better. I hate nightmares.

I have a process when I get them though, my mental game, if you will, on how I overcome the attacks on dream-hood. I would assume my parents encouraged most of these habits, though the only one coming directly from them was:

Go get a drink of water, go back to bed, pray about it.

It always worked, except I remember being terrified that something was going to eat me in the kitchen. I was so scared once, I remember waking up in the middle of the night on top of the kitchen counter. I assume I was hiding from the floor monsters after attempting to gulp a glass of water.

Here I am, mid-twenties, still cowering from monsters.

My dream last night:

Somebody attacked the biggest part of my heart by stealing the two things in this world most precious to me. I remember, I was specifically walking out of a gas station after getting them their favorite chocolate milk, and having to watch them drive away with somebody else. I woke up shaking and paralyzed. One of the things I immediately do post-nightmare, is make my own ending. It always helps me come to a resolution, and move on. “Rewrite the movie” so to speak. Last night, no matter how I rewrote it, it didn’t end well. Luckily, I had allowed one of them to sleep with me, and woke up with her literally sleeping with her head on my shoulder and her fingers entwined in mine, which is the only reason I survived the night, I’m sure of it. I lost three hours of sleep though, even with the fact that we were completely protected…ammunition, guard dogs, cops next door and all. ;)

My biggest fear is losing my children-or them suffering in some form that I am unable to protect them from. Which explains the reason I had it, but not the timing. Last night I read a happy book before bed, ate a healthy meal, and got plenty of cuddle time. No movies or TV last night at all. So why the attack?

The random part about this dream that tells me that it wasn’t some prophetic message? Randall McDaniel, a recent Minnesota Vikings hall-o-famer was the guy that did it (in my dream of course). Obviously, that’s not true. Nor will it ever be. Knowing that it was completely false, I did some research today. I really hope that what I found, helps you overcome your night terrors and battles:

~When your children get them, hold them tight, and reassure them that it was just a dream. The younger we are, the harder it is to understand.
~Check your medications. If you’re nightmares have become more frequent, could it be relative to the medications you’re taking? It’s a pretty common side affect.
~Rewrite your nightmare (I AM doing something right! Until I read this article, I thought I was crazy!). You can create your own ending, tricking your mind to assume everything is ok.
~Talk about it!
~Most nightmares are stress related, or stem from a traumatic occurrence in the past, or one that you worry about regularly. Find a way to get over that event: dream less about it!
~Alcohol or Illness may be a factor. If you went to bed slightly medicated or intoxicated, it will probably have an effect on your dream cycle.

Dream Sweet!

Yours Truly,
Nomz

Sources for Dream Research found here:

http://www.themedguru.com/articles/nightmares_symptoms_cure_and_prevention-8614097.html
http://www.mothernature.com/Library/Bookshelf/Books/16/158.cfm
http://children.webmd.com/guide/nightmar

To Vaccinate or not to vaccinate?

There has been much hoopla over the flu shot and vaccines lately, in regards to their adverse effect on children. The scary thing here is, each are supposed to protect us from diseases and sickness, but what if they are doing the exact opposite? What if they are hurting our children?

The more I've been reading about the flu shot, the more I find information about a link from it to autism. An estimated 1 our of every 90 children that are autistic. Why have the numbers become so common? Could it be that we are over anxious to pump our children with unknown chemicals and so this the outcome? Please, mothers with autistic children, do not read this blog and think I am pointing fingers. I am only trying to glean as much information about the flu shot and other vaccines as I can, before I make the decision to subject Malachi to them.

This is the information I have dug up in an attempt to educate myself, please give me your thoughts!

Found at Associated Content, a study has been done on a group (or maybe a few) of Amish in which no flu shot has been administered. Where they "should have found nearly 200 cases of Autism" (I'm assuming this is based on population) "only 3 cases were found. One was a Chinese girl that had been vaccinated in China, and when brought to America was vaccinated again, another was an Amish child that was vaccinated, and the third was of unknown cause. It was later found that the third Amish child lived in an area of an old mercury mine."

So, the connection here seems to be mercury. I do remember my teacher telling me about the little silver ball at the tip of a thermometer and that I should never allow it to touch my skin. The issue with mercury is that the body cannot process it, so it just stores it in the kidneys or brain-- causing all sorts of problems. This is the reason that pregnant women and babies should not eat tuna, the mercury content can be dangerously high. There are multiple articles and studies that support both sides of this heated debate. Here is something to think about (from the article mentioned above), "... the testing paid for by the pharmaceutical companies seems to be conclusive that there is no connection between vaccines and autism."

My step-uncle, who is a nutritionist, opposes vaccines (When I asked him his opinion of getting the flu shot he said, point blank, "HELL NO.") and hasn't had a shot since he was 16 said to me, "What do you do if your fish is sick? You don't pump him with chemicals to get better, you change his water. So, if your body gets sick, you change what goes into it- you eat and drink healthy."

The main questions he recommends to ask are: Do you know what the shot contains? What are the sources of the stuff in the shot? And, really, do we know?

So what do we do instead of getting a shot? "Be proactive." Ed says, "Wash your hands. It sounds simple enough, but it's the basis of all good hygiene. Think in terms of food, air and water. Number one, eat healthy. Get rid of all processed and white food. Live off of grainy and live foods. Take your vitamins. Number two, get an air purifier in hour house. Number three, drink lots of water; don't drink soda."

What are other ways of being proactive? Ed suggests grape seed extract, super lysine plus, garlic and vitamin c as alternatives to the flu shot. Visit your local health store and ask them about other alternatives for prepping your body against the flu season.

All this being said, I know that there is a line between being smart, doing your research and making and educated decision and believing everything you read or hear, panicking and never letting your child out of the house again. I'm trying to avoid the latter. I do hope this information helps. Please, as I said, let me know your convictions or thoughts. Have you vaccinated your child? Did he/she have the flu shot?

Check out Moms Against Mercury and Mercola.com.

**GIVE me the splendid silent sun!

Please give our Wyoming Winter Guest Blogger some love and take a listen! :) It's a good one!
~Nomz and Sazaran

Listening to the birds whistle, sing and play outside of my window this afternoon, you would think it was the first day of Spring, not Sunday, October 04, 2009. Why are they so damn happy? The weather today is over cast, cold and yes snowing. And yet for the past few hours I couldn’t help but notice the little suckers dancing about as if there were no tomorrow. What’s up with that?

Steve Martin once said, “A day without sunshine is like, you know, night.” Very funny Steve, but I think you are on to something. When the sun goes down we want to “power down” and go into hibernation mode. Our metabolism slows to a crawl. So on the 129 days a year in Cheyenne when the sun doesn’t shine, it seems quite natural for us to put on our PJ’s and just sit around with Charlie Manson looks on our faces. It just seems like the right thing to do. Do the birds know something we don’t know?

Lately everyone it seems has been more than happy to tell me that this winter is going to be the worst in 50 years. Where did they get their information? And why be so perky about it! In the book, “The Rural Life” the author, Verlyn Klinkenborg makes a very interesting observation about Wyoming; He says, “In Wyoming people talk as though winter were “out there” even now, lurking not in time but in space, being prepared somewhere in a shop or factory, awaiting only final assembly and shipment to the proper address.” Are these rumors of a hard winter preparing us for the inevitable?

I must admit that I am a just a tad bit grumpy and irritable today because I love my sunshine. I need my daily serving of Vitamin D! But now as I look out my window, fog is rolling in, and the wind is starting to blow. Winter is just around the corner. Were the playful birds today trying to teach me? Today my little friends reminded me of a poem by Walt Whitman entitled “Give Me the Splendid Silent Sun”

GIVE me the splendid silent sun, with all his beams full-dazzling; Give me juicy autumnal fruit, ripe and red from the orchard; Give me a field where the unmow’d grass grows; Give me an arbor, give me the trellis’d grape; Give me fresh corn and wheat—give me serene-moving animals, teaching content; 5 Give me nights perfectly quiet, as on high plateaus west of the Mississippi, and I looking up at the stars; Give me odorous at sunrise a garden of beautiful flowers, where I can walk undisturb’d; Give me for marriage a sweet-breath’d woman, of whom I should never tire; Give me a perfect child—give me, away, aside from the noise of the world, a rural, domestic life; Give me to warble spontaneous songs, reliev’d, recluse by myself, for my own ears only; 10 Give me solitude—give me Nature—give me again, O Nature, your primal sanities!
So for now I am going to live every hour of the day and night like an unspeakable miracle, winter, spring, summer or fall!

*Ghost Blogger

Life demands inspiration.

Hinging on Nomz's blog about being optimistic, I thought I would share this little inspirational story. It's all over YouTube, but I think it just might be worth more than one view:




Have a great weekend, dear readers! :)

♫ Negativity is the easy way out.

Negativity is lazy. Anybody can find fault in somebody, because nobody is perfect. The real challenge, is glass-half-full lifestyle. Sometimes, the hardest thing to do in life, is find something good, when everything is bad.

“Being happy doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It just means you’ve chosen to look past life’s imperfections.”

I am a happy person. My sister, and a few of my friends known as the soul chargers, are generally happy people. I’ve tried to surround myself with people that can put a good spin on any situation. Of course, not all people are positive people. That’s ok! Of course we love you anyway. But you’ve officially been deemed: Eeyore Friends.

To my Eeyore’s:

Life isn’t nearly as bad as it seems. Even though you continuously have to pin your tail back on, drag your nose out of the mud, dig to find the positive, and just really have a hard time with life, we love you anyway! I mean honestly, Eeyore is like…everybody’s favorite Pooh character, right?! I’m just begging you to look around, and of the 10 negative things you found on somebody’s Facebook page, outfit in the mall, voice on the phone, the bad boy drama or girl drama…find one positive. Just one. As in: something you love about yourself. Something you love that’s going on in your life. OR even better; something you love about the thing in front of you that’s got you buggin’ and gripin’. It’s hard. It’s really, really hard sometimes. It’s just a challenge, from me to you. Me begging, even. Negativity is soooooo easy to carry around, and faults are so easy to find; the real challenge is finding the good in something that has you spinning the wrong direction.

Do me a favor. Since we allow you to comment anonymously: do so. Tell me about something that drives you NUTS. Something you vent about every day to somebody, and post it. Then, put PS….”but_____”. Example: “All she talks about his how hard her life is, when she doesn’t even realize what I am going through, or cares to ask! “ –anoymous. PS. “she has the most amazing voice when she IS griping though”.

Please?

Yours Truly,
Nomz

Greedygreedygreedy

An Ecclesiastes moment, I haz it. (“Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.”)

Maybe it's because I'm in America and have every little necessity at my finger tips, or maybe it's because I'm a girl and I like fashion... either way, I've been finding myself overwhelmed by things as of late. And by overwhelmed, I do mean that I'm not finding it at all enjoyable.

Do you ever feel that way?

Driving to the mall to exchange a pair of jeans, I just watched the businesses zoom past... all full of things. Cars, cell phones, clothes, sex toys, vices of all sorts and shapes. All screaming out with their slogans and bright colors to keep us from feeling like we can live without them. Really, what did the world do before such vain and unimportant (in the whole scope of l-i-f-e) stuff? If I could, I think I would like to be shipped off to Africa or India for a few weeks. Live life with bare essentials, if only to remind myself that it is not about how many cute tops hang in my wardrobe, how well my cell phone gets reception or how shiny my hair can be. The meaning of true happiness, I'm sure, reveals itself when there is nothing to distract one from its still, small voice.

While in Africa, my dad once offered to buy a McDonald's hamburger and shake for an African. The gentleman politely refused. We asked him why and he replied, "If I have one now, it will be the only thing I can think of. I do not need it." Oh, to have that kind of self-control and appreciation for the simple things!

A domino maze, that's what it is. You can tip-toe around but once you bump into one little black dress and red leather heels, it's all over. More more more or "Gimme gimme gimme". It doesn't just stop with those two items; you need jewelry, a nice bag, new makeup. With the newest DVD to come out, you also need the newest DVD player, the nicest highest definition TV and a cherry oak entertainment system. Baby Einstein isn't enough, Signing Time isn't enough; how will baby learn without his ABC train? His shapes and colors blocks? His Bilingual Musical and Words Table Deluxe?????

Maybe I don't have to go across the world to get this revelation. I would like to just strip down- get rid of superficial belongings and focus on what is truly holding me in one piece: My God, my son and my family. Surely, contentedness doesn't come wrapped in plastic with an orange price tag. But, as I look around, I really don't know what I could live without! Ahhh, the madness!

I'm not saying that a life of hard work and dedication does not deserve to reap the rewards. But, for me, I'm feeling the need for a little bit of a spring.... er, Fall cleaning. Attitude more than accessories- when it comes right down to it. Be content with what I have, not what I need.

Philippians 4:11
"...I have learned how to be content (satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or disquieted) in whatever state I am. "