Physical / Emotional Illness

In recent weeks I have felt severely ill in the physical realm.  I have been coughing for days –and also I am even coughing up phlem. My body has  been severely weakened and my energy level has been extremely low.  Many days I have spent much of the day in bed resting with no capacity to get any work done at all.   My body has burned for hours on end, and I have had a very hard time falling asleep.  In addition my constipation has become extremely painful. 

I knew the illness was emotional more than physical because I never had a fever.  And once I realized that the physical illness was caused by my inability to separate from my family of origin in an emotional sense, at least I knew what the problem was.  Once I identified the problem, then I could begin working on a solution. 

I had a hellish experience seeking assistance from a public health facility in Miami-Dade County on Friday.   The experience left me frightened, aggravated, anxious, and tense.  It made me realize that essentially I cannot receive any medical care at all if I had to depend on the public health system.  I am thinking that I might spend the money for a private female physician in the area so that I can get actual service including medical care.

I arrived there at 8:30 a.m. and first I waited in line to have my number called, only to realize I was in the wrong area.  I was in the primary care area, not the mental health area.  Once I got to the mental health area, I waited an hour before requesting service at 9:30 a.m..  It took me another hour to get service, and then the bureaucratic nightmare began.  On the phone I was told that I could use my tax return as proof of income since I am not currently working.  When I got to the desk, the clerk informed me that since I am not currently working, I cannot use my tax return as proof of income.  She also said that I could not use my credit card statement as proof of address.  

Then I told her I was in a transitional housing program.  She asked me which one I was in, and I told her Heaven on Earth Foundation.  She said the Foundation would have to fax over a letter that would serve as my proof of residence.  Julia did that for me promptly.  Luckily I also brought my bank statement as an additional proof of residence, and instead the clerk reluctantly took my bank statement as proof of income.  She questioned me about  the $5,000 payment that my mother had given me, and I told her that was my last available income.  She also questioned me about the $75 check to HOEF, which she described as “weird.”  I told her it wasn’t weird –that HOEF had recently instituted a new policy that all residents had to pay $75 a month toward utilities. 

Finally the bureaucratic problems were settled, and I began filling out mountains of paperwork.  I filled out a detailed description of my medical conditions and of my psychological issues.  I told the clerk that I had to leave by 2:30 p.m., and asked her if she could please arrange for me to see a psychiatrist before then.  I was waiting….and waiting….and waiting some more.  I was bored out of my wits, and I later joked to Cheryl that if I had the energy, I could have read the whole history of Cuba in Spanish while I waited for an appointment.  I went to the cafeteria, where they served Southern food consisting of catfish, vegetables with spices, and also a potato salad.  The food was unfamiliar to me but good. 

I called Bev and told her it looked like after all my effort I wouldn’t even get to see a doctor.  Finally around 2 p.m. I was ushered in to see the nurse practitioner.  She was the rudest health care professional I have ever encountered.  She berated me for not making an appointment, and I told her I did make an appointment.  But in mid-July I called up and received an appointment…for September 23. Her attitude was extremely nasty and made me feel profoundly uncomfortable.  She treated me like an intruder, not a patient in need of care.  She rushed through everything and made no attempt to connect with me as a human being.  She gave me a diagnosis of depression to get me out of her office as fast as possible, and she shut me down when I tried to tell her I also have anxiety and PTSD.  I am certain that she never bothered to read anything that I wrote down of my physical illnesses and of my psychological condition.

She grew angry and hostile when I asked her to fill out the form for STS.  She told me that she could not fill out the STS form for me today.  She asked me if I could afford to pay for her to fill out the paperwork, and I said yes.  Then she informed me that it would cost me $50 to fill out three pages of paperwork for STS.  She offered to have me make an appointment to return and fill out this paperwork.  But unfortunately I could not do that because Bev would have to drive me to this appointment, and Bev does not know her schedule from day to day.  I have to also come back to meet with the medication assistance program person there so I can have my prescription assistance for Seroquel through AstraZenica transferred to this pharmacy.  And I have to pick up my medicine as well. 

I dread the thought of coming back to this awful place which made me so stressed and tense.  The physical and emotional exhaustion associated with this public health facility was the last straw that pushed me over the edge into a state of physical illness.  I was soon reduced to coughing and a cold and no energy at all.   For me, who was previously accustomed to the comfort and luxury of private medical care, it was very eye-opening to see just how inefficient this public health service was.  I realized that it seemed designed to frustrate and humiliate the consumer and to deter them from returning for additional service.  I realize that the thought of returning here was so emotionally upsetting to me that I inwardly cancelled my previous plans to return here for a gynecological check-up, dental care, and primary care doctor.  I inwardly decided that I would return here for STS – and possibly a gynecologist so I can get my birth control pills renewed.  But I would generally avoid this place like the plague.

I reflected on how this public health facility creates and fosters an atmosphere of dependence and powerlessness among its clients.  You see all these young women coming in with multiple babies to register for services with Women, Infants, and Children.  These women come with their babies and often their mothers to spend all day to wait for service.  And a woman who is forced to waste her whole day seeking medical care for herself and her children does not have the time or energy to look for a job.  Also a woman could lose her job if her child got sick, and she was forced to wait all day to bring her sick child to the doctor.   The atmosphere in this place was thoroughly demoralizing and disempowering.

Meanwhile I continued waiting for my medicine to arrive and grew increasingly anxious that it appeared to be nowhere in sight.  I called up the pharmacy in Delray which had sent it in the mail, and they confirmed that they did indeed send it.  The pharmacy suggested that maybe I should call the local post office and see if they had my package. I tried to make a phone call to seek directory assistance and get the phone number of the local post office.  I was soon informed that I could not dial directory assistance on my phone because my $30 a month 1,500 minutes of text and phone calls doesn’t include directory assistance.  I added another $11 to my phone so I could make this phone call.  I got a national 1-800 number for the post office, and they found the phone number for the local post office.  I called this  number around 4 times, and the post office never answered.  Luckily I later found out that my medicine had arrived at Gisel’s house, and I felt immense relief about this.   

C had previously mentioned to me that she no longer qualified for Medicaid.  Apparently now Medicaid is reserved for pregnant women, families with children under 18, and elderly adults over aged 60.  So by reserving Medicaid only for pregnant women and mothers, the government has now given many frustrated young women an extra incentive to become pregnant.  The young woman is even more likely to view a baby as a meal ticket if pregnancy is her only way to get any kind of medical care.  The government is virtually destroying the incentive for the young woman to stay in school, work, and use her brain by effectively penalizing women who make the responsible choices in life.  Cheryl said to me that many women have babies in order to get Medicaid, food stamps, and also cash assistance.  So the result is the government is encouraging poor women to remain dependent by becoming pregnant rather than trying to better themselves by pursuing a college education and a job.  This policy should be changed immediately so that women know they can still qualify for Medicaid even if they are working or studying. 

It seems that now I am an informal free banker for my fellow residents at HOEF.  Last week I loaned $360 to Bev and Kristin for their car tags and gas and nearly $40 to C for a router.  Today I loaned C $107 so she could buy a computer monitor.  I am really happy to help my fellow residents at HOEF in this way, and actually in Jewish culture we have a service called the Hebrew Free Loan Society that provides interest-free loans to Jews in need.  So it seems I am the free loan service a HOEF, and it is my pleasure to help everyone this way.  My attitude is that if I can afford to help others, I will do it cheerfully and happily.

Tisha B’Av in a transition house

I felt weaker and less energetic today, and Julia wondered why.  I had half-forgotten that tonight was Tisha B’Av, the saddest day on the Jewish calendar.  Tisha B’Av is the climax of three weeks of mourning in the Jewish calendar.  It is a time when traditional Jews refrain from getting married, cutting our hair, and listening to pleasant music, among other customs and laws.  These examples of mourning are intensified during the Nine Days, when we stop doing laundry, taking pleasant baths, and eating meat and wine except on the Sabbath.  We mourn because the First and Second Temples were destroyed on Tisha B’Av, and we believe that the holiness of the entire world was dramatically diminished by the destruction of both Temples.  We believe that not only the future of the Jewish nation but the destiny of the world was forever altered on these days with the loss of our direct form of spiritual connections to G-d. 

The  mourning is climaxed with the 24 hour fast on Tisha B’Av from sundown to sundown.  Marital relations and bathing are also forbidden on this day.  Since Torah study is considered the primary pleasure in Jewish life (aside from eating), Torah study is also prohibited on this day except for reading the saddest portions of the Hebrew Bible and Talmud.  I cannot fast largely because I take psychiatric medications which require me to eat.  On the night of Tisha B’Av, we Jews are commanded to sit on the floor and go to the synagogue.  We sit in the synagogue listening to the haunting chanting of Eicha, the Book of Lamentations, which is read in a mournful tone to match its heart-rending subject. 

For the first time since I became an observant Jew in 2000, I had no way to go to a synagogue on Tisha B’Av.  And so I simply read the Book of Lamentations in my room, and then read many other Jewish articles on the Shoah (Holocaust) and other similarly uplifting topics.   The Book of Lamentations tells the horrific story of a nation bereft, where the infants are dying of hunger at their mothers’ breast, and where desperate mothers are driven to eat their own children.  It also tells the tale of a nation shattered by the destruction of its holiest site, the Temple, and by the forcible exile of its people from their homeland. 

Judaism says that these events are Divine punishments for Jewish sins – and I would say in response that there is no question the Jewish people have sinned grieviously, both in the land of Israel and in exile.  But I would add that there is no ‘sin’ grave enough to make us deserve such horrendous cruelty.  So I depart dramatically from the traditional Jewish rendering of this day.  And yet on this day, like no other, I long for connection with my Jewish people. I love everyone in the HOEF so dearly, and I feel welcomed and loved by everyone so much.  But still my heart yearns to be with my nation on this day of mourning for our national tragedy.  And this day is said to be a day when Jews pray for internal unity, or Achdus, and Ahavat, or love, because the division between Jews has been the cause of our destruction throughout our  history. 

Well we Jews continue to be plagued by 2,000 years of genocidal hatred.  It is painfully clear to me that the world has learned nothing from the Shoah, the destruction of the European Jews. The hatred and terrorism against Jews continues unabated, whether from radical Islam and the PLO in Israel or from constant attacks on the Jews in Europe and South America.  The world does nothing to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon that would wipe the Jews off the map because I think most of the world secretly wishes for the end of the Jews.   And tragically I don’t think I could ever imagine a world without Jew-hatred.  Although I have lots of loving friends who support Israel and the Jews, I know you are a tiny minority in a sea of cruelty and hatred.      

I also believe that although Tisha B’Av contains many lessons which are specific to the Jewish nation, yet its wisdom has universal human application.  As sad as I feel about the Jewish national tragedy, I am happy to be spending my first Tisha B’Av in freedom.  I am a free person who is not being emotionally and verbally terrorized by my family of origin for the first time in my life.  And so my intense mourning for the Jewish national calamity is balanced by a profoundly deep sense of gratitude to Hashem, our G-d, for having given me the strength to liberate myself from captivity.  I am also thankful beyond words to the people in this transition house who have stood by me every moment of my struggle for freedom: C, A, R and her daughters, and of course Julia, Gisel, Marie, and Ibis. 

And I think it is clear to all compassionate human beings, regardless of religion or sex or income level or race, that our world is profoundly broken.  We have a global epidemic of domestic violence and child abuse.  The worst global economic depression in 70 years has left tens of millions of people unemployed world wide, and nothing is being done to help these people find work and support their families.  Food prices continue to sky-rocket amid budget cuts for programs helping the poorest people in the U.S. and world-wide.  

The African continent has been shattered by the catastrophic effects of the AIDS epidemic, which has wiped out 30 million people and destroyed the extended family structure in many African countries.  In addition, genocide continues unabated in the Darfur region of Sudan for 8 years now with no end in sight.  Systematic rape and mass murder continue to be the lot of the desperate people in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and nothing is being done to protect the women and men of this country from systematic rape and abuse.  I just read that 26% of the men in the Eastern provinces of the Congo have been sexually abused at some point in their lives.  A tremendous famine also stalks 10 million people in large parts of East Africa, particularly conflict-ridden Somalia which is at the mercy of radical Islamist terrorists.  We also should not forget that extreme poverty continues to kill babies, children, and pregnant women in the developing world every hour of every day.

In Syria thousands of people have been slaughtered because they peacefully rose up for freedom.  The world has failed to meaningfully condemn these crimes against humanity, let alone verbally support the freedom struggle of the Syrian people and their legitimate demand for regime change.  The Syrian people may yet free themselves from their tormentors, and yet they will not forget that the world abandoned them in their time of suffering.  Indeed for last Friday, the first Friday of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, the Syrians had a slogan: “G-d is with us.”  Syrians came up with this slogan because they are sickened that the free world and the Arab world is not on their side.  The same moral bankruptcy that characterized the global indifference to the slaughter of the Iranian freedom fighters in 2009 has returned in a new and ugly form in the world’s deliberately callous non-response to the crimes in Syria. 

There is no simple or single answer to this global trauma.  But I think the beginnings of an answer lie in a rededication to the sanctity of all human life, regardless of the person’s gender, race, religion, or income level.  I think it starts with human beings coming together in solidarity to support one another.  It starts with everyone reaching out beyond their comfort zone to help someone of a different race or religion. It begins with a  recognition that we are all responsible for one another, and that we cannot remain silent in the face of global atrocity, poverty, genocide, and war.    

Reflections on Emotional Abuse Statistics

August 2, 2011

I found some statistics that measured the scope of emotional abuse and was glad to discover two things.  One, these statistics exist.  Two, emotionally abused and neglected children like me were finally being removed from the home rather than simply left to suffer in silence and captivity.  In 2006, 1.25 million reports of child abuse or neglect were filed, representing 1 out of every 58 children in the United States.  Interestingly, reports of neglect were more common than reports of abuse.  61.7% of reports concerned child neglect, as compared to just 44% concerning child abuse.  I would have expected to see the reverse result, namely that child abuse was more common than child neglect.  Also the numbers add up to 105.7%, which suggests that 5.7% of the reports mentioned both abuse and neglect.

553,300 kids were reported as abused in 2006.  148,500, or  26.8% of the abused kids were reported as having suffered emotional abuse.  I could immediately see myself in these statistics, as one of the more than ¼ of abused kids who suffered emotional abuse.  Once again, when you add up reports of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse together, you come to a sum much greater than 553,300.   The three forms of abuse together contain 608,500 reports.  Thus, you have at least 55,200 children who suffered more than one form of abuse – it could have been physical and emotional, physical and sexual, or emotional and sexual.  All three of these combinations are terrifying and horrifying.   

When you look at the cases of neglect, you start with 771,700 kids.  You find that emotional neglect cases make up 193,400 reports, or 25% of cases.  Interestingly, most cases of neglect involved one form of neglect: physical, emotional, or educational.  Educational neglect made up 46.7%, or nearly half of the cases of neglect. 

One final thought is that out of the 1.25 million cases of abuse and neglect reported in 2006, 12% represented the emotional abuse that I have suffered.  I am glad to have some statistics which help give us some sense of the scope and scale of the emotional abuse that I suffered as a child.  Emotional abuse and neglect together make up 341,900 cases, or 27% of all cases reported. 

Older statistics from 1999 give us very different figures.  First of all, the number of reported child abuse cases in 1999, or 3.244 million, was nearly 3 times as many as the number of abused kids reported in 2006, or 1.25 million.  I find it really hard to believe that the rate of child abuse fell by 61% in just 7 years from 1999 to 2006.  I also really doubt that the number of annually abused kids fell from 3.244 million in 1999 to 1.25 million in 2006.  When we consider that a large proportion of abuse cases involve young children under the age of 4 and infants under one year old, this drastic drop in such a short time makes me suspicious.  It frankly makes me wonder if people have just stopped reporting abuse more often than in the past.

Also in the 1996 reports, emotional abuse made up a much smaller proportion of the reported and substantiated cases than in 2006.  In 2006, emotional abuse made up 12% of total cases, compared with just 4% of reported cases and 3% of substantiated cases in 1996.  I am not sure why this variation would occur.

Interestingly rates of emotional abuse dramatically among reported cases varied in the English-speaking countries of Canada, England, Australia, and the United States.  A 2001 study of 135,000 child abuse cases in Canada found that a staggering 60% of cases were for emotional abuse.  It is really hard to imagine that emotional abuse was the primary complaint in over half the child abuse cases in Canada in a 3 month period 2001.  By comparison, in 2006, 27% of reported child abuse cases in the U.S. involved emotional abuse.  Also, in 1996, emotional abuse accounted for 15% of the cases in 43 U.S. states.  The rate of emotional abuse among cases in Australia was nearly twice as high as in England.  In 1997, 31% of substantiated child abuse cases involved emotional abuse, compared to just 15% of reported cases in England. 

Other statistics give us a better idea of the prevalence of emotional abuse in the English-speaking world.  41% of surveyed adolescents in a 1995 survey in Ontario said they had suffered emotional abuse at home.  A 1995 survey of 1,000 women aged 15 and older at Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, found that 36% had experienced emotional abuse in their childhood.  A similar proportion of women who had been emotionally abused in their childhood also had been emotionally abused in a relationship within the last five years.  36% had been emotionally abused at home, compared to 39% who had been emotionally abused by a partner in the past five years.   Thus, women who grow up in emotionally abusive homes like mine are at greater risk for ending up in emotionally abusive relationships than women who come from loving and stable homes.  I know that I am at risk for being a victim of emotional abuse in a romantic relationship by virtue of my history as a survivor of horrendous emotional abuse as a child.  So I avoid dating even though I have ended many emotionally abusive relationships very early on as I am quite aware of what the signs for emotional abuse and control in a relationship are.  For me the risks of ending up in an emotionally abusive relationship significantly outweigh the benefits of  finding a loving marriage. 

It is frankly staggering and appalling to contemplate the fact that 41% of adolescents suffered emotional abuse in Ontario in 1995.  That is nearly half of all teenagers.  Emotional abuse is much more prevalent than I would have assumed.  And you have to wonder why the rates of emotional child abuse are so high.  The consequences of emotional child abuse are devastating, as you can see clearly in my case.  

My first visit to the library in freedom

August 2, 2011

This morning I woke up and A announced that she was going to the library with her kids.  I asked her if I could join her, and she said sure.  I stumbled around and finally found my credit card bill which lists my new address.  I got in the car and we went to the library.  I have always loved being in a library. For me it has always been a safe place of intellectual exploration where I am not judged for my lack of social skills and where I am allowed to wander freely.

What was special about this visit to the library was that it was the first time I was not going to the library in order to escape an abusive home situation.  Previously every visit to the library represented a brief and all too fleeting respite from an intolerably abusive environment at hope, and I went to the library knowing that I would eventually have to go back to the prison of my parents’ or grandmothers’ house.  I had the comfort and security of knowing that I would be able to return home to freedom for the first time and that I wouldn’t be abused as soon as I came home.  I didn’t have to prepare myself mentally for abuse and assault as soon as I got home.  I could leisurely wander in the library without fearing a return home to terror and cruelty.

I went and looked around at books. I am a strong supporter of the Iraqi liberation movement to remove Saddam from power.  And so I took out two books on the Iraq War, one of which was about the U.S. military rescuing an abused Iraqi teenage boy who provided intelligence to the U.S. military – about his own father.   I also looked around at the small section of books on Russia.  I found Edward Crenkshaw’s masterful book about nineteenth century Russia, which I had read in 2008 during my recovery from the car accident where I almost died.  This book was amazing and it helped me to learn about nineteenth century Russia for the first time.  This book allowed me to acquire a whole new set of heroes – the Decemberists, or the democratic aristocrats who tried to promote a constitutional monarchy in 1825.  I decided not to take out this book because I had already read it.  I instead decided to take out another summary of Russian history which I haven’t yet read.  I chose another book on pacifism and World War I  – in homage to my hero Dr. Maikel Nabil Sanad, the imprisoned Egyptian pacifist and pro-Israel activist who has inspired me with his courage, compassion, and love for my people the Jews.  I am interested to learn more about pacifism because of my deep admiration for Dr. Nabil. 

Finally I went to the Spanish language section of the library, which was in some respects better and more comprehensive than the English language section.  I thought about taking out a Spanish language novel by Isabelle Allende.  But I decided instead to take out a book on the brief history of Cuba by Jaime Suchlicki, who runs the Cuban and Cuban-American Studies Program at the University of Miami.  I want to learn more about the history of Cuba, and I also would ideally like to work with Mr. Suchlicki on his program to support the Venezuelan democracy movement to peacefully remove the Chavez regime. 

 I had one of those only-in-Miami moments in the library.  I saw the voter registration application was only available in Spanish, and so I grabbed it to begin filling it out.  Seeing my clearly non-Hispanic appearance, the clerk reminded me that the application was in Spanish.  I told the somewhat bewildered clerk that I also know Spanish.  And so I submitted a voter registration application in Spanish to Miami-Dade County.  Cheryl said yes it is a good thing that I am bilingual.

Unfortunately, I forgot to give Beverly my new phone number, and so when Aisa tried to reach me on my cell phone, she called Bev.  Not having my new phone number, Bev tried repeatedly to reach me on my old number.   When I got home, Bev asked me why I was unreachable on my cell phone.  I thought for a minute and asked Bev which number she was using.  When she told me it was the old one, I apologized for having forgotten to inform her of my new cell number.  I also sent her a message containing my new number – from my current phone. 

After we went to the library, A said she wanted to go to Walmart and asked me if I wanted to come along or if I wanted her to take me home first.  I said that I hadn’t planned on to visit Walmart but that actually it might be good for me to go and pick up one of my medicines which is there.  I told her that it would take an hour for my prescription to be refilled and asked her if that was ok.  She said that was fine.  Looking for something to read without messing up my library books, I spotted A’s copy of the Diaro Las Americas newspaper in Spanish and asked her if I could read it.   She said sure, and so while A went food shopping with her kids, I spent a pleasant hour eating and reading a Spanish newspaper.  This way I was relaxing and at the same time re-orienting my brain back to Spanish so I can do Spanish-lanaguage research on domestic violence with the people at the University of Miami.

A also told me her story in brief.  She began dating her boyfriend / husband when she was just 15 years old.  He hit her and emotionally abused her throughout their eight-year relationship.  They moved in together after two years of dating when A was just 17 years old.  A gave birth to her son J when she was only 19 years old.  The couple married when J was five months old and then moved to Arizona together so that her husband could take a job in that state.  A year ago, A gave birth to her second child, a daughter.  When her daughter turned a year old, she decided to leave her husband and take her children back to Florida with her to live near her parents.  She decided not to seek a restraining order against her husband because she is keeping confidentiality and not sharing her location with her husband.  She is also communicating with her husband only via email so that he cannot pinpoint her location through cell phone conversations with her.  Her husband would like her to return with her kids to him in Arizona, but thank goodness he is far away from her and has no way to locate her and her children. 

And so A is a single mother of two young children, and she herself is only 23 years old.  I am very thankful to her for patiently waiting for me in the car with two small kids – at the library and at Walmart.  A is a lovely young woman and mother – and I like her very much.  I enjoyed sharing stories with each other and supporting each other. 

My inner emotional turmoil continues

August 2, 2011

I was thinking about the implications of many generations of abuse.  My facebook Ubi, who lives in the Phillipines with her mother and verbally abusive father, asked me if my family came from a ‘defective soul factory.’  I said no, my parents are both the products of many generations of abuse.  My mother is the third generation of abuse victims in her family of origin, dating back to her grandfather’s experiences in czarist Russia. 

My mother remembers her father, my maternal grandfather Joseph Weinberg, continually yelling at her and her sister Margie.  My late aunt Margie even wrote an essay in school about her father when she was around 9-10 years old calling him “the shouting man.” When my grandpa died, my mom said that her father shouted at her mother so much that she didn’t even realize her parents loved each other. 

I watched my grandpa die in front of me and was so grateful that I had the opportunity to say goodbye in person to him.  Once she made the decision to pull the plug on my grandfather, my grandma sat there tenderly hugging and embracing my grandpa, stroking his head and telling him she loved him.  My mother was shocked by her mother’s expressions of love and tenderness toward her father. 

I remember the way my grandma tenderly said goodbye to her husband, but my maternal grandpa constantly expressed love and affection toward me in emotional and physical ways.  I felt loved and embraced by him in a way that I have never felt from my own father.  I was grandpa’s oldest grandchild, and he treated me with a special degree of love, tenderness, and affection.  He used to take me to get Doritos and lemonade after school at Morrison’s when I was in first and second grade.  When I was in high school, he used to pick me up from school so often that my classmates thought he was my father.  Seeing my grandpa’s white Toyota in the parking lot, more than one classmate informed me that my dad was there to pick me up.   He also used to go running with me and being a physical ed teacher, he used to constantly also encourage me to swim and exercise to keep my body in shape.   Grandpa also had a great sense of humor, and after his death I made an album where I kept a picture of grandpa in his underwear.  When I went away to Brown University for my first semester at college, grandpa used to call me every week without fail to ask me when I was coming home.  He also used to send me a postcard that said,”I love you.  I miss you.” Every single week.

Unfortunately, I don’t think my mother received the same degree of love and affection from my grandpa that I did.  She also remembers clearly how her grandfather used to verbally and emotionally abuse his wife and daughter.  My great-grandfather Abraham Rosen verbally abused his wife, my great-grandmother, and his daughter, my grandmother, through constant intimidation and screaming.  My grandmother thinks that men should abuse women and that a marriage is abnormal if the man actually respects the woman.  My grandma thinks that because she grew up watching her mother being abused by her father and also suffered emotional abuse at the hands of her father.   My grandma was born in the United States in 1918, but her parents were born in Belarus in the 1890’s.  My great-grandmother was born in Minsk around 1895 or 1897, and my great-grandfather Abraham Rosen was born in Vitebsk in 1890.  My great-grandparents came to America separately as teenagers.  They met in America and married here.

My great-grandfather Abraham Rosen fled from his father, who was a cantor or chazzan in Vitebsk.   The official story is that my great-grandfather ran away from home because of an ideological disagreement with his father, because my great-grandfather was a socialist and my great-great-grandfather was an Orthodox Jewish clergyman.  And indeed it was quite common in late czarist times for Jewish youth in the Russian empire to embrace socialism as an alternative to the virulent anti-Semitism of the last two czars Alexander III and Nicholas II.  Alexander III ruled from 1881 to 1894, and Nicholas II ruled from 1894 to 1917.  But given the way that my great-grandfather abused his own wife and daughter, I believe  my great-grandfather ran away from home and fled to America because he was trying to escape emotional abuse at the hands of his own father.    

My father was the second generation of his family to suffer horrendous emotional abuse at home.  My dad was severely brutalized emotionally by his mother, who rejected him from birth because he was most likely the result of an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy.  My dad’s mother also had a tragic childhood.  Her mother died when she was only six years old, and she was temporarily placed in an orphanage by her father.  My dad’s mother spent her whole life grieving about the fact that the orphanage took her clothes away from her when she was six years old.  And my dad’s mother was also severely beaten by her step-mother, and thus she suffered a horrifically abusive childhood.  I feel sickened by the cruelty that my dad’s mother suffered as a child, but I am also outraged at the way that she brutalized my dad. 

So I am the product of 100 years of abuse dating back to czarist Russia on my mom’s side of the family.  I am the fourth generation to be abused on my mother’s side of the family and the third generation to be abused on my dad’s side of the family.  So I am overcoming the legacy of 100 years of abuse on both sides of my family of origin. 

My dear friend Kareem Amer in Egypt, the former political prisoner who served 4 years in prison and suffered horrendous child abuse at the hands of his Wahhabi radical Islamic father, is also the second generation in his family to be abused.  Kareem told me how his grandfather had suppressed his father by forbidding him to study theatre at university and forcing him to study agriculture instead.  His father in turn reacted to being forcibly suppressed by his own father by adopting radical Islam as his ideology.  His father imposed his radical Islamic ideology upon his wife and children by force.  His mother and sisters were forced to wear the niqab, a full body face covering which only shows the woman’s eyes.  His sisters were also subjected to female genital mutilation and then married off at young ages.  Kareem never saw his sisters again after they were married off. 

Kareem’s father and four brothers are adherents of the Wahhabi radical Islamic ideology.  Kareem renounced Islam, declared himself an atheist, and also spoke out forcefully against the radical Islamic oppression of women and Christians in Egypt.  Kareem was arrested and imprisoned for four years because he challenged the Egyptian regime’s treatment of women and Christians.  After his arrest, his father and four brothers publicly disowned him and called for his death, G-d forbid.   Kareem is considered an apostate under Islamic law because he has renounced Islam, and therefore under Islamic law he is automatically subject to the death penalty.  He has received death threats from radical Wahhabi Muslims.  But thankfully he is protected to some extent from the harassment of radical Muslims by his relative prominence as an Egyptian dissident and most of all by the support he receives from Western democracies. 

Last night my emotional turmoil continued.  After finishing my writing around 12:30 a.m., I went downstairs to eat and tried to go to sleep at 2 a.m.  Unfortunately, I continued to vomit and realized I would not be able to go to sleep easily.  Accepting the reality of my inner emotional turmoil, I decided to spend the next 1.5 hours from 2 a.m. to 3:30 a.m. conducting scholarly research on statistics about emotional abuse and on child abuse issues in the Arab world.  I found out many important things such as the fact that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, who took the throne in 2005 and has sought to challenge radical Islam in his country, is also attempting to tackle child abuse in Saudi Arabia. 

As I lay down to try to fall asleep, I found my stomach burning intensely from constipation and from grief and anger and sadness about my history as an abuse survivor.  I was able to go to the bathroom with some struggle, but physically and emotionally I didn’t feel comfortable.  I know that this is from the abuse in my past and not from anything going on in my present life, but still the feelings of depression and despair are hard to cope with.  I was frustrated that I did not fall asleep until 5:30 a.m. 

I was also haunted by the feeling that I have failed in my life.  I saw the reports about high school graduates who were headed to Brown and Harvard to major in international relations, and I remembered how calm, confident, and secure that I felt when I was in that position.  I thought that the world was my oyster and that as soon as I had left the abusive home environment behind, I would begin to flourish.  I never would have dreamed in my worst nightmares that my college experience would prove to  be more devastating for my self-confidence than the six years of abuse in high school and middle school at home and at school.  I never imagined that my dreams of a successful future as a Russian studies professor would be brutally shattered in my freshman year of college by a confrontation with a powerful Russian history professor.  

I made the mistake of publicly challenging this professor in class for his support of Stalinism, and not knowing I was not allowed to do this, I had my career completely destroyed. After receiving a B in this course where I knew as much as the professor, I realized my dreams of a Russian history professor career were finished.  In retrospect I now know that I made a mistake because of my profound social skills deficit or Asperger’s.  But I continue to feel that the price I was forced to pay, the destruction of my career, was far greater than the mistake I made.    

I discovered to my deep sorrow that the main skill needed for an academic career was the one skill that I have never been able to master: the ability to read social cues.  I was stunned to learn that my intellectual skills were considered a liability, not an asset, in the academic world.  I thought that academia was about intellect, and now I realize that actually intellectual skills are irrelevant in the academic setting.  I am continuing to mourn the destruction of my academic career dreams although increasingly I am accepting this situation with a sense of peace because I have come to understand that my vision of academia does not correspond to reality.

 I am realizing that perhaps I have another destiny intended for me as an intellectual advocate for emotional abuse and domestic violence victims, particularly in the Hispanic community in Miami.  As I continue to write about my experience, I am coming to embrace my destiny as an advocate for emotional abuse survivors.  I know that the only way I can redeem my experience as a survivor of 35 years of severe emotional child abuse is by helping other survivors.  I cannot change what my parents, academics, and business employers have done to me.  I cannot undo the horror of 17 years of rejection in academia and business for reasons beyond my control.  But I can use my experience to help other emotional abuse survivors, and I can use my Spanish language skills and comfort with Latin American culture to conduct research with people at the University of Miami to help design programs for abused Hispanic women and children here in Miami. 

And in the past month, lacking Internet access, I have been filling up journal after journal with my thoughts, feelings, and experiences about abuse.  I realize that I am in fact writing a book about my experiences as a survivor of emotional abuse.  I am hoping to publish this book in order to help empower other survivors of emotional abuse and domestic violence, particularly among my fellow Jews.   I can’t wait to share my experiences with the board of directors at HOEF and begin writing and speaking on the topic of emotional abuse. 

I also hope to write and speak on from my horrendous personal experiences in the office setting about the terrible disabilities associated with having a neurological social skills deficit called Asperger’s.  I want to show other people with Asperger’s that you don’t have to subject yourself to the horror of the office environment in order to make a living.  I want to demonstrate that actually a person like myself with Asperger’s is much better off not working in the office setting because success in the office environment depends entirely upon the one set of skills that we Aspies lack: the ability to read social cues.

PTSD returns with a vengeance

August 1, 2011

Saturday night was a living hell for me.  I was up all night throwing up because of PTSD, and I lost my appetite and I got physically and emotionally exhausted.  I called my best friend Elana and another friend Freddie for support, and Freddie told me I didn’t sound good.  I told him it was because my body does not yet know it is safe even though I am now in a physically safe environment.  The memories overwhelmed me to the point that I almost felt like I ceased to function completely.  It was a really terrifying feeling, and I really did not anticipate it happening to me. 

I thought I would immediately begin a job search as soon as I was able to pick up my stuff.  But I began to feel queasy as I passed by my parents house and my high school, and I knew something was wrong inside.  Later on I picked up my stuff at my grandma’s house.  I was hit with a triple whammy of memories from not one, not two, but three sources of abuse: my parents, my maternal grandma, and my high school.  I could almost feel my head spinning from the memories that were swirling inside my mind.  My body and mind were so overwhelmed that really I couldn’t begin to process all the sources of my inner distress.  Too many terrifying memories were hitting me all at once, and I began to feel a sort of internal collapse happening. 

I fell asleep to terrifying nightmares in which I was being chased by a murderer and barely escaped with my life.   I blocked out the remaining dreams because they were so scary.  Luckily I took a very easy day on Sunday and fell asleep easily on Sunday night and slept well.  I noticed my body beginning to recover once I gave it healing, nourishing food like oatmeal with milk.  I ate a yogurt and then a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with milk before falling asleep easily. 

Perhaps I should clarify that the Nine Days began on Saturday night.  Chances are, if you are not an Orthodox Jew, you  have no idea on earth what I am talking about.   So every year on the Jewish calendar, traditional Jews observe a three week period of mourning for the destruction of the First and Second Temples.  The First Temple was destroyed in 586 B.C.E., and the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 C.E.  You may well wonder why we would even care about an event which happened so many centuries ago.  Well, its because we Jews believe the Jewish people and the entire world were profoundly and permanently harmed on a spiritual level by the destruction of the physical location where Jews had the most direct access to G-d as we understand Him (or Her).

The mourning is particularly intensified during the Nine Days.  One of the most important observances of the Nine Days is that we don’t eat meat or wine except on the Sabbath.  So we have a dairy-only diet.  Jews are forbidden to do laundry and to engage in pleasurable bathing, although bathing for hygienic purposes is allowed.  Travel abroad except to Israel is prohibited, and starting new business ventures is discouraged.  The purchase of new clothes is also forbidden.  http://www.ou.org/torah/article/laws_and_traditions_of_the_nine_days

So I am going through my personal sorrow, and at the same time we Jews are mourning for our national sorrow for the destruction of the Temple.  The Hebrew word for destruction is Churban, and we are commanded under Jewish law to “zecher L’Churban”, to remember the destruction.  The destruction starts with of course the destruction of the First and Second Temples.  But many Jews also include in this period mourning for the Shoah, the destruction of European Jewry from 1933-1945 which is known as Churban Europe.  I feel that the lifetime of emotional, verbal, and psychological abuse to which I have been subjected at the hands of my family of origin is my own personal Churban, my own personal cycle of destruction.  So there is a strange congruence in the Jewish calendar between the intensification of my personal suffering and the remembrance of Jewish national suffering at this tragic time of the year. 

Yesterday we welcomed a new family into our transition house: Aisa and her 4 year old son Julian and infant daughter Sophie.  It is clear that little 13 month old Sophie has stolen the show and has brought laughter, light, and joy into all of our lives.  Her constant movement and her innocence are sources of hope for us all.  Of course we need to remember she is still an infant, so we want to make sure to try to keep her safe.  She is already trying to climb the stairs, and so we need a gate on the stairs to prevent her from that particular arena of exploration.  The house has been pretty well baby-proofed already, but we need to be extra careful to little hazards that could present themselves to Sophie.  We are also glad to have a little boy staying with us. 

 Today I was talking with one of my dad’s cousins about my family of origin.  She told me something that shocked me.  My closest friend on my dad’s side of the family, my uncle Phil, was someone that I have come to trust very deeply.  So I was stunned when she told me that she had seen uncle Phil hitting my dad’s mother.  She said she was told by aunt Sara that he was hitting my dad’s mother.  I have always regarded my dad’s mother as a pathologically evil person and my uncle Phil as a key ally and friend to me.  So the notion of Phil as a violent person is frankly shocking and hard to digest.  She also suspected that Phil might have hit his ex-wife Connie. Phil has often told me how he has struggled to develop an appropriate relationship with his three daughters, who were raised by their mother.  And now I think maybe I understand why his daughters have often rebuffed his attempts to build a relationship with them. 

She said my dad’s mother was a slovenly housekeeper, and I wasn’t surprised by that revelation at all, which only confirmed to me my suspicions about her character.  I thought her slovenly housekeeping was the least of her evil qualities, and if that was her only fault that wasn’t really a big deal. 

She also said that my dad’s mother told her mother,”I hate Louis.”  Louis is my dad’s name, and she asked me whether she hated all of her children or only my dad. I said that she reserved all her hatred and rage for my dad.  My dad is seven years younger than his next-oldest sibling, and I am pretty sure that my dad was the result of an unwanted and unplanned pregnancy.  Unfortunately, my dad’s mother terrorized him until the day she died.  She was a constant source of terror in all our lives. I remember that my dad was so frightened of his mother that he was afraid to see her alone for fear that she would psychologically batter him.  So anytime he had to go see his mother, it was a terrifying and traumatic ordeal for him.  And so he usually asked my mother to come along with him on visits to his mother because he needed her support to endure these visits.  My mom used to tell me how much she hated going to see my dad’s mother because she used to terrorize both my mom and dad. 

My dad took care of his mother until the day she died as both her physician and as a loyal and loving son.   My dad’s mother lived near us in Florida, and so my dad was the only one of his four siblings who ever took the time to visit his mother.  His three older siblings live elsewhere, and each year they would come for a week to Florida for a perfunctory two hour visit with their mother.  They spent more time hanging out with us, playing bridge, and going to restaurants than with their mother. My dad loved and honored his mother, and in exchange she brutalized and terrorized him without mercy. 

I told her the story that my mom told me.  My dad graduated from medical school, got married and fathered a daughter (me).  He wrote to his mother and said,”Look at what I have achieved.”  His mother answered his letter with the worst insult she could think of: telling him that she loved her other children more.  It was yet another stinging and painful rejection from a lifetime of cruelty at the hands of his pathologically evil mother.  And there is no doubt a close connection between the fact that his mother told him,”You are not my son” and the fact that my dad once told me,”You are not my daughter.”

I added that I hate my dad’s mother to this day because she refused to go to my bat mitzvah, and that left me terribly insulted and hurt.  Meanwhile my paternal grandfather, who could barely walk and was practically blind, came to my bat mitzvah and celebrated it with joy.

My dad’s cousin asked me if my dad had ever gone to counseling.  She also heard that my mom was in counseling.  First of all, I told her that my dad had refused all my mother’s numerous attempts to persuade him to attend counseling.  Part of the reason for his aversion to counseling was that he refused to admit there was anything wrong with himself or his behavior.  But part of his aversion to counseling was much more reasonable and understandable.  My dad views counseling in a very negative light primarily because his mother spent her whole life in counseling, and it obviously did nothing to improve her life or change her truly abominable behavior. 

I added that my mom has gone to counseling and even briefly attended a support group for abused wives that she found helpful.  But my mother has not attended counseling on a sufficiently regular and consistent basis to attain the full benefits of counseling.

My dad’s cousin said,”Well if your dad had gone to counseling, he would have understood that it wasn’t his fault that his mother abused him.  And if your grandmother had found the right counselor, she would have understood that it wasn’t her fault that her step-mother violently abused her.”  My response was that my dad and his mother are not genuinely open to the counseling process because it requires the kind of rigorous self-examination that they cannot handle, and therefore neither one of them would benefit from counseling.  Also, when you go to counseling, you actually have to admit that you are wrong and discuss and take responsibility for your mistakes.  As a practical matter, my dad refuses to admit that there is anything wrong with:

·         cursing at your wife and daughter

·         calling your children “moron” and “idiot”

·         calling your son “worthless”

·         terrorizing your wife and daughter during every meal at the dinner table over their table manners every time they pick up a fork or spoon,

·         dropping your child off at school when she is 12 years old and telling her to “drop dead!”

·         yelling at your daughter almost every week in middle school and high school

·         telling your seven year old daughter,”I hope you have children just like you.”

·         Making your daughter feel so terrorized that she feels the need to flee your home after she graduates college to take a job for which she is totally unsuited

·         Refusing to pay for counselors for your terrorized daughter because these counselors challenge your emotional abuse toward her

·         Systematically destroying your daughter’s self-esteem through a calculated program of intimidation, psychological abuse, and emotional terror

·         Shattering your daughter’s self-esteem so severely that you completely destroy her interest in marriage and motherhood

·         Attempting to force your terrified and brutalized daughter into marriage and motherhood

·         Bullying your wife every single day for the silliest of reasons with the intent of destroying her self-esteem as well

·         Breaking your promise to buy her an apartment

·         Reacting to the departure of your victim by angrily demanding the immediate return of your suddenly missing punching bag

 My dad is very good at rationalizing these behaviors – and at blaming the victim.  He has a million strategies to get the victim to apologize to him after he terrorizes her.  I wish I could remember them because they displayed keen psychological insight.  But he managed to twist everything so he could make the victim feel guilty for his assaults against her.  My whole body is sweating as I begin to remember these traumatic experiences. 

I called up my Iraqi friend Mohammed again, and he was relieved that today I was doing better than yesterday.  He was sorry for not returning my call yesterday when I was feeling so down, but he was out camping with his wife and couldn’t get back to me.  He told me that the key to overcoming the PTSD was to discuss and face the memories that were causing me to feel so bad.  He said I was reacting so badly because I had so many memories of abuse that I had not come to terms with, and that was why I was getting overwhelmed.  He said that I should share memories and experiences with the other survivors of domestic violence in the transition house so that we could help each other.   Once again, he had some wonderful suggestions for me.  He also told me to call him again on Thursday so we could talk about job options for me as I was clearly in no frame of mind to look for work right now.  He said he read the last posting and thanked me for mentioning him in it.  And then he said he was going to read my other postings on my personal blog when has more time.  Mohammed, thanks again for restoring my faith in humanity.

As the Muslim holy month of Ramadan is now upon us, we were talking about the practical implications of Ramadan in Muslim countries.  Mohammed reminded me that a lot of Muslim countries have laws to punish people who break the fast on Ramadan in public, and he didn’t like this reality because he thought religion should be a matter for personal choice instead of state coercion.  I said that in Muslim countries there was no separation of religion and state, and that’s why you have the state trying to impose Muslim religious observances upon the population.  He said there were campaigns to encourage people to publicly break the fast in Egypt and Morocco, but he didn’t know how many people had participated. 

He said that he remembered Iraq had a law to punish people who broke the fast during Ramadan while he was growing up under Saddam Hussein, but it went completely unenforced.  I said that Saddam was way too busy murdering Kurds and Shi’ites to care if anyone violated Ramadan, and he laughed and said it was true.  He said that Saddam would kill you if you insulted him, but the penalty for insulting Allah by violating Ramadan was slight.  So obviously Saddam thought he was much more important than Allah.  I added that Saddam was not exactly known as a pious Muslim, so it would have looked ridiculous for him to be punishing people who broke the fast on Ramadan. 

I spoke to my British friend Amran Hussein, who shares my admiration for Israel and the Jews and is chairman of British Muslims for Israel.  He expressed horror and outrage about the Syrian regime’s massacres of innocent civilians.  And I said,”But didn’t you know that there is a split in the Syrian army.  Didn’t you hear that several Colonels led by Riyad al Asad had formed a Free Syrian Army to break with the Assad regime and protect civilians.  The names of the battalions include the Hamza al Khatib Battalion, named in memory of a 13 year old boy who was brutally slaughtered by the Assad regime; and the Hurriye (Freedom) Battalion.” Amran Hussein said he didn’t know about this and he felt a lot better now that I told him this news.  He added that he hoped the Assad regime in Syria would fall swiftly so more innocent civilians would not have to die.  I said that certainly I hope more innocent civilians will not have to die, but realistically I didn’t think the Assad regime was on the verge of immediate implosion just yet.  I strongly support regime change in Syria for the sake of the Syrian people who deserve to live free of 41 years of murderous tyranny at the hands of the Assad regime, both father and son.

I wrote a letter of support to Dr. Maikel Nabil Sanad, an Egyptian political prisoner who is serving 3 years in prison because he is a pacifist who refuses to serve in the Egyptian army and who supports Israel and the Jews.  I am sure he will not receive the letter because the military censors confiscate his mail, but by sending him his letter I am making a direct personal protest to the Egyptian military regime against his captivity.  Maikel has moved me beyond words with his expressions of love, compassion, and solidarity for my people Israel and the Jews.  And the hundreds of protestors who have taken to the streets in Egypt to protest his captivity – risking their safety and even their lives – have touched me more than words can say.  I realized these people must support his vision of peace with Israel and the Jews because otherwise they wouldn’t be risking their own safety to support him so publicly.  And ten people led by Maikel’s brother held a ‘stand-in’ outside the prison where Maikel is being held.

I was really appalled to read about how Maikel is being brutalized inside the prison in Egypt.  The other prisoners are told that they will be punished if they associate with him, and thus he is isolated.  My heart really sank when I read that he is starving because the food in prison is very limited and of very poor quality.  His brother goes to the prison every two weeks to visit him and buy him food, and that is how he gets food.  I thought about setting up a fund-raising campaign to pay for Maikel’s food because quite frankly I can’t stand the thought of the Egyptian military regime starving such a wonderfully compassionate, courageous young man who dares to stand up and support Israel and the Jews at such terrible risk to his own safety and life. 

In addition, the Egyptian military is denying Maikel medical treatment and medication for his heart condition, and he is getting sick from being forced to take showers in dirty water and sleep with mites and insects in his bed.   His life could be endangered from denial of needed medical care, and so we have to demand that he receive essential medical care.  His web site is http://www.maikelnabil.com, and there is a facebook campaign to call for his release.  I hope everyone will join it. 

Last but not least on the political front, I wish to mention the struggle of my dear friend Dr. Roya Araghi.  Dr. Araghi has a PhD in physical chemistry from Iran.  She is also a follower of Ayatollah Boroujerdi, an unusual Shi’ite cleric who supports separation of religion and state, gender equality, and peace and is opposed to the whole clerical regime in Iran.  Ayatollah Boroujerdi is a political prisoner in Iran since 2006 who has been brutally tortured and denied essential medical care for many serious illnesses by the regime.  His wife was also raped in front of him while he was in prison.  He will not be released as long as this regime is in power, and the regime could very well kill him.

My friend Dr. Roya Araghi was one of six followers of Ayatollah Boroujerdi to be arrested in November, 2010.  She was released on heavy bail and decided to flee to Malaysia rather than face the certainty of many years of torture in Iran’s Evin Prison, the central location for Iranian political prisoners.  Iranians are only allowed to enter two countries without a visa: Malaysia and Turkey.  Dr. Araghi had a hearing for her political asylum with the UN in July, 2011, and she was told to come back a year later in August, 2012.  Dr. Araghi is in grave danger from the presence of Iranian regime agents in Malaysia, and she has reason to fear that they will kill her if they find her, G-d forbid. 

Dr. Araghi has supported Israel and the Jews very forthrightly.  Thus I would like to raise her case with American Jewish organizations and urge them to support her.  I am also asking anyone with a heart and a conscience to put pressure on the U.S. government to allow her to be granted expedited political asylum here.   Anyone who wants to get involved in her case is encouraged to contact me immediately. 

Finally I would like to note some recent developments in our transition house.  Today Cheryl came and told me that since she and Rachel had taken their turns to pay for toilet paper in the upstairs bathroom, it was now my turn to pay for toilet paper for us.  She added that we were in need of purchasing toilet paper today because we were down to our last roll.  I told Cheryl that I am happy to pay for toilet paper for our household and asked her when she would take me to the store to buy groceries.  She took me to buy groceries around 7 p.m., and I also pitched in to buy sponges for our kitchen and cooking oil and brownies to bake brownies for our bake sale.  I happily let Cheryl’s daughter Shannon use cooking oil to cook chicken and would have gladly given Aisa some sugar except I haven’t bought any yet. 

Since Cheryl has no Internet access until at least Wednesday when Internet access is scheduled to be restored for our household, I told Cheryl that she is welcome to use my computer today and tomorrow to send her materials for her job to her boss.  She thanked me and used it tonight for a while.  While she used my computer for her job, I sat on the couch and read a Spanish-language newspaper to re-orient my brain to the Spanish language.  Since I know she also needs to print out materials for her job, I offered to open up my printer and set it up for her to use for her job if she needs it.  She said she doubted she would need it but thanked me for my offer. 

Also I congratulated Kristin on getting a job at the Gap that will allow her to pay for her schooling soon, and tonight she went shopping to buy clothes for her job.  Her orientation starts tomorrow, and I am very happy for her that she will have some income coming in.

I am so tired that I am ready to fall asleep.   But no posting would be complete without another expression of gratitude for the hard work and financial support that Bev, Kristin, Julia, Gisel, Marie, and Cheryl contribute to this household.  I am happy to be here and I love you all with all my heart.