LA Moms Blog

I AM NOT ADOPTED--JUST NOT A SUPERMODEL!

My older sister stands at 5'11 and is a size four. Her stomach is concave and I'm pretty sure the only muffin top she's ever experienced is the blueberry kind behind the bakery counter. She has long wavy (easily straightened) brown locks and perfectly sized perky you-know-whats that have never had to be poured into an unsexy minimizer bra. She has a passion for fashion, exquisite taste and obviously the body to make it work. No sweats for sister. She is always looking fabulous even if she simply throws on jeans and a sweater. Oh...and she is truly one of the kindest, wisest and most beautiful (inside and out) people I know. She is my best friend, my confidante and the greatest blessing in my life. 

It wasn't always this way. Growing up in the shadow of my super-model sized sister was tough. I felt less than, ugly and sick and tired of everyone always asking me if we were really related. But maturity, some therapy, a supportive mom and a stint away at a university where no one knew I was Lisa's sister helped me to move out of her shadow and into my own light. Then, I lived in San Francisco for six years where no one knew about my super svelte sibling so I kind of forgot about the daily dealings with people and their stupid, incessant comments. 

Jumping into the Fray

O.K. I've held off for quite a while, now, about the H1N1 virus and vaccine, quietly reading the many posts about it and the comments about these posts. I've given my opinion on a couple of the seizure/epilepsy list serves that I'm a member of and been silenced a bit by what I believe is hysteria and fear. I even responded to an advisory put out by a very large, national epilepsy group, expressing my anger that parents of children with neurodevelopmental conditions do not have nearly enough information to make informed decisions about this virus and the vaccine for it.

 This space is not sufficient to really voice my opinion in a careful and nuanced way, balanced by facts and history, but I can probably summarize. I have a fourteen year old daughter who developed a severe seizure disorder shortly after her initial round of vaccines at two months of age. As you might know from my blog, we have never found a reason for her seizures AND have never found a treatment for them. She is profoundly disabled as a result, and despite trials of eighteen medications continues to have seizures just about every day. We stopped vaccinating her when she was about six months of age. After a year or so of largely fruitless treatment for her seizures, I began to look for alternatives and found an osteopath who changed her life and mine, steering us toward more holistic health care. As a result, her general health improved dramatically.  She stopped having ear infections and weathered colds and fevers without increases in her

Exposing the Ft. Hood Tragedy

Cross posted from our sister blog, DC Metro Moms Blog.

I grew up in a military family.  My father was a career Air Force officer, as was his father.  My brother joined the Army a few years after high school and served two tours in Bosnia before he got out.  Of course then he gave my mother a heart attach by turning around and joining the Ohio National Guard.  Thankfully, he returned from a tour in the Middle East late last year. My husband spent 20 years in the Navy - 3 on active duty and then 17 in the Navy Reserves.

I also happen to live in the Hampton Roads area of Southeast Virginia, home to one of the largest concentrations of military and veteran families in the country.  I'm actually hard pressed to think of a close friend in the area that isn't associated with the military.  

In my professional life, I'm the New Media Director for Blue Star Families, a non-partisan, non-profit dedicated to empowering and supporting military families.  My community, online and in "real" life, is the military community and my community is hurting right now.

We don't know what caused Major Nidal Hasan to open fire in a soldier readiness facility on the U.S. Army's largest facility.  I don't want to speculate.  Besides, the reason for Hasan's actions is largely irrelevant to the Ft. Hood families affected by the tragedy.  For them, and for many of us, the tragedy is incomprehensible. 

But what I do know is that military families across all of the services are stressed beyond belief.  While I no longer have to deal with the threat of activation and deployment, I've watched friend after friend try to hold things together for 6 months, a year or 18 months at a time, only to do it all over again a few months after a service member's return.  Deployment after deployment is hard on a family, particularly families with children.  And when a soldier, sailor or airman (or woman) comes home, nothing is immediately easy.  Families have to readjust, learn new routines, and all too frequently help a service member cope with injuries.  Families also deal with the unseen wounds of war such as post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injury, and even secondary PTSD, a form of post-traumatic stress disorder that can affect care givers (such as spouses, nurses and doctors) constantly dealing with the trauma of others.

Read the rest of this post at the DC Metro Moms Blog.

Women's Rights

A few nights ago I was at an interview by Los Angeles Magazine with Matt Weiner, the Creator of Mad Men. The show is set in the early 1960's and even though the show is called Mad Men, it has a lot to say about women of the era and the challenges they faced. It got me thinking about women's rights, where we've come from and how far we still have to go.

I think many people of my generation (that would be the Generation X) were born right as women made great strides in achieving equal rights. Movies like 9 to 5 still depicted rampant sexual harassment in the work place in the 80's. It's really only been the last 25-30 years that women have achieved some level of equality. Women still only make 70 cents to the man's dollar.

Flu, Flu Everywhere, But Not a Shot To Take

One of the mothers at my son's elementary school was talking about the swine flu and said she wasn't planning to get her children the H1N1 vaccination.

"I'm not an alarmist," she said. She hasn't given her kids the flu shot before and she isn't planning to now.

I am an alarmist as this blog I wrote at the beginning of the outbreak will attest. But it's hard to know what to be alarmist about – the virus itself or the vaccine.

Family portraits

Not long ago, my stepson brought a flyer home from school. It informed parents that on the evening of Picture Day, the photographers would be back at the school to take family portraits for those who were interested. Of course, the flyer came home the night before this was supposed to happen, so there wasn't much time to plan. Besides, he and his sister would be at their mom's house the night of the photo event, but the notice came to his dad and me, since it was sent home on one of his days with us.

Families like ours aren't unusual anymore, but they can - literally - be a bit tough to picture.

We didn't go to Portrait Night, but I think there's a good chance that if this event had been scheduled on one of my husband's nights with the kids (and we'd had a little more notice), we might have tried to have pictures taken - and I honestly would have felt a little weird about it. We have snapshots of the four of us, but formal portraits have a certain significance, and that's what makes me unsure. When my husband and I got married, we did get a few photos done of the two of us together with all three of our respective children - his two, and my one. In my thinking, that's our little family: his and mine, all evened out.

Healthy Habits

I gained 38 lbs. while I was pregnant with my baby. After she was born, I lost 19 lbs. by my 6 week check-up. "This is going to be a cinch to lose!",...so I thought. I breastfed and heard of all the encouraging stories of women who lost their baby weight all because of breastfeeding. This was certainly not the case for me.

I gave myself a break. A very good friend of mine said, "It took 9 months to put on so it should take 9 months to take off." Amen to that!!! So I have 9 whole months?! This is going to be a piece of cake. In the famous words of Rob Schneider in every Adam Sandler movie "Yu kin doo eeet!" Unfortunately, 9 months came and went. Hello 19 lbs. So then I gave myself an extension. Okay, by her 1st birthday...Still there. So then I gave myself ANOTHER extension. Okay, by MY birthday! I learned very quickly that the worst kind of promises to break, are the ones we make to ourselves. I felt very defeated.

Don't Look Back

This week I turn 33, which I didn't think much about until my friend pointed out that it is my Jesus year. That, along with a recent message on Revolutionary Faith, made me think about what great things I could accomplish this year. I'm not going to be able to save the world from cancer or swine flu, I don't have the political savvy to charge into Sacramento or DC to bring about sweeping new legislation, and I don't have the funds to alleviate the amount of poverty and suffering that is present in South Bay. But I do have the ability to make a huge difference to two people who have meant the most to me for the largest part of my life. My parents.

 In Korea, there is a joke (if you can call it that), that goes, "If there is a car coming straight towards your mother or your wife, who would you save?" The "correct" answer is "your mother, because you can always get another wife." Like every joke there is a thread of seriousness to this in that filial piety is a highly regarded part of society. Everyone wants everyone else to think that they have the best son or daughter and everyone wants to be the best son or daughter. A good Korean-American friend of mine has extremely abusive in-laws. They insult her appearance, her cooking, her child-rearing skills, anything they can attack. But she doesn't say anything back because her own mother tells her not to, because if she did, then her in-laws could not only say she was a bad daughter-in-law, but that her parents had not raised her properly. The purpose of this illustration is just to show how strong this sense of filial piety can be, that a grown woman born and educated in the US would be willing to take such abuse to please her own parents. 

Lessons of a Kitchen Remodel

This is my kitchen.  Technically, this is the "before" picture.  You can see the ripped-up counters, empty cabinets, the knocked-out wall (which had housed a double-oven and hid a pantry-sized closet space that I had no idea existed until demolition began).  Minus the general disarray and confusion that is inherent in renovating, I'd say this is pretty much how I've seen my kitchen since we moved in -- functional but ugly, not at all what I wanted.  So this picture, as out-of-sorts as it is, represents an upward slope of contentment for me, a moving-up in the world of homeownership.

Renovating our kitchen had been on our minds since we moved into my husband's childhood home nearly 11 years ago.  According to my father-in-law, it had been "state of the art" in the 80s, with its individally hand-made tiles (in green, purple and gold), and had even starred in a laundry commercial during that decade.  But, just as big hair, men in spandex and Jazzercise before it, our kitchen had begun to show its age as the millenium turned.  There were many other things on our to-do list before the kitchen, so we continued to ignore its dated appearance while we prettied up the family room, painted the exterior, added a new back porch, fixed up bedrooms as we filled them up with our babies.

Blob Blog (a mommy blunder!)

Admittedly, I am a bit liberal with my son about what he watches in terms of movies, TV, live shows, etc. Liberal in that some may seem a bit scary to other parents considering his age (7 1/2 years). Don't get me wrong, it's not that he's watching R rated movies with extreme violence, sex, nudity and bad language. But I'm that parent who has taken him to "Iron Man," lets him watch "Spongebob," etc, you get the picture. (I can feel some of you giving a nod of me too and others squirming in horror!)

His father, who I haven't lived with since he was a year old, started letting him watch movies, etc. that I considered inappropriate probably at age 4. Things like "Spiderman" which I freaked out about, and other things that I considered too violent. But at this point I've relaxed realizing that each kid is different in their tolerance, reactions and interest and that my son is a happy, sensitive boy who has a high tolerance to a little scary.

Driver Education

Warning: rant ahead. It really bugs me that people move their shopping carts the way they drive. They are on phones, wandering aimlessly, and completely oblivious to everyone else. Why is that? How hard is it really, to just watch where you’re going? I’m hard pressed to decide which is worse: the grocery store, Costco or the freeways . At Costco, the aisles, carts and items are bigger than at the grocery store. This might lead a person to believe that there is more room for you to move around. In actuality, it leads people to believe there is more room for you to move around THEM.

Seriously folks. Every time I go to Costco there are people who stop for no reason in the middle of the aisle. People push the oversize carts with one hand while talking on a cell phone and simultaneously trying to push their way to the front of a sample line (not sure which hand they will grab food with), and people who weave back and forth across the aisle, unsure of which way they want to go. Then there are those who decide to stop in the middle of the aisle, or go soooo s-l-o-w because, well, who knows.  These very same people are out there on the roads, with the exact same behavior behind the wheel. They run stop signs, lights and crosswalks, don’t signal when they should, signal when they ought not, and weave around when they can’t decide which way to go.

Katie Couric Tells Women's Conference Attendees a Little Something About Resilience

Maria Shriver may be the busiest First Lady of a state in the U.S. Just prior to the start of this year's Women's Conference, she teamed up with the Center for American Progress, Time Magazine, NBC Universal, the USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy and the Rockefeller Foundation...

...and issued a national study called The Shriver Report: A Woman's Nation Changes Everything, which highlights the many ways American society has changed due to the current recession and the emerging economic power of women.

Today's lunch session touched on the report's findings. It began with a "Once-in-a-Lifetime-Conversation" between former Secretary of State Madeline Albright, CNN commentator Amy Holmes, Good Morning America correspondent Claire Shipman and Valerie Jarrett (whose official titles are Senior Advisor to the President and Assistant to the President for the Office of Public Engagement and Intergovernmental Affairs).

It concluded with the emotional discussion on grief by Shriver, Elizabeth Edwards, Susan St. James and surprise guest Lisa Niemi. Sandwiched between those two powerhouse panels was Katie Couric, who broke the ice by announcing "I love the smell of estrogen in the afternoon," followed by a joke:

She continued to charm the audience with tales of her early days as a newscaster:

Couric did not use the "P" word (you know, perky) to describe herself, but did admit that she's one of those positive people who is "hot-wired for happiness." Her husband told her that she was "born on a sunny day."

Couric got through trials in her career through hard work and sheer determination, and never doubted her talent or abilities and she succeeded. But there are times when that's not enough - which she learned the hard way, when her husband Jay Monahan was diagnosed with cancer:

"His nine month battle with cancer was a hellish journey," Couric said.

She remembered how she continued to work every day, chatting up guests about their latest books or movies… "but a piece of me was dying too," she said. "Putting on the happy morning face most the excruciating challenge I ever faced."

She said she learned the language of cancer, frantically calling medical schools, pharmaceutical companies, anyone she could think of to find a magic bullet. She never found it. Her husband collapsed in the bathroom on a January day and died on his way to the hospital.

She mourned. Her grief lasted a long time. But eventually, she had an epiphany, inspired by a quote from Thomas Jefferson: The earth is for the living.

"That gave me solace and permission to seek joy and choose happiness," she said.

Four years later, Couric lost her sister Emily to pancreatic cancer at age 54.

"Clearly, the sunny day I was born on, didn’t stay sunny forever – but they never do," she said."My life was on a journey of loss and disappointment, but also amazing joy and incredible discoveries and unparalleled opportunities. And here we all are."

Original post for Los Angeles Moms Blog by Donna Schwartz Mills.

This post is sponsored by Lean Cuisine.

CA Nonprofit Leaders receive Minerva Awards at CA Womens Conference 2009

I have worked and volunteers at different non-profits over my career and sometimes forget that at the heart of these agencies are stalwart women who make miracles happen on a daily basis.  Today at the Women's Conference, four of the miracle makers were honored.  According to California First Lady Maria Shriver, the recipients of the 2009 Minerva Awards are "true Architects of Change".    They are recognized for their extraordinary legacies to their communities CA and the nation. These women are not only caretakers, but advocates. For example, the brilliant Dr. Hull challenged us to think about the national debate for Health Care.  Jane Goodall, at the forefront of the environmental movement, spunkily encouraged us all to reach a little bit higher in addressing the environmental problems we've created for ourselves and our children.  

This year's awards went to 4 amazing Californians:

• Agnes Stevens - Founder of Schools on Wheels, which provides educational opportunities and one-on-one tutoring for homeless children in Los Angeles' skid row
• Helen Devore Waukazoo - Co-founder of the the Bar Area-based Friendship House, which provided residential substance abuse treatment for American Indians
• Dr. Kathy Hull - Founder of the George Mark Children's House in San Leandro, the first freestanding residential  pediative palliative care center in the USA
  
• Dr. Jane Goodall - Renowned primatologist and conservationist, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute, UN Messenger of Peace, Founder of Roots and Shoots program and author.

If there was any doubt that women indeed make a difference, just check these women out and prepare to be inspired.

An original post to LA Moms Blog

Sheila Bernus Dowd usually posts at Silicon Valley Moms Blog and at XiaolinMama, but is visiting LA and enjoying the good weather!

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This post is sponsored by Lean Cuisine.

Grief, Healing, and Resilience with Maria Shriver, Elizabeth Edwards, Susan St. James & Lisa Niemi

There were no dry eyes during the Women's Conference lunchtime "Once-in-a-Lifetime Conversation: Grief, Healing & Resilience". California First Lady Maria Shriver began by sharing some of the feelings, experiences and emotions she had this summer after both her mother, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and her uncle, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's passed away.  

My brother committed suicide three years ago and I'm still unable to talk about it without bursting into tears, so I am absolutely in awe of Shriver's ability to speak so eloquently about emotions that must still be raw.  Maria was joined by a phenomenal group of women living in every stage of grief: actress and dancer Lisa Niemi, actress Susan St. James, and Senior Fellow of the Center for American Progress, Elizabeth Edwards.

Shriver said of her motivation for having the conversation despite how emotionally difficult it is, "It is our hope that this conversation will give anyone out there dealing with a broken heart or a shattered soul a sense that you are not alone."

The discussion: Shriver began by asking Lisa Niemi, wife of Patrick Swayze, if it's easier to let go if you know death is coming.  Lisa shared that she thought the long months of her husband's illness would help her get used to the idea of loss but it didn't. When Patrick's death came, it made the "sadness and grief prior to that look like an intellectual concept."

Susan St. James lost her son Teddy in a plane crash five years ago.  Shriver asked her, "Listening to Lisa, is the pain five years later still the same?"  

Susan says it is and shared how she once told her husband that if she ever lost a child she'd never speak again.  But of course, right after the crash she had to deal with it.  "You take your character and then you choose how you're going to go on."

Elizabeth Edwards lost her son 14 years ago and she says, "The truth is you honor somebody by taking whatever greatness they had in their life and incorporate it...translate it into your own life as you move forward." 

Edwards went on to share, "You're not going to get over it.  You're never ever going to get over it."  And you don't know what the trigger will be.  She shares how she dissolved into tears last week when she saw a picture of a young woman that's the age her son would be right now. But you try to turn these things into something positive.  

What do you say to someone who's grieving?  Maria Shriver says,"In the United States we're a grief illiterate society. People don't feel comfortable talking about grief or loss."  Too many people don't know what to say when someone's grieving, they don't know what to say when you've lost a child, they don't know what to say in the first couple days and weeks. 

Susan St. James made the crowd laugh by saying that right after her son died in the accident it was not helpful to hear a guy tell her he'd lost his dog so he knew how she felt. 

Lisa Niemi shared that she herself never knew what to say to people before.  But now she has a couple of girlfriends who've told her she can call anytime to talk.  She told how she was having a panic attack at three a.m. and she actually called one of them.  "It's very important to reach out and reconnect with people."

Elizabeth Edwards explained of her son, "When he died, I didn't lose the desire to parent him." --I started to cry, and so did everyone else around me, when she told how she goes to her son's grave and still talks to him.  In the year after he passed away she took the books on the high school senior reading list and read them aloud at her son's grave. 

She says of saying the right thing, "People mean to say the right thing even when they say the wrong thing.  Even if you say the wrong thing, don't worry. Be present, be the person who's willing to get the call at any time, and not just now, 14 years out."

Maria asks Lisa if it makes it harder to be able to turn on the TV and see her husband in film.  She shares that it's different because that's an actor playing a role.

Susan St. James talked about keeping her marriage together after the death of her son.  After the accident, her husband couldn't move around because he'd also broken several bones.  He had to be still so he couldn't distract himself with work and be gone all the time.  It meant that he had to share the grieving process with her.

Grieving in the public eye: Lisa Niemi talked about tabloids like the National Enquirer and how what they did was emotional cruelty to her family.  "Every month they were killing Patrick off and it was very demoralizing."

When do you start to laugh again?  Susan says you do find yourself laughing, her other kids made her laugh.  But she looked in the mirror a few months ago and she felt like she saw herself again.  Saw herself as the woman she used to be.  Says she had five natural childbirths, is vegetarian, raised her kids, -- and she couldn't do anything about her son's death.  "You're used to these things happening to someone else and you're helping them...  People are afraid to talk to somebody who's just lost someone." 

Maria says she knows it's been eight weeks but, "I find myself more emotional today than I was two weeks ago or a week ago."

Then she asks Lisa a doozy of a question, "Do you see yourself as a widow or still married to Patrick?  Lisa paused and finally said, "That's a hard question." (I thought she was going to start to cry on this one.  I wanted to cry!)  She explains she spent 2/3 of her life with Patrick.  "My regret is I didn't tell him I loved him enough over that 34 years."  She regrets the times she was mean or bossy.  

Maria had the room in tears again when she shared how, "I did Meet The Press last Sunday with David (David Gregory) and it was the first time I walked out and there was no call."  She explained that her mother would always call her after TV appearances and it was the first time she'd done a TV show and hadn't gotten a call from her mother -- and then she lightened the mood by making a little reference to Cell Phone Gate by saying that she was never in her car when she talked to her mom.

Maria then asked Elizabeth Edwards about the process of having cancer and grieving through it.  "Do you find yourself grieving now while you're living, the loss of your own life?"

Edwards responded,"I grieve the loss of my life as I knew it." But death offers her a chance of reunion with her son.

Lisa said of Patrick, "Cancer may have taken him but it never beat him." 

Maria Shriver ended the discussion by saying the most important thing is that the grieving process hasn't beaten these women, "And you're an inspiration to all of us."

Written by Liz Dwyer aka Los Angelista.

This post is sponsored by Lean Cuisine.