The Complete Guide to the Game of Life

Dear Readers,

It has been quite a mess lately. I’ve been spending a bunch of days mothering my newborn child. Now that he has been born in the world, I’d like to welcome my beautiful little angel, Malcolm Clayton Jacobs, into this big wide world. This post is dedicated to all moms and babies but especially my Little Malcolm, so without further adieu, I hope that all of us can welcome my newborn son with this perhaps hilarious getting started guide and a bit of a lifetime instruction manual, I wasn’t sure what to title this post anyway.

Dear Malcolm,

Welcome. You just came out in this big wide world weighing six pounds, one ounce, and let me tell you something. You might not remember what you were doing inside me, but on the outside, things are a bit harder and yes, more fun. First, let me start by stating that when you came into this world, you greeted us with a good cry. It sounded like any ordinary newborn cry. But as this is a sort of instruction manual for navigating life itself, I want to give you some pointers as you are going to grow and develop in your new body. So, let’s start with an introduction.

Start from the top of your head. You were born with a cone shape but that’s fine. You literally were pushed out of my uterus through a big cavelike entrance called, well, a birth canal? Cervix? You literally ripped me open just a little, but your head weighs more than the rest of your body, and it contains the brain, all the essential stuff for your journey through the intellectual mine field of life. So you have a nose which lets you smell everything from the milk I give you on a regular basis to the cookies I will someday bake for your holiday pleasure. You also have a pair of eyes, consider these like little cameras that are more natural than the night vision goggles the soldiers in Halo use. But your eyes have a cute color, and they close at night so you can shut the shutter and go straight into sleep mode. Easy, right? Not so fast.

You have a pair of lips below your nose, but now that you’ve arrived here like thirteen days before, you don’t have teeth yet. However, to obtain nourishment, all you have to do is ask, but how you want to do it, well, that’s easy. I hear you holler, so I go over and get your needs met. Need some food? It’s all there in your drive for hunger. Is something bothering you? It’s easy, we can detect what’s bothering you by the sounds you are making. No worries, your daddy and I will do our best to console you with every bone in our bodies. Every time you hear my heart beating, you are a calm but steady breeze. Beware that being a baby is not always easy on us parents or you yourself either. You will have a lot of questions when you age a bit, but right now, we’re going to enjoy every moment of your sweet existence.

Now what is in the body also matters. You have some ways of filtering out solid and bad wastes. Everywhere in life you will find that there is garbage. Garbage gets into all kinds of stuff, including human and animal bodies. Humans have two kidneys and a liver, and all the pee you sprayed on me is in your gallbladder. IF you get a bladder infection, you can do some troubleshooting with antibiotics, but don’t use these too many times.

So you might be wondering, how do I grow and develop? I can’t always answer that question, but I do have a list of pitfalls and zonks for you to look out for:

Stage I: Here you are as a newborn. Look out for anything to make you feel discomfort, and if you encounter someone who doesn’t seem to care one way or another about you, you have to let us know. It’s easy. Just scream as loud as you can, and if something really bothers you, just don’t worry about the fretful nurse who said I couldn’t lactate, don’t worry about the weirdo in the hallway of the building who refused to make way for you and Dad with the car seat. Since you can’t speak at this stage, just sit back and eat and poop and holler at us whenever you need to, and we’re right here.

Stage II: Welcome to being a young toddler. It starts though when you begin to talk, laugh, and coo when I pick you up. You might encounter some dangerous objects, which we parents will do our best to put away from you, a process called baby proofing. Don’t worry too much about baby proofing, you will be as safe as the world allows. Pitfalls to look out for include strangers who wanna kidnap you, bright shiny things, a favorite toy on a store show. We will start by teaching you how to avoid kidnappings, being mugged and robbed, but we also want to remind you that we love you a lot.

Stage IV: Welcome to school and other fun things. When you’re about four, your toddler years continue, but by this time, you will have been toileting, so we’ll show you how to use a toilet, this will mean you can kiss diapers and a dirty butt goodbye perhaps until you’re a ton older and about to enter hospice, but that’s a whole different story for another day. You will be learning like crazy, singing songs, and playing a lot. Pitfalls to avoid: bullies. When I was growing up, we always heard that old story about the big giant but miserable male bully who would pick on people less than he is in size. Son, bullies and demonic foes will try and mess with you, so here are your weapons. The number one weapon you will need to deal with bullies is right there in your head: your words. First use diplomacy, yeah a big word but basically talk to the adversarial party and just gently but firmly state that you don’t appreciate so and so doing such and such with you and me and your daddy. IF it gets too much, use physical weapons as a last resort. So what are your attacks? Oh, that’s easy. Just kick a couple times with your feet, you have a lot of ways you can throw your fists in the air. Also, you have a very powerful weapon at your fingertips, the word no! Use that word as the one big way you can shut up a bully and or tell someone to just back off. You don’t necessarily need to use this weapon all the time with your family or good friends, but beware that people will try and take advantage of you, and this carries throughout the other stages.

Stave V.: Preadolescence. Welcome to bigger boyhood. Here, you will find that your whole body has gotten bigger, all the parts are elongating and getting stronger, so when you get to preadolescence, you will have already begun understanding what is within and around you. Eleven and twelve are also good times to explore all kinds of mischief. Pitfalls to avoid include a lot of peer pressure, and trust us parents when you get pressured to do all manner of bad things, you will want to pull out your tools and weapons for this one. First, ask yourself is it fair to say that the person pressuring you is doing this to hurt you. You might encounter that little friend who asks if you want some heroin, cocaine, and a host of other harmful drugs and acts. Your best weapon here is simply to use your words, and if someone tries to force you to take hard drugs, walk away but be sure to say no on the way out. No like I said is only two letters, but quite powerful as a big weapon when someone tries to walk all over you.

Stage VI: Teenagerhood. Wow, by this time, you will have a huge body, I’m predicting six feet tall. On the outside of your body you will have just loads of hair, your arms and legs will be covered with it. Your daddy and you will sound almost alike in pitch, but then you might call that lady at the grocery store a bitch. That’s a penalty move by the way, but you could use that word in a song, either way we’ll show you what to do with it. Pitfalls to avoid: again, peer pressure. Also, you might have a tendency to rebel. Well, you’re lucky we parents are rebels of some sort ourselves, but teenagers at this stage need to be responsible. Your brain is starting to trim and trim and all of it, but down there, your once tiny or medium sized genitals are now at full length and almost there for some action. You might bring home a girlfriend. Another pitfall to avoid is the pressure to drink when you don’t want to. You might be half tempted to go out with your male friends and they’ll offer you a drink. Just use the words “No” and “I’m too young to drink, I’m leaving.” Avoid sexual ogling of the wrong girl, but if you are half tempted to ogle bodies of the female sort, there’s lots of porn mags you can get your paws on. While most porn mags are for those eighteen years of age or older, you can still stare at pop star photos and such, use your eyes carefully, and pay close attention to the details of a girl you like. IF you’re not into girls, that’s fine. Males are cool too, but be aware of what you like and dislike. You will become an adult at age eighteen. IS that the winning level of this game called life? Not by all means, and it’s not the end either. You could go from teenager responsibilities to being a full adult for more than who knows, a hundred years!

Pitfalls for all the stages to avoid: While most parents would say bad behavior should be avoided, the whole purpose of us parenting with you is so that you know what love looks like. Everything starts with Stage I. So we’re going to enjoy you at this stage of life. I could go further in depth about this, but I’m literally laughing at myself and typing your instructions while half dead at my desk. Forgive me, when you reach the adult stage, you get a girlfriend and you all get pregnant, you will ask and receive better answers.

Good luck, Malcolm, and enjoy all that life brings you.

Love,

Beth,

Your Honored Mother.

Florida Schools May Be Creating Asexual Beings

Dear readers,

When I was attending private school in Titusville, Florida, in a little building with an emblem sign reading STS, better known as St. Teresa’s Catholic School, we students were required to peruse a really big book of topics that later became something we called “family life discussions.” These discussions ranged from things such as girl and boy anatomy to pregnancy and sexual intercourse, but it went a step further. The discussions in seventh and eighth grade set a pattern of supposed normality, something about dating and how to relate to others of the opposite sex. Eighth grade was required to study what was called a “morality book.” Looking back, however, I have soon come to realize that these so called “new creation” or “family life” textbooks were littered with all kinds of ways the church, and henceforth the school, were setting me as a disabled girl up for utter failure in relationships. Fast forward to ninth grade at Titusville High, there was a health class requirement, no surprise, but this textbook did not cover things that looking back, most disabled girls and other sexual beings would never know much about. Weddings and the horrific statistics on divorce were covered, anatomy of course, some stuff about safe sex, but the whole agenda lay in the affirming of abstinence before marriage.

Today, Florida children are being hampered more and more when it comes to sexuality and the so called practices of morality. There are a thousand things I could touch here, if I may exaggerate, but the main problem is with a governor whose only interest in life is to fill the pockets of right wing antigay ideologues and not protect children. Contrary to the belief that not discussing LGBTQ issues protects children, it actually creates environments where the teen suicide rate could rise dramatically. From my observation of many cases of cyberbullying, most of these involve LGBTQ slurs aimed at children, and worse for females, slut shaming and body shaming comments are aimed at her. The goal of cyber bullies is to push these people over the edge, and in turn, off the proverbial balcony. Many parents whose children committed suicide due to bullying or other matters of sexuality if those were brought up would ask themselves why their child did this. Some would argue that they did this to themselves, but on the contrary, I believe the parents are partially to blame if they know full well their child is LGBTQ and yet they do nothing about the bullies, and the governor of Florida is also accountable because of his “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Many families with gay parentage would argue that Florida does not celebrate these beings, and it gets further entrenched in the good old boy network when any person in the body politic signs off on any law or ordinance forbidding free discussion of sexual matters. As the mother of a son, I believe it is highly important to discuss sexual matters with him, even at a young age, because failing to do so could bring more harm than good.

Psychologists have found when kids ask questions about sex or growing up, and parents engage with children about this, it actually stimulates the opposite of what right wing ideologues would expect. A healthy discussion with your family about sex is crucial to any child’s developing sexual curiosity and attitude. LEt’s say your son asks a question about why his little sister does not have a penis. While it may sound silly to some people, my answer would be, your sister’s body was just made that way. I’d also want to add that the parts she has will if she chooses perform great big tasks like giving birth. That could open up more doors for discussion. When I get pregnant again, I hope that my son asks me one day, Mommy, are you all right? Why are you sick? From a tiny tot, this is perfectly normal to ask, and if I could, I’d answer this question.

Florida schools and their desire to hamper LGBTQ kids from being safe is what will result to me in higher rates of either asexuality not by choice or suicide. Suicide is nothing to play with, and that could be a whole separate topic, but one of the top reasons teenagers commit to taking their own lives is issues of family and sexuality. Compounding disability for some, and the choice becomes obvious. Parents are then left asking themselves how they failed their children. Without shaming all parents like the ones whose teens commit suicide, I believe they could benefit from training themselves. Sexuality is highly important to teenagers, but furthermore, Florida schools should be investing, not divesting, resources relating to diversity and equity and inclusion into helping these beings. Children who are LGBTQ deserve to live, not die by their own hands.

Beth

Florida confederacy part two: books are power, and so is knowledge, see article from mother Jones below

instead of part, two of the Florida confederacy series, here is an article from mother Jones, which could shed light on some of the absolute ridiculousness of Florida’s war against Black people in education and such.

www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/03/ron-desantis-florida-teachers/

Florida Confederacy?

Dear readers,

I’m going to start a series of posts dealing with Florida’s backward leaning education system, and I want to start out with a post detailing my own Florida schools experience. What could it have done better? You’ll see. Read on.

I was mainstreamed in the third grade just about, being born totally blind meant that I would have to have some way to learn Braille, and I did with the help of a TVI. Every blind child who needs it should be learning Braille after all. Through the learning of Braille, I was able to read many things, including but not limited to books, signs, and documents related to all kinds of subject matter. It became necessary to use Braille in music classes too, and everybody benefits when a blind child learns Braille music so … what are we waiting for!

I was lucky in my Florida school education. Aside from obnoxious religious texts and frameworks dealing with purity and inaccurate and backward views of sexuality and marriage, I still got the bulk of subjects I would benefit from along with my classmates. Examples of literature I was exposed to ranged from things like fairy tales and story novels like those written by Roald Dahl and some written by classic authors like Laura Ingalls Wilder, all the way to William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, now perhaps I don’t feel so bad about that book today but I thought for a few moments back in high school that Lord of the Flies was quite stupid. No, actually, I could think of a much more stupid book than that. Lord of the Flies actually exposes the reality of human nature from the point of view of a bunch of shipwrecked boys, nuff said.

Florida schools back then taught me about things like totalitarian Communism, and we also covered black history as well in U.S. history. Such black figures as Malcolm X, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and even Madame C.J. Walker were all covered. We learned so much in the way of how the antebellum slave institutions affected black and white people, and how the Civil Rights Movement really turned things on their heads for those who did not want blacks in their establishments. I felt like reading books about Rosa Parks, for example, was not taboo. But look, what I am about to write here could be considered taboo, read on.

Today’s Florida schools are twisted evil brainwashing centers. I need not look too far to find such places even out west. Utah’s got a couple, they had someplace called Alta Academy, which is a brainwashing center, not a school. I can tell you why. One, the textbooks chosen for this school do not truly educate, they school girls to be submissive baby factories for men who are of course taught you can have and must have three wives to get into Heaven. Imagine you’re a male from this religious sect, the FLDS as it’s called, but we’re talking many victims of this cult still roam and Warren Jeffs, their leader, is now rotting in prison. Why? Because, should I say this, his voice and errant teachings promoted sexual abuse of many young women, and teaching males that it’s okay to abuse and fondle underage girls is never okay.

Florida schools these days probably won’t teach young women how to bake huge meals for a family of a hundred kids and such, but they are attempting to build something the Boogaloo boys might be proud of. Jefferson Davis and other Confederate officials during the Civil War and antebellum Southern history might be even more so because of the governor of Florida, Ron De Santos and his minions doing a lot to curb Florida students from getting a real education. My dear partner and I had a deep discussion as is often the case when we’re in the mood, and it involved us talking about the true purpose of public schools. It’s ten times worse now in Florida today than it was back in my educational nightmare before. For one, public schools all over the country literally do lots of what we psychologist types might call “Pavlovian conditioning.” Um, ever heard of a curious old Russian scientist called Pavlov? He used dogs to prove a point and if you forgot, here’s the summary. Whenever a bell was rung in Pavlov’s laboratory, dogs would get food after. Later it was found that upon the ringing of the bell, the dogs would salivate because they anticipated food. In human senses, we are a lot like pavlov’s dogs in school, and we know why. Thirty minutes of class, then a bell sounds, and the bell makes kids riled up. In high school, one is expected to go from class to class with a bell and then there are tardy policies. I don’t think I agree with either of these. I have been a victim of Pavlovian conditioning for on time performance in school, and I want to apologize to all the teachers this affected, so yes.

LEt’s get further into why Florida schools are brainwashing centers. One could say that now you have to make the elite kids comfortable. LEt me just say I’m not comfortable because Gideon Brodas smiles, is comfortable and can own someone. I wouldn’t like that. Okay, anyone watched the movie Harriet with Cynthia Arrivo? IF you haven’t, you’re missing out. Gideon Brodas is as white as it gets, and if he were transported to a modern Florida, perhaps he’d ask just one more thing. HE’d want all black children to be owned as slaves, or not allowed to advance in careers. Well? Perhaps De Santos is not far off. This man is public enemy number one for all minority students, and it goes so far when you ban books about Harriet Tubman, but you put someone like the Brodas family on top and don’t even bother talking about Tubman’s contribution to society. What could be worse! One scene in Harriet pretty much spells out what I’m saying here. in it, Harriet is pretty much burning Gideon up like he deserves it, and my favorite words are these, “WE don’t own people, Gideon,” says the eloquent Arrivo as her character is seen with a gun practically all over the son of her master, and she disabled him, glad she didn’t kill him at least, he needed to feel the pain so that he could understand how his father’s estate’s worth of “property” felt. Perhaps such punishment should be instilled on Florida’s governing persons?

Schools in Florida are now no longer able to teach about all black figures, including Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., and my son’s namesake, Malcolm X, and to my absolute horror, it gets worse. All books and literature can’t have anything to do with Diversity, equity, and inclusion. All of this will also make a younger version of myself a target for exclusion in school. Blind girls in literature being depicted doing anything but sit rocking in a chair seems now to have been made illegal. White supremacy doesn’t just hurt black people, it also hurts anyone who does not fit straight definition of male and female. We can’t even read about how to fix this!

Sexuality and gender affirmation is now illegal. Let me tell you this will hurt my dear son. IF he should be somehow a different sexual orientation or gender identity, Florida will say, too bad so sad your child has genitalia assigned this way, so no care or affirmation.

Anyhow, I do plan to write part 2 of this, and hoping I can get some raw data from actual teachers on my Facebook and Twitter that can support or refute what I’m saying here.

Beth

Extrajudicial Guardianship and Medical Apartheid: How Hospitals and Medical Providers Must Treat Minorities Better

Dear readers,

First of all, if any of you attempted to pop on to my blog, I apologize for a server error, and I’d like to thank my big fan Clayton for pointing that out, I’ll jump on that soon as possible. For now, try going to denverqueen.wordpress.com, and browse there. Might even be a hosting issue, as Firestar Hosting, my new web hosting provider, has had some maintenance thingies going on, so I’ll talk to the administrator in charge and I happen to have a pretty good working relationship with this person. Now, on to the meat and potatoes of this post.

Over the last six months, I’m not sure how much time has gone by since I last typed up a post here, it has been quite obvious that because of my low income status, perhaps my blindness, perhaps other factors, that my women’s care clinic finds it within themselves to perform a few subliminal messages that sighted people are a bit or a lot more welcome to receive care without too many hangups at the clinic. As I type this, I’m thoroughly experiencing normal things associated with 34 weeks of pregnancy, and it has been a roller coaster not just for me, but for my partner. We’ve gone up and down, had a lot of twists, turns and embankments, upside down, round and round, and from various sources. I’ll start with something that seems to bother me from the beginning.

The clinic at Denver Health seems to have put the burden on me, the patient, and thrown surprise tests like iron levels, and without warning, they poked me in the arm to see if I was anemic, and out came a prescription for an iron supplement. While this is relatively normal for most pregnant women to have anemia, who knew how much billing that supplement came with? I take the supplement each morning, along with an antibiotic because this pregnancy brought two UTI’s which if untreated, could have become painful. I get that, having suffered a UTI while not pregnant, mind you, but it didn’t help that both my bladder and the rest of me were doing strange things the morning I went for college registration in 2011. Turned out I had a fever in the works, and the doctor in charge of my care basically prescribed an antibiotic, and that was only me not pregnant. IF a pregnancy had been in the picture, however, antibiotics would be inevitable, and the close monitoring probably even more close. Each visit at the OB clinic, I submit a urine sample. There were two samples taht came back infected, thus the antibiotics. So along with my iron supplement, I have to take my antibiotic once daily and I do that in the morning.

Along with the morning meds, I usually have the prenatal things, stuff I’ve been taking since even before conception began. Prenatals are important, mind you, but then came the baby aspirins, which you can chew because why swallow those! They’re just the baby ones, little doses in each tablet, and they help with the preeclampsia symptoms, including … well, high blood pressure. For women over 35, preeclampsia can occur at birth, and the symptoms leading up to it include hypertension, but my blood pressures have been going down with each check, but have stayed consistently in the normal range, the bigger number within 120-130 plus or minus five points along the way, and the smaller number, the little one below it, usually hovers around 70-80 again plus or minus five points. It doesn’t seem to bother me, and sometimes I think the whole blood pressure is overkill. With my little boy, I’ve developed gestational diabetes, which unfortunately is classified as a kind of autoimmune disease and I agree that it is mostly a genetic thing, and it shows. Looking back at my own family’s history, there are members who have consistently had either type II diabetes or in some people, gestational diabetes. My mom’s sister had or has type II, and a cousin or two would develop gestational diabetes, and it further exacerbates things when we add that my mom’s dad has gotten type II and has had it most of his old age. There’s nothing wrong with a healthy lifestyle, but family genes and history don’t help matters either.

My biggest worry about all this, citing the concerns described above, is the OB clinic’s use of what I call “extrajudicial guardianship.” I’ve written posts about guardianship and just how traumatic it is for all adults, especially for those with disabilities and seniors. When a clinic claims that they’re acting in the best interest of the patient, sometimes it goes further than it needs to. My question here is, am I the vessel and do I have feelings? IF yes to the question of feelings, then why aren’t they being taken into consideration? We’ve seen this time and time again. Here are some examples, and before I do the listing of examples, I want to throw in a trigger warning, so TW for medical information and some exploitation, content warning CW for pregnancy related information.

First off, the surprises we’ve seen along the way were just too many to name. WE fought for consistency with providers, and we got a lovely midwife who provides good service so far. She’s not the problem we’ve had a lot with, but we’ve had some medical assistants who’ve tried to pull things on us, a few fast ones, such as failing to work with our daily schedule to best serve the needs of this family. Example, for my nonstress tests (NST’s) appointments, the medical assistant we had on with us failed and utterly refused to give us a time that would work on the day we usually go to appointments, consistently giving us the worst possible times where we’d have gaps between the regular OB visits and then the NST part itself. We’d have been forced to wait long hours in someplace in the megacomplex of this hospital, and there would not have been too many options, being that Subway has some low quality food with too much processed sugars in it, bad for GD patients, and the hours we spend waiting, we reasoned, could best be spent doing other things, and could overlap with other scheduling things, which it could have done had we taken such times at all. We fought tooth and nail to get better times, this way we’d be doing hospital and OB appointments with the other activities we do in mind. This almost would have never been the case with a sighted couple.

Another big example of extrajudicial guardianship over a patient involves determining when life within should begin. At my last NST, while my tiny fetal baby was playing hard with the nurses, kicking as hard as he could perhaps to send the message that “I’m as funny as you think I am” and so on, his heartbeat strong and happy as it should be, a midwife approached me and while she did sign off on the NST test, my partner and I discussed something that she had told me. “We commonly recommend inducing at week 37 for patients with gestational diabetes and hypertension.” I have been repeatedly given the story of the risks involved in having a baby with those conditions, including the possible scenario of a stillbirth, and we both got quite angry. My partner and I will soon have a discussion with the midwives and providers in charge, and we want a clear risk assessment for our baby should this truly be the outcome they predict, which it shouldn’t be. I feel that these clinicians are attempting to in a sense play God, where they get to decide my baby’s birthday based on something out of my control. My little boy should be allowed to be born on the expected due date, which as of right now, is April 30. Extrajudicial guardianship, however, dictates that he be born at week 37, but given my family’s maternal pregnancy history, my mother had me right on time, and both my brothers were subsequently on time to my knowledge. My youngest sibling oddly enough sprang out of my mom’s womb and broke a bone along the way. The doctors put him back together, of course, but in later years, my brother would break bones three times in his youth. Kids seem to have done that quite a bit.

With extrajudicial decision making on my behalf a concern, it brought to mind something else. We are concerned that the clinic, in recommending induction at week 37, would like to get rich by throwing in more medical interventions. I hope to not even. have to have an epidural, and my other options include opiates in an IV which I wouldn’t dare touch. I am trying to avoid plutosin, which supposedly augments the pain in labor. I don’t want too much labor pain, not more than ordinarily felt by an ordinary woman in the ninth month of pregnancy. I’m preparing for the possibility of my water bursting and breaking, which to me will be quite exciting, sort of, and the wetness is one clue. The pain in labor, however, should not be so debatable, plutosin or no. We’re going to be frank here, we want almost nothing in medical interventions, but I will say if I test positive for group B strep, which that’s required so that baby will live, I’m fine with antibiotics in an IV so that this little man will not have to go down with the infection. I want to raise my little boy, I’m sure everybody wants this, but I would rather have a tall and strapping young man in my presence down the road, not have to worry about everything in the newborn years. I read a very informative bit on group B strep, thanks to a fellow pregnant mom who’s been pregnant before, doesn’t exactly help matters there. The group B strep is quite dangerous, but must be sought and found if present at week 36. IF found, the strep could cause some issues with mom and baby, so intervention to fix that is a must. Other than this, I don’t want medicated pain management. We have some wonderful birth team members we’ve recruited along the way, including but not limited to the fine women at the Elephant Circle, the fine peer mentors at Alma, and so many other loving and caring people along the road we’ve taken. Shout outs to our doulas out there, I’d like to train as one because we need more blind doulas in this country, let alone blind midwives/nurses, doctors of course, but blind women are in most need of voices heard. This leads me to what I would like to say regarding my voice being heard. We understand the risks, but if my baby gets too big to fit through my body, I can see the possible induction being at week 39 or 41, but we also understand about the hypertension and gestational diabetes being any sort of factor. What we want here is to be able to make decisions based on the facts, not the concerns or predictions. We don’t want our baby to be born still, born with issues, of course. However, we want to make sure we the parents play an active role in deciding how we’re going to put this child on the road to begin his life. We truly don’t wish for anyone outside God to be playing God. It happens so often, people think they can take the role of Creator and Destroyer, and it happens when a baby is forced out of a woman’s body in labor and by way of induction, or further, when an inmate is executed. Life should begin with nature, end with nature. Both myself and my partner want to be able to experience that nature that was intended for women in pregnancy and birth spaces.

Extrajudicial guardianship is a huge problem for low income and Medicaid patients. It hearkens to a scenario often played out over and over again. In black communities, we see women in OB and birth spaces being at risk of mortality during or after birth. This could have happened to a tennis great, Serena Williams, at the birth of her daughter. It happened, unfortunately, to a dear friend of mine. Crystal Henry-Campbell, who is of mixed racial background, was giving birth to her third daughter, and she completed the birth successfully. However, some hours or so into the postpartum stage, I’m not quite sure if it was hours or days, she developed a very big stroke, and this led to her being airlifted to Orlando Regional Medical Center, where she was later pronounced dead. Her girls will no longer have a mother, and for the youngest, it is heartbreaking and devastating. Could Crystal have received better care if she was Caucasian American? Possibly, which leads to the question of medical apartheid. IF anyone read the book about medical apartheid, it covers many experiments and unethical practices done against black people in the United States, particularly African Americans and those who were enslaved to begin with. LEt us travel back in time a bit, and look at the experimentation done on black women in the mid nineteenth century. A trigger warning, TW, will be in place for the next section as I’m about to discuss some gruesome details about dissection, and the details could make one’s blood boil.

Dr. Marion Sims, the so called “father of obstetrics and gynecology”, was perhaps psychologically sick. HE experimented on female slaves and dissected their body parts, particularly the labias and uteruses so that the world could see how the body worked. Back then, you couldn’t just do painless procedures, but even back then, there could have been better things to do with such front if experiments were necessary. Dr Sims was unethical and besides the purchase of the black slaves, this doctor engaged in things I couldn’t imagine. It goes deeper. Medical Apartheid covers not only this particular doctor, but there are countless others, including the extraction of cells from one Henrietta Lax, on which there is also a stand alone book. Henrietta Lax’s own cervical cells were extracted for experimental purposes, and perhaps without the family’s consent. Thus why I’m outraged about my own care.

Outside of obstetrics and gynecology, the medical apartheid goes into cadavers and exhibiting black people in public zoos and circuses, I could go on. The same treatment given to these people could possibly extend further to disabled patients. IF I die, to be fair, I have recently signed up with Donate Life, but I’m making this clear. Don’t bother using my eyes for anything but research purposes. They are not usable, but my other organs will be a great asset to someone who’s possibly at death’s door waiting for a new set of guts, kidneys and liver, all of it. My heart could possibly give life to someone else, who knows. I am registered as a deceased organ donor, and I did this for the sake of others I would know that need it. My body will be of use after my death, so in a way I’m going to be a tad immortal, even if that means I’m not all the way animated, and you won’t hear my voice or see my writing here after my death, but if someone walks up to you and says, I have Beth’s heart and I have Beth’s lungs, kidneys or liver, you will be thinking that I did something incredible. I have to be clear though about my eyes, but all other organs and tissues will be distrivuted to people who truly need it. When a cadaveric organ or tissue is donated, oftentimes it could be of someone who is low income, and they have no say in it. How many of us have any idea what Donate Life is? I registered as an organ donor on my phone’s health app. iF you all have Apple or Android health records stored, I’d be one to say the setup and registration process is easy, and accessible with Voiceover but I can’t speak to Talkback, the screen reading software for Android users. Donate Life is a very huge national organ donor registry, and I’d rather have signed up with my personal consent, but not if a doctor demanded it because of anything else. My partner would probably be proud of me, and I’d inform him that the registration will for me be a bit of peace of mind, and I would hope for him, it would be a way for me to say that no matter where I am and where my soul is, I’m still going to give myself away as many times as possible. With medical apartheid victims, the medical orgn and tissue donation is not done with their personal consent. Sometimes black and minority patients are cut apart, purposefully killed for their cadaverous bones and such, which begs the question of ethics. Families should not have to beg and sue medical providers for the dead remains of their loved ones.

Blind and physically disabled people should be making all decisions, including medical on their own. I made the medical decision to conceive and bear a child for my beloved partner, so why isn’t any medical provider apt to respect that? My decisions are essential to my well being, and it just never occurs to medical providers that my decisions are my decisions, from the beginning of my son’s life to my actual death.

Grocery prices are too high

Dear readers,

While at King Soopers trying to find a good sauce for dinner that night, I ran across a sauce. It was a preferred brand, but the price absolutely shocked me. The Primal Kitchen and most of the other dairy free alfredo sauces were a whopping $9 for one small jar! IF this is what we have to deal with, I don’t quite understand how anyone will survive. $9 is too much for a jar of sauce, $12 is too many bucks to spend for eggs. There is currently an egg shortge. Worse, Domino’s delivery fees are now $5. I will say this, I will not pay for $5 delivery fees. I will not support inflatable business practices. Here’s a proposal: lower your prices, and find some way to expand social programs to cover all the inflated price points. I say this not because as some of you could say, it’s not about entitlement, it’s about survival. I will never pay $10 or more for a small jar of something, sauce or salsa. Whatever I pay should be reasonable, and let’s all remember that there are elders and disabled people who like me will never pay that price for food. There are folks like me who could never possibly be hired for employment, and even so, the wages earned are not enough. SSI is purposefully designed to kill us all off, so people, think about it.

Money: The Root of All Evil and How It Rips families Apart and kills people

Dear readers,

Imagine you are slapped in the face by your mother, and then you wonder if you just got slapped hard enough to cause blood to flow. Up to this point, you’re asked to do chores, but under threat of punishment, you have to be in bed, you can’t even read books at night, and also under threat of punishment, you are told to exercise, go to a stupid private school, and furthermore,you are screamed at and punished for four weeks without any relief such as music on the radio for something as minor as flooding a bathroom, or perhaps you don’t get a hot lunch and can’t liten to the radio for any number of minor infractions. This was my reality. Yet the Child Welfare system in Florida, the Department of Children and Families, did not anticipate a fifteen year long stunt with a guardianship, did not anticipate my reality being transformed into a prison. In March of 2006, David Taurasi falsely imprisoned me along with my mother, Patricia, his wife. Their justification was that I was “obsessed with Orien Henry” and at that time, I was nineteen. HE was a bit below that, however, I had zero friends, zero ways to get help, and because of the prior slap from my mother, I was the one being punished not her. My parents assured and duped DCF workers into thinking they’d get counseling as a family, but that counseling was also abusive in that the counselors and therapists were paid for with my parents’ insurance, and these people were coached, perhaps demanded of, to tell me that I was inferior, to tell me to obey parents whose only wish was to emotionally abuse. To this day, I can no longer trust them. Their guardianship did not allow me to marry the men I chose, allowed their emotional abuse to continue beyond the slap and the mocking bullshit they posed about me sitting beside persons I cared to be around, and they cut off all communications with all my friends, and this was in an effort to silence me. This reality was sponsored in large part by the almighty dollar. Insurance companies, social workers, and worst of all, a powerful aerospace engineer were all complacent in emotional abuse of this girl, this woman, me. David Taurasi continues to show little if not no interest in my beautiful son, I won’t reveal his name here on this blog because it’s more public than Facebook, but David and Patricia, my own parents, claiming they love me, have shown zero interest and zero contributions to my baby registry have popped up. They are hurting my son, yet showering Leah, my niece, their legitimate granddaughter, the daughter of Danny, not the son of Beth but the daughter of DAd’s little golden child, Danny, with gifts, love, family time, attention, and respect. My mother nods off and sighs when I want her to help with my upcoming birth, but then jumps on the opportunity to help a strange woman, the wife of her firstborn son. She refuses to let me marry, then I balk and expose her and my adoptive father for the people they are, especially on the FaceUs radio program, Third Eye Visions, all of this in an effort to expose their wicked scheme, so what does this family do? When my beloved partner and I are expecting a child, they close the door. They punish me yet again, not showing interest in keeping my son with me. Instead, they pressure and pressure me to adopt the little guy out to a family. I’ve even gotten judgments like this on Facebook, stuff like because of the partner I chose, I’m not fit to be a mother. WHo’s the fit one? Was it the one who lies about child abuse allegations that are false? Or is it the lioness over here who’s typing this to tell you what people’s actions actually do?

Let me explain what money does to hurt our children. I won’t use any stories but mine and publicized stories in the news outlets and things I’ve been exposed to. Disclaimer: I am not publicizing any answers about any alleged incidents involving my partner or me.

LEt’s start with some happy endings. Eight-year-old Tekiah Innocent was removed from her mother because of neglect. Was there neglect in the Innocent story? I don’t know, but DCF does, and they likely did find a lazy mother playing with herself, the television, or something other than Tekiah herself. She moves in with her father who, besides being “pussy whipped” by an evil monstrocity such as Tansy Innocent, doesn’t report his daughter’s abuse by Tansy when she dunks her stepdaughter’s body in hot water as punishment. I have a few things to point out here. Florida is the child abuse capital of the United States, and there’s one thing that might have stopped Tansy from doing this evil deed. Had she been monitored closely by DCF officials, and this is a sighted nondisabled parent, she would have probably been denied access to Tekiah while she was behind. Tekiah’s prognosis? 30% of her body was covered in second and third degree burns. The grandmother might never see her granddaughter again, but she did the right thing and Tekiah was eventually adopted in a kinship placement to my knowledge. She survived, but the next few cases did not.

DCF doesn’t seem to have its priorities straight. My own story proves that. I had to, however, escape at age 23 to Denver in 2010, and I’ve never been the one to want to be flown back. I have my own apartment, I have a baby on the way, I have a loving partner, and I have friends in the area who care, not only professionals but true soldiers who stand with me, solidarity is key. I have literally fought the shit out of liars, and I know the importance of protecting my nest, my baby, all of this around me. My parents have shown zero to me about helping with Baby, flying over to meet the child, all of it. No money contributions, no items on the registry purchased, this family is pressuring me to give up my son. Well, that won’t happen.

DCF Florida also has a problematic track record with girls who have disability. They seem to have a huge track record for deaths too. My god, DCF allowed Kayla McKeen to die. In other states, we meet a girl called Sabrina, who died as a result of being conditioned not to eat, that food was for people who earned it. We meet a young boy who is so badly traumatized called Demitrius Keye, who kills his poor little brother Lavarius, this poor innocent boy, over something as trivial as dessert. LEt me ask you a question: would you kill your sibling for dessert? what kind of family dynamic is in a home where a little thirteen year old gets to bully and squash out the life of his little brother for food? The answer is a toxic family dynamic. Social workers did next to nothing, nothing to provide this family with counseling.

Then there’s Michaela Senate, the little girl from Missouri who was snatched away from Erica Johnson and her then partner Blake who are both blind. For some months, this girl was growing big in the arms of foster care. It was determined that Erica and Blake were unfit. Why? Child welfare orgs like the ones across the nation who fail at saving lives yet ripping disabled parents away from their children are doing thees backward things so they can fulfill federal quotas, receive more federal funding for the so called care they receive. I will not reveal how this is possible, only to state that given my experience trying to work with DCF, this is correct. Social workers do this failure and falsify allegations against parents with disabilities, poor people etc., and they even failed to stop the abuse of one Kelly Marie Bond. She was raped repeatedly, and her obituary upon her death seems suspicious. Her pets get more attention, and they are the survivors, but she’s not given any credence as to how she died. Her sister Emily doesn’t seem to care she died.

The CPS/DCF workers’ only interest is to kill off those they deem undesirable. Blind people included, also they want to deny they would kill blind parents, but that’s their end goal. It’s all about the Washingtons, Benjamins, all of it. I’m so livid about the way child welfare orgs operate, and for your information, the DCF folks could have killed me. I’m a blind female, who is going to adopt me?

One final thing about child welfare in Florida. One of my friends on Facebook knows a woman who was a rude bitch in the carpool line outside an old place I went to, Coquina Preschool. This woman supposedly was a foster mother in Titusville, but the news outlets like Florida Today report that this woman killed a fosterling in her care, stating the girl was “possessed by demons.” Who does that! DCF did little if anything to stop her. To close this, however, I will try and offer a happy ending story. It illustrates why DCF/CPS arms must do more and make sure that children in dire need are safer, and this means actual physical and emotional cases of abuse.

Tammy and Brad had some kids, stepchildren between them. Little Jordan was living with Brad and Tammy and the gang. Unfortunately, Brad and Tammy thought it was cute and perhaps a good method of their authoritarian abuse and discipline to throw their little Jordan in a so called Harry Potter room. This went on for years, and little Jordan, living now with his biological mother and still visiting his rescuers, hint hint, was starved nearly to death. Tammy tried to hide this asinine act from DCF/CPS and police, but you should know that the older sibs rescued the poor little boy. The brother fucked with Brad, and the stepsister, well, she called 911 and stuff, and she and the brother with her decided to act because the stupid shell of a mother, Tammy, was abusive to Jordan. Thanks to the courage of the older siblings, Jordan survived, but not without refeeding at the hospital, Dr. Phil McGraw reports that because Jordan’s body was emaciated, he was fed small amounts, then bigger amounts, a process called refeeding. It’s something they should have done to Holocaust survivors, but yes. Now, I would hope that Jordan thrives, loves his siblings, but Tammy and Brad are splitzville and history.

All this could have been stopped if CPS/DCF workers would have their heads on straight, and quotas and money bullshit wasn’t a priority. I have a final thought for you on the front lines of child maltreatment. Do your job. Your job is not to be mooching and collecting federal moneys, it is saving children’s lives. It is helping disabled parents like myself and my partner, it is not ripping apart families so you can cash in.

Thank you.

Beth

The Complete Idiot’s Guide for Installing a Baby’s Car Seat, Both as a Blind Parent and With Having to Use Rideshare

Dear readers,

This is not exactly the whole complete idiot’s guide to putting in your car seat, but I want to simplify what I learned about putting in a basic and simple easy to use car seat system for a baby. Yep, here we go, the baby thing is real. I’ll add some asides about the car seat I’ll personally be using to carry my little man around. So let’s start with what the car seat looks like.

First off, any good car seat should have a structure that protects a baby. LEt’s take a look at the model I’ve got: the Even Flow Nurture. I love this car seat because you can pretty much do what you need to and it’s pretty basic, and you don’t have to use a base in cases like with us blind parents, while we can’t just have our own vehicle, we can use this thing particularly for a ride share. The Even Flow Nurture comes with all the basic seat harnesses for baby’s legs and there’s a double thing on the bottom where the crotch belt goes in. Like, you put two pieces into the belt slot. It has this shoulder thing, and a pretty sleek and slick chest clip. You can also secure the baby carefully using a little strap and a button on the bottom of the seat. I’m going to be honest, the h harnessing of Baby in the seat is a piece of cake, once you learn the steps it will be a no brainer. So let me explain in some way like you would in the complete idiot’s guide to anything for real.

First, make sure there’s slack in the harness, you can push the button on the bottom where the little pull strap is, and pull the harness toward you, provided the car seat is in the vehicle, and rear facing. I’ll get into the placement later. So while facing the car seat, pull the harness toward you, and it should slacken.

Next, place your little munchkin, baby, your precious cargo gently in the seat, taking care to put the baby’s back and all against the back of the seat, and start from the bottom up, see next step.

Take the left leg and be sure to slip it in the left leg portion of the harness, that should be pretty easy. Same wih the right. Then, carefully put the arms in the shoulder spaces.

Now, to clip the harness, start as I said from the bottom. The crotch buckle has two slots, so place the two leg portions in the slot, and let the things clip like a normal safety belt. Make sure the straps there are not ever twisted. SEe next step.

Make sure the shoulder straps of the harness are not twisted or bunched as well. The chest clip goes in the middle between the baby’s shoulders, right on the chest, and so all you have to do is clip the thing right on. Clip carefully from left to right, taking care that the chest clip thing is below the baby’s head and neck, don’t mess with the airways.

Now, to secure the baby properly in the car seat, pull the little strap thing on the bottom of the car seat and make sure the baby is firmly strapped in, you don’t want the harness straps to be an inch even away from baby’s shoulders, so in the event of a crash or fender bender, the baby won’t fall.

Now, myself and my partner have found, for all intent and purpose, that the base of a car seat is a bitch to install, takes multiple steps, but at least we know what it looks like. Because we don’t own a vehicle, we recommend anyone who doesn’t own one just do the following seat belt instructions.

First, look at the bottom part of the car seat, there’s a couple little places to thread the lap portion of your car’s seat belt. Take the lap portion and put that carefully into the threading portion of the car seat. And then, pull slowly across, letting the shoulder strap go free. Then, place the belt buckle into the console on the opposite side where the baby would be seated, then pull the shoulder strap out, all the way until you can’t anymore, then listen for the click as the shoulder strap feeds back in to the belts threading spot in the car, and then it comes right back up to center, so when the clicking stops, your shoulder strap on the regular seat belt should be firmly secure. Note that when you are installing the car seat, check the seat carrier itself so that it’s flat against the car’s seat back. The reclining thing should be upward, and the seat upright in turn. There’s a slight angle on the bottom, that should indicate the recline.

A note about car seat placement: To all parents with all car seats, all children from 0-6 or so should be in a back seat and infants to a certain degree above a certain weight should always be in a rear facing car seat. Always, always place your car seat in the car seat inside the back end of your vehicle, whether it’s yours or a friend’s, and it should be facing you and the baby should be facing the rear of the vehicle, so when an airbag deployment happens, you can always be mindful that your child is safe and secure.

Happy traveling.

Beth

Football: the Safe Sport You Can’t Play

Dear readers,

I’d like to say that I’m taking this blog a few different directions, and I want to first apologize because I had to trash a couple of posts due to what seems like some damage done between me and another person, and I was wrongly or somehow accused of publicizing negativity that to this person, caused irreparable harm to our relationship. I don’t believe in irreparability, so I just went and erased the posts he had a problem with. I do however want to say I was fearful for my own personal safety. And speaking of personal safety, I am going to tell you all a few good reasons why you can’t play football. Here they are:

1. Let’s start with the limbs. You’re at risk of broken bones and or nerve damage in your arms or legs.
2. CTE is a big concern, and if you wanna know what I’m talking about, just watch Concussion, starring Will Smith. You’ll see why.
3. The behavior of football players, if it didn’t amount to the brain, it would amount to other people not being safe around these guys. You’ve got football coaches and players alike committing sexual abuse and rape. Not just girls either. Jerry Sandusky perhaps was a football player, but with him doing the abuse on young boys, costing Joe Paterno his winningest college football career, I’m not sure where to go from there.
4. Football players who play for years, I’m talking about Tom Brady and Bret Favre, those guys will need extensive care for all body parts, including the limbs, heart, and brain. IF those guys end up with severe dementia symptoms, don’t be surprised.
5. Guys who play football just don’t look the best. This might not be one of the top top reasons not to play the sport, but all that padding and all the helmets and such, just makes you look more like a soldier in some weird armor rather than a football player. Football as we know it in the United States is also showing a lack of understanding and the NFL for example only seems to care about profits, not the lives of its players.
6. And speaking of the last item, prayers for DaMar Hamlin, because he fell on the ground and had cardiac arrest, and that’s rare but possible in football, and I don’t want to ever think that DaMar made a bad choice by playing, but sometimes we run across injurious conditions that nature put in people’s way, and this is a case in point. The NFL in this rare instance made the right decision. DaMar’s condition may put him out of the sport, but the more important thing is that he’s alive, and at 24, he could get a bright new start to things. I suppose he could get married, settle down, and get a job as a sports medicine nurse if you ask me. But football? No. I wouldn’t recommend it, for the sake of his heart.
7. Another thing I want to point out. The NFL has a domestic violence tolerance policy, and they don’t put up with guys slapping around their wives. I get it. But the panel investigating such should be made up of players’ wives, mostly black women, and there should be a good panel of survivors of DV that includes all manner of women but white women. White people seem to think they can get away with no accountability. Ugh.

This is the big things I would avoid when playing football. Thank you for reading, and for this blog, I guess I’ll be in the more informative space here. Anyone want something to talk about, just let me know. Thank you.

Beth

Here Comes Christmas

Dear readers,

As the holidays approach me with their garish and gaudy glitter and glam about Santa Claus and ho ho ho, mistletoe, and a thousand other things, I just want to pause and think about one aspect of Christmas people often want to associate with only Christianity. While I’d been a Christian for years, I can’t help but wonder as I’m carrying my little one how Mary managed to do things, what with no doula, no midwifery attendants, no hospital or relaxing music, not even a birth plan.

Let me begin the story as I should, but let me be clear. Mary was probably not a virgin, although many Christians will say that she was to save face. A woman’s hymen by the way does not diminish her value if broken, not ever at all. So we begin in a time when such a belief about hymens was real, and the reality was that a woman was always judged for even a rape. Judaea, an ancient home later called Israel, was occupied by Romans, people who prided themselves in being conquering antiheroic bastards, excuse my language, but that’s what these people were. Roman soldiers like all conquerors actually did do some damage. They pillaged and raped and robbed, they killed and put up lots of oppressive rules to make their people feel supreme. One of those women who could have been victimized by the conquerors was a peasant maiden, Marium, or we could call her Mary. Mary was approached by an angel, Gabriel, who was probably God’s favorite, and he would later reveal himself to a Prophet of God in Islam, so what this guy did was say, “Hey, you’re going to have a son.” Mary didn’t know men in the proper way of women in those days, but she’d been promised to Joseph, a carpenter in a little place called Nazareth, we all know that. Now I can only imagine Mary’s thoughts at that time, and she being so young and a maiden being transitioned into motherhood, she asked, “Why do you choose me to carry your son?” I question that a lot. Why am I carrying a child in the first place because let’s face it, blind and mentally damaged by years of parental abuse, no money no job no gold sovereigns. What can I do?

God, the goddess, and the universe picks all kinds of unqualified and or less seeming individuals to do huge jobs for them. Mary was one such. She was a maiden of probably about teen age, and in our teenage years, most of us worry about school, friends and the opposite sex. Or perhaps we worry about the same sex, depending on who we truly love. In our modern teenage bodies, there is no promised marriage, no behavior and rigid social classes to the extent of ancient times, and no girl is usually in Western culture forced to marry an old man, except if she’s in some sort of cult or she’s in places where it happens too many times to count. Mary and Joseph, I suppose, were probably engaged to each other long before Mary understood what she would be going through. The two of them probably grew up together, grew up side by side and by turns both families knew each other. Joseph was of an ancient royal line of a king that probably messed up a few times, David, who famously went out with Bathsheba and she bore him Solomon, the wisest king in the world, but I digress. David’s ancient home was a place known as Bethlehem, which is also the burial place of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. I won’t go into Rachel and Leah’s big cat fight over kids, okay?

Anyhow, how do we end up in Bethlehem? Mary was withchild by this point, and Joseph being of David’s bloodline went off to Bethlehem because of this Caesar, a Roman emperor king, and this guy was pretty messy with the way he handled the Judaeans. He decreed that a census be taken, not for the same reasons we do a census here in our modern world. Caesar Augustus wasn’t my personal preference for a leader, of course, but he had a big way of going all out counting everybody. This guy made all the conquered peoples go to their ancient base homes, including Joseph, who ended up in Bethlehem with his wife Mary. There was, however, a snag. They needed lodging, but let’s be clear, Mary didn’t have a suitcase and couldn’t just jump in her wagon and head to a real hospital or birth center. It gets pretty good from here.

Many innkeepers and those with proprietary taverns and hotels all turned Mary and Joseph away because for one, they had no money, and for two, no prestige. Mary wasn’t a queen or princess, and by the same token, Joseph, despite being David’s descendant, was not even a king by the title or anything like that. So the keepers of these hotels and inns were all very rude and said things like, “We only take the great people like lords and kings. Get out, you filthy peasant folk.” However, there was a family who probably had a barn cellar down below and it had lots of animals in it. Here’s where it gets good.

First off, when you see the Nativity, the barn is definitely an enclosed cellar, and you have animals all over the place. Horses, sheep, donkeys, you name it. Most families in cities and towns like Bethlehem in that time had these setups, and the animals were a blessing to the baby to come and Mary because according to scripture and story, Mary was probably facing a cold night ahead. Some shepherds were out there protecting sheep, and an angel would later tell them of the news of Mary’s little baby. Well, sadly, Mary had to lay her little baby boy in an old manger, a feed box for cows and goats and such, full of hay. Sounds a bit odd, but I could tell a story of three trees so that you could understand that a bed doesn’t have to be for just any king. The first tree wanted to be a bed, but that old feed box it was turned into became a bed for the greatest spiritual teacher ever, a king in the eyes of his people. The baby lay in this little manger bed and Mary had him swaddled in clothing, much the way we all do with our babies. There were three wise men, and they brought the little guy gifts, including gold to represent his kingship, frankincense to represent his divinity perhaps, and myrrh to represent his sacrifice in later life. Myrrh, in case you guys forget or have forgotten over the years, is a spice used for embalming dead people especially in ancient times. The myrrh would later be used for Jesus’s burial and we’d all know what could happen then after.

Mary’s story proves to me that God and the universe are not out to pick queens by title or gold sovereign rich people to always be the ones to bear children. I am carrying my little one inside me, and I can’t honestly wait to hold the child tightly in my arms, giving him life and love beyond measure. When Mary first delivered Jesus, I bet she kissed the baby and wrapped her arms around the little tyke and just cooed at him and told him how much she adored him. The song Mary Did You Know says it all, that the child she delivered would deliver her from pain. Honestly, I hope my darling boy delivers me a message, but I’m not sure. Even still, the thought of me carrying this big task before me would scare my parents. I am very upset that they aren’t even interested in their grandson, and they won’t understand that this boy is my life, my universe, it’s an unbelievable connection between us, so it was also the same with Mary. When a baby is inside you, the connection is downright awesome. It can be hell at times, what with the little baby sitting on your bladder, making you go and go and go. Sometimes you have scary symptoms, including gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, all that crap. Trust me, however, it will be worth it. My precious child will be more precious to me even now. My mother doesn’t know that this child is staying with me, and the father and I planned a few things, but his future is bright. I have a brighter future and honestly, this child saved my whole life. This little babe saved my entire life’s purpose, and I feel I’ve been put on earth to nurture and love the child that the universe gave me.

Christmas brought me the news that I was having a boy, and I meet such news with so much joy. It’s overwhelming. Although Mary’s story is a bit different, maybe it is the same, my baby is and will be borne of love and made with love. Trust me, I hope that with every child born this holiday, we realize this with the hearts that we carry within our bodies. While my baby will ick my butt a few weeks from now, I would hope that you all will celebrate Christmas with me.

Thank you so much.

Beth