Why God Gets Sued

Okay, okay, nobody really sues God.  I mean, nobody in his or her right mind would even contemplate suing the Almighty, right?  But they can and do sue the next reasonable facsimile thereof.  They sue doctors.
 
Why do people sue doctors?  Because many people are hurt and/or killed every day by the very profession that is supposed to help them, or at the very least, ‘do no harm’.  But isn’t it the right of each and every American to sue those who have caused us harm?  Well, yes, within reason.  However, recent events have shown us that this practice has quickly outgrown the bounds of reason. 
 
So, what then, is causing the dramatic increase in malpractice suits and monetary awards?  There are several answers to this question, but each answer is in reality a problem that begins and ends with the physicians themselves.
 
The first major problem with the medical profession is one I like to call the ‘Circle the Wagons’ syndrome.  In my career as a nursing home supervisor, I saw many mistakes, errors and lapses in judgment by attending doctors.  Whenever I became aware of one of these blunders, I would bring the error(s) to the attention of the offending doctor in a timely and courteous fashion.  Only once did an appreciative physician thank me for calling his attention to a mistake in a prescription that would most surely have cost his elderly patient her life.  The majority of the time, I was verbally abused and sometimes even threatened with the loss of my job if I didn’t ‘forget what I saw’. 

The only reason I persisted in this course of action was that my first loyalty and duty were to my patients, not my fellow health care providers.  Or course, not everyone can or will take this stand, and I eventually burned out of the field of geriatric due to stress.  Many of us lesser mortals, the nurses, CNAs, and other ‘secondary health care providers’, are leaving the field due to incidents like these, and for us, doctors are the worst offenders.
 
There are far too many practicing doctors who make mistakes on a near-daily basis.  Quite frankly, I have personally known some doctors who did not deserve the title ‘M.D’.  Every day in this country and throughout the world, I hear about some horrendous medical mistake.  Last week, a doctor removed the healthy breasts from a woman.  She had been mistaken for a patient with advanced breast cancer.  As a woman, I can deeply identify with the horror of this case of “Oops, sorry, mistaken identity”.  As a former health care provider and a present consumer of medical services, I know that a mistake like this can happen to me.  And that terrifies me.
 
We have also heard about surgeons deliberately desecrating the sanctity of their patients’ bodies.  One surgeon carved his initials on a woman’s stomach, and another surgeon carved the initials of his favorite sports team on a woman’s uterus.  In both cases, these doctors were ‘victims’ of substance abuse, and/or were under the influence of drugs/alcohol at the time of the perpetrated outrage.  Does this excuse their actions?  No, it doesn’t, not any more than the “I was drunk” excuse mitigates the results of a deadly DUI vehicle accident or a fatal domestic violence incident.
 
In 1990, a study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health estimated that, each year, more than 3% of patients in New York State hospitals suffered some form of a medical mistake, which resulted in serious injury. Nationally, the Harvard Medical Practice Study estimated that, each year, more than 180,000 people die, at least in part, because of medical mistakes. Public Citizen, a non-profit organization that advocates the rights of consumers, estimates that, each year, 1.3 million injuries are caused by physician/health care facility negligence, and that more than two-thirds of these injuries are preventable.   The most disconcerting factor in these figures is the understanding that these figures represent only those mistakes that are honestly reported.  How many mistakes are deliberately covered up, lied about or go unrecorded?  Remember too, that this study was done over 22 years ago.  How many deaths in the year 2012 were due to medical incompetence?  250,000?  300,000? More?
 
How many of these substandard physicians end up losing their license to practice medicine?  Not enough.  Most of them end up just paying a fine and/or having their malpractice insurance rates raised, and the few who do lose their license in one state can easily move to another state and set up their (butcher) shop again.  Why is there no nationwide database on physicians who have been found guilty of malpractice that is available to public scrutiny?  If a physician is convicted of deliberate patient abuse, malpractice or practicing under the influence of drugs or alcohol, why aren’t they banned from practice in all 50 states and all U.S. protectorates, such as Guam, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands?  Because the medical profession continues to claim that it can adequately police itself, and that it is doing a good job of censuring its renegades without outside help.  The statistics show otherwise. 
 
We all know that there will always be rotten apples in every job/barrel.  In truth, physicians and other health care providers have done a terrible job of policing their respective professions.  Instead of rooting out and getting rid of medical miscreants, the medical profession protects them.  It is very, very rare to hear any one doctor privately or publicly disparage another doctor.  Physicians consistently refuse to testify against each other.  Why?   Because all doctors recognize that they could be the next one defending their actions in a court of law.
 
Publicly admitting on the stand to an error in judgment could cost a doctor a tremendous amount of money, horrendous publicity and even their practice.  The stakes are very high in this game of life.  However, by subscribing to this shortsighted viewpoint, doctors are dealing themselves out of the game, thanks to the increasingly high malpractice insurance rates.  Bad doctors hurt all doctors, but this obvious truth is too bitter a pill for the medical profession to swallow.

What I see as another major problem with the medical society of today is the tremendous disparity in the power structure of the physician/patient relationship, and the unwillingness of the physicians to listen to their patients.  Doctors are still almost worshipped by a majority of people outside the medical field.  (Those of us with experience within the medical field know better.)  To the layperson, a doctor has a nearly ‘mystical’ knowledge of the human body that they lack.  Because of this concept, nearly all of the power in this relationship lies with the physician.  The doctor is the ‘expert’ on the human condition, and his/her word is law.  At least that’s what a lot of doctors seem to think, or at least that is the stance they strive to project onto their patients.  What is most unsettling to me is that many physicians believe that they do indeed have nearly ‘Godlike’ powers over life and death.  But unlike God, who makes no mistakes, physicians can and do commit errors on a daily basis!  By refusing join the rest of the common people in experiencing the humility of mere humanity, physicians set themselves up for retribution and retaliation at the hands of those they harm. 
 
In a substantial number of magazines on the rack today, I see articles on ‘How To Talk With Your Physician And Get The Results You Want’ or some such nonsense.  These articles give very specific directions.  Among them are notions such as these:  1.  Make a list of your physical complaints.  2.  Make a list of questions you need to ask.  3.  Ask for clear and specific instructions in language you understand.  4.  Expect respect from your physician.  This line of action sounds good, and many people, especially women, try to follow these well-meaning guidelines.
 
In my experience as a health care provider, I can tell you that this is a good idea that usually doesn’t work.  I have witnessed the majority of those people who actually do these things deeply resented and charted as ‘listers’ by their personal physicians.  Instead of opening up lines of communication, these actions are, by and large, cause for ridicule of the patient behind their back as soon as they leave the office.  I have not only heard it from the mouths of the doctors I have worked with, I have experienced this attitude when my former physician directed it at me.  Now, these guidelines could indeed foster clear communications, but it is the rare doctor who has the patience or the proper mindset to appreciate the patient’s effort.
 
While the above suggestions on effective communication are actually a very bastion of common sense, they cut into the physician’s power base.  You see, many doctors hate, absolutely hate to recognize the fact that they, as human beings, are just as prone to error as the rest of the human race.  When a patient actually takes tries to take some responsibility for his or her own personal care, or gives the slightest appearance of questioning the judgment of the attending physician, ‘God’ is not happy.  How dare a mere patient even begin to suggest that a prescribed course of action that is/isn’t in their own best interest?  Who is the doctor here?  Who is the expert?  I have a news flash for all physicians.  Each and every patient is an expert on his or her own body.  Only the patient knows how he/she feels at any given moment.  Only the patient knows where it hurts, how bad it hurts, and what gives relief from the pain.  Only the patient knows when and how a prescribed medication acts after being taken for his/her condition. 

This attempt at giving ‘input’ is derogatorily described as ‘subjective anecdotes’, and is treated with complete and total contempt.  Why?  If I were to walk into a physician’s office, sit there in his/her presence and not say one word in response to his/her questions, just how could the physician know how to begin to treat me?  Unless I ‘tell you where it hurts’, how do you know where to start?  Without my ‘subjective imput’, any doctor in the world is clueless.  My ‘subjective anecdotes’ are the critical starting point of any effective treatment plan!  Without my information, doctors are useless, helpless and totally ineffective – perhaps that is exactly why they hate ‘subjective input/anecdotes’ so much.  It is this very thing that infuriates them – ‘God’ is just another human being without my ‘subjective self-knowledge’.  Nothing is so vital to accurate health care as this much maligned ‘subjective input’, and nothing is hated as much as patient opinion.   

Until and unless each and every physician in this country can show me proof positive that he/she has been living inside each of their patient’s bodies for the entire lifespan of the patient, and can tell me exactly how each patient has functioned at any given moment, from conception to the grave, I will persist in my belief that physicians are only making an ‘educated guess’ on any given treatment.  After all, why do doctors themselves call it “My Practice’ and ‘Practicing Medicine’?  Isn’t practice something you do until you perfect it?  Are doctors perfect?  Is the present state of available medical care in this country perfect?  Will it ever achieve perfection?  All together now:  Duh.
 
We are not clones, we are not the same person, each of us is a diverse life entity, and what may work for one patient may sicken or kill another patient.  I can tolerate the use of antihistamines extremely well – my best friend can take one and be knocked out for the rest of the day.  I am now allergic to Penicillin – my brother and I could be given Penicillin and die from anaphylactic shock.  This one-treatment-fits-all approach to medicine is the most prevalent yet misguided application to health care in this country today.  It is directly contrary to what each person instinctively knows, that each of us is different, and we react differently to any given treatment because of physical, mental, emotional, psychological and genetic differences.  Medical care must be tailored to each individual, and the only correct way to do that is to listen to and respect each patient’s communication about their perceived state of his or her health.
 
It is this unwillingness to listen to subjective patient input that causes the majority of problems for both the patient and the physician.  When patients feel that they are not being heard or taken seriously, when they see that their attempts at effective communication are negated by the arrogance of the doctor, well, quite frankly, their feelings are hurt.  Since the power structure of the physician/patient relationship is so unequal, what other avenues do patients have to make doctors take them seriously?  If a patient brings in literature or a suggestion about their health care, how many doctors will listen or be willing to discuss it?  How many physicians contemptuously dismiss any attempts at such communication by their patients or will even label the patient as a hypochondriac or worse, non-compliant?  Trust me, receiving the label of ‘non-compliant’ is the kiss of death to your insurance coverage.  Doctors know this, of course.  It is one of the weapons they use with great frequency against big-mouthed patients who dare to think that their personal opinion has merit.
 
Another news flash, doc.  An overwhelming majority of patients now have access to an awesome amount of medical information.  The Internet has done more to level the medical playing field than any other device or institution in history.  At the touch of a finger, any reasonably intelligent patient can pull up complete prescribing information of any given medication, in fact, the exact same information supplied in the Physician’s Desk Reference on Drugs.  Patients can check for themselves any possible drug interactions, they can read about their medical conditions, and they can communicate with others who suffer the same condition.  They can read, learn and intelligently decide for themselves what actions they may reasonably take to insure their quality of life.  They deserve to be heard, and they certainly deserve respect for their ideas, fears, concerns and conjectures. They have a computer, and they’re not afraid to use it.
 
Do doctors begin their medical education with this attitude?  For the most part, no, they do not.  This attitude is acquired in medical school, and it is driven home by the de-humanizing burden of school workload, internship and residency.  Instead of requiring residents and interns to be adequately rested and take proper breaks between shifts, many young doctors are forced to work 60 to 80 or more hours without rest.  What idiot dreamed up this scenario?  In what other profession are beginners required to work such long hours without respite?  What effect does this have on the new doctor?  Well, if you were forced to see hundreds of patients without a break, wouldn’t you eventually begin to view the patients not as people, but as mere bodies with problems?  Would you not easily lose sight of the human being inside the flesh?  With many doctors, this de-humanizing of the individual person lasts their entire career.  They will always be cold, detached and emotionally A.W.O.L. from the pain of the human condition.  A patient becomes just a body, just a bag of meat and blood that needs to be fixed.  (Oh, and by the way, if it can’t be fixed, it is ALWAYS, always the fault of the patient, rarely if ever, the medication, the procedure or, God forbid, the doctor.)
 
If the Department of Labor and OSHA can regulate all other work professions, why haven’t they lowered the boom on the medical profession?  Working such long hours under such adverse conditions leads to extreme physical and mental fatigue, and places patients in danger of a medical misjudgment performed by an exhausted physician.   Why hasn’t the medical profession itself addressed and corrected this scandalous and unwarranted practice?  Is this deliberate?    Is this being done on purpose to create an impenetrable distance between the suffering patient and the almighty doctor?  Some doctors have admitted that this is the desired goal and have even claimed that this acquired emotional distance is necessary for a physician to be good at his work. 
 
Fortunately, this brainwashing does not take hold with every doctor.  There are some few outstanding physicians out there who recognize that their ability to emotionally connect with their patients is absolutely necessary to dispense quality medical care.  Luckily for me, my General Practitioner happens to be one of them.  That’s why I chose her as my G.P. – she listens to my concerns and respects me as a reasonable, intelligent human being.  We discuss all options of my health care and make decisions together.  We have a partnership, and she has an investment in me as a human being who trusts her with my health care.  She regards this as the sacred trust that it is.  This is what a patient-physician relationship should be.  Unfortunately, my doctor is a member of a very small minority in the community of physicians.  I just wish that there were many more like her.
 
Most importantly, doctors, physicians and health care facilities are not seeing the forest for the trees.  I refer to the highly publicized ongoing attempts to legislate monetary caps on malpractice awards.  Would the passing of these limits forestall malpractice suits?  If you believe this, I’ll have the Hope Diamond up for sale on eBay next week and I am looking forward to receiving your first bid. 
 
Let’s break it down here.  Bottom line, who benefits from malpractice suits?  The victims?  The families of the injured parties?  No, the primary beneficiaries of malpractice suits are attorneys.  Always, first and last, attorneys.  Personal injury and malpractice attorneys.  To cite one example, several local children were severely injured in an automobile crash.  In one family alone, one child died of his injuries, and the remaining sibling was totally mentally incapacitated for life.  The insurance company for the offending driver refused to pay, so the family engaged an attorney.  They won their lawsuit, and the award was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.  How much money did the family receive to provide lifetime care for their permanently brain-damaged son?  Not one red cent.  The attorneys on the case claimed every penny for their ‘services’.  This family continues to struggle financially to this day to provide adequate care at home for their son.  In this case, as in so many others, Lady Justice was blind drunk.
 
Several years ago, a young friend of mine was paralyzed, at the tender age of 17, from the shoulders down, by a surgeon who severed his spinal cord.  The boy was born with a severe curvature of the spine, and the purpose of the operation was to insert steel rods next to the vertebra to straighten it.  The surgeon was operating impaired under the influence of drugs, and cut the boy’s spine during the operation.  The young man and his family filed a malpractice suit against the doctor.  The surgeon immediately fled the state.  After an extensive trial, the boy was rightfully awarded thousands of dollars for wrongful injury.  How much of it did he receive?  Just enough to buy for him a vehicle with hand controls.  His attorneys claimed the rest for ‘expenses’.  Oh, by the way, this surgeon continues to practice medicine in another state as I write this.  I have to wonder, how many other people has he crippled for life since he ruined the life of my young friend? As with this case, the ‘wagons are circled’ each and every time a dysfunctional doctor is exposed.
 
What the extended medical community refuses to face is the fact that their worst enemies are  themselves and their cranial/rectal inversion attitude toward their patients.

  Okay, doctor, here is my prescription:

Physician, heal thyself.

Improvised Explosive Devices

While waiting in a doctor’s office quite recently, I idly picked up a magazine to read while I waited for the doctor.  Like many waiting rooms, there wasn’t much of a selection.   I chose to pick up the May 2006 issue of VFW.  This magazine is published by the Veterans of Foreign Wars for their membership.

An article written by Tim Dyhouse, VFW Magazine’s senior editor, immediately captured my attention.  In February of 2006, Mr. Dyhouse was embedded in the Missouri National Guard’s 110th Combat Engineer Battalion.  This is one of the battalions in Iraq whose primary mission is to search for and destroy IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices).

According to the article:

‘The battalion’s nearly 500 men and women comprise four companies and a headquarters staff based at three locations.  The 110th’s staff officers and Headquarters Company are at Baghdad, after moving from Tallil in March.’

“ The center of Iraq’s population is Baghdad, and that’s where the enemy’s munitions and orders come from,” said Lt. Col. Mitchell Passisi, the 110th’s commander.” 

What exactly does their job consist of, and what do they do?  Again, their primary job is the location and safe detonation of IED’s.  Baghdad and other major cities are nothing more or less than a continual minefield.  The Iraq terrorists are smart.  They are waging a battle we cannot win.  They are waging a battle with a strategy far beyond that waged in Korea and Viet Nam. 

Korea was pure guerrilla warfare.  Viet Nam was guerrilla warfare at it’s most intense.  Combat veterans from these two wars know quite well what it is like to fight an enemy you cannot see, and one you cannot tell from the indigenous population.  The concept of this type of conflict was unimaginable and impenetrable to the American battle mindset of Johnson & Co.  That is why we were forced to withdraw in those wars. 

There is no honor in mindlessly destroying American lives in a hopeless, civil conflict.  The biggest difference between WWs I and II and our latest wars is that we were not attacked as a nation in Korea, in Viet Nam and now, Iraq.  We entered the Korean and Viet Nam conflicts because of NATO and other post WWII treaties with our allies.  The war in Iraq, however,  is something shamefully new  – we have attacked a nation that had not attacked us.  If we attacked anyone, it should have been the home country anf political refuge of Osama bin Laden, the country of Saudi Arabia.  Oh, wait.  They are our allies, right? 

But Iraq isn’t Korea or Viet Nam.  This is a new game, one in which the body count is fast approaching 1,500,000 civilian and military dead.

The war in Iraq does share some grotesque similarities with the wars in Southeast Asia.  My husband’s friend, a decorated Viet Nam Veteran with a Bronze Star, told me about a young, orphaned Vietnamese girl-child who was adopted and looked after by his platoon.  These kind-hearted Marines clothed her, fed her, made sure she was safe and warm.  They took great delight in teaching her to swear in English.  She was the camp mascot, their little foreign daughter.  Her favorite American food was chocolate. 

One day, this little child walked up to a group of Marines.  They hugged her, petted her and were teaching her to play Tic Tac Toe in the dirt of the compound.  My husband’s friend had to wash out his socks before night patrol, so he left the group.  As he was gathering his laundry to begin his wash, an explosion caused everyone in the compound to hit the dirt. 

It wasn’t incoming fire.  This little girl, their adopted daughter, their ‘pet’, had pulled the pin on a grenade hidden under her little dress and blown up herself along with seven of the Marines in the group.  She was Viet Cong.

That was just one incident in Viet Nam.  Our forces did not, could not tell Vietnamiese from Viet Cong.  In my friend’s words, ‘They all looked and sounded alike.’  Trusted advisors turned out to be Viet Cong, time and time again.  Villagers, old, young, male and female could be ‘friendlies’ and then turn right around and actually be ‘Gooks’.  This was a war we could not win.  We did not win in Viet Nam.  We pulled out, and we brought our boys home.  Viet Nam survived.  It is not a democracy, but it survived. 

But how can you win a war when there is no one to shoot at?  How can you win a war when your enemy fights by hiding a gasoline-filled shell hidden inside a dead human body?  The insurgents in Iraq know that American soldiers will stop and check every body they find, for humanitarian reasons.  They count on American soldiers’ concern for the living and their compassion for the injured and dead.  They have us figured out; trust me on that. 

One day, a stretch of highway in Iraq will be cleared of IED’s.  The very next day, or even that same night, the next patrol will find old tires, piles of garbage or rubble, a bundle of clothes or bodies that were not there before.  Our soldiers learned the hard way that anything not there the first time around is probably booby-trapped.  If our troops have learned this lesson, they have learned it the hard way.  We now have well over 3,000 dead American soldiers to prove it.  How many have been physically maimed?  I haven’t been able to get those figures.

Mr. Dyhouse says:

“IED’s are the deadliest weapons in the enemy arsenal, accounting for more than two-thirds of all hostile U.S. deaths in Iraq in the last half of 2005.  Between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2005, Pentagon statistics show that 368 uniformed Americans were killed by enemy action.  Of those, 251, or 68%, were killed by IED’s.  During that period, an additional 19 GIs died by suicide car bombers, seven from landmines and three from “explosions.”

All told, these deadly devices had claimed 739 GIs’ lives by March 18, 2006.  Last year, IED’s inflicted 72 % of all wounds on Americans”

Let me repeat this for clarity:  72 PERCENT OF ALL WOUNDS INFLICTED ON AMERICANS ARE CAUSED BY IED’S.  They are NOT inflicted in face-to-face combat – these people do not engage our forces in ‘traditional’ combat.  They know full well they possess the winning strategy by waging this war with IED’s.

Although some are, the majority of  these IED’s are not primitive devices.  Many of them are triggered by remote control, sometimes using circuit boards from cell phones.  This allows the IED’s to be triggered by an Iraqi hiding nearby in a house, behind a pile of rubble or some other camouflage.   The most frustrating thing for our forces is this fact of Iraq law:  Unless the perpetrator is caught in the act of detonation, whether in person or on tape, they cannot be charged with any offense.  They cannot be charged, and they cannot be tried for their acts.  Iraqi law prohibits it.

How can you fight this enemy, this type of warfare?  How can sending an additional 30,000 troops to Iraq change anything in this senseless, hopeless quagmire/nightmare brought on us by courtesy of the lies of the American President?

We cannot win here.  All George W. Bush is doing is trying to save face by offering up for slaughter an additional 40,000 0f our sons and daughters on this insane field of battle that is not a battle.  He is sending our children out into this insane minefield called Iraq.

Given these cold, hard facts, straight from Iraq and the Pentagon itself, how can Bush and his top military advisers continue to knowingly and willfully kill your children? 

Because someone has to protect the no-bid oil contracts of Haliburton.  Your children are being blown to bits so Cheney and friends can pocket more millions from Iraqi oil.

This is why there is a near-total blackout of war coverage on television and in print.  Do you remember the live coverage we had of Viet Nam?  Right there on the six o’clock news, right there in our faces, coverage of our brothers and sons being killed or maimed for life in another senseless conflict we had no business being in. 

I’ll give Bush & Co a great deal of credit for one thing.  They learned from Viet Nam that in order to continue to wage an unpopular war, you have to keep the faces of our American dead and the agony of our wounded hidden from view.  Our government censors any and all media coverage of our injured, our wounded, our maimed and even our dead children.  No cameras are allowed to photograph the coffins of our American dead being unloaded onto American soil for burial.  George Orwell was right. This is ‘1984’, and Big Brother has a name.  George W. Bush.

Only one American publication has been able to obtain and print photos of our wounded soldiers in Iraq.  That publication is the ‘National Geographic’.  The editors of NG, under the guise of doing a story on military medicine, were granted permission to publish photos of some of our wounded in the December 2006 issue.  This is one of the few publications able to show the true cost of George W’s war of lies.

I listened intently as the President addressed the nation the other night.  I heard nothing new.  It was just the same old song and dance – “Stay The Course.”  All he wants to do is throw more of our children’s lives away for nothing.  There is nothing the new Iraq government can do to stop the primary weapon of war, the IED.  Our American soldiers are doing all the dirty work.  Even fully trained, a unified Iraqi National Army could not combat this type of warfare. 

How much longer must we stand in solitary support of the new Iraq Democracy we have created by force and destruction?  How and when will this ‘fledgling democracy’ be able to fully unite and govern its’ own people?  If Iraq is truly a new democracy, then let’s do it the democratic way.  Why don’t we ask the people of Iraq if THEY want us to stay?  I’d bet good money that if that this question was put to the ballot in Iraq, there would be no opposition to voting of any kind, no one would be in fear or danger of his/her life on that Voting Day.  They would in all likelihood flood the voting booths if they thought that their vote would stand even a minute chance of causing us to leave.

How long will we ‘enable’ the new Iraq Democracy to survive?  When a child learns to walk, it falls down quite a few times.  Parents who rush to pick baby up find out the hard way that baby soon learns it doesn’t have to learn to walk when the parent is there to carry it.  One thing I learned in my years of counseling substance abusers is that the first thing you have to eliminate is the ‘enabler’, the one who provides the alcoholic with alcohol.  We have enabled the new Iraq government to delay facing the real problem with this new government, the problem of ‘just getting along’.

If the people of Iraq truly want to be a Democracy, they will unite and form one.  We have taught them as well as we can by force how to be a democratic nation.  President Bush points with pride to the new governing body of Iraq.  That’s all good and well.  They can do it, but only if it is what they themselves really want.  What if the majority of the citizens of Iraq don’t want a Democracy?  What if their religious and social beliefs are so deeply embedded that they will willingly return to a religious dictatorship as soon as we leave?  You can’t convert people at gunpoint. Only the Iraqi people know what they want.  They can unite and come together.  Their united nation-wide support of their soccer team proved it. 

You think the embryonic Iraq ‘Democratic’ leaders do not know this?  They knew full well that the assurances and promises they made to Bush were just for his Presidential address of the nation.  They know the truth – you cannot fight those you cannot see.  This war cannot be won, and they allowed themselves to be used as mouth puppets by Mr. Bush in an effort to, once again, play on the fears of our nation.  In his ‘State of the Union’ address, he  got in six mentions of 9/11. 

“Wolf!”, Mr. President, “Wolf!”.  How many more times will you cry, “Wolf!”  Enquiring minds want to know. 

Mr. Dyhouse further states:

“It’s frustrating for them (American soldiers) because there is no human enemy at which to strike back.  With IED’s, terrorists fight by hiding in bushes or homes near the road, triggering a bomb and running away.  It requires none of the courage displayed by American soldiers, who would be more than willing to fight it out face-to-face.”

It is this last sentence that tells me why Dubya cannot win this war.  Our troops are still being trained in the anachronistic battle styles of World Wars I & II.  In those wars, the enemy would stand up and fight you man-to-man   They wore different uniforms and spoke different languages.  Their spies were fairly easy to trip up with obscure American trivia questions.  It was easy to spot an enemy sympathizer in these wars.  They usually made no secret of whose side they were on.

We did not learn a lesson from Korea.  We did not learn a lesson from Viet Nam.  We cannot win this type of war!  Our generals in charge of this war still think our training is adequate for this new type of non-engagement war.  Have our training methods changed in the least bit to include knowledge of and ability to triumph in this type of warfare?  No. Because it can’t be done.  You cannot be trained to fight those you cannot see.

Ask a Veteran of Iraq yourself.  Most of us know one by now.  I have spoken with several Veterans of this war.  95 % of them have told me the same thing:  They had no clue as to what they were actually getting into, and their training did not address any successful way in which to effectively engage the enemy.  The insurgents are fighting THEIR war, and we are fighting OUR war, and they are winning theirs.

Most frightening of all is a Commander-in-Chief who possesses a total blindness to truth that can be classified only as ‘pathological’ in nature.  His naked statement blaming himself ‘for any mistakes’ was a coldly calculated attempt to pull the wool over the eyes of the American public.  It turned my stomach.  Enough is far too much of enough.  No one is buying this.  Not Congress, not the American public, not the rest of the world. 

According to the January 13, 2007 edition of the Roanoke Times, in an article from the Associated Press, our allies are ‘bugging out’.  They are leaving.  The Italians are gone.  The Slovaks are getting ready to leave.  Great Briton wants to start getting out along with the South Koreans and the Danish troops.  Let them leave.  All along, they have been too smart to actually mix it up with the Iraqis.  Most of the paltry 15,857 troops from 25 other nations (compared to 132,000 American troops) are in noncombat positions as it is.  They have decided to take their marbles and go home.  This is not their game.  I can’t blame them.

Has this critical information penetrated the protective curtain of yes-men and power brokers and superrich advisors that cocoon and cushion Mr. Bush’s tender sensibilities?  It has not.  Now he wants to take on Iran.  Heaven help us.  Our King James Bible, which Mr. Bush is so fond of claiming he is familiar with, proclaims that, “There are those who have eyes to see and cannot see; ears with which to hear and cannot hear.”

Hear me, Mr. President.  Hear me loud and clear.

Bring our children home. Now. All of them. 

Stop trying to fight this war you started with American attitudes, with American training, with American methods.  It cannot be done.  The Veterans of Korea and Viet Nam will tell you the same thing.  This war cannot be won.  No one can win a war when there is no one to shoot at.  We are and will continue to be a nation of brainwashed idiots if we allow this to continue.  The bottom line is this: we have been duped into this war by a man who has avoided any actual combat by the diplomatic immunity of the superrich just because Saddam Hussein threatened to kill his daddy. 

Mission accomplished, Mr. President.

By unhappy coincidence, I watched a movie this afternoon.  I’m sure most of you have seen it.  It is called, ‘War Games’.  It was made in 1983 and starred Matthew Broderick, Dabney Coleman and Ally Sheedy.  The premise of the story line was that the kid, played by Broderick, hacked into a NORAD computer and engaged our top defense computer, WOPR, pronounced ‘Whopper’ into what he thought was an innocent video game.  It turned out to be ‘Global Thermonuclear War’.  The computer thought the war game was real, and began trying to unlock the codes to our nuclear missile sites in order to launch a strike.  Ultimately, the kid, along with the creator of the computer, was able to stop the imminent nuclear war by convincing the computer of one unassailable fact: 

“The only winning move is not to play.”

Let’s take our marbles and go home.

The Price of Coal

I can’t quit crying.  My eyes are filled with tears as I write. 

As I watched the tragedy in West Virginia unfold, a childhood memory surfaced in my mind.  I was 7 years old, and my family and I, with the rest of our small community, were gathered around the mouth of a coal mine.  There had been a rock fall and a cave-in, and several miners were trapped. 

We stood there for hours, in the cold and wet, watching, listening and hyper-alert for news of any kind, good or bad.  I was tired and thirsty, and began to whine.  My normally gentle mother slapped me, knelt down and shook me.  “This is more important than your needs”, she told me. 

While waiting for the drama to end, we prayed, sang songs, and held each other tight.  We tried to comfort each other.  I remember hugging a little girl younger than me, about 5 years of age.  Her Daddy was in that mine.  She was standing silently near her family, with them, yet alone, and something in her silent pain pulled me out of my preoccupation with my own small discomfort. 

She and I gradually wandered over to the edge of the lot, and sat down on a damp log. We were trying, as small children do, to distract ourselves from the overwhelming emotion running rampant from the adults. She was shivering from the cold, and her little threadbare coat was too small to provide much warmth. She inched closer and closer to me, and I put my arm around her.  Her body was trembling from the chilly air, and with fear.  I began to rock her back and forth, humming a song, a child comforting a child.

All at once, the air was torn open with wailing and screaming.  The first bodies had been brought out, and there was no life in them.  The keening cries rose in volume; they took on a life of their own.  Not even knowing whose broken body had been found, she and I opened our mouths, and the grief poured out.

One of those bodies was that of my brother-in-laws’ father.   At the age of 17, it now fell on his young shoulders to suddenly become the man of the house, and to try and hold his large family together in the face of our greatest fear made reality.

I had pushed this memory far, far back into the remotest recesses of my mind.  It broke out of its’ mental cage as I watched the families in West Virginia make the journey from joy to grief.  The keening rose in me, and I mourned out loud.

These keening cries of grief are torn straight from the soul of the Appalachian spirit.  It lays bare the anguish, it is pure emotion, and it shreds the hardest heart among the listeners. 

There are no myriad layers of polite veneer back here.  There are no social pretenses in the presence of death.  There is just the agony of loss laid bare.

Compounding this tragedy was the miscommunication between the rescuers and the surface.  To believe that your loved ones were safe, and then to be slapped across the face with the brutal truth, put these people on an emotional seesaw nearly beyond bearing.  So much for technology.

Reality show?  This was a reality show.  Do you sincerely believe that Fox or any other network has a clue?  Survivor?  What a farce.  This is survival.  This is reality. The reality of this life is that my people die because the Federal and State governments in charge of rules and regulations governing safety are more interested in making sure that the white-collar owners and lobbyists continue to make the most money at the least expense.

I was astonished and disgusted by the litany of violations in the Sago mine.  It is, however, much cheaper to pay small fines, ($200) for each violation than it is to make the necessary and expensive changes to insure that this and other mines in the mining industry are safe. That’s called ‘good’ business – keep costs down and profits high.

As my husband and I watched this agonizing chain of events, we saw something that gave us some small hope of future change.  After the truth had been broken to the families, one of the family members verbally cut loose on West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin III.  There were several police officers, including West Virginia State Troopers nearby, and they started to move in to protect the governor. 

In an act of supreme courage and compassion, Joe Manchin waved them back.  He knew that this man needed to vent his rage and grief on an official figure, and he just stood there and took it.  Joe is West Virginian and Appalachian.  He knew just how quickly the raging emotions could have gotten out of hand, and he stood in there in the face of this man’s awesome rage and just let him pour out all his anger and grief.  He put this man’s emotional needs ahead of his personal safety, and I thank him for this with all my heart. 

We are encouraged by the brave actions of Governor Joe Manchin.  He has exhibited the necessary traits of understanding, compassion and courage that are desperately needed to address the problems and to try and right some of the tremendous wrongs continually being done to the mining communities of Appalachia.

Although little can be done to change the past, the fact that the mineral rights to the coal in Appalachia were stolen by glib ‘company men’ who befriended the mountain people only long enough to get their ‘X’ on a binding contract needs to be brought back out into the public eye.  It was a massive, wholesale theft of invaluable rights, and should be expunged from our country’s ‘black gold’ history.

Exploitation of these socially impaired people for their mineral rights was only the beginning.  These companies then employed the local men to dig their own coal, and sold it for the companies’ profit.  The history of coal mining in this country is literally ‘littered’ with bodies of Appalachian people.  They call it ‘the true price of coal’, and it is a price America should never have paid, and the Appalachian people can no longer afford to pay.  The coal that fuels America’s industry has been drenched with generations of Appalachian blood.

What hypocrites we are!  Our leaders carp about conditions in China, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, while ignoring the desperate straits of Appalachia.  We hear Bush, Cheney and Condi Rice talk about ‘human rights’ in undeveloped countries nearly every week. The Appalachian Regional Commission receives millions of dollars ($92 million for 2006) for improving the living and working conditions of Appalachian people, yet my people still have the lowest economic standard of living in the entire country!

It is this same administration that has gutted safety laws and environmental laws pertaining to ‘deep’ mining and mountaintop removal.  Have you ever seen what mountaintop removal does to the environment?  It fills in the breathtaking valleys, coves and ‘hollers’ that make Appalachia the most unique mountain range in America.  There are species of mussels, salamanders and wildlife that are found nowhere else in the world!

Why do we continue to cling to our way of life in the mountains? Why don’t we all just move away?  Appalachian people are bound to the mountains by much more than coal and blood.  When our Scottish forefathers made the long journey across the ocean and over the plains of the Eastern coast, they did not stop until they lifted their eyes up to the hills of the Appalachian mountain range.  When they saw the tops of the mountains shrouded in mist, their hearts told them they were home.

Have you have ever seen a computer graphic of how the continents of the world were once one large piece?  The Discover channel has shown this graphic in one of its’ fine shows.  If you watch it closely, you can see that as the continents began their shifts eons ago, the country that is now Scotland and Ireland was once physically attached to the end of what is now the Appalachian mountain range.  There is a band of red clay that runs through Appalachia to the end of our continent and continues across the Atlantic Ocean to Ireland and Scotland.  Geographically, it is identical with the red clay here at home.

My people, in their racial intelligence, knew in their souls that they had come home, both physically and spiritually.  This ancient land called to their blood.  The King James Bible says it best in Psalm 121: “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.  My help cometh from the Lord, who made heaven and earth.”

So much history, so much pain, so much agony, and all of it is unnecessary.  All of it is for profit, for the pursuit of the almighty dollar by people whose greed demeans the lives of good men and women who pay the ultimate ‘price of coal’.

My family and I have paid the price for your coal far too often.  It is my hope that Governor Joe Manchin III will take the lead in pushing for these critical, overdue changes in regulation.  I hope he will lead the charge in calling for overwhelming changes and strict enforcement on both State and Federal statutes.  It is a tall order, but Governor Manchin is a man of courage and conviction.  

In the meantime, I grieve.  My keening cries of today pave memory’s path to the two little girls sitting on a log and crying out to God:

“Daddy!  Not my Daddy!”

Shamblin’ Man

You may have noticed him when you passed through our small community; a tall, slight, shambling figure of a man walking on the side of the road.  Perhaps you gave him only a glance; perhaps you didn’t really see him at all.  He wasn’t much to look at.

His clothes were usually well worn and slightly shabby, his glasses nearly always sat at the end of his nose, and sometimes his chin bore testimony to his last meal.  He wore his cap pulled down over his forehead to shield eyes weakened by many years of bright sunshine and age.

He never officially ran for office, he never achieved much in life – according to most people, that is.  No, he just quietly walked up and down Route 58 picking up after other people who threw their garbage out of the windows of their cars. 

He used his own money, and sold the aluminum cans he picked up to buy food to feed the stray and feral cats in our community. These feral cats will certainly miss their gentle friend. He always worried about them making it through the cold winters.

He spent his days quietly in the back of the local Food Market, reading the Roanoke Times and underlining articles and words of particular interest to him.  To those of us who took the time to sit with him and talk, he was a walking encyclopedia of mountain genealogy.  He could tell you who was related to whom, who had married whom, and who was kin to whom.  He remembered birthdays, anniversaries and dates of death, and could discuss current events with an acuity few could match. 

He delighted in learning new facts and new words; whenever, in the course of one of our many conversations I would use a word unfamiliar to him, he would stop me and ask me what the word meant and how it was used.  He would make a note to himself, look up the word, and proudly mention it to me the next time he saw me.  He sometimes misused words, and we would quietly laugh together. 

I remember well one day at the Market.  He had previously had laser eye surgery for cataracts, and he was worried that they were returning.  He said to me, “I’m afraid I may be gettin’ another Cadillac in my eye.”  I replied, “Well Tommy, I sure hope not, ‘cause that would hurt like the very Dickens!”  He immediately caught what he had said, and we stood there before the counter and quietly enjoyed a good laugh together.

He was never proud and vain; he just went about his life, a simple, good man.  He never married because, as he explained to me, he had to take care of his parents after he got out of the military, and then he ‘never could find nobody by then’. 

He graduated from High School in 1938, and served honorably in the United States Navy during World War II.  He was a member of the local VFW Post, and turned up faithfully for meetings, trusting that one of his friends would see that he got home safely.  He was a familiar figure at any ‘doings’, he loved to hear music, but what he loved most of all was just to talk, to chat with anyone who came across his way.

He lived his last years with some very dear friends, who remodeled their basement to make him a comfortable apartment.  There, thanks to their caring hearts and kindness, he was able to maintain his independence.  Nearly every day, he would walk up Route 58 to the Market, where he would do odd jobs, pick up aluminum cans for recycling, and pass the time of day with anyone who came in and wasn’t in too big of a hurry to share a few words with him.

His self-depreciating humor was legend to those of us who took the time to know him. Years ago when he drove a vehicle, a 1951 Chevrolet pickup, he stopped to give a ride to my teenage husband-to-be and two of his cousins.  Packed into the front of the truck like sardines, the truck crept down the road towards Jack Archer’s store.  He told them, “You boys ‘ll just have to bear with me – sometimes I get a wild hair and just have to drive fast!” Glancing over at the speedometer, the boys saw that he was driving 25 miles an hour!

I first met Tommy in 1973, when I moved to the Blue Ridge.  That same year, I introduced him to my older sister, who lives in another city.  We stood and chatted for a few minutes, and then left.  In 1978, I moved to Wisconsin, stayed there for 14 years, and then moved back home to the Blue Ridge.  Tommy was one of the first locals I saw upon my return.  You can only imagine my amazement when he greeted me by name, and then asked me, “How’s your sister?  Marie, wasn’t that her name?”   His memory was astounding!

As the unofficial mayor of our small community, he was our good will ambassador, greeting tourists, inquiring where they were from, and giving them a wonderful impression of mountain friendliness.  I wonder how many picture albums in the world have his picture in them – hundreds, I am sure.  Yet how many people really knew him?

Tommy was a member of the greatest generation this world has ever seen.  He belonged to an era when you took personal responsibility for your words and actions.  His was the generation when a handshake sealed an unbreakable agreement, when your word was your bond, and you stood by what you believed.  He loved God, country and community and the natural world.  He quietly grieved when the beauty of the mountains was bulldozed flat by progress, but he turned his thought and deeds to preserving the little that was left.

Tommy and I both shared a common belief – when Jesus our Lord said “When ye do this unto the least of them, ye do it unto me’ – Tommy and I both believed He wasn’t just talking about people.  We shared a love of all animals, and he was devoted to taking care of the stray cats around our tiny hamlet. 

On November 25, he was walking across Route 58, either coming or going from feeding his cats.  This being Thanksgiving Day, he was making sure his ‘kitty cats’ had a good meal.  He was struck by an automobile and died at the local hospital the same day.

The shock waves generated by his death throughout our community are incomprehensible to outsiders.  Our hearts and prayers are not only with our friend, but also with the unfortunate teenager who struck him.  Tommy would have been the first one to ‘take up’ for them, and not associate them with blame in any way.  This was just the way he was.

Something good, and gentle and kind has left us.  To strangers and to most people, he was just a quiet, shambling figure of a man walking up and down the road.  To his friends and intimates, he was a fountain of information, cheerful good will, and a kind-hearted friend to all the stray cats in our area.

Who will pick up our roadsides now?  Who will feed his beloved cats?  Who will ever take his place?  No one can fill his shoes.  Tommy Cockram was a rare man, and our community and our lives are much the emptier for his absence.
 

THOMAS JEFFERSON COCKRAM 1918 – 2004

Appalachian Legacy

She was two years old.

Before dawn, her grandmother awakened her and told her to get dressed.  Breakfast was on the huge round table; sausage, eggs, biscuits  & gravy and fried mushrooms. 

After washing the dishes, they assembled the tools for the days’ work; scissors, knives, baskets, woven bags, small spade and clippers. 

Dawn was just beginning to break as they left the house.  The grass, heavily wet with dew, drenched her bare feet as they began the slow walk up the mountain. Birds greeted the coming of the sun with their incredible melody of praise; taking brief flight at the advent of their passing, then settling back to their business. 

“Now, I want you to larn this ‘un today”, said her grandmother.  Setting the little girl down before the selected plant, she instructed her grand-daughter to stare at the plant until she told her to stop.

The little girl sat down beside the plant, and began to study it.  She noted the overall shape of the plant, its’ leaves, the stem, the bloom.  Then she pinched off a piece of it, rubbed it between her hands, smelled and tasted the essence of it.

 After ten minutes of study, her grandmother said, “There.  That’s enough.  Now look for it.”

When she raised her eyes, the child was once again astonished at her new ability to see that particular plant everywhere she looked.  Now she had another wild herb stored in her memory, added to the many already embedded there.

Then the real work of the day began.  Grandmother always had a specific list of plants and herbs she needed for her herbal remedies.  She was an Appalachian Herbwoman.

A racial mix of Scots, Irish and Cherokee, her grandmother had learned her trade from the hands of her mother and grandmother.  For decades, the only ‘doctor’ in this isolated area of the Appalachian Mountain chain was the ‘yarbdoctor’.  Equally deft at delivering a baby, setting a broken bone, and treating the various illnesses of her people, the ‘Herbwoman’ held a position of immense respect in the mountains.

Now, with the coming of modern life, none of her 4 daughters wanted to continue the practice of herbal medicine.  Of 29 grandchildren, only the 2-year-old daughter of her youngest son had any interest in her craft.  She found the child to be an apt pupil, who delighted in the natural world and was never happier than when out foraging with her grandmother.

God gives the gift of connecting with the natural world to very few.  The little girl felt completely at home in the woods and fields of the mountains.  The plants were her friends, the flowers and fruits of nature her playthings.  She made her dolls from fresh flowers, and built entire communities for her dolls with moss, leafy twigs and nuts. 

Her Grandmother’s mental list of  plants was not cast in stone.  In addition to the specific needed items, they were open to accept any of nature’s bounty as they came across it.  They could always make ‘room’ for ‘shrooms’.  Wild berries, tree fruits, nuts, roots, shoots, seeds, plants, leaves and other treasures were easily accommodated.  Wild food was as much a part of the daily table fare as was the produce from the large family garden. 

Indeed, her grandmother looked upon the mountains as one huge natural garden, given to her people by God Himself, complete with instructions for its’ usage.  “Never take the best plant”, she instructed the little girl.  “Always leave the best ones to go to seed and replenish the supply.”

It was the same with bramble plants.  When they picked wild black raspberries, wineberries, dewberries, or blackberries, her grandmother would always pin the tops of the new canes to the ground with homemade staples.  She cut lengths of wire, bent them into a ‘U’ shape, cleared a small patch of dirt and pinned the top 4 inches of the cane to the earth.  Later, when they came back in the fall, she would cut the newly rooted cane free from the mother plant.  In this way, she perpetuated the growth of the patch.

When gathering ginsang, she only took 4 or 5 year old roots, carefully planting the berries from each plant to ensure the survival of the valuable herb.  These roots were carefully trimmed, washed and dried in the hot, airless attic.  After drying, they would be sorted, weighed and either made into a premium tonic or sold for ‘cash money’.

Her ‘medicine cabinet’ was filled with tonics, remedies, concoctions, tinctures and salves.  All of her liquid ‘medicines’ were alcohol based; her husband made and sold the best ‘moonshine’ in those parts.  He used only ‘red corn’ for his still, and the faint red tint given by the corn was his products’ ‘signature’. 

She had remedies for everything; she fully believed that God had given mankind a natural medicine for ‘everthin’ that ails a body’ in nature’s pharmacy.  She was deeply distressed and concerned with the damage being done to the mountains by coal mining.

She was wise in all areas of life.  She was a psychologist, therapist, mentor, guide and spiritual advisor.  She often commented that her shoulders made ‘dandy cryin’ posts’, and she dispensed comfort along with some hard, good common sense. 

Her views on life were simple yet incredibly deep.  “A body knows right from wrong”, she often said, “They just need to be reminded of it sometimes.”  Young troublemakers were brought to her door for correction.  Those who just needed extra attention got it; those who needed a ‘whuppin’ got that as well.  The leather strap on the woodshed door was well known and feared in the commuity.  She had deadly aim, but she dispensed hugs and kisses after the discipline.  “It’s for yore own good,” she would say, and she meant it. 

“Think it through.”, was her mantra.  In that one sentence, she expressed all the common sense anyone would ever need in life.  It wasn’t enough to just act and react to life, she would sit and think of all the possible connotations to words, deeds and actions.  Then, once her course of action was decided upon, she would ‘go to work on life’.

Always open to new knowledge, new facts, constantly re-assessing the situation and correcting her course, she was a role model of all role models.  Long before the slogan became into popular usage, she believed that a ‘mind was a terrible thing to waste’.  “Get some schoolin’, but get enough education to help you, not jest ruin you.  And never, ever, git above yore raisin’.”

This, then, is the Appalachian Legacy I have inheirited; like my grandmother before me, I am an Appalachian Herbwoman.

May my life be an honor to her.

The Miracle of the Crab Pot

Crab fishermen have odd customs at sea.  Living and working in the sea gives them a unique perspective and understanding of our oceans and their conditions.

When these fishermen dump a load of crabs into the holding ‘pot’ on board, the majority of the crabs will fight and wrestle and try to kill each other to get to the top of the heap of crabs.  It does no good to get to the top, because the crabs still can’t get out – they’re too far from the sides of the pot.  But they don’t know that; they are frantically driven by primal instinct.

Other, instinctively smarter crabs, attempt to scale the walls themselves.  Due to the wear and tear on the metal or wooden sides of the ‘pot’ from the nets and the loads themselves, large and minute dings, scratches or ridges develop on
the walls.  These dings provide essential handholds for the freedom-seeking crabs.

These crabs attempt to climb up the sides of the pot, clinging to precarious hold after hold, but always headed up.  The crabs on the edges of the center heap notice these climbing crabs.  They then come to the wall, grab hold of the climber, and haul he/she/it back down to the bottom where all crabs are ‘supposed’ to be.

Psychologists have called this type of behavior in nuclear families ‘the crab pot mentality’.  When one member of a deeply dysfunctional family realizes that they and their family have emotional/psychological problems and earnestly seeks help, the dysfunctional family circle becomes threatened. 

The dysfunctional nuclear family lives and functions only within the complete denial of the true family dynamics. The stigma of the very words ‘mental illness’ unleashes a firestorm of fear within the family.  As the causation of the change, you become the focal point of the pathological anger/fear driving the family psychological engine.

The nuclear family turns on the one seeking help, assuring themselves that ‘they’ are fine, that ‘you’ are the crazy one because you had to finally admit that you were ‘mentally ill’ and had to seek help.  That means, to the rest of the dysfunctional family, that they have no problems, ‘because they never had to get help’!

You become a threat to the functioning of the dysfunctional family.  By your beliefs and actions, you are, in effect, upsetting the dysfunctional ‘norm’ they so desperately try to maintain.  You are in a process of personal change, and a nuclear family locked into a pattern of denial, abuse and maintaining the ‘status quo’ has to discredit you and the work you are undertaking in order to feel ‘safe’.  When you change, you change the family dynamics, and that is devastatingly threatening to the ingrained order of the family.

They try to discourage you in every way they can, with anger, verbal attacks, or replaying the family myths, with their completely re-written family history.  Their version of the past is so twisted and so far from the truth that you sometimes react with horror at the depth of their delusions.  Nothing in the past actually happened as it really happened.

Nothing you do in the present is accepted as reality.  Your accomplishments are ignored, downplayed and/or given a negative spin that must, by dysfunctional family necessity, reflect badly on you and positively on them.  You must be kept in your place.

Unable to understand you on any level, the nuclear family ignores you, chastises you, tries to ‘talk some sense into you’ and uses every emotional and psychological weapon they can muster to bring you ‘back in line’ with the dysfunctional family norm.  The more progress you make, the further you draw away from the discord, the more the family gets upset and frustrated by your ‘selfishness’. 

Their biggest fear is disclosure in any form of the twisted, demented and unstable family structure.  “What will people think?” or “What happens in the family stays in the family!” are familiar formulas for the secrecy practiced by abusive and dysfunctional families.  For the rest of the family, even the slightest hint of exposure of the warped family dynamics is unbearable and cannot be tolerated.

As you continue your personal journey, seeking to understand the truth about yourself and your family, their attacks become progressively more personal and increasingly vicious.  They may constantly belittle you verbally or ply you with obviously false, passive-aggressive compliments designed as a ‘back-hand’ slap at who you are becoming. 

You are never given the benefit of a doubt.  Every act and action you undertake is denied and downplayed to reassure the nuclear family that who you are and what you do is not important and as such, is in no way is a reflection on their
inadaquacy.

If, for example, you are overweight, they try to push food on you that you don’t want.  Your are the ‘jolly fat clown’ and your assigned role is that of the ‘family buffoon’.  God forbid that you should lose weight and regain your health.  Discarding or trying to redefine your role in the family is a psychological sin.  This the family cannot allow.

If you continue with your education, thereby elevating yourself out of their comprehension, you have ‘got above your raising’.  One of the cardinal rules of dysfunctional families is that you are not supposed to succeed at anything; by your success you demonstrate their inadaquacy and this cannot be allowed by the family.

If you persist in speaking the truth, they can even get to the point of taking your picture off their walls, thereby cutting you out of their lives until you ‘see the light’.  Although their walls are plastered with pictures of the entire nuclear and extended families, there will not be one single picture of you.  This perverted attempt to ‘cut you out of the family circle’ physically,
emotionally and psychologically is another desperate attempt to pressure you back into your ‘place’. 

You are no longer invited to family get togethers, no one calls, no one visits you, because you make them uncomfortable by seeking and living your own personal truths.

The dysfunctional family functions exactly like the crabs in the above mentioned crab pot.  They see you trying to get out, they see you reassessing your role, and they do their damndest to pull you right back down there in the pot of dysfunctional family dynamics, where your reward is that you get to assume your assigned role again.

You keep trying, braving their displeasure, ignoring their comments, and they pull out all the stops.  They tell their friends, their children and even your friends, spouse and your children that ‘you’ obivously have ‘mental problems’ in whispered asides, as if the subject is much too taboo to talk about, except, of course, as how it applies to only you.

You try to share what you are learning with them, but, locked in a mental/psychological cage of denial, their brains refuse to accept in any way, how, form, shape or choice of words the self-knowledge and the understanding of the family functionality you are gaining.  They absolutely, passionately refuse to acknowledge how you are changing.  To them, your ‘assigned’ role in the family dynamics is cast in stone. Talk about an exercise in futility!

Finally, the abuse becomes so toxic that you are forced to make a choice – re-enter the family dynamics and assume once again the crippled role they assigned you, go along with all the re-written family myths, and ‘know your place’ once again;

Or, you can finally get to the uppermost point in your life (the top of the crab pot) and decide to fall outside the pot.  Even the fear of the unknown is finally preferable to the abusive family dynamics.  Letting go is the hardest part of the entire process.

You let go and fall outside the pot.  You cut off contact with your toxic family because you realize that there is no way they will ever accept you as you are now.  Their rage at you has been built to massive proportions because you have escaped their clutches.  The family applecart is upset big time.  You have committed the sin of chosing sanity over myth, of putting yourself and your mental health before the unity of family dysfunction.  How dare you?

Ah, but here’s the nice part.

When the rare crab finally does manage to climb up the sides of the crab pot, and fall out onto the deck below, what do you think happens?  Does the crab fisherman, realizing that every ounce of crab is worth money, toss that crab back down into the maelstrom of crab pot?

No.

He picks up the crab, and tosses it over the side of the ship, back into the ocean, from whence it came.  He sets it free, because he knows that the genes for survival, instinct, intelligence, whatever you choose to call it, are very strong in that particular crab.  That crab, left to breed, will produce stronger crabs, crabs that are better able to survive in the ocean and to perpetuate the crab species.

So, what happens to the human being who finally manages to get to the top of their personal ‘crab pot’ full of dysfunctional people?

If they decide to let go and fall onto the deck of reality, then the miracle really begins.

The Hand of God picks them up, and gently sets them free in the Sea of Life.
********************************************************************************

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming,”  *

*Dory, in “Finding Nemo” Copyright 2003 Disney/Pixar

Hello world!

Welcome to The Herbpress.  Herein you will find the musings of an Appalachian Herbwoman. 

Life is complex; we yearn for simplicity and comfort.  But without knowledge and understanding, our world crushes in upon us.

Common sense is the key – let us find some together.

Welcome to my world.

theherbwoman