#i actually think the people working with at risk homeless youth at my university are SOOOO lovely and if the cost of living hadn't

[suncaptor]

they should make university but like in a way that isn't made for people who have tons of financial support or safe living situations

[meditativeyoga]

How Yoga Can Disrupt the School-to-Prison Pipeline

This is an interview with B.K. Bose, who began the non-profit Niroga Institute with a few yoga students in 2005. Niroga was asked to assist work with a team of delinquent girls in an alternative high college in the San Francisco Bay Area, and also from the very first yoga class the Niroga instructors might see just how these trainees took to the conscious activity, breathing and focusing (the ABCs) like fish to water. They appeared to attach with a place inside themselves that was safe from all the dysfunction around them.

Today, Niroga carries out over 100 yoga exercise courses a week in 40 websites throughout the Bay Area, serving over 5,000 children, young people, and grownups annually, in mainstream as well as different colleges, adolescent halls and jails, rehab centers, and also cancer cells healthcare facilities. It likewise performs trainings for numerous teachers, psychological health and wellness specialists, and violence-prevention authorities nationwide. In these trainings, individuals get aid with personal sustainability (stress monitoring, self-care, and also recovery from vicarious injury), which also has a favorable impact on their professional technique. Niroga shows Transformative Life Abilities (TLS: conscious yoga, breathing methods, as well as meditation).

Rob: What initially inspired you to do this work as well as exactly what continues to encourage you? Just how, if in any way, has that inspiration transformed over time?

I learned yoga as a kid, yet my technological training was in computer technology. While I was working as a researcher in Silicon Valley, I saw the ravages of persistent tension around me. It was affecting the wellness, partnerships, efficiency, and also worldwide competition of numerous people and companies. I understood about an ideal solution!

So I came to be a pupil of persistent anxiety and also its pervasive influence on people and areas. I learned that stress and anxiety is not only a risk factor for the majority of persistent illness (which are accountable for 75 percent of our health-care budget), however it impacts all of us the means down to our DNA, speeding up aging and also modifying our genetics maps (switching on disease-causing genetics). Chronic tension is additionally a common impact of every significant social determinant of health and wellness (e.g., income inequality, institutionalized racism, as well as the breakdown of traditional household structures). I additionally gained from the current injury research study that we hold chronic stress, traumatic stress, and post-traumatic stress in our bodies along with our minds. An incorporated mind-body strategy is essential for optimal healing.

How could yoga come to be a game-changer in stopping institution failure as well as minimizing adolescent delinquency

Approximately one in 2 young people is quiting of our inner-city colleges. About a million youths are dropping out of college annually across the United States ... When a youth leaves of school it is really most likely that he or she will be entailed in criminal offense and violence.

Many of the kids and young people who go to biggest threat of institution failure come to school not all set to find out. They are handling the injury of abuse and also disregard, crime and physical violence, weapons and gangs, medications as well as fatality. We rush to show them, failing to remember that we need to heal them first.

If we can bring ideal trauma-informed programs such as mindful yoga exercise, breathing methods, as well as reflection to adequate youngsters enough times, I believe we can reach a powerful tipping point. An efficient as well as affordable method to doing this is by training the adults that are around these youngsters (e.g., teachers, counselors, and also moms and dads) in these methods. This would have a twin benefit: It would certainly help the adults with their very own anxiety administration, self-care as well as healing from additional injury, as well as also allow them to produce communities of method in their colleges as well as homes.

Why should wellness professionals and college administrators find out about Transformative Life Abilities (TLS)?

The most current neuroscience study reveals that chronic stress interrupts our ability to hold focus as well as manage our emotions, neuroscience additionally shows that mindfulness practices can alleviate these very results. [1-4] Scientists have actually currently established that self-constraint is a forecaster of scholastic accomplishment, which low self-constraint is in charge of a wide variety of individual and interpersonal issues. [5], [6]

Independent scientists studying the result of Niroga's TLS amongst thousands of young people in urban schools have actually revealed that TLS lowered anxiety, enhanced emotion policy, enhanced school involvement, as well as transformed attitude toward physical violence. [8] I think this has multi-dimensional impact on our school-to-prison pipeline, along with on education equity as well as the accomplishment gap, considering that many of the youth leaving of institution and also winding up in adolescent hall are kids of color.

In addition to the studies you point out above, is there an evidence base for your program in particular? What is the return on investment?

As I claimed, there is engaging clinical study revealing 1) stress and anxiety influences self-control, as well as self-control predicts academic accomplishment, and also 2) yoga/TLS reduces tension as well as increases self-discipline. So it is rather feasible that yoga/TLS will affect academic achievement, and this needs to be investigated. It will require getting yoga/TLS to a great deal of youth arbitrarily picked to get TLS adequate times (sufficient frequency and also duration), as well as following their trajectories for numerous years. We are simply starting to obtain passion from entire school districts to examine just this.

Of course, we see circumstances of change on a daily basis in our straight solution programs in the area. When a young man is able to let down his armor of hyper-vigilance, when a girl in a homeless shelter claims that her continuous psychological pain is relieved with the method, when opposing gang members have the ability to close their eyes and also loosen up next to each other at the end of a session, when a high-risk teenager graduates from a different high school and joins our instructor training program to ensure that she can assist draw her close friends out of the mire of sadness, we consider these triumphes bread for our journey!

It expenses less than $1,000 to saturate a youngster or young people's life with TLS. If we used TLS throughout our institutions, and also if the graduation rate can be raised by just 1 percent, the math is simple and clear-- we would certainly get our money back often times over!

What is the best challenge you face in bringing TLS to those who require it most?

There are so many misunderstandings around yoga exercise. Despite 20 million people doing yoga in the United States, it is frequently viewed as socially elite. It is additionally often presented as a fitness trend for versatility, or simply as stretching.

So we call our program Transformative Life Skills (TLS), abilities that nudge us in the direction of healthy and balanced actions as well as healthy way of living options, also as they change us from the in out. Secured in mindfulness, connecting with our breath, we arise in activity, to ensure that the entire technique ends up being dynamic, symbolized mindfulness-- mindfulness in movement, or removaling reflection. It is an universal, secular transformative technique, which anybody can do anytime, anywhere.

Awareness regarding the power and possibility of these transformative practices requires to expand among instructors, health-care experts, and also violence-prevention authorities. Idea leaders in these interconnected major domains of social function are just beginning to recognize that these reliable techniques are evidence-based, validated by cutting-edge research study in several disciplines. Long-lasting funding dedication is needed, to make sure that detailed research study could be carried out to develop system influences, such as secondary school graduation price and the recidivism price in adolescent halls.

What are 2 vital features of your strategy to decreasing stress and anxiety and also enhancing self-constraint and resilience among at-risk youngsters as well as youth?

We think that every child and every youth has limitless capability for self-awareness and also self-mastery, to act rather compared to simply react, to attain their greatest potential.

We also think that we are not aiming to take care of or aid any individual, simply to offer them with love as well as empathy, unselfishly as well as unconditionally. Doing so is our opportunity. We are happy to those we offer, because each of them provides us with the opportunity to expand in lots of ways.

What are several of your concepts regarding or expects the future of 'service yoga exercise' in America in the next decade?

I desire about the opportunity when a lot of individuals in neighborhoods across the United States as well as past have access to these profound and powerful techniques, so that they can act with self-awareness and also self-mastery a lot of the time. Such gain access to will change ourselves, help recover our communities, and also aid make our vulnerable planet much more lasting for generations to come.

None of us could do this alone. We will certainly need all our enthusiasm and also compassion, vision as well as creative imagination. Yoga specialists will should extend their method past the limits of their floor coverings, bringing it from people to institutions, from classrooms to companies, from jails to juvenile halls, building healthy and balanced as well as dynamic neighborhoods one breath at a time.

[red-stocking]

The Women’s March on St. Louis

The Women’s March was so incredibly inspiring, both at a local level and a global one- the number of people looking to get more politically involved and looking to upset the system was incredible! Just the volume alone was impressive, and a lot of people I actually talked to one on one were eager for consistent action,which is a great sign. I am very optimistic about the coming years because of these women, and I hope this energy really goes somewhere, leads to greater political participation and fosters a curiosity for new political ideas.

One thing I want to comment on was the number of older white women throwing around the word “divisive”. Talking about race is “divisive”. Condemning US imperialism is “divisive”. Calling for a socialist labor party is “divisive”. This started on the facebook page for the march, showed itself very prominently in community planning meetings, and also was demonstrated too strongly at the march itself.

I tried to address the women directly who said these things to me & engage them in conversation, but I am afraid I was not very eloquent. Not only that, but when I tried to discuss issues with these women I was met with was condescension, by way of ageism. Because I am only 22, I don’t know how the world works. I might be a socialist and radical feminist now but I will “grow out of it”. It’s just a phase. I’ll come to my senses. Essentially, I was not taken seriously and I don’t feel I would have been even if I had been better able to communicate my ideas, because of my age and ‘inexperience’. Now this isn’t exactly a rant, it’s more of a way for me to get over the helplessness I felt at not being listened to, an attempt to clarify my ideas not only to myself but to people who maybe actually will listen (or rather, read). If you want me to further clarify anything I talk about, or even argue with me, please do not be shy! My anon is always on, inbox open (dick:out jk jk) and I welcome opportunities to talk about this stuff.

Proclaiming that discussion surrounding issues that affect only or primarily a particular demographic is ‘divisive’ is well, divisive. You are effectively silencing a minority, and telling them that because the struggles they face are not universal, they don’t matter. It’s populism in its most ugly form, and it can have drastic effects. (Basically: I don’t want to be “inclusive” to white supremacists. Just, no.)

What happens when you insist the focus be solely on those issues that affect the majority is ultimately a movement that caters to the lowest common denominator of political consciousness. What arises from a lack of political consciousness in a movement is a vulnerability to a takeover from an outside group, or a reformist, elite section of the group. Ultimately, the movement ceases to threaten the status quo and you end up with only superficial progress being made. 

This has happened countless times before in history- most notably the suffragette movement in the US (definitely not just the US really, but I’m most familiar with how it went down in the US) The movement refused to consider the demands of African American women as well as working class women and immigrants. The women’s sections of international socialist movements broke off early on from the suffragette movement in the US and in other places because it refused to fight for totally universal suffrage, higher wages & better working conditions, better access to healthcare, among other very important key points in the socialist and radical women’s programs. The movement became a platform for bourgeois (white) women alone, and only served to help them gain access to the bourgeois men’s domain, in other words it helped them gain influence within the elite political and economic sphere to which their husbands already belonged to, while completely ignoring the rest of the population. 

This populist takeover more recently has been happening in the LGBT rights movement in the US (though from my perspective outside the community, it seems maybe to a lesser extent). In a failure to listen to more vulnerable populations (homeless, working class, immigrants) they focused entirely on legalizing marriage. I don’t want to sound like I am minimizing the importance of that fight for marriage rights. I am pointing out that there are other afflictions that the LGBT community faces that were completely forgotten to a large extent- because white, upper & middle class members of the community reduced the movement to the most minimal political analysis to avoid challenging the status quo- a reformist compromise that left the rest of the community afloat a creek without a paddle, you might say. Immigrants that are at risk of being deported to a country that has determined their existence illegal, homeless LGBT youth that have been disowned, they are not heard by the movement as a whole. They are forgotten. And I don’t want to accept that. We can do better!

Now, even white, rich women and white, rich members of the LGBT community are my sisters and brothers and I stand in solidarity with the ways in which they experience oppression- I am proud that my country has legalized gay marriage and I gratefully benefit of all that the feminist movements have accomplished for women myself, though I am disappointed- no, angry- that the rights of the white upper class are still not accessible to all. I will not stand idly by when the rich members of these communities ignore my other brothers and sisters that are suffering very real economic distress! I will not sit quietly when you call them “divisive” whenever they bring up issues that completely challenge the white-supremacist, capitalist, patriarchal, system! We need to fight the ruling class, the capitalist class, the people that benefit most from our system! 

There are several axes of oppression but the basis of all of them is exploitation through capitalism. If you think that sounds divisive, either you are part of the class I want to challenge or you have been brainwashed by them into creating the divisions you claim to be against. Ensuring that everyone has an equal platform is an inherent part of the socialist agenda, and calling me or other women divisive for discussing ideas you personally never thought about is showing me you are uninterested in giving people who don’t look or think like you their own platform. Sometimes giving others a platform means talking about issues that make you uncomfortable, or talking about experiences that you have never had, or fighting for causes that you have never thought to fight for. That’s the exact opposite of divisive, that’s the definition of inclusive.

An injury to one is an injury to all! The women’s struggle is the workers’ struggle! The black struggle is the workers’ struggle! The immigrants’ struggle is the workers’ struggle! the LGBT struggle is the workers’ struggle! The disabled peoples’ struggle is the worker’s struggle! 

tl;dr: Fighting for socialism is not divisive, nor is it setting aside the causes for freedom from other axes of oppression that are not economic. It is recognizing that ALL of these axes of oppression are connected to and have a basis rooted in economic exploitation. Socialism is fighting for all workers- ensuring that a victory for one is a victory for all!

[erraticfairy]

How Long-Term Friendships Enrich Our Lives

Yesterday I found myself in the familiar presence of people who have been pivotal in my life for 40 years. Like everyone else I now know and love, they were once strangers, going about their own lives, not knowing I existed either until our paths crossed. 

Most of us were college students, enrolled in psychology, sociology and teaching programs at what once was called Glassboro State College in Glassboro, NJ. The name has since been changed to Rowan University, but it will always be GSC to me.

One of the mainstays of the school was a crisis intervention/counseling center called Together, Inc. Not sure who it was that came up with the name (since we all did spend a great deal of time together in academic, work related and social interactions) or idea in the place, but I am grateful to them, since it played such an important role in my professional and personal growth. It was where I cut my teeth on crisis counseling, family therapy and adolescent treatment. Most of the staff were volunteers who were putting their Psychology 101 to practical use. I worked there initially as a volunteer and then paid staff once I graduated. 

When I look back at those days, I am amazed that I was as brazen as I was, wielding my basic skills. Now, with two degrees (BA in Psychology and Master of Social Work) and thousands of supervisory and classroom hours and PA licensure under my belt, I am actually humbler and in awe of the trust my clients place in me and the responsibility it entails to work as a psychotherapist. 

My compatriots in this endeavor were dedicated to the wellbeing of our client population; some we never met, since many called the toll-free hotline, and others we saw when they showed up for counseling sessions or walked through the door of the runaway and homeless youth shelter. Some of us were not much older than the kids we took care of, so in many ways they viewed us as peers. It was also where I had the experience of staying up all night, answering crisis calls from people who were facing their demons and were looking to us to offer support and resources. It was during those times, in between calls, that life, the Universe and everything conversations took place with my co-workers/friends. We explored the nature of existence, relationships, what makes people tick, consciousness, environmental concerns, political and social activism, music, sex and spirituality. That hasn’t changed all these years later.

One memorable episode took place when a teenaged girl came in and had a seizure and then went into cardiac arrest. Three of us began CPR after 911 was called and she was revived and then I had the lovely experience of her vomiting on me. Never was I so glad to have that happen. 

A more enjoyable activity was taking paint brushes and multi-hued paints and decorating the aging house that needed a bit of sprucing up. The stair railings and walls were rainbow splashed, as we let loose our creativity. I think we may have intentionally painted each other, too.

Weekends would sometimes take us to the TLA on South Street in Philadelphia to see the midnight showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. We didn’t just sit back and take in the movie. We were active participants, complete with costumes, makeup and props. To this day, I can still rock a mean “Time Warp.”

One of my favorite movies is The Big Chill. It tells the tale of college friends who reunite a decade or so later at the funeral of one of their group. When we watched it, we said “That will be us.” In many ways, it was. Over the years, we have seen each other through marriages, divorces, children, grandchildren, widowhood, health crises, triumphs and tribulations and the deaths of four of our friends.

One of our circle experienced a stroke 10 years ago and as a result, it brought many of us closer, since it helped us to recognize how transient life is. He was the host of our gathering that included pot-luck food, guitar and sing-along of mostly 60s-70s era music with a few more current pieces thrown in for good measure. The daughter of one of our friends who was born right after we met was there with her four children ranging from 3-11 years old. The youngest are twins. It sets my mind awhirl to reflect the passing of time and the power of enduring friendships.

According to Martin Seligman and Ed Diener, people with supportive friends are quite simply, happier. In their research paper, called Very Happy People, they affirm this. “Our findings suggest that very happy people have rich and satisfying social relationships.”

When people have a supportive social network, they tend to live longer, per a study called Social Relationships and Mortality Risk: A Meta-analytic Review.  The authors report, “people with stronger social relationships had a 50% increased likelihood of survival than those with weaker social relationships.

Even though life happens in between our visits which take place every few years, we celebrate life events in person when we can or from a distance if needed. Several of our friends were not able to be there with us in person, but their names were in the air. We regaled each other with “remember when…” stories.

The wedding of the daughter of one of our circle who was born after we each graduated and moved on to the next version of adulting will be happening next month and I look forward to rejoicing together. 

I found myself sitting in reverie yesterday as the hands on my mental clock spun backward. These faces that now bore wrinkles and gray hair, and a few extra pounds than what we carried four decades ago belong to people who enrich my life in ways that I will never be able to measure.

from World of Psychology https://ift.tt/2z7ZtUw via theshiningmind.com

[theherblifeblog]

Can I Be A Drug Advocate As the Sister of A Drug Addict?

by Kait Heacock

The night I learned of my brother’s overdose, I cooked a large pot of food. Every time I’ve eaten this meal after, I’ve thought of it as the death meal. I was in survival mode: make enough food to feed myself for the next couple of nights because eating was one of the fews things I could guarantee. Eat, breathe, sleep, maybe. That week I drank too much and smoked weed every night. The weekend in Atlantic City, a new couple’s getaway, was damaged beyond repair, but we went, and I consumed everything I could to feed the vacuum inside me.

The Epidemic

Much like survivors of gun violence focus on gun reform or breast cancer survivors raise money for research, those of us touched by the opioid crisis feel a personal responsibility. I did not save my brother; that fact will remain with me for the rest of my life. But I refuse to sit quietly and watch other families fall apart, not when there are potential real solutions. Opioids are a big pharma backed scourge made possible by doctors rushing to dull the symptoms of chronic pain rather than treat the cause. We should stop scapegoating cannabis and put actual funding into more in-depth research.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s latest report found the number of opioid-related overdoses rose by nearly 28% between 2015 and 2016. These overdoses break down into prescription opioids, synthetic opioids, and heroin. It was heroin that took my brother, though his entry point was the painkillers given to him after foot surgery. After some fifteen years struggling with alcoholism and drug addiction, a doctor handed him a death sentence when they filled out that prescription.

In a report released in April 2018, JAMA found a correlation between legalizing marijuana and a reduction in opiates, and this follows a report from 2017 by the National Academies finding evidence “to support that patients who were treated with cannabis or cannabinoids were more likely to experience a significant reduction in pain symptoms.”

 According to a .gov drug abuse website, “Marijuana use disorder becomes addiction when the person cannot stop using the drug even though it interferes with many aspects of his or her life.” The website carries a whiff of reefer madness, so quick to offer marijuana as a gateway drug because it still holds the counterculture stigma of “turn on, tune in, drop out.” I was raised in the DARE, “just say no” generation, where we were taught that all drugs are the same. Unfortunately there are people, including those high up in our government, who can’t separate cannabis from other drugs.

For the record, former Attorney General Sessions, cannabis is not the same as heroin.

There were moments following my brother’s death when I wondered if I could do it too, need something so much I’d risk my life for it. I hovered on the brink but never dove off it. Is want and need the difference between dependence and addiction?

 In an alternate universe, my brother was told cannabis was not just another “illicit drug” made to fuck him up, but that it was a medicinal alternative to address the pain caused by his surgery.  

The Survivors

In an alternate universe, my brother survives. Not lives, survives. Because this is an epidemic.

I look for answers because I don’t have a brother anymore. A cursory glance at headlines suggest we exercise to combat the epidemic. The Trump administration wants to explore policy allowing the death penalty to be sought for drug dealers, and yet there is no mention of punishing pharmaceutical companies. We are fumbling in the dark for an answer to this plague. Is it really so absurd to suggest cannabis?

Entrepreneur and Ellementa co-founder Ashley Kingsley is a survivor. She is two years sober from pills and alcohol, and attributes her recovery to cannabis. Ashley suffered from undiagnosed Endometriosis for years, and from the age of 15, doctors prescribed her everything from sleeping pills to Percocet. When she was finally diagnosed, she underwent multiple surgeries and began to rely on opiates to dull the pain.

“It was like I had to feed something inside of me, like this beast,” Ashley described of her pill addiction. She tried AA, yoga, therapy—everything to get sober. “I was functional. I wasn’t jobless or homeless. I wasn’t what people pictured.”

Melissa Heldreth, co-founder of Panacea Plant Sciences, considers her family survivors too: “My brother was one of the lucky ones. He is one year and eight months off heroin, and it’s been a struggle for years.”

Melissa is also sober, and she uses cannabis for anxiety and pain relief. She, like so many others who become advocates, knows firsthand the risk of using cannabis when drug addiction is in your family, your life, yourself. When I shared with her my fear of a potential cannabis addiction, she told me, “I 100% understand this battle of thought process, but I look myself in the mirror every day and know this is the right thing for me. I’ve never been healthier or happier in my life.”

 She supports her and her brother’s recovery stories with evidence, pointing me to studies on how CBD stops addiction. “THC is what stops heroin and alcohol withdrawals that could potentially kill a person. While there are people with addictive personalities who should watch their intake, studies show that weed, itself, is not addictive,” she explains.

 “This is my main mission in life, to help end the stigma in using cannabis for sober people. To show people this is a less risky, healthier way to elevate so many things that doctors push prescriptions for. Prescriptions that are extremely addictive,” Melissa adds.

Ashley echoes the sentiment, saying, “Cannabis has changed my life—in so many ways. I want these kinds of stories out there.”

My Survival

I admit that I relied heavily on alcohol, weed, and sex to numb, self-medicate, and distract myself after my brother’s death. I was in survival mode. We don’t always make the best choices in desperate situations. In the nearly six years since, I’ve stopped sleeping around for the sake of departing my body, and I’ve stopped the reckless nights of binge drinking just to force myself to sob on the walk home, a needed pain extraction that was as messy as my wet face.

In the years since my brother’s death, my relationship with cannabis has only deepened. I’ve utilized it in both my running and writing routines, began learning its medicinal benefits through work with a women’s wellness network, and now proclaim myself a cannabis advocate.

I want to normalize cannabis and proclaim its benefits, but it’s hard to do that when first you have to fight stigma and stereotypes. I worry people can’t—or refuse—to see the plant in a new light. But I also worry that their shortsightedness prevents them from utilizing something that can help with pain, sleeping problems, and in my case, wading through the emotional chaos left inside of me in the wake of my brother’s death.

What I’ve found the most interesting in my experiences using cannabis to affect my mood is that it seems to help me better hone in on what I’m feeling and process it. When I drank, it was a distraction from what I was really feeling, or like I was only able to experience the raw, visceral tears. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all in for an ugly cry, but sometimes I wanted to dig deeper than that, and that’s where cannabis shaped a lot of my grief journey. It slowed me down and helped me shed the inhibitions that kept me from truly exploring my grief.

I haven’t always felt comfortable admitting that cannabis helped me fight my way out of the dark places I had fallen into in the wake of loss. I worried people would think I was no different than him, using drugs to escape my problems. To preempt that, as anyone with addiction in their family should consider doing, I’ll take breaks from using cannabis and alcohol to check the want versus need ratio, sometimes for a week, maybe a month. I don’t ever want to need it, don’t want to abandon everything and wind up like my brother, frozen in his Alaskan backyard, hundreds of miles away from his children.

In an alternate universe, my brother and I sneak away from Thanksgiving dinner at our parents’ house, pass a joint by the lake, and talk about how big his kids are getting. But I don’t get to live in that universe. I live in this one; I survive in this one.

If you or someone you know is suffering and needs help there are resources available:

U.S.A.

The National Drug Helpline offers 24/7 drug and alcohol help to those struggling with addiction. Call the national hotline for drug abuse today to receive information regarding treatment and recovery.

Tel:1- 888-633-3239

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline Tel:1-800-273-8255

Canada

For questions or concerns about substance use during pregnancy, please contact Motherisk’s Alcohol and Substance Use Helpline​ at 1-877-327-4636 (toll-free in Canada).

For access to a listing of programs offered to First​ Nations and Inuit, visit: Addictions Treatment for ​First Nations and Inuit​​.

The new Canada Suicide Prevention Service (CSPS), by Crisis Services Canada, enables callers anywhere in Canada to access crisis support by phone, in French or English: toll-free 1-833-456-4566 Available 24/7

Crisis Text Line (Powered by Kids Help Phone) Canada Wide free, 24/7 texting service is accessible immediately to youth anywhere in Canada by texting TALK to 686868 to reach an English speaking Crisis Responder and TEXTO to 686868 to reach a French-speaking Crisis Responder on any text/SMS enabled cell phone.

KidsHelpPhone Ages 20 Years and Under in Canada 1-800-668-6868 (Online or on the Phone) First Nations and Inuit Hope for Wellness 24/7 Help Line 1-855-242-3310 Canadian Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line 1-866-925-4419 Trans LifeLine – All Ages 1-877-330-6366

Visit thelifelinecanada.ca for more services.

[limejuicer1862]

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger. The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Julian Stannard

is a poet and a university teacher. He obtained his PhD. from UEA and is now a Reader in English and Creative writing at the University of Winchester, where he is the Programme Leader for the MA in Creative and Critical writing. He writes critical studies – his most recent book was about the work of Basil Bunting   (http://writersandtheirwork.co.uk/index.php/author/authors-s-u/201-stannard-julian) – as well as reviews, essays, and poetry. His most recent collection is What were you thinking? (http://www.cbeditions.com/stannard.html)(CB Editions, 2016). His work appears variously in TLS, Poetry, Manhattan Review, Poetry Review, Poetry London, Spectator, Guardian, Telegraph, The Honest Ulsterman, The Forward Book of Poetry (2017) and Nuova Corrente (Italy). An essay on the poetry of Leonard Cohen appears in Spirituality and Desire in Leonard Cohen’s Songs and Poems (Cambridge Scholars, 2017.) He is at present writing a study of British and American poetry entitled Anglo-American Conversations in Poetry: 1910-2015 (Peter Lang). He has read at various literary festivals, including the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, as well as literary venues in the UK, mainland Europe and the USA – including London, Amsterdam, Utrecht, Paris, Rome, Prague, Genoa, Munich, New York and Boston. He teaches for the Poetry School (London) and is often invited to organise and lead workshops in a freelance capacity. He is both a Hawthornden and Bogliasco Fellow and has been a visiting Erasmus scholar at Charles University Prague and the University of Warsaw. Presently he is an External Examiner for the MA in Creative Writing at Birmingham City University and has been nominated for both Forward and Pushcart Prizes for his poetry. From 1984 to 2005 he lived for long periods in Italy, where he taught English and American Literature at the University of Genoa. He has written poetry about that mysterious port city and is now working on a bilingual publication of his Genoese poems for Il Canneto Publishers ( Genoa).

http://www.julianstannard.com/about/

The Interview

1. What inspired you  to write poetry?

As a young kid I was sent to a boarding school near Sheffield. I had been living in Malaysia  up until that moment  so boarding school  felt like an unexpected  and unwanted incarceration; it could be  nightmarish at times, and it was always  extremely cold! Reading –  as is so often the case, I think,   was  a way of coping generally  and English  was more or less the only thing I was  reasonably good at . At ‘A level’  we studied  the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins  who, it turned out, had actually taught at the school in the  19th century,  and  we also studied The Waste Land  which seemed to resonate across the years. Something in my head said   ‘Holy shit, I think I like this!’

2. Who introduced you to poetry?

Our A level English Lit teacher was an irascible drunken left-wing Scotsman who was nevertheless on occasion  quite brilliant. He didn’t discourage drinking; in fact, he probably saw it as part of our wider education (an extra-curriculum activity), so we would trek across the damp hills looking for accommodating Public Houses.  In the 1970s no one seemed to bother that much about the legal dimension.  A barmaid would say ‘I suppose you’re going to say you’re eighteen?’ and we would say ‘Yes’ in the deepest voices  we could muster.  The beer flowed and in  our state of  inebriation  we would sometimes   talk about  poetry, and  even begin  to write it, in  our heads at least.  At the ages of sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, drinking and writing poetry  and  smoking hash were somehow inter-related and it felt better than most of the other things you were expected to do. The English teacher had a record of Eliot reading The Waste Land which, as it most  likely seemed the easiest option, he   would  play quite often, invariably nodding off before  we got to What the Thunder Said. We knew much of it off by heart. At University, in 1983,  I met Fleur Adcock , who came to give a reading and I realised in an instant that  poetry could be conversational,  colloquial and utterly contemporary. For me this was a real breakthrough!

3. How aware were you of the dominating presence of older poets?

In those days it  was still mostly all about older poets, but less so after meeting Fleur.  At University I read  a lot of medieval poets, including Chaucer, who were in turn  indebted to classical poets.   Later when I moved to Italy in the 1980s I learnt that every school child  could cite something  from Dante’s Divine Comedy. And I learnt that Liguria and Genoa, the city  which for a decade or so  became my home , had a rich literary history.   Which included the presence of Byron, Shelley, Dickens, Lawrence, Charles Tomlinson,  Hemingway, WB Yeats, Ezra Pound, Max Beerbohm, Basil Bunting , Camillo Sbarbaro, Eugenio Montale, Giorgio Caproni, Dino Campana. This year, much to my delight,  the Italian publishers Canneto has published my book Sottoripa (2018), which is  a bilingual  publication of my poems about Genoa, translated by Massimo Bacigalupo. http://www.cannetoeditore.it/libri/arte-e-grafica/sottoripa-poesie-genovesi-di-julian-stannard/ In 2013 the title poem had been  made into a short film by Guglielmo Trupia  which was nominated  at the Rain Dance Film Festival https://vimeo.com/82730928 But it was also in that period –  the 1980s – I got hold of a copy of Michael Hofmann’s Acrimony  –  an outstanding  collection by such a youthful poet  – Again  it  was a case of reading old and new voices  – and then finding  one’s own voice.

4. What is your daily writing routine?

I begin new poems with a mixture of hope and fear and excitement.  Because  I spend a lot of time teaching in  a university which also means  marking, and all that other bureaucratic stuff and then, when possible,  enjoying some recovery time,  I don’t always have a consistent writing routine but I take the opportunities when they arise  – on the train maybe, or weekends or during holiday  time. I spend a lot of time working on drafts or reading new poetry. I like listening to music, especially Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis,  Charlie Parker et al. This helps me write or re-write or just relax. When  my younger son was living  with me I would  listen to  a lot of  Rap – whether I wanted to or not – and when it comes to   the Notorious B.I.G , I have acquired a coating of  expertise! And  sometimes I send poems to friends to see what they think.

5. What motivates you to write?

A response of a kind.  The general weirdness of stuff I think – overheard conversations, things I‘ve read, billboards, train announcements (endless!), anger, desolation, joy, memories. I think we’re living in particularly challenging times; the political climate is worrying, more food banks, more homelessness, more poverty, fear of losing one’s job. The wider international situation too.  I have always been a loyal supporter of the Labour Party so that in itself brings  highs  and lows, rather like watching  your football team play brilliantly for much of the game yet somehow  throw it away  right at the end. Brexit fills me with immense sadness. 6. What is your work ethic? Teaching  often  consumes swathes of my life, it’s  draining , but because I also teach creative writing  I can, from time to time, get inspired by student  work which is wonderful too. It’s a delight to come across real talent and help nurture it.  I like to read  a lot of contemporary poetry and new fiction  generally. I am asked to review quite frequently which is a discipline in itself, a kind of homework, and a way of keeping up to date. Travelling often produces new poetry. Notwithstanding work pressures I manage to write a fair amount; and if a poem demands  to be written I  usually find the time to answer those demands! It’s a lot more enjoyable than writing some anodyne document or funding bid. 7. How do the writers you read when you were young influence you today? Their influence never really goes away, even if you spend a lot of time with newer or different  voices. I think  those ‘early’ poets helped fashion a way of thinking  about poetry  – and it’s  always a great pleasure to return to their  writing, whether it be those earlier generation such as the modernists  –  Eliot ,Pound, William Carlos Williams, DH Lawrence  – or  poets such as Frank O’Hara or Robert Creeley,  and/ or Lowell, Berryman  and co. Not to mention those older contemporary poets, especially if they are still producing new work: poets such as Fleur Adcock, Christopher  Reid, Hugo Williams, Maurice Riordan , Selima Hill, Michael Hofmann-  to name a few.

8. Who of today’s writers do you admire the most and why?

There are so many! There’ s a kind of resurgence in the world of  poetry I feel. I could roll out  a list off the top of my head but I am surely  leaving people  out; but the list would surely include Caroline Bird, George Szirtes, Kathryn Maris, Andrew Macmillan, Declan Ryan, Emily Berry, Tim Cumming,  André Naffis-Sahely,  Claudia Rankine, Sharon  Olds, Annie Freud, Ishion Hutchinson, Luke Kennard, Richard Skinner,  and some pieces  from  Bobby Parker  and Ocean Vuong too. I would also want  to acknowledge the dark genius  of Frederick Seidel, the intimations of mortality still coming from the pen of Clive James. And I take my hat off to my former student and colleague Antosh Wojcik who’s making   quite a name for himself as a performance poet. And why? Variously and varyingly  there is so much  energy  here, a lot of drive, and risk- taking,  and moments of candour (Lowell said ‘ why not say what happened’?)  and plenty of ludic mischief  too and experiment  with form;  in effect some lively conversations between poetry and prose, including  prose poetry, and other media too, including social media.  Some of the poets above work across genres: variously novelists, translators, essayists,  reviewers,  editors, teachers, events’ organisers  and  publishers . Difficult not to mention Charles Boyle, ex-poet, and now writer of prose under various names and the founder of CB Editions. The blogging of Katy Evans-Bush  –  fine poet – has been  significant and the gregarious Bethany Pope, poet and novelist, is now writing more or less daily reports from China.   I look forward to reading her next book.

9. Why do you write?

After forty years or so of doing it  –  oh  my God ! – it’s become a habit, a way of thinking and even a way of  living. Sometimes reportage, sometimes invention, I guess it’s a way of dealing  with some deep, not always unpleasant,  itch  – which in turn probably answers to  all  sorts of Freudian-like  neuroses… Writing, at times, is totally satisfying and, in a practical sense, quite easy to do. I don’t need a studio or a theatre or complicated props.  Just the page itself, I guess, which  is a kind of stage. 10. What would you say to someone who asked you “How do you become a writer?” I’d say Read, read and read yet more  and try thing out. Experiment, take risks, be thick-skinned,  and try and get  plenty of sleep!

11. Tell me about the writing projects you have on at the moment.

My last  English collection came out in 2016 –  What were  you thinking? (CB Editions http://www.cbeditions.com/stannard.html) ; so  I’m grappling  with the creation of a new MS – several pieces of which  have been published in  magazines. Any new collection  has , at least for me , a rather  aleatory dynamic –  feeling  my way forwards, as it  were, letting  poems butt their way in, or conversely slide away … I’m also writing a book called Transatlantic Conversations – which is about the relationships, harmonious or otherwise,  between British and American  poetry; this is for the publisher Peter Lang. As well as the above ,I’m  also working with  the novelist and artist Roma Tearne on a collaborative  project  called  Heat Wave  – It’s s a sort of dialogue between  poems of mine and Roma’s  fantastic  paintings . Not an ekphrastic venture I hasten to add. More a dark night of the soul with some gleeful moments too! A kind of synaesthetic fugue…. It’s coming out next year thanks to Green Bottle Press. We’re planning  several readings /events so watch this space!

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews:  Julian Stannard  Wombwell Rainbow Interviews I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me.

[princesscolumbia]

These were obviously written by someone who doesn’t have children

Anonymous said:im genuinely happy for you that your coming out was able to help your parents and that you were accepted by them and the environment for you was a supportive one, i really am i promise theres no sarcasm here, but do try to remember that a LOT of us lgbt folk have homophobic parents who sadly dont learn from their kids being lgbt, and instead hate us, abuse us, disown us, etc. the reason people are upset is bc they feel like you're undermining that and saying the abuse is "worth it"

Anonymous said:but the point is that a parent learning a valuable lesson isn't worth their child's safety. why should an innocent young person end up risking their livelihood? the statistics of homeless queer youth prove that it's not worth the risk.

Anonymous said:gay kids are not a lesson for homophobic parents. homophobic parents abuse us, homophobic parents kick us out, homophobic parents get us killed.

Anonymous said:you have to understand that not all parents are like yours. most parents completely hate their gay/trans kids and would rather put them through conversion therapy or ignore their gayness/transness than accept their kid as they are. sometimes they would rather have a dead cishet kid than a living gay/trans kid. a gay kid having homophobic parents isnt a punishment for the parents; its a punishment for the kid.

All four of these came in nearly at once, and I suspect that they were all the same person, so I’m just going to address them all at once:

Honey, sweetie, darling child...your experience is not universal any more than mine is. When you focus on the headlines that are intentionally written to be sensationalist and rustle your jimmies, you develop the same tunnel-vision that cops do; you’re only going to see the worst in humanity.

Couple that with the above comments clearly coming from someone who isn’t responsible for preparing a child to face the big, wide world. Yes, there’s people who are such monumental cock-bites that you’d think they’re getting paid for it (my ex-wife’s family comes to mind) but the vast majority of parents are really just overgrown teenagers making shit up as they go along and wondering how their parents ever managed. They don’t know any better than the next person, and often they’re getting bad advice from well meaning people who know even less than they do, but they don’t know it’s bad advice and they don’t know the people dispensing it are the wrong people to ask in the first place.

My ex-wife is in for a world of pain when my daughter gets old enough to start dating. Why? Because our daughter is most likely gender-queer and is showing signs of being only attracted to women. She’s got friends that are boys, but has shown zero inclination towards “church approved” heterosexual attraction; meanwhile, she’s flat out told me that she likes girls. She’s a little young to make that determination for sure (heaven’s knows I didn’t really understand my own attractions until I was in my early 20′s, even if I was sexually active in my mid-teens), but I’m willing to bet with how early the women in my family start puberty that she simply has a clear idea what her orientation is already. My ex-wife drank the kool-aid that her family served about how LGBT people are all inherently evil and sinners. My ex-wife gets to have a wonderful little learning experience where she gets to grow as a person or lose her daughter.

That’s not going to be fun for either of them. Hell, it won’t be fun for me. (I’m not looking forward to being referee in that particular argument, and you know I’m going to be “blamed” for it) My daughter is going to get a chance to learn and grow from her figuring things out. My ex-wife is going to get a chance to learn and grow from our daughter figuring these things out. Neither of them gets to force the other to accept their opinion any more than you get to force my ex-wife to accept our daughter.

(Sidebar: For those who might be worried about the possibility of my daughter being sent to any sort of “conversion therapy” or some similar nonsense, there’s a clause in the divorce contract stating that I have full veto rights to any medical treatments our daughter is put through, and that includes anything like a “conversion camp” or similar. I didn’t know I’d be needing that clause for this purpose at the time, but I’m damn glad I fought for it)

Every parent of an LGBT kid has to learn, grow, and change once they find out that their child doesn’t fit into the mainstream. Most parents eventually figure it out and accept their child’s choice, if for no other reason than they know that said “child” is their own person and by the time the dust clears said person is over 18 and can do whatever the fuck they want and the parent either gets to play nice or never see that child again. This does NOT mean that ALL parents will learn that they should love their kids and grow their heart and mind, and when the parent chooses not to learn those lessons, that means they fail. They lose that connection with their child and deep down they know they screwed up. They’ll either learn and grow and get over it, or they’ll go to their grave knowing how badly they screwed up and be too stubborn to actually do anything about it.

Further, not everything a parent does that hurts the child is done to hurt the child. A well-meaning but clueless parent has just as much (if not more) to learn about their child’s orientation/gender-presentation as their child. These imperfect beings are usually doing their damndest to raise a kid, and now they are the odd-person out among their peer group, and all because of something that they have no control over. (Sound familiar?)

A good, christian, Republican father who thought he was raising three boys finds out he’s got two boys and a trans-girl is going to be so far out of his element he might as well be a pet store goldfish piloting a space shuttle. He has zero frame of reference and he’s just lost a son. He’s got to go through a learning process, he’s got to question everything he believes in, he’s got to go against the grain so hard that splinters are inevitable, he’s got to go through the grieving process, and he’s got to figure out how to love this changeling living in his son’s room. That is a LOT to go through, and it’s just as hard for him as it is for his son daughter.

Let’s take an opposite case: A...”good” (she’s trying real hard but keeps dropping the ball at the worst times through no fault of her own), atheist (as soon as she turned 18 she left her parent’s church and never looked back), Liberal single mother is told by her daughter (by a one-night stand during her brief stint in college...she’s not even sure who the father is) that her daughter is a lesbian and, by the way, her girlfriend’s parents kicked her out because their pastor said she was sinful and can she stay with them please? She now has to deal with a girl who’s legal status in the home is questionable at best, potentially abusive parents who will come over at any time to harass their daughter and the “heathen family of sinners” that “corrupted” their little girl, potential CPS investigations, and all this on top of having to completely scrap any hopes and dreams she had of her little girl finding a good man (preferably with a degree) to settle down with so her daughter doesn’t have to deal with the crap she did. Does she let them sleep in the same room? (They’re underage, after all, but since there’s no chance of pregnancy, does that matter, or is it the principal of the thing? Who the hell would she even ask about that?) How is she supposed to be there for her daughter (and possible live-in girlfriend) if she’s having to work 10 hour days 6 days a week? And let’s talk about the budget; she can barely afford two people, and now her daughter is asking to bring in a third?!

Both the parent and the child are going to do and say hateful, hurtful things. Usually, it’s without meaning to. If the parent is ACTUALLY abusive, then action gets to take place, most especially the child being removed from the abusive environment. The parent gets to have legal action taken against them, possibly including jail time for abusing a child.

tl;dr - The original post made a statement about how a kid being LGBT isn’t all about the parents. I simply made a statement that it also impacts the parents, and that is a good thing.

[type2diabetestreatments-blog]

Five-Year Move-aversary: Me and My Diabetes

New Post has been published on http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/five-year-move-aversary-me-and-my-diabetes/

Five-Year Move-aversary: Me and My Diabetes

Five years ago today, I packed my bags, kissed my mother good-bye, and bid a fond farewell to my life as an Oregonian. I had never lived outside of that state, and in the years since moving to the East Coast many people have asked, "Weren't you scared?!"

Honestly, no. Mostly because I had no idea what I was supposed to be scared of. I had a job, although no car and no place to live (details, details). I knew a handful of diabetes bloggers (shout-outs to Gina and Scott S) and some local family. I was very excited to live so close to my dream city... New York, New York! The fact that I was essentially homeless with no transportation and very little idea of where anything was didn't really dawn on me.

That is, until I landed. Then I got a little nervous. But as you can see, I have survived.

There are hundreds of PWDs who've graduated from high school and college, and they're spending the summer getting ready to move on to the next phase of their life. Although I didn't go far for college, the experience of moving a long distance for college or your actual career are fairly similar.

Me and Manhattan, in 2007

In honor of my five year "move-aversary," I have five pieces of advice for PWD young-ins (and their parents, too!):

* Find a primary care doctor, an endocrinologist and a CDE. It's probably the last thing you really want to do, especially when you have school, work or your social life calling your name. But trust me, Murphy's Law dictates that when you are the least prepared, something will go wrong. So show Murphy who's boss and find that health care team. How to do that? It can be particularly challenging because pediatric endos don't always know who to recommend, and your insurance company's database is probably not helpful.

A few suggestions: head to Google and look at websites for endos in your area; post a message on a forum to get recommendations from the locals; check with the local JDRF or ADA chapters to see who is involved in the community; talk to your University's health center to see if they have any recommendations.

The SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth study showed that 32% of teens ages 13-18 years and just 18% (!) in their early 20s achieved an A1c under 8%. Finding a new healthcare team is difficult, but it's also incredibly important. Don't let the gaps happen. The longer you go without a team, the harder it is to get back into the groove.

(We're going to have even more coverage on transitioning from pediatric care to adult care in the coming weeks... So stay tuned!)

* Get plugged in. Easier said than done, right? Right. Throughout college, I didn't have very many friends with diabetes. No one understood what I was going through, and my A1cs definitely displayed the consequences of my detachment. It can be hard to find a place to plug in, especially when you're a young adult with diabetes. You're either "too old" for type 1 or you're "too young" for the type 2 crowd.

The JDRF and ADA are pretty good places to start looking for support groups, as both organizations are (finally!) realizing that your emotional health is as important as your physical health. Other spots to look: your clinic (see aforementioned bullet about finding an endo), the student health center, social networking websites like Meetup.com or even Facebook, and forums on diabetes websites like TuDiabetes.org where you can search by member location. Even if you only make contact with one person, that often leads to more connections later on. I found one local diabetes support group through Meetup.com, and the other one through Twitter!

You can also check out the College Diabetes Network, an organization led by two twentysomethings who are coordinating chapters of PWDs on college campuses around the country.

* Ask the embarrassing questions. When it comes to things like sex and drinking, it's easy to shy away about asking if these things will affect your diabetes, especially with parents. Here's a hint: they do affect your diabetes. Whether it's what to do with your insulin pump during intimacy, what to expect from the hormones in birth control, or how to deal with insulin and alcohol, some of the best people who can help answer these questions are the ones who have been there before you.

Not that we advocate these practices, but if you are using any substances or changing up your lifestyle, it's important to be as educated as possible about how these things affect your diabetes. Drinking? I talked to my nutritionist about how alcohol affects the liver. Birth control? I chatted with my endocrinologist about which ones were less likely to cause insulin resistance from the hormones. Intimacy? That actually might be best saved for a fellow PWD, either in a support group or anonymously on an online message board. There are plenty of experts and folks here to support you, and some are required by law to keep your confidence.

* Don't keep your diabetes a secret. At least, not from everyone. There's a time and a place for disclosure, and that doesn't necessarily mean on the first date or in your job interview. The people who need to know are (IMO): your boss (after you're hired), your professors, your roommate(s), your significant other, and at least one co-worker. Everyone else is optional, though I'm of the school of thought that more is better.

The reason you need to tell people about your diabetes is simple: your safety. The last thing you want is to collapse at work or in class and have everyone think you just stayed up too late. It's important that those who spend the most time with you understand diabetes to a degree in case their is an emergency. Most of my co-workers at my first job knew I had diabetes, and I also informed all my roommates that I had diabetes before we moved in together. I wanted to make sure they would be comfortable and willing to help me if I needed it.

It's also easy to think that, now that you're "on your own" you've also been totally abandoned and no one cares about you. Cynthia Berg, a psychologist at the University of Utah, who presented on the topic of teens and transitions at the recent ADA Scientific Sessions, says, "It really takes a village to manage diabetes. So are there friends that can be helpful as well? Some new work shows that romantic partners, when they come on board are really helpful. Putting a social support network in place that may facilitate the transition may be a better way to think about this."

Another reason I told co-workers and friends is because for my first year after college, I lived alone. I felt more comfortable knowing that people realized the risks of diabetes and helped keep an eye on me without being overbearing.

* Stay in touch. When I graduated from high school, I moved two hours away by car. When I graduated from college, I moved six hours away by plane. Both times, I wanted to distance myself from my parents. I'm a grown-up! I should manage my diabetes on my own!

Berg believes there's no reason to expect that children necessarily need to be "launched" out into the real world all alone, but that means parents and their teen or college student need to have good communication skills.

In transitioning, managing diabetes alone can be overwhelming. With today's technology, phone calls, texting and emailing can help with adjustment. It's important to not judge your child's supposed "mistakes." Just like we need a little help managing our money or building our job interview skills, most teens and young adults in transition aren't going to do everything perfectly and they might not even take your advice. But that doesn't mean it isn't valuable, you just need perspective on their stage in life.

For those of you who have "flown the coop," what advice do you have for both parents and their teens or twenty somethings?

Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.

Disclaimer

This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn't adhere to Healthline's editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline's partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.

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