ARGH!

Non-adoption family drama is peaking. I'm extremely angry and upset about certain developments involving certain family members. I'll have to wait until things settle down a bit before posting a blog update, because I need some distance.

Search and Reunion - Thoughts on the Future

I just finished reading through this post at AdoptionTalk: "Find My Family" as Sensationalist Trash or Springboard for Discussion. It's about a new reality show that covers adoption search and reunion. The post discusses the potential reaction of children and what age would be most appropriate.

I had a lot of contradictory feelings when imagining whether Sunny should watch such a show at his current age.  It's somewhat remote from his experience and it might not affect him at all.  He knows his maternal bio family.  He lived with his mother.  He doesn't need to search or reunite, because we already have a relationship with them.  But his mother passed away... and because of that, watching other adoptees reunite might feel like a punch in the stomach and a reminder of what's been taken from him.  He's never going to see his mother again, at least walking this earth.  I know this hurts him.

Sunny talks about it, but not often.  We read a great book together once -- Everett Anderson's Goodbye -- a story about a son grieving for his dead father.  It made him cry, and he told me he never wanted to read the book again because he didn't want to cry like that again.  Every so often, he'll say "I miss Mommy __" or "I'll never get to see Mommy __ again."  I'll just pat him on the back and say "I know you do," and talk about maybe visiting her grave the next time we visit, if he's up for it.

On the other hand, in the future, it might be useful for him to know about other kinds of adoptee narratives.  Maybe the stories would fascinate him.  Maybe they would bore him, since they tend to lack dinosaurs, robots or explosions. 

Maybe these stories would make him think about his biological father... that's an area where I'm waiting (an active kind of waiting) for him to take the lead.  I know, from talking to more maternal relatives, that his father is not quite as unsafe as the record indicated. I'm not going to pick up the phone and call him out of the blue, but I'll remind Sunny when he gets older that we can set up contact with his father.

We're not at that stage yet.  We recently cleared a pretty important stage... he understands that his maternal uncle is his uncle and not his father, that his uncle is white and his father is black.  I think he really knew this, but he didn't want to know it, so he obfuscated.  He needed a lot of very gentle reminders.  About a year's worth.  Getting to see and play with his uncle on our latest visit finally clinched it. 

I don't think I'll be watching those shows myself.  I hate to say it, but the thought makes me too sad. I can take a little bit of these stories, but not in concentrated multimedia doses.  I would find myself thinking about my own lost relatives... the grandparents that died before I was born, whose deaths were inextricably linked to my father's adoption. 

I also think the cultural practice of closed adoption with sealed records is deeply unnatural, a historical anomaly, and will hopefully disappear soon.  In the future, we'll all have DNA fingerprints on file electronically (for good and for evil) and finding a relative will become just as easy as Googling... you'll just lick your iPhone or something and a list of everyone who shares your DNA will pop up.

Transgender Day of Remembrance Post

Usually I suck at blogging on significant days and anniversaries. But today, I'm in time to catch The Transgender Day of Remembrance.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance was set aside to memorialize those who were killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. The event is held in November to honor Rita Hester, whose murder on November 28th, 1998 kicked off the “Remembering Our Dead” web project and a San Francisco candlelight vigil in 1999. Rita Hester’s murder — like most anti-transgender murder cases — has yet to be solved.

Although not every person represented during the Day of Remembrance self-identified as transgender — that is, as a transsexual, crossdresser, or otherwise gender-variant — each was a victim of violence based on bias against transgender people.

We live in times more sensitive than ever to hatred-based violence, especially since the events of September 11th. Yet even now, the deaths of those based on anti-transgender hatred or prejudice are largely ignored. Over the last decade, more than one person per month has died due to transgender-based hate or prejudice, regardless of any other factors in their lives. This trend shows no sign of abating.

The Transgender Day of Remembrance serves several purposes. It raises public awareness of hate crimes against transgender people, an action that current media doesn’t perform. Day of Remembrance publicly mourns and honors the lives of our brothers and sisters who might otherwise be forgotten. Through the vigil, we express love and respect for our people in the face of national indifference and hatred. Day of Remembrance reminds non-transgender people that we are their sons, daughters, parents, friends and lovers. Day of Remembrance gives our allies a chance to step forward with us and stand in vigil, memorializing those of us who’ve died by anti-transgender violence.

Here is the latest victim: Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado, who was stabbed to death, then decapitated, dismembered, and burned in Puerto Rico this week.

I'm not sure if he was gay, transgender, somewhere in the middle, or both at the same time.  But the story makes it clear he was murdered for his gender expression.

I don't want to remove the focus of this day from transgender victims.  However, I have to do that, in order to stress that hatred and fear of transgender people makes all of our lives worse, when you really think about it.

Homophobia and/or transphobia (I think it's a continuum) affected me lightly when I was a girl. I didn't look like other girls around me because of my race. I was also tall, small-breasted and blocky. I got called a "lesbian" and a "dyke" quite a few times.  Once, someone even called me an "Elizabethan" which was awfully confusing. It shows that even when kids don't even know what these words mean, or how to pronounce them, they use them to hurt other kids and try to make them conform to gender standards.

Of course, I've been quite lucky since then.  Since I'm straight, I have a lot of economic privilege from being able to marry my husband and get tax breaks and discounts on a wide variety of things. And I've been mistaken for a man off and on, depending on how I was dressed and how I style my hair, but it never particularly bothered me, and I never had to pay a big social penalty for it.

That is, until one time I went to the Bahamas.  I didn't know it at the time -- I was blissfully unaware -- but many parts of the English-speaking Caribbean are hotbeds of hatred towards anyone who is not "gender-conforming".

I was in Nassau for two days en route to another location.  I dressed in my typical tropical travelling clothes.  Knee-length shorts, baggy long-sleeved cotton shirts, hat.  I like wearing these types of outfits because 1) they're comfortable in the heat 2) they protect my skin from the sun 3) they cover my body enough so I don't get too much unwanted male attention, so I can fly under the radar. 

I started feeling really nervous after only a few hours in Nassau. I was used to being stared at because of my race when I travel, but this just wasn't just curiosity, it was curiosity plus anger.  Bahamians were glaring at me. Women especially.  I'm tall, but a lot of these women were taller and bigger than me. I was in line at an ATM when a group of women pointed at me and broke into derisive laughter.  I didn't understand what was going on... until the time I was outside of a grocery store and women yelled at me "ARE YOU A BOY OR A GIRL! HA!" Then she sneered at me and moved off.

If I'd stayed in Nassau, I was probably putting myself at serious risk of a beat-down. Of course, I had the privilege of escaping that treatment if I had to... I wasn't particularly attached to my androgynous outfits.  I realized later that if I'd put on some lipstick and a halter top, that terrifying sense of constant physical menace would basically have evaporated.

As far as I've learned, although many English-speaking Caribbean countries have horrendous levels of violence towards LGBT people, it's not quite as bad in the Spanish-speaking countries, and in Haiti there's actually a pretty high level of cultural tolerance. I know about this now, because it affected me, and so I took an interest. But it's not just an interest for many other people... their very life can depend on it.

There are many ways in which hatred of transgender people is mainstreamed and made acceptable.  One way in which everyone should help is by making a pledge not to use gender expression for mockery.  For example, I'm going to try hard never to make fun of any woman, trans or otherwise, by saying they "look like a man". Casual stuff like this goes on all the time, and it contributes to the disrespect of transgender women, dehumanizing them, and making their deaths "not count".

I think it's also important to support children in foster care who have been rejected because of their gender expression. There's an organization here in Atlanta I donate to: Chris Kids and Project Rainbow.  They always need donations especially for this program, because although their other child programs receive federal and state funds, Project Rainbow is more "controversial" (sadly) and has to be funded separately.

The Rainbow Program

The Rainbow Program is a subset program of the Independent Living Program that transitions teenagers from homelessness into self-sufficient adulthood. Youth live in apartments and receive counseling, vocational and educational training, and life skills development. Each teen must be working or enrolled in appropriate educational programs for a minimum of 20 hours per week. Teens have individualized service plans that outline goals and objectives for independence. Staff works with each teen to accomplish their individual goals. This program targets outreach to homeless youth and teens identifying as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or questioning (GLBTQ). At CHRIS Kids these youth find a place to live where they can learn self acceptance and be open about who they are without fear or retribution.

• National statistics suggest that up to 56% of homeless youth identify as GLBTQ.
• This program is one of few GLBTQ Independent Living Programs in the Southeast
• This program receives no federal support

Short Sunny Update

Guy is out of town this week.  When we went on the same trip last year, things kind of fell apart.  That's the first time that Sunny ever hit me during a tantrum. Guy being away seemed to flip a switch in his brain and probably activated all his memories of the other people in his life that left him...

This week, it's been hugely better, so far. Guy wrote seven notes with little drawings and messages like "I love you" and "sleep tight", and I give one of those to Sunny every night.  He also emails Sunny from the road.  Sunny has a clear goals -- 5 nights of "reading nicely" and "no fits" means two visits to the play center this weekend.  His days are also much more scheduled. 

Guy does so much around the house.  Washing the dishes and getting Sunny's lunch ready and all the other stuff isn't easy on my own. I do have my mother helping out -- she's picking up Sunny from afterschool every day.

Sunny says "I miss Dad" and "I'm sad because I miss Dad" a lot.

After dinner we usually play a game of chess together. We've also tried (and failed) to do some dance videos together.  It's so hard! Also, Sunny really does not have good dance basics.  That's one reason I keep up with his hip-hop dance classes.  I think it's a generally good thing to know how to dance, and as Sunny grows up hip-hop is what the kids his age are going to be dancing to.  He doesn't dislike the classes -- if he did I'd have to discontinue them -- but he's not really excited about them, either, the way he is about chess club.

He loves singing punk rock songs though... or singing AOR soft rock songs in the style of punk rock. Guy recently taught him to sing this one.  It's not very hard to learn.

Long Fitness Update

Here's how it's going. I'm not weighing myself or even measuring myself because I don't want to get stuck on numerical goals.  I'd rather aim for a general wellbeing and fitness level.   That way it might be more sustainable.

Nutrition: I'm doing a modified South Beach, low carb but not ultra low carb style.  The hardest part is remembering to eat six times a day and not letting myself get hungry.  I know this is a nutrition principle that's crucial for keeping your metabolism working properly, but it's tough, especially since I have a tendency to get really focused on something and postpone eating.

For breakfast I'm usually eating omelettes with a little parmesan and ajvar... ajvar is a spicy red bell pepper and eggplant spread. We have a lot of Bosnians living nearby, which is how I discovered ajvar, which tastes awesome, and is really convenient as a filling and additive for all kinds of dishes.  Then for a mid-morning snack I'll have some miso soup or a handful of almonds.  At lunch I'll have vegetables with hummus, veggie burgers (I'm not a vegetarian but I like veggie burgers) and/or a lentil or bean soup.  Then for a late lunch I'll have some more almonds or half a roll-up with a low-carb wrap, and maybe an apple.  For dinner I'll eat whatever I cook Sunny and Guy, but without the rice.  Then for dessert, after exercising, I'll have a small protein drink: unsweetened soy milk with hemp powder, a dash of vanilla and cinnamon and a Splenda packet.  The flavors make it not taste entirely like ass (that's the kindest thing I can say about it).

I'm planning on making some rolls with those Vietnamese rice paper things so I can replace the small low-carb wraps, which don't taste very good. 

Here's my exercise log.  Start it Up is the first level of Slim in 6.  Ramp it Up is the second. You're supposed to do Start it Up for only 2 days or until you "master the moves".  It took me a LONG time to "master the moves".

Tue Oct 20         Start it Up
Wed Oct 21         Start it Up
Thu Oct 22         Start it Up
Fri Oct 23         Start it Up
Sat Oct 24         Start it Up + Weight Training
Sun Oct 25         REST

Mon Oct 26         Start it Up
Tue Oct 27         Start it Up
Wed Oct 28         Start it Up
Thu Oct 29         Start it Up
Fri Oct 30         Start it Up - and evil fire drill
Sat Oct 31        horrible pain
Sun Nov 1        horrible pain

Mon Nov 2        horrible pain
Tues Nov 3        slightly less horrible pain
Wed Nov 4         Start it Up
Thu Nov 5         Start it Up
Fri Nov 6         Start it Up
Sat Nov 7         Start it Up + Weight Training
Sun Nov 8         Zuma (dance fitness) class

Mon Nov 9         Ramp it Up
Tue Nov 10         Skipped - did 20 mins of cardio + flexibility instead
Wed Nov 11         Ramp it Up

Start it Up and Ramp it Up are tough, but they're good for my back. After the first week, my back pain disappeared.  Unfortunately, the day before Halloween, and the day before we left to visit Sunny's home state, the evil fire drill happened and that ruined my exercise schedule for a while... otherwise, I would have been able to start Ramp It Up sooner.

I'm going to try and do weight training twice a week, and Zuma every week, but for now, I think I can only count on once a week. 

The first time I did Ramp It Up, it was hard on my arms. I felt like one of my muscles that I use doing pushups was close to being pulled.  So I decided to skip it and do a different, simpler cardio video instead: Jillian Michaels: Banish Fat, Boost Metabolism. It was popular and had good ratings... but it was a really bad idea. One move involved jumping while rotating your whole body 180 degrees.  The first time I did it, it hurt, and I should have known to stop, but I tried to keep up.  The next day my lower back really hurt.  Luckily the pain went away in time for me to get back into the schedule by doing Ramp It Up later that night.  My arms don't hurt as badly anymore, although one of my legs feels very sore, and I 'm thinking about getting a full-body massage this weekend.

I wish there was some way of telling which exercise videos are back-friendly/scoliosis-friendly and which aren't! I can twist -- in fact, I need to twist, because that strengthens core muscles and helps my back -- and I can jump, but now I've learned that twisting while jumping leads to certain doom. Plus, Jillian Michaels glares at you in kind of a freaky and frightening way, whereas Debbie Siebers (Slim in 6) strikes a better balance between perky and aggro.

I can mostly keep up with Ramp It Up except for the part where you get on your elbows and knees and kick your feet in the air. That's hopeless.  I'm starting by simply doing half of whatever Debbie Siebers doing.  Then I'm going to gradually work it up until I'm doing the same number of kicks.

At this slow rate, I don't think I'm going to get to Burn it Up level in 6 weeks. Oh well.  I'm fairly happy with the way things are going, and my energy level and mood have improved.

Veteran's Day Quick Post: Hepatitis C

I wrote before on this issue.  My stepfather is a Vietnam veteran with Hepatitis C that he contracted while working as a medic stationed in South Korea. Currently, his Hep C is under control, but until a reliable cure is developed, he's always going to be in danger of liver failure. 1 in 10 Vietnam vets have Hepatitis C.

Please see this page at hcadvocate.com to find out what we can do to help people with Hep C.

Email to Hank Johnson Regarding Healthcare Reform and Stupak Amendment

Hello,

I would like to congratulate you on all the great work you have done to fight for healthcare reform so far. I have supported your reform efforts and I attended your healthcare townhall as well as David Scott's. However, I'm very upset right now at the current House bill.  Here are just a few of my problems:

- fines for people who refuse insurance
- lack of coverage for undocumented immigrants
- The Stupak-Pitts "coathanger" amendment

I understand that compromise is necessary in politics.  I understand that if we pass halfway reform now, we will be able to augment and improve on it in years to come. I am willing to compromise quite a bit on healthcare reform. But we can't compromise away everything.  We cannot actually TAKE A STEP BACKWARDS. Any healthcare reform legislation should improve on what we have, or at the very least, continue SOME of the same injustices at the same level... not actually make those injustices worse!

I have never had an abortion. Like you, I am a Buddhist, and although I do not know your opinion on the subject, I have some moral reservations about abortion when it comes to me personally. But I believe every woman has the absolute right to make that decision for herself. If the Stupak amendment is included in final legislation, that means that only women above a certain income level will have that choice anymore! It goes far beyond refusing federal funds for abortion by not even allowing private insurance companies to include abortion.  The Stupak amendment equals FORCED CHILDBIRTH for lower-income women. It is disgusting and unconscionable.

I heard that a letter has been sent to Nancy Pelosi with the names of at least 40 Democrats who have promised to vote against any final reform that includes the Stupak amendment.  I hope your name is on that list. I do believe in compromise and negotiation, but at some point we have to stand strong and hold the line. Thank you.

Our Halloween Visit

The visit this Halloween went well.  Sunny and I flew in on Saturday, and flew out Sunday night.  I scoured the web for coupons and specials and got very good deals on the hotel and rental car.

It's enjoyable spending time with Sunny's foster family. They're incredibly nice people and their family is large, boisterous but harmonious.

It's just that their environment really gets me down.  They live in a solidly middle-class, very white suburb.  It's a great place to be a little kid. Neighbors know each other. It's safe to play in the streets. But when you get to be a teenager, especially someone like me, it can turn into hell on earth. From the age of about 8 to 15 I lived in a similar environment.  Towards the end I simply refused to leave my mother's house at all.

It's in a different region, but it inspires the same familiar feeling of dread.

Plus, the food is awful. The regional food is practically inedible. I'm not going to sing the praises of Southern food -- it's mostly overcooked, oversalted and overgreasy -- but at least it has some taste.  If I can have a pork chop with some collard greens and fried okra I won't complain.  Even a barbecue sandwich is acceptable. When I visit Sunny's family I have to carefully plan out my meals. My only real options are chains: Cracker Barrel, Chipotle and Subway.  I don't know what I'd do without Cracker Barrel. Sunny's family mainly eats massive amounts of pizza, pasta and mashed potatoes. I would never refuse food in a formal dinner setting, but it's often a "make yourself a plate" situation there, so I'm usually able to duck out politely.

Being a food-snob burb-trauma victim makes the visits increasingly rougher. Once a year is more my speed.  Sunny's foster mother and I also discussed sending Sunny up there for a week visit as an unaccompanied minor. I think that's what we'll definitely do in the future, but I'm not sure if he'll be ready yet next year.

The family really goes all out for Halloween.  They had a corpse on the roof, and a collection of animatronic witches and bats on the porch.  I told their oldest son about how nobody trick-or-treated in my neighborhood, mainly because there are a lot of Baptists and others who think Halloween is anti-Jesus. He told me that the one time he was in Georgia he hung out with some "country boys" and was pretty amazed at how they would hellraise all week and then go to church on Sunday.

Their neighborhood was full of trick-or-treating kids and everyone had an incredible time. Sunny was Darth Vader. Toward the end of the night, he had to use his lightsaber to fight off a whole squad of Imperial Stormtroopers.

My other problem was that we had a fire drill in my office the Friday before Halloween.  I walked down an ungodly number of steps. That day, I was fine.  On Saturday, I woke up with agonizing pain in my calves. I could sit, I could stand, but anything in between and it felt like someone was stabbing me in the calves with a fiery poker. I could barely bend my legs.  I started walking like an arthritic penguin.  On Sunday, my back pain came back in full force, because I hadn't been maintaining proper posture. I could barely move. I was trying to spend a lot of time bonding with BB but I couldn't even pick him up.  It was so frustrating.  In order to fly back to Atlanta carrying our luggage -- luggage that included many pounds of Halloween candy -- I bought some compression bandages and wrapped my calves really tightly, and even then, it was tough.  My back pain finally went away on Monday and my leg pain went away a few days later.

I didn't want to show Sunny exactly how badly I was hurting. Little kids like it when their parents are a little bit off their game, because then they can show off being useful and helping out.  But they can get panicky if they think their parents are really not doing well; it's upsetting to their worldview.

BB looks great. He eats and drinks constantly, and is very active.  Some of his favorites activities: pushing his toy truck around the house, spinning things around, tipping over the trash can, dancing up and down, throwing himself down on a blanket, getting tossed up and down.  He's still not saying any words yet (he's 16 months old) but he does make happy sounds and frustrated sounds and excited sounds.  He plays nicely alongside other children.  In contrast, Sunny's foster mom's grandson, who is a few months older, is much more advanced developmentally but also likes to run up to people and hit them and throw things at their faces!  It's still kind of cute now, but hopefully he'll grow out of it soon.

Sunny and BB got to do some bonding, which was very sweet.  Sunny didn't have the patience to play with him, but he would stop and kiss BB on top of the head whenever he ran by.

On Sunday, Sunny went out with NN to a local playground.  They also hung out with his uncle, the one that Sunny used to think was his father. NN told me that her ex-husband, the disagreeable grandfather, even showed up, although he didn't interact with Sunny that much (this was the grandfather that threatened to disown his son, Sunny's uncle, if he adopted Sunny).

After we got back, Sunny was on pretty good behavior.  Then it fell apart on Wednesday.  He had a very long fit that night, although there was really more crying than hitting involved. He had a crying fit in class so that he had to be taken out of the classroom temporarily on Thursday.  He had another two fits on Sunday.  There's definitely some fallout from the visit.

We have an intake appointment at a promising new therapist office next week.  We're not looking into the ABC of Atlanta right now because we're really looking for play therapy, not attachment therapy, but thanks to anyone who left suggestions anyway.  This week is shaping up to be tough because Guy is going out of town for the rest of the week.  Sunny is NOT going to handle that well, no matter what we do and how we prepare.

When I walked into our office tower the Monday after the trip, it gave me a sense of shameful joy to notice that a quite a few other people were still walking like penguins.

I Have a Sneaking Suspicion About Our Adoption Subsidy

I hesitated to blog about this for a long time, because it might be possible to ascertain Sunny's home state from this information. However, I think it's worth the risk.

Last month, we got a letter from Sunny's home state. It started talking about the state's budget woes, which we are well aware of.  If it wasn't for their budget crisis, BB would probably be with us now.

The letter asked us to accept a cut in our monthly adoption subsidy. Since interstate general adoptions involve a supposedly ironclad contract when it comes to this subsidy -- as long as we are taking care of Sunny, we are guaranteed to be paid that amount until he turns 18 -- the letter said that we should VOLUNTARILY give up the money.  Why?  Because if enough people didn't give up the money, they would be forced to make vaguely defined "across the board" cuts.  The language was rather slippery and menacing.  The deadline is next month.

I've been trying to figure out what to do about the letter.  Some possibilities:
- We don't sign, and they don't make the cuts (no money lost)
- We sign, and they don't make the cuts (a known amount of money lost)
- We don't sign, and they make the cuts anyway (an unknown amount of money lost)
- We sign, and they make the cuts anyway (a known amount of money lost + an unknown amount of money lost money lost)

Based on that decision matrix, the option of signing looks really, really bad.

I finally managed to get hold of our local caseworker. She told us absolutely not to sign.  She didn't think it was even possible for them to make the involuntary cuts!  Her theory is that they're just trying to help the budget by picking some low-hanging fruit -- that is, scaring a few adoptive parents into signing the letters.

It's so sleazy.


They already cut BB's foster mom's adoption subsidies.  Since her adoptions are not interstate like ours, there was apparently less legal protection. Her income went down a combined total of $1000 a month. Two of her older children have FASD and need a lot of services.

We could get by with a lower subsidy.  But the subsidy helps a lot.  If it wasn't for the subsidy, we probably wouldn't have been able to take a risk on that extremely expensive course of neurofeedback Sunny did earlier this year.  In the long run, special needs subsidies help the state, as long as the parents are ethical and the subsidy is actually helping the child, because the money you invest in children now means less money you have to spend later on.  But the state is obviously desperate and not thinking about the long term.

BB's caseworker wasn't able to give us any advice on Sunny's subsidy letter issue. But I'm a little bit suspicious of the way she's been asking us to give her a subsidy request letter on BB even though we're missing some health paperwork on him.  His foster mom tells me that she's waiting on the results of a blood test to determine whether he has a sickle cell issue. Earlier test results were apparently ambiguous.

I'll write about my thoughts of our Halloween visit later on, maybe tomorrow.

I Have a Sneaking Suspicion About Our Therapist

Well, this sucks.

I couldn't go to therapy today due to my work schedule, but I'd talked extensively to Guy about what we should bring up in today's session. The main points were: 1) our weekend trip to Sunny's home state, which is sure to stir up some strong emotions 2) recurrence of his chainsaw nightmare 3) the way his fits have lately seemed like he's just going through the motions and isn't really feeling them (he had one this week).

Guy and Sunny showed up on time. The therapist was 5 minutes late. He said he was locked out of his office, so he led them into the file storage room for the session. He brought a chair in for himself, sat on it, and rubbed his forehead while looking distracted. Once Guy realized a chair wouldn't be forthcoming, he sat down on a cardboard box. Sunny just stood. They all talked for a little bit, but the therapist seemed very disjointed. He didn't remember the chainsaw nightmare, or much of anything, for that matter. After ten minutes he asked Sunny if he was feeling OK. Sunny said yes, of course. "See you next week!" That was it. Guy left... but as he drove back he got more and more irritated with the therapist's behavior. The therapist has canceled a lot of sessions in the past. The receptionist he shares with another practice has often called us to cancel sessions because she says he's sick.

It isn't a waste of money for us, because he takes Medicaid and we don't pay anything out of pocket for the sessions. But after some discussion Guy and I decided we're just going to "break up" with him in a passive way. Guy is going to cancel next week's appointment and we're not going to make any new ones. I'll start looking for another therapist that takes Medicaid.

All of the therapist's behaviors point me to one suspected root cause: HEROIN. I'll feel bad if it turns out he has killer migraines or a brain tumor or something like that. But he should say so in that case, because otherwise, it looks very, very squirrely.  In the past, when I've seen or heard of behavior like this, it's been caused by heroin. That whole avoiding eye contact thing seems more like a mark of heroin addiction than crack or meth (people on meth make especially horrible and inappropriate eye contact).  I think he left something he didn't want Guy to see on his desk, and that's why he pretended he was locked out.

When I was a teenager, I worked for a junkie boss once, in an ice cream store, and it was a total nightmare. At first, I thought he was just going into the back of the store and getting drunk or smoking pot. Then he started leaving his dirty needles in a paper bag next to the cash register... He used to go into the backroom for ten minutes or so, then come out front staggering and weaving and ineffectually sexually harassing me. I would wave him away and make him return to the backroom to lie down on the cot in the corner. I left after a few weeks of this, but I heard the situation deteriorated quite a bit afterwards.

I'm going to start looking for a new therapist on Monday. All we need is someone who will do simple play therapy with Sunny weekly, or once every two weeks... who will get to know him, establish a consistent program of anger management for all of us, and be able to work through highly emotional issues with as they arise (like this trip we're taking). All I want from a therapist is that they 1) show up to appointments 2) listen to us and to Sunny and remember what we tell them 3) don't use overtly religious therapies 4) have some experience working with children from foster care 5) do play therapy, which is something that Sunny responds well to. That's not so much to ask for, is it? There are a gazillion therapists in Atlanta and I guess I just have to keep plugging through the lists in search of a new therapist, who will be our fourth one so far.  The first one had no clue, the second was great until she recommended spanking, and the third is... umm... potentially way too problematic.

Our neighbor says their family therapist is great and would fit all the criteria, but he doesn't take Medicaid.  I might end up going to him if things keep falling through with other therapists. Perhaps it could fall under my insurance.

BB Timeline Update

I've been talking to BB's caseworker for a while. I have a very tentative timeline. First comes the official matching, which will happen very soon. Perhaps next week. I need to submit a letter requesting a subsidy. The subsidy is going to be a LOT lower than Sunny's, due to budget constraints. I'm just hoping for anything better than zero dollars a month. I don't care about the subsidy as much as I care about making 100% sure we get Medicaid for BB.

The actual cross-state investigation/paperwork process is going to take many months. How many? It took five months for Sunny. Add in a month for the holiday season, and another couple months for the budget crisis, and we should still be able to get full placement before BB turns two years old. I have to look at the bright side, otherwise it's just too depressing.

They won't pay or reimburse for pre-placement visits anymore, since the state ran out of money. The caseworker did say they would pay to fly BB down at least once. This is totally meaningless, since he would have to have someone fly with him, and children under 2 fly for free for anyway.

This translates into a really open visitation schedule... whatever we can afford, basically. We could bring him down to Georgia for periods of up to a week, but that would mean someone flying there, flying back with BB, then flying BB back, then flying back home.

If I figured out some way to work from there, I could go up for a week at a time, and just feed him and sleep next to him for that week... I don't know. It's going to take a lot of planning.

One really worrisome thing is that according to the Georgia adoption rules, an infant older than one year cannot sleep in the same bedroom as an adult. I'm not a believer in full-on attachment parenting, but I've read a lot of convincing stuff that says children like BB who are in danger of attachment disorder need co-sleeping.

Weekend Update with Gun Violence Q&A

I'm closing the weekend on a down note, although it has mostly gone well. Sunny's behavior has been pretty good. He had two rewards he was working hard towards. The first was going to see Astro Boy; I promised I would take him as long as he didn't have a fit or major snit. The second was a candy bar, which he could get if he won the "anger management game". This is just a simple point system where we get a point if he loses his temper and yells or backtalks, and gets a point if we tell him "no" and he doesn't lose his temper.

We spent the whole day together, since Guy was off on a day trip. Sunny ran lots of errands with me and was extremely helpful. He got in some quality play time as well.

I was very appreciative of Sunny today because I had a horrible nightmare the other night. In the dream, my family was vacationing in a city by the beach. The city was full of nightclubs and restaurants and hotels built almost vertically on high cliffs above the beach. The beach was full of swimming vacationers and also full of large sea turtles... it was hard to walk down the beach without stumbling over a sea turtle. Something complicated was happening and I had to run from place to place handling various issues. I ended up in a restaurant balcony on the cliff, watching Sunny play far below. All of a sudden, I saw a huge, 100-foot tall wave rushing out of the ocean -- it wiped the beach completely clean of everything and everyone. Guy and my mother rushed over to the restaurant, I figured out that Sunny had been lost to the wave and I started crying, and kept crying for what seemed like forever.

I have recurrent nightmares involving tsunamis. I don't know why. In real life, I have very little fear of the ocean or even of large waves, and I'm a strong swimmer.

We had an interesting talk about guns in the car today. One of my friends that Sunny knows was once shot in the chest during a failed mugging in Little 5 Points, and Sunny is kind of obsessed with that incident... I think it ties into his long-standing obsession with Abraham Lincoln getting shot. I had to answer a lot of questions about guns today.

If someone shot at our car, would the glass stop it?
- No, because the car doesn't have special bulletproof glass.

If someone shot at our car, what would we do?
- I would yell at you to duck down, then I would duck down and keep driving, and we would get away.

But what about you? I could duck down because I'm little, but you're too big, you wouldn't fit under the seat.
- I wouldn't need to duck down all the way.

How could you keep driving if you were ducked down so you couldn't see out the front?
- I could drive while peeking out of the corner of my eye.

Have you done it before?
- No, I've never driven under gunfire but I'm pretty confident I could manage it if I had to.

Can people who are big get shot and live like your friend who got shot and lived?
- Yes, but it's a better idea not to get shot in the first place.

If you get shot by a bazooka could you live?
- No.

If I was shot would I get killed because I'm little?
- It depends on where you got shot.

If I got shot in the leg I wouldn't die.
- Well, if the bullet hit your femoral artery in your leg, you might bleed out and die. Like I said, it's better not to get shot in the first place. A lot of kids die each year because they play with guns and they shoot themselves or their friends by accident. They think guns are cool because kids see so many movies where guns are cool, but they don't realize how dangerous they are.

So they didn't mean to do it? That's impossible!
- No, it's really easy, maybe they look down the barrel and they hit the trigger by accident.

How come Abraham Lincoln got shot in the head and he lived for three days?
- (I should have this answer down cold by now but I don't) Umm, because the bullet caused his brain to bleed, and the doctors couldn't get into his brain to stop the blood, so it took three days but he was bleeding too much in his brain to live.

The brain has a lot of blood in it because we need blood to give us lots of energy to think!
- That sounds right.

I was oddly touched that Sunny was worried about my safety during gunfire.

He also made me a really nice offer later on. I was pulled over by a cop for an annoying reason: not seeing a minuscule "No Turn on Red" sign. Luckily, the policeman didn't give me a moving violation ticket, but instead of letting me off with a warning, he gave me an even stupider ticket: not having proof of insurance (I had an insurance card but it was expired). Georgia has an automated system and they can look up proof of insurance in seconds, so I didn't even know you were still required to carry around a current insurance card! He obviously knew I had valid insurance... this "no proof" ticket is just a stupid nuisance. Anyway, Sunny said he felt bad for me and offered to pay my ticket out for his birthday present money! I told him, "No, it's my responsibility since I was the one driving, but thanks a lot anyway."

Back to the gun stuff... I believe in being pretty graphic about what guns can do. Here in the U.S. we get a ridiculous amount of positive messages about guns. Guns = instant power = instant masculinity, and so on. Gun messages start at a preschool level and just get stronger and stronger. There's no way to totally shield kids from these messages, and the idea of the gun is too powerful to fight against. The pragmatic remedy is to try and balance the idea with the reality. If you just tell kids that guns are evil and leave it at that, I doubt they're really going to take it to heart.

It's also important to know what to do in case of gunfire. I've talked about that with Sunny before. If you hear a gunshot, hit the ground and crawl to cover. I've had to do this more than a couple times in my life. Just last year in Charlotte, actually!

People who don't understand these simple lessons, perhaps because they were lucky enough to grow up somewhere without a strong gun culture, are really vulnerable. For example, I remember a party I went to a long time ago in Miami, where a friend of a friend publicly announced that someone had taken his .22 out of his backpack. He spent an hour trying to find it, then went to the police station at 2 in the morning to report it stolen (otherwise, if someone had shot someone with that gun, he might have gotten blamed for it). It turned out a drunk German backpacker who had washed up at the party had taken it, thinking it was a toy pistol, and was passed out on top of it in a bedroom corner somewhere.

I've heard a lot of anecdotes about young Europeans getting into serious trouble in Miami. In a lot of European countries, if you get in a bar fight, people hit each other, and the worst that happens is a bloody nose. But people are more polite in places like Miami, where everyone and their grandmother has a gun, because you should take for granted that your opponent isn't going to start a fistfight... instead, they'll just go out to the parking lot, get their gun and wait for you. Drunken soccer hooligan type behavior in a gun culture is a disaster waiting to happen.

Sunny's Pawpaw (Guy's mother's husband) has a gazillion rifles but he keeps them carefully in a safe. J's father (J is Sunny's friend, the pinecone lighter) also has a gun and keeps it in a safe. But realistically speaking, someday Sunny is going to end up in a house where somebody is not responsible, and kids/teenagers can get hold of the gun...

I've spent so much time writing about guns I'm too tired to talk about the reason I'm feeling down today. It's all about my dad. I was relying on him for something and he let me down. He can be such a jerk sometimes. Maybe I'll write about it later.

On all other fronts, things are going well. I feel pretty good about my health. Today was a day of rest -- relative rest, that is, considering all the stuff I did with Sunny. Yesterday, I finished my 5th consecutive Level 1 Slim in 6, did weight training at the gym and got an extremely painful but effective massage. There was a scapula pop involved. I'm not sure if I'm going to get all the way through Slim in 6 in 6 weeks, simply because my arm strength is not very good... I'm fine with all the leg work but I can't follow along 100% with the arms. At one point I think you're suposed to do about 16 push-ups and I can barely do 6. It's going to take me a while to build up the arm strength, and I'm going to be conservative and not start the next level until my arms are ready for it.

I also need to write a post about Astro Boy and adoption. The movie has huge, huge adoption issues, including a portrayal of two extremes of bad adoptive parenting: 1) the parent who wants to force an adoptee to fit their image of the fantasy child 2) the Fagin-type parent who takes in and exploits the orphaned.

Although, when you think about it, adoption issues are all over children's and fantastic and superhero stories. Superman? Transracial adoption. Spiderman? Relative adoption. It's rare to encounter a story without it. It's like a reliable motor to drive a story with.

I'll leave with some Twitter stuff. The hash tag #oneletteroffmovies has been really popular lately, and all the funniest one letter off variations have been done already. I contributed my own variation, #oneletteroffWernerHerzogmovies, though I warn you it will only be somewhat humorous if you're German, a film geek, have a juvenile sense of humor or some combination of those three qualities.

Aguirre, the Wrath of Cod
Bad Lieutenant: Poot of Call New Orleans
Cabra Verde
Fescue Dawn
Nosferatu the Vampire
Little Dieter Needs to Fry
My Best Friend

I love Werner Herzog. I can't wait for the Bad Lieutenant remake that's coming out next month. I don't know if it's going to be good, but it's going to be extremely something.

Link Post: The Many Ways that Asian Adoptees are Vulnerable

This is so sad. But these are such important stories to hear. I'll let the links and quotes speak for themselves.

From girl4708:

Screening for Woody Allen

Today I’ve got no insights, revelations, or provocations. Today I am merely asking questions. The question I mainly want to ask is: How do we screen out Woody Allen? There are a few of us molested Korean adoptees who have come out of the shadows to speak about the traumatic consequences of latent yellow fever combined with the ability to adopt yellow.

Do these men KNOW they have yellow fever when they adopt? Is that why they choose Asian countries to adopt from?

Are these men pedophiles before they adopt?

What is it about these men that allows them to cross personal boundaries, morals, and ethics?

How is it these men are so infantile and self-absorbed they ultimately can not control their urges?

WHY WERE MY FATHER’S WHITE, BIOLOGICAL CHILDREN NOT MOLESTED, BUT I WAS?

[...]

From O Solo Mama:

Adoption: When Satan doesn't want you to

It’s been brewing for some time but now appears somewhat official: there is a Christian duty to adopt. Christian evangelicals are being commanded to “be at the forefront of the adoption of orphans close to home and around the world.”

[...]

Andrea says:
October 22, 2009 at 7:19 pm

Check out this story from a Christian family adopting:

http://jdavis2.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/the-cultural-advantage/

"we also have the advantage of understanding our host culture’s worldview and their very deep superstitious beliefs. thus, we were not surprised that sterling was given to us with a jade luck charm – a buddhist charm meant to bring good luck, fortune and protection. we, however, know that this charm is associated with spiritual forces meant to keep people in bondage. thus, we smiled and accepted it as we should, and then later went to the park, broke it, and threw it into the pond, and prayed for our sterling that all spiritual bondage over him would be broken. these spiritual forces are alive and real, and manifest themselves in more obvious ways (but with the same degree of power) than in the west, but we know that the power and grace of the God who created the heavens and the earth is infinitely greater than the forces of evil."

From AdoptionTalk, also discussed at American Family:

Eyes Wide Open: Surgery to Westernize the Eyes of an Asian Child
One of my colleagues told me about this article -- she teaches it in Bioethics. It is a horrific must-read:

The speaker was a proud father. To illustrate his comments about a piece of art that celebrated the wonders of modern medicine (and which he had just donated to a local hospital), he told a story about his adopted Asian daughter. He described her as a beautiful, happy child in whom he took much delight. Her life, he told the audience, had been improved dramatically by the miracle of modern medicine. When she joined her new Caucasian family, her eyes, like those of many people of Asian descent, lacked a fold in the upper eyelid, and that lack was problematic—in his view—because it made her eyes small and sleepy and caused them to shut completely when she smiled. A plastic surgeon himself, he knew she did not need to endure this hardship, so he arranged for her to have surgery to reshape her eyes. The procedure, he explained, was minimally invasive and maximally effective. His beautiful daughter now has big round eyes that stay open and shine even when she smiles.

Sex and Scoliosis

What does scoliosis have to do with sex?

There are a lot of connections. I guess I'll need to start by explaining scoliosis. It's a common disorder, but one that is often very misunderstood by the general public, as well as many non-orthopedic doctors. Most people vaguely remember a scoliosis check from their school days. Sometimes the kids are lined up in a row, and told to take off their shirts and bend over while a medical professional inspects them from the back. The experience is obviously rather humiliating and tends to cause a lot of nervous laughter.

Scoliosis -- a sideways, left-right asymmetry of the spine -- is the most common form of spinal deformity. It can also be accompanied by other forms of spinal deformity, like kyphosis (AKA hunchback) and extreme lordosis (AKA swayback). It sometimes comes as a package deal along with disorders of connective tissue, or with cerebral palsy and spinal bifida. In those cases, scoliosis is often diagnosed at a very early age.

The other kind of scoliosis, the much more common kind, seems to come out of nowhere. It's known as adolescent idiopathic scoliosis or AIS. "Idiopathic" is from the same Greek root as "idiot" and basically means "we have no idea what causes it." Though recent research has shown that it's actually genetic, and they've even tracked down the genetic location (but only if you're white, which is bizarre, because there isn't any significant racial/ethnic difference in prevalence rate). Someone with this kind of scoliosis (usually a girl, as the incidence of more serious curves among women is 7-10 times that of men) is born with a normal-looking spine. Before puberty, the spine begins to bend and curve. Maybe it stays there... maybe it gets worse through puberty. Then maybe it stays there, or maybe it gets a lot worse close to menopause. Without major surgery, it's essentially a one way road. In scoliosis vocabulary, when curves get worse, it's called "progression". "Progression" is bad. Arresting progression is good.

According to this NIH resource, "Of every 1,000 children, 3 to 5 develop spinal curves that are considered large enough to need treatment." If you adjust for sex, the rate climbs up to almost 1% of all girls. I don't know of any source that says actually how many girls receive treatment of which types. Treatment means to watch, take lots of x-rays, determine progression, and if it looks like progression is, well, progressing, to brace. Or in very serious cases, go directly to spinal fusion.

That's the "Milwaukee" variant of brace. It's the kind I had. It's made from hard plastic and steel. It's expensive, ugly, frightening, and extremely uncomfortable. The family nickname for my brace was "The Iron Maiden". You can climb into it and strap it on and off, and adjustments of the screws will accommodate changing body shape during puberty. I think you're supposed to wear it until a few years past puberty, when your spine growth finally halts. The brace is an old form of treatment and it's shown to be moderately effective at arresting progression.



Many girls experience horror and anger when they find out what bracing is going to mean for their lives, and that it won't even fix them, it will just probably keep them from getting any worse.

It was easier for me to accept my fate. First of all, my mother also has idiopathic scoliosis, and her curve was fairly serious. Hers is comparable to the woman pictured above. She had not been treated as a girl, and her scoliosis had slowly progressed as she went into middle age. She eventually had a spinal fusion -- two long steel rods screwed into her spine -- and was in the hospital for two weeks. So I had a strong motivation to make sure my curve didn't progress as far as my mother's. She was also a positive role model for me. I saw her as an active, glamorous woman who refused to be limited by scoliosis. I tried to adopt the same stoic attitude toward my own scoliosis. Second of all, my orthopedist said it was OK to only wear my brace 12 hours a day, which meant I slept in it, but I didn't have to wear it to school. I think he may have subscribed to the philosophy that although the brace should really be worn 23 hours a day, there's so much social stigma attached to it that many girls rebel, and won't wear it at all, whereas a private bracing regimen has more likelihood of consistent follow-through.

I don't know if it would have made school any worse. I've written before about the extensive racist abuse, and sexualized racist abuse, I got in late elementary and middle school.

I was harassed so much in the locker room my first year of middle school that I refused to change my clothes at all. P.E. was a living nightmare full of verbal attacks and physical threats from larger girls. I spent much of my time desperately thinking of ways I could get a medical excuse. Unfortunately, aside from my scoliosis, I was healthy as a horse. I refused to participate in activities anyway, and sat with the asthma-sidelined section. I'm still bitter about this experience because it taught me to associate healthy athleticism with emotional trauma and racist bullying. Maybe if I'd had my brace on, I could have gotten my coveted medical excuse.

It was something I never, ever thought of at the time, though. The orthopedist's word was the word of law. And the brace was something to be hidden. I think this is a common tendency among brace-wearers. Girls that age don't want to be seen in a brace. For photos, they'll take off the brace. If they're told to wear it to school, they're mocked and stared at. At the time, I considered myself very lucky that I was able to hide my brace from other kids my age.

I don't know much about disability theory and disablism, but I've been reading through blogs about it, and it's very interesting in relation to scoliosis. I don't identify as a disabled person/person with disabilities, and I don't think many other people with idiopathic scoliosis do. But many of us have also gone through an intensely emotional adolescent period where we're viewed as disabled.

One of the hallmarks of disablism is that it strips away sexuality. The prejudice against disabled people includes thinking they are not supposed to exist sexually, have sexual desire or be desired.

Being braced means going through puberty strapped and screwed in to a weird exoskeleton that incarnates the negation and emprisonment of your sexuality. Your breasts and hips are starting to grow. They might start to bump painfully against the brace. So you have to visit the doctor -- often an older man -- who adjusts your screws to accomodate your new growth.

The brace seems anti-sexual, but it also has positive sexual connotations. The light at the end of the dark tunnel is that the brace will "keep you normal". You'll get through puberty and enter into sexually desirable womanhood without too much spinal deformity... the brace will preserve you. The brace probably becomes the most significant physical object in your life, for good and for evil.

I certainly didn't receive any counseling about my scoliosis. I don't know if it's common today to have counseling as part of the bracing process. If it's not, it should be. Girls who have gone through bracing feel like it's them, alone, against the world. Although it's quite a common experience, by medical and social tradition, the disorder is isolated and hidden.

This study showed that bracing doesn't affect self-image much. However, it also takes places in Sweden, where school environment I'm sure is quite different than in the U.S. This other U.S. study tells a somewhat different story: "Scoliosis was an independent risk factor for suicidal thought, worry and concern over body development, and peer interactions after adjustment. CONCLUSION: Scoliosis is a significant risk factor for psychosocial issues and health-compromising behavior. Gender differences exist in male and female adolescents with scoliosis."

After bracing, scoliosis, and deformities of the spine in general, become almost invisible. It's extremely rare to have a spinal deformity so pronounced that anyone can tell by looking at you when you have clothes on. People with idiopathic scoliosis "pass". People have known me for years, even decades, without knowing I had scoliosis. Then one day they'll see me in a bathing suit -- and not even the first time they saw me in a bathing suit, but maybe the first time they really focused on my back -- and they'll burst out with something like, "OH MY GOD DID YOU KNOW SOMETHING IS REALLY WRONG WITH YOUR SPINE!!"

Once it stops being invisible, it's all of a sudden very, very visible. I guess it's sort of like shaking hands with someone and suddenly realizing they have six fingers.

If I'm not experiencing any back pain, I rarely think about my scoliosis, although I sometimes worry about my future. Pregnancy is not a risk factor for progression, but menopause is. Right now, my thoracic curve is 36 degrees. If it gets past 40, I might need spinal fusion surgery. This is a mostly safe procedure, but it's still really scary, and involves weeks in the hospital. Click on the following link if you've seen enough David Cronenberg movies that you think you can handle it (link to nightmarish spinal fusion surgery image). Spinal fusion partially reverses the curve, arrests or slows down further progression and relieves chronic pain. You're still reasonably flexible afterwards, but there are potential complications, and I'm not considering surgery at this stage. If I refused surgery, and my curve happened to progress further, I would start to have more pain and diminished lung capacity. Past 60 degrees, I might start to experience severe and constant pain in my back and/or ribs, and my internal organs would get squeezed together and I might start to have breathing problems. Past 80 degrees I might have lung AND heart problems.

But I don't stay up night worrying about the risks of progression. Many people have more uncertainty about their medical future than I do. For example, if I had diabetes, I might worry about having a foot amputation.

Since I grew up with scoliosis, it's taken me a while to understand how it looks from the outside. Aesthetically speaking: not good. We're conditioned to associate left-right symmetry with health and general wellbeing. People with moderate scoliosis, like me, often look symmetrical from the front, but assymetrical from the back, and I suppose that seems eery and perhaps even deceptive and sneaky. There's a lot of really negative associations in popular culture (e.g. Hunchback of Notre Dame). When mean-spirited people do "retard" imitations they'll often hunch up one shoulder and stagger in order to simulate a deformed spine.

I don't talk about scoliosis casually because a) I don't have any major health problems because of it, so there's not that much to talk about b) I'm afraid of it being used against me. I'll put it on medical history forms when I know I can be assured of privacy. It was used against me recently when I applied for private disability insurance. I thought it would be a good idea to have a separate private policy in case I lost my job for any reason. I did a ton of research, spent a lot of time talking with the salesman, and ended up with a quote that specifically excluded anything going wrong with my reproductive system AND my back. I changed my mind and decided it wasn't worth buying since so much of my body was apparently uninsurable. They excluded my ENTIRE BACK. Hypothetically speaking, if I got in a minor car accident, and as a result developed the exact same kind of back problems that anyone without scoliosis would develop, nothing would be covered. What a terrible deal. No thanks!

The health implications of my scoliosis are not that extreme, and I don't need any accommodations to perform any major life activities, which is why I don't consider myself disabled.

- I have foot pain in my arch if I don't wear comfortable shoes. I can wear platforms, but I can't wear high heels.
- I have to be a bit careful doing things like yoga and pilates.
- I have to stay reasonably active in order to be 100% pain-free. When I get too sedentary, I start having back pain and rib pain. If I ever had an illness that forced me to rest all the time, I'd be in big trouble. Exercise and stretching are highly effective for scoliosis back pain. Other options I would consider to control pain if it ever got worse include drugs, physical therapy and adult braces. There are a gazillion alternative health "cures" for scoliosis back pain suffering, but they strike me as being of very dubious efficacy.
- I have to watch my posture
- I have to watch my weight. Excess weight leads to back pain. Being underweight might be even worse, because being underweight is connected to bone density loss, and people with scoliosis have lower than average bone density anyway.

None of these problems are really unique to scoliosis. Plenty of able-bodied and disabled people have back pain or foot pain.

This link from Eurospine.org sums it up: "Progression of scoliosis can involve an aesthetic problem and lead to functional problems. Respiratory disorders may develop in large curves greater than 80º. Nonetheless, the mortality rates and vital prognosis in individuals with scoliosis are comparable to those of the general population."

It's the "aesthetic problem" of scoliosis that's unique. Like I mentioned before, left-right symmetry is wound up with definitions of health and beauty across many different cultures. People like me are aware of this on a subconscious or barely conscious level. 99.99% of the time I forget that I don't fit that symmetrical standard. Every so often I'm reminded, and it feels a bit painful. There are subtle psychological effects. Vague feelings of being a secret curved impostor in a straight-backed world. Times when I feel like my spine is an enemy working against me... times when it hurts to breathe and the pain makes me feel angry at my spreading rib bones, and I wish I could reach inside of myself and squeeze them back into place. Sometimes I'm bitter about the inches of height I lost to scoliosis.

Back to sex. Even without bracing, there's still a sexual paradox when it comes to scoliosis. Have you ever seen a picture of a woman with scoliosis and/or kyphosis that was not anonymous, depersonalized, clinical, grim and depressing? Like the photos I included above? Scoliosis is profoundly unsexy.

On the other hand, when women pose provocatively, they often throw one hip to the side and put one shoulder forward.Why is that pose sexy? Maybe it makes us look femininely defenseless and vulnerable, as opposed to a masculine, stick straight pose. That's going along with a typical sexist definition of "femininity". There's another less sexist possibility... the pose is also highlighting the flexibility of the spine. So in that sense, the woman is showing off her body's capacity by bending in a certain way.

There's a comic book artist, Rob Liefeld, who was (in)famous starting in the 1980s for drawing unrealistic women. The conventions of drawing women are in comics are easy to criticize, but Liefeld's stuff is... well...I guess you'd have to see the spinal curvature to believe it.

That's supposed to be sexy. For the audience of predominantly young men who made Liefeld very popular, it must have been sexy. This is a funny analysis of the above drawing by a group of women comic book artists:

Take note of Avengelyne’s waist and how it is thinner than her head. Minus the hair. Note how it hangs beneath her ribcage like a suspension bridge, rather than actually supporting the top of her body. (Her torso must be kept afloat by those helium breasts.) Note the scoliosis gone grossly untreated. Note the little leather bags which wouldn’t fit around a normal person’s wrist. Especially note that the artist put her in the most obvious POSE to exaggerate the spine: a profile shot with negative space between her back and arm. That’s correct - our intrepid heroine’s spine would appear yanked. Avengelyne is a SWAYback™.

The humor is partly at my expense. But I can't help laughing. It's a highly sexualized image, but not one that I identify with in any way.

But here's a poster image I ran across that uses stupid sexist humor to make fun of a real woman, and I don't find it funny at all.

It really illuminates the double standard that women are subjected to. You're supposed to be sexy so that you please men. But if it looks like you're trying TOO hard, men (and other women) will make fun of you. If you don't wear makeup, you're a [insert homophobic slur]. Wear too much makeup, you're a [insert transgender-phobic slur]. Curve your back, look sexy. Curve it too much, it looks like you're deformed. Argh!

Thanks to my brief readings of disability theory, I realize that making fun of people with spinal deformities isn't something I should just accept as the natural order of things, especially because this humor is connected to moral judgments of disability. That is, the idea that physical body difference reflects some kind of moral failing. When it comes to scoliosis, I think the general public halfway believes that scoliosis is the fault of the person's family. There's a myth that giving young kids backpacks that are too heavy will make their spines curve (totally not true). When people are adults, "she should have had that corrected" is sometimes an assumption. A lot of people don't realize that the only sure way to even partly reverse a curve is spinal fusion, which also leaves a giant seam-scar running up your back. Another judgment is that a person with scoliosis must be poor. It's true that I'm very lucky I had access to bracing; if I wasn't born into a middle-class family in a rich country, my curve would be a lot worse by now. So there are major class differences in scoliosis, but ultimately, we're all in different positions on the same boat because there is no way to permanently and completely reverse adult scoliosis.

Thanks to flickr, I did actually find some images of scoliosis that I think are beautiful and help affirm positive self-image and sexuality. I wish I'd found a greater variety of body types, but these images are great to start off with. Some are post spinal fusion.

First, here's the typical clinical picture. It shows everything that's wrong with the body.

Now here are the flickr pictures. They show the open possibility and vitality of a body with scoliosis.

It's heartening to see a bunch of pictures like that. There are more at this link.

When I walk, my right hip swivels a bit higher and wider than my left hip. I've had people tell me it looks sexy. I've had people ask if I've hurt my foot. Neither reaction bothers me anymore. The way I walk is just the way I walk. It gets me where I need to go.

Acknowledgements for this post: thanks to Thorn for commenting about this issue, and mentioning how it negatively affected your adoption homestudy due to ignorance on the part of the social worker. Also thanks to Deesha Philyaw on Twitter for mentioning the Judy Blume book about a girl who goes through bracing: Deenie. I wish I'd gotten a chance to read that book when I was a girl, and it sounds really interesting.

Health Plan

I hesitate to write this, because I might jinx it, but I feel like I'm starting to climb out of a hole in terms of my physical health.

The last month I've been depressed.  There are several factors but the largest one is the situation with BB.

I'd call this a mild functional depression.  I had truly deep depression only once in my life, when I was 19. It lasted about a month and was something I don't think I could ever handle again.  When I dragged myself out of bed in the morning, I just had one thought: how I could ration and kill time until I went back to sleep. I could only talk in monosyllables and was constantly on the verge of crying. At the time, I was feeling terrible isolation staying in Tokyo that summer... I'd flown there soon after sitting for a month at my grandmother's deathbed in Florida, waiting for her to die slowly of emphysema. She weighed about 60 pounds at the end. I held up well during the time, because I was supporting my mother, but fell apart shortly afterwards when I was on my own and didn't have an emotional "job" anymore.

If something that bad ever happened to me again, I'd go to a doctor and get some kind of antidepressant. My only experience with medication has been the time I tried Wellbutrin to quit smoking. I couldn't take the side effects and stopped taking the pills after a week.  I ended up quitting a year later on the patch.  The Wellbutrin gave me dry mouth, I needed to pee all the time because I had to drink so much to get rid of the dry mouth, I couldn't get to sleep at night, and I kept looking over my shoulder all day because I had a low-level paranoia that people were sneaking up behind me. But at least I was getting stuff done!  Being miserable with side effects while getting stuff done would be my preference over being miserable while vegetating.

Anyway, because I've been depressed recently, and very inactive, I'm about 15-20 pounds overweight.  This is turning into a disaster.  I'm not healthy at this weight.  My bra size has gone from 36A to 38B, which freaks me out.  Even though a lot of boys and girls made fun of me when I was younger for having small breasts, I've never felt bad about them, and I love the freedom of almost never having to wear a bra.  Now I've had to buy a bunch of new ones, and wear one every moment I'm upright, or else I'm in pain. I HATE IT.  Second, the weight might be aggravating my scoliosis.  I have rib pain that comes and goes because the 36-degree sideways curve of my spine squeezes some ribs together and spreads the other ones apart too much, and it's been getting worse recently. 

I'm adding different things to a regimen of trying to get healthier and get to my optimum weight.

- Going back to taking the supplements that I had unwisely started to skip.  I also have mild anemia and need a multivitamin with extra iron.  Of course, the extra iron gives me (ahem) digestive issues and I have to take fiber powder to counteract that.  So I've got to take 1) SAM-E in the morning for mood 2) multivitamin, fish oil and primrose oil capsules, plus fiber, in the evening.
- Going back on the South Beach diet.  I'm doing a modified Phase I. My only problem with the South Beach Phase I food guidelines is that they don't include a lot of Asian dishes... I'm sticking with 90% of the guidelines, but substituting in fairly low-carb things like miso soup and curried lentils. The main part is cutting out all bread, all rice, and all added sugar.  I've been making sure to cook dinners where there are still rice and potatoes and pasta for Guy and Sunny, but I can be full eating everything else.  And also remembering to eat 5 times a day and not let myself get hungry.
- Starting an exercise program.  I've started the "Slim in 6" home program and did the first set last night. I felt great afterwards!  I'm going to try add in a gym session once a week, on the weekend, for weight training, which I think is a realistic goal.  Three times a week is setting myself up for failure.  I was going to buy a rowing machine, but I realized that would be murder on my back because of scoliosis, so I'm going to stick with fairly low impact fitness videos like Slim in 6, and yoga.

Beyond just getting back to normal, here's my extra motivation! I have a naturally blocky build - broad shoulders, wide hips but not much waist - here are some actresses (Michelle Rodriguez and Katee Sackoff) rocking the body shape I'd like to achieve after some major fitness work:

I've hardly seen any Asian women with a body type like mine.  Although I have the typical long Asian torso/short legs (I have to buy petite-size pants even though I'm 5'8"), it seems like I'm a lot wider from shoulder to shoulder than any East Asian woman of my comparable size.

Anyway, here goes.  I hope to be in pretty good shape by the end of this year.

I fondly remember the best shape I was ever in... when I spent several weeks in a small beach town in Mexico in my early 20s.  I ate lots of awesome seafood, street tacos, fresh fruit and French pastries.  I spent all day bodyboarding and snorkeling, which builds the upper arms, and all night dancing to reggae, which is like doing a gazillion squat exercises.  Sigh... I wish being fit nowadays could be that fun.  Atlanta right now seems rather cold and grim.

BB and Sunny Update

I haven't posted in a while. I just haven't felt up to long-form writing.

I finally spoke to BB's adoption caseworker... this is the same woman who was also Sunny's caseworker. I got a bit emotional on the phone with her and told her that this process was very hard on everyone, especially Sunny, who often asks us when he's going to be a big brother. I told her I was totally aware of the budget crisis, and that I was also aware that BB's case plan had moved to adoption many months ago, though we had no communication from the state about it. I asked her if things would be easier if BB went to his grandmother (NN) and then we adopted him from her in a private adoption (NN had raised this idea herself a while back). I even asked her if it would make things easier if we hired a lawyer... I added that I didn't mean this in any antagonistic sense, but was posing it as a sincere question.

She didn't have a lot of answers for me, and she didn't have good news either. Things have changed since they did the contract to place Sunny with us; because of the budget crisis, it's even harder for their state to work with private agencies like ours. If they don't have budget approval to do the contract with the agency, our agency would have to transfer our homestudy to Dekalb County and have them do placement and post-placement supervision. That would present another roadblock and potential area for delays.

We'll find out in the next few days whether this county transfer has to happen or not. BB has been in limbo for 14 months already.

At this point, if the ball ever gets rolling, they'll also determine subsidy information if he's special needs. I'm sure that by now he really is "special needs" according to the state definition. For those who aren't familiar with foster adoption terminology, special needs doesn't necessarily involve any defined mental or physical handicap. Special needs really just means "it's harder to find adoptive parents for this child than it would be for a healthy white infant". There are almost no general adoptions that aren't "special needs" according to some definition.

But BB might have real special needs. His foster mom says she's a bit worried that he can't use the fingers on the right side of his body to grasp things. He still grasps using only his entire right fist. Since she's raised double digits of bio and foster kids over several decades I trust her opinion on his development. And she believes he's behind, though not so behind that needs physical therapy... yet.

The longer he stays with her the more difficult his transition is going to be. It's tough at any stage, but some stages are probably worse. A toddler is more aware of different people than an infant, but they're not able to express the emotions they're feeling, like Sunny was when he came to us at the age of 6.

We're going there for Halloween -- just Sunny and I -- so I'll get a chance to see BB. This quick weekend visit is a big treat for Sunny, because he loves talking about how much fun the great big foster family has doing Halloween stuff together. However, the visit also represents a major break in structure, and that's had some negative effects. He had more fits, got mad on several occasions because I wasn't letting him do things that his foster mom let him do (and he almost never uses that complaint), has been especially needy, and regressed in terms of what he wants to watch and read. He's been watching Dora cartoons that are way below his level, but they're obviously comforting him, so we don't discourage that.

I'm a big believer in openness, and I don't think the visit itself is having these negative effects. Instead, it's the break in structure. If we had already established a clear schedule of exactly when we would visit his family, this wouldn't be as much of an issue. I think in the future we'll have to establish a single date and stick to it on a yearly basis. I can't afford much more than that... each visit means at least two plane tickets, a hotel room and a rental car.

Sunny has had some rough episodes recently, but this weekend, we also had some wonderful times with him. On Sunday, we went walking on the trails at the Chattahoochee Nature Center, and Guy taught Sunny how to skip stones into the beaver pond. Later that day, when they were driving together, Sunny wrote Guy a note:

"You are the best dad I love you and I will love you forever"

Dark Sarcasm in Adoption

Guy recently reminded me of a conversation he had last year, when he was proudly telling his friends and colleagues about Sunny's placement with us.  I wasn't with him at the time.

One colleague gave him the standard "which country?" question, assuming international adoption. We both have the same attitude about that question: answer with a single direct sentence, ignore any looks of resulting embarrassment and just move on with the conversation.  So Guy told his colleague we were adopting from Sunny's home state.

The colleague responded, "Well, you didn't have to adopt from a third-world country!"

This would have been horribly insulting... if his colleague hadn't been Chinese-American. So the joke was really on everyone. Guy thought it was hilarious, although we won't be repeating it with any sort of frequency.

Personal Update and Blog/Racialicious Comparison

Last week was really exhausting. I need another vacation! My weekends are becoming an extension of the working week... and this is mainly my own fault, since I really need to organize them better.

Sunny has a 101-degree fever this morning. Guy had to pick him up from school yesterday because he had a sore throat, but then his throat quickly got better, so Guy took him right back to school. Last night Sunny's appetite didn't suffer: he ate a huge pork chop, with sides of couscous and grilled asparagus with cheese on top, then some grapes for dessert. It's hard to know how to handle Sunny being sick because 1) he's ridiculously healthy and 2) he's sort of a hypochondriac. In all the time we've had him he's been sick exactly once, and that lasted less than a day. I think he has a very powerful immune system, so when gets sick, the symptoms are light, and go away quickly. Because he's so dramatic, he doesn't exactly lie, but he does exaggerate his symptoms greatly. All kids do this to some extent, but Sunny does seem a bit extreme. His friend J has a much more stoic approach to illness and injury. On the other hand, because Sunny's so energetic and restless, I think he gets up and moves around when he really should be relaxing...

I just hope he doesn't have the swine flu, or the regular flu, for that matter. I've been watching the news and calling our pediatrician to find out when I can get him the vaccine, but I don't have a date yet.

Right now, his cousin (Guy's sister's daughter) is visiting, and they're hanging out on the couch, watching Voltron and playing Legos together. They'd be out running around if Sunny was feeling better.

I just noticed comments from Sarah (hi!) saying, among other things, that I sound a lot different at this blog than I do at Racialicious, where I comment frequently and guest-post occasionally. I haven't thought about it that much, but that's right. I'm much more of a hard-ass at Racialicious, ha ha! It's a good jump-off point for talking about online communities in general, though.

I really don't like using terms such as "safe space" and "triggering" on the internet because I think they're infantilizing. But what I observe is sort of a continuum of environments. The parameters include the following:

1) Who are the members who will interact with you?
2) Who are the members who read what you say, but will not interact with you?
-- For anything posted publicly, 1) is unpredictable and 2) is REALLY unpredictable, and much larger than 1).
3) What's your degree of hard control over who will interact with you? If you're a moderator of a group, you can kick another member out. If you run a blog, you can delete comments. If you're on a forum, you could use the "ignore" feature on someone.
4) What's your degree of soft control (level of respect in you, or your peer group) when it comes to who will interact with you? If you tell someone they're being offensive, are they likely to listen to you and stop? Can you marshal support? If you have a whole posse of people and they all tell that person to stop, will they listen?
5) What is the range of opinions permissible in the environment? Is your perspective inside that range, outside that range or on the edge?
6) What do you want to get from the environment? Concrete bits of useful information? Psychological validation and a sense of human contact? Entertainment and light humor? Establishing lasting links with new people? Revenge? A sense of power over others? With these last two, we're getting into troll territory, although they're negative tendencies that can surface in absolutely anyone.
7) What do you want to give to the environment? Do you think you have anything of valuable to impart, and do you want to educate others? If so, you need to tailor your message to the audience (so we go back to 1 and 2).
8) What is the cost to you of participating in the environment? This is crucial. Navigating all these elements is hard. Just when you think you understand one of them, something changes. You get disappointed, angry, you feel like no one is listening to you, you thought you were in a "safe space" but someone attacks you, someone you thought was your ally disagrees with you strongly, you feel betrayed, you feel unwanted, you feel like you have to maintain a false face and hide your true self in order to gain acceptance, or you become disappointed in yourself because you engaged in negative behavior out of anger... internet drama takes a toll. Sometimes you want to be in an environment, but it's just too damaging, and you're better off turning your back. Sometimes the cost is very high, but what you're learning/getting is so valuable that you need to stay.

Though people will often say "I just want to express myself", it's never as simple as that. Unless your expression is totally private, "self-expression" will have a social element.

When it comes to 1) and 2) for this blog, I agonize a lot. I control my interactive audience by limiting comments to people with Google accounts. This means most of the people who interact here also have Google blogs. They're more invested in leaving substantive comments. So I almost never get drive-by comments. The trade-off is that I lose out on substantive comments by people who aren't registered and don't feel like registering. For 2), I removed this blog from Google listings for a while, then a few months ago I put it back on, and just now, I took it back off again. I do NOT want people who know me personally surfing in on key words. Especially my mom and dad. I'm very close to my mother. We work on certain projects together, we see each other every other day, but one of the reasons I don't talk about her much on this blog is that I don't want to put down key words that would lead her here, because she's internet-savvy and on more social media than I am! Partly because we're so close, I want to maintain certain barriers so I don't feel smothered. My dad is the opposite of my mom: he's an intensely private person. I am also protecting Sunny's identity and that of his biological and foster family. I have a lot of reasons to want to maintain anonymity.

My control over this blog isn't total, in the soft sense. I care about what other people think. The feelings of regular readers and commenters do factor when I'm writing a post. It's not the number one factor, but it's in there. Number 5 -- the range of permissible opinions -- is also difficult, because I'm blogging at the intersection of some practically incongruous communities. What's held as standard and inarguable inside one community might be totally outside the envelope at another. I flatter myself that in this respect, I'm quite honest, I don't censor myself and I don't avoid controversies. I put that opinion out there and I also analyze why it's outside the envelope to begin with. I've already talked a lot about what I've gotten from being part of a blog community (great, life-changing advice and support) and what I want to give back (more of the same). The emotional cost of running this blog mostly has to do with anonymity-agonizing... other than that, it's very low.

When it comes to Racialicious, all of these factors are different. A lot more people read there, and a lot more people read there that will never comment, but are still very important because what they read there might change their opinions. I don't have any hard control there, but I have a degree of soft control, because I've been hanging out there so long that I've built up respect. When it comes to the range of opinions, I'm mostly on the inside. So although there's a lot of tussling and heated debate that go on, the emotional cost to me is fairly low, because I feel like I'm arguing from a position of greater strength. Plus, there are a lot of posts on topics I have little experience on -- e.g. Native American identity, Islam -- and on those, I'm a member of the passive audience, learning but not necessarily interacting.

I used to participate in more online communities, but I don't have the time for a wide range. And when I analyze the emotional cost, it's often too high. There are a few communities I've participated in where I just wanted very concrete bits of information, in which I made sure to have a race- and gender-neutral handle, and got in and got out again right away. Because otherwise I would have been harassed and it would have been horrible. A few months ago I got burned when I was in a certain community and complained (in what I thought was a mild and reasonable way) about a racist Asian joke and about twenty members just piled on me. Race card, PC, no sense of humor, Asians are all doctors or lawyers anyway, blah blah blah. I walked around for a day in real life while fuming, and that wasn't healthy. Arguing a case in a hostile environment can do a lot of good (remembering, again, the passive audience) but it comes at a high emotional cost.

I don't think I'm really saying anything different at Racialicious, but I am talking about different aspects of the same things, and in different ways. I also let loose my evil sense of humor a bit more over there.

Update: by the time I finished typing this up, Sunny seems to have recovered... he's full of beans again, and playing some kind of high-volume racing game with his cousin.