Posts by Guest
Have You Ever Been in Helpless Patient Mode?
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This post by Michelle Robson, the founder of the awesome women’s health website EmpowHer.com, is the second in a series of National Women’s Health Week guest posts. Michelle founded EmpowHer after experiencing her own horror story with the health care system. The site she created is dedicated to helping women improve their health and well-being. They provide up-to-date medical information, access to leading medical experts and advocates, and a devoted community of women who ask questions, share stories, and connect with one another in a safe and supportive environment.
In this article, Michelle describes a situation that each of us has probably found ourselves in at one time or another: what she calls “helpless patient mode.” Sound familiar? Read on…share your story if you’re so moved…and be sure to check out EmpowHer.com.
I really believe that women tend to go to a certain state of mind when they’re patients and relying on a doctor’s care. It’s called “helpless patient mode.” Ironically, when we have a sick child, spouse or other loved one, we can be a doctor’s biggest nightmare. We’re brilliant and strong when advocating for a loved one. A mother will do an inordinate amount of research and will carefully question the pediatrician when her child is ill. But when she is ill, it’s another story altogether. Women tend to do what their doctors tell them to do. We don’t listen to ourselves, to our guts. We simply want that doctor to fix us, give us that magic pill, and quick, so we can go about doing all the millions of things we do to take care of other people.
I admit that I’m totally guilty of this. Big-time. In fact, my hysterectomy may not have even happened if I hadn’t succombed to the all-too-easy “helpless patient mode.” I may have chosen another option if I’d been aware of the other options and hadn’t relied so completely on what I was told was my only option.
Read MoreWhat Are the Rhythms of A Woman's Life?
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This is Women’s Health Week. I’ll be posting about this on all my blogs during the week, starting with this guest post by Suzanne Mathis McQueen. Suzanne has been a lifelong women’s advocate as well as an entrepreneur in the salon/spa industry, working with thousands of women individually as employer, associate, mentor, business leader, instructor, and hairdresser (aka confidante), for nearly 30 yrs. She is currently writing a book on the natural monthly rhythm of women, basically re-writing society’s version of the female cycle, called Four Seasons in Four Weeks: the new female experience. She lives in Ashland, Oregon with her 14-yr. old daughter, Myan (who was born on International Women’s Day and will also begin blogging, any day now, for teens on the website). I appreciate her sharing this post called “Your Natural Monthly Rhythm”:
When it comes to “periods” Mother Nature doesn’t care whether you’re black, white, purple, or polka-dotted, Republican or Democrat, Buddhist or Atheist, straight or gay, as long as you’re a human female and somewhere between the ages of 8 and 55-ish. Minus pregnancies, nursing, hysterectomies, or some unusual health challenge, women cycle day in and day out for approximately 40 years of their lives. Yet this basic premise of what makes me female is an uncomfortable, if not taboo, subject. Due to lack of information, embarrassment, or violence against them, women worldwide often suffer in silence from its sometimes chaotic effects, which influence their lives in every way – including parenting, friendships, and their sexual relationship.
As an employer, instructor, longtime mentor and women’s advocate, I continue to observe that young women don’t feel well on a consistent basis. The majority of women I talk to say their monthly cycles disrupt their lives in some large or small way, yet they don’t know how to tame the lion. I see most women going 24/7 no matter what is happening with them personally. Often they are quietly dealing with heavy bleeding, on-going fatigue, extreme breast tenderness, or headaches while working and taking care of the family. It would help a lot if their guy could understand.
Read MoreMarilyn French, 1929 to 2009
Reprinted courtesy of the Women’s Media Center Exclusive by Carol Jenkins, WMC president.
A brilliant feminist theorist, her 1977 novel, The Women’s Room, connected with millions of women who had no way before of claiming their anger and discontent. And, as Carol tells us, Marilyn French was a tender and caring friend.
My friend Marilyn French was a rare blend of genius and grace. A Queens, New York, girl of modest beginnings, she became one of our leading feminist theorists, her work read worldwide. Both as a scholar and novelist, she brandished a razor sharp writing instrument on the patriarchy, but privately she was gentle and funny. And, oh my, was she smart.
The first time I saw Marilyn French—in the late 70s—we shared the stage at a women’s event on Long Island, both of us invited to deliver remarks. She was a bona fide international celebrity—famed for her novel The Women’s Room, which perfectly captured the quest of the modern feminist movement. I was a local news anchor, still new in my career, a new mother. She was breathtakingly brilliant, vibrant and sharp—and outspoken in a way that was unusual in those days. Then, there were still many women who muted their opinions, smiled often, and perfected the skills of “getting along.” I may have been one of them. Marilyn, on the other hand, was among first women I’d met who were “having none of it.” The “it” being a reflexively submissive attitude. Marilyn definitely left an impression.
It was some years between my first introduction to Marilyn French on that Long Island stage—and becoming her friend. That happened in the late 80s when our mutual friend Gloria Steinem invited Marilyn, Esther Broner, the writer and ritualist, and me to dinner. We sat down at seven—and when at four in the morning we realized we didn’t want the conversation to end, formed what we soon named “The Coven.” For the next 20 years we met at least four times a year—on the days of the solstice and equinox—to tell each other about the state of our lives and have it reflected back to us. We created some rituals of our own: waving magic wands and tribal feathers. It was fun, but it was also serious work.
Read MoreFor the President’s Suggestion Box: Nominate a Woman
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she’s lonesome being the Court’s only woman. The New York Times pointed out that President Obama will have no lack of highly qualified women to consider when filinghis first vacancy because of the stunning advances women have made in the legal field during the past generation. This Guest Post is…
Read MoreWhat's the Cure for Inertia, Stagnation and Utter Depression? Throw Out Fifty Things!
Just this morning I was talking with my friend Karen Scates about how hard it is to get rid of the “stuff” that accumulates over the years. She’s been trying to clean out her closets but keeps finding mementoes she can’t part with. I’m in “deaccessioning” mode, wanting to simplify my life by having fewer possessions. Like yesterday, I was so glad that my husband got rid of our safety deposit box at the bank along with its few remaining contents. Two less things for my kids to deal with when we kick off, I’m thinking. This reminded me I’d asked my friend, author and executive coach Gail Blanke, to allow me to cross post her recent HuffPo article. It’s from her new book Throw Out Fifty Things – Clear the Cutter, Find Your Life; www.throwoutfiftythings.com, because I want to share it with everyone. Check it out! (Thanks, Gail!)
Okay, we’re living in really tough times. Jobless rates are soaring, home values are plummeting, 401K’s are dwindling and bad people are running off with good people’s money. And nothing is the way it was – or likely to be again.
Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to know who we are, or rather who we could become. Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to know what we’re made of, what we stand for, how good we are. And sometimes it takes a crisis for us to let go of the past – so we can grab hold of the future.
Darwin was right. It’s not the strongest of the species that survives – or even the smartest. It’s the one that can adapt to change – whether you’re a country, a company, an institution – or an individual. And if we want to survive, never mind thrive, if we want to rescue ourselves from almost certain extinction, we’ve got to let go of anything and everything that would suck us back into the slime.
Read MoreHow to Reverse That “Perverse Cosmic Myopia”
Guest blog today by Jane Roberts, cofounder 34 Million Friends of the United Nations Population Fund and author of the book “34 Million Friends of the Women of the World”. Though written in present and future tense terms, the post reminds us that we can rewrite the history of women’s global economic and reproductive subjugation.
The term PERVERSE COSMIC MYOPIA (PCM) was used by David Brooks in a New York Times column on March 20, 2009 which intimated that the world economic and financial crisis was so bad that President Obama needed to concentrate his attention on this single tiger sinking its teeth into the world’s neck and forego at least for now health care, energy, immigration, and education.
To me PCM is a fitting term for only one all encompassing area of concern. Gender inequality, the neglect of women’s and girls’education, health, economic empowerment, and human rights, and the coming 9.1 billion people on the planet by 2050, fighting over resources and for survival, and living on a planet with a down-spiraling environment, now that, and only that is COSMIC!
Hillary Clinton at her Senate confirmation hearings: Of particular concern to me is the plight of women and girls who comprise the majority of the world’s unhealthy, unschooled, unfed, and unpaid.
Ban Ki-Moon, Secretary General of the United Nations: In women the world has the most significant but untapped potential for development and peace.
Stephen Lewis, former U.N. ambassador to Africa for AIDS: I challenge you to enter the fray against gender inequality. There is no more honorable or productive calling. There is nothing of greater import in the world. All roads lead from women to social change.
Read MoreGoodyear, You Can Spare $360K for Lilly Ledbetter?
You know how I like to ask “so what are you going to do about it?” Well, here’s a great example, courtesy of blogger Joanne Cronrath Bamberger, aka PunditMom. She has graciously allowed me to crosspost her commentary from Huffington Post. For those of us who feel justice requires that Lilly Ledbetter receive compensation for her heroic efforts on behalf of all women’s paycheck equality, Joanne provides an easy way to communicate to Lilly’s former employer, Goodyear Rubber and Tire, and urge them to make good on the pay they in effect robbed her of over the years. Here you go, and don’t forget to drop your note to Goodyear:
As so many women have been basking in the glow of the passage of the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, the news reports reminded us that even though Lilly has become a standard bearer for the fight for fair pay for women, Lilly herself will never see a nickel of the money that she sued Goodyear Rubber and Tire for.
Read MoreMoose, Mousse, and Spalinism by Robin Morgan
Guest posting again! This was just too good not to share, especially with some folks who have been commenting on Heartfeldt. recently. Award winning author of 21 books, and feminist leader Robin Morgan takes laser-beam aim at a few “feminists” who have taken to the blogways lately to support John McCain and Sarah Palin. You…
Read MoreObama in St. Louis: Metaphor for America (Guest Post by Mark Salo)
Of all things during this last pre-election week, I’m in the utter chaos of moving into a new apartment, unpacking boxes filled with material elements of life while watching the increasingly frenzied campaign coverage on CNN. As though we’d picked up conversations from decades of working together, an e-mail from Mark Salo popped up on…
Read MoreMedia Matters: So Now the Press Tells Candidates When to Quit?
This article from the media watchdog organization Media Matters is such a well documented analysis of the media’s current push for Hillary Clinton to exit the race for president that I wanted to share it in full. Regardless of which candidate you support, you can’t help but be aghast by how the echo chamber reverberates through and by the political media. The piece lays bare the process by which a narrative gets floated, then picked up widely from the New York Times to the local radio talk show, then beaten like a drum until it fills all the airwaves and leaves no room for a different point of view. And in this case, the narrative has a distinctly sexist tinge; all the better that a man, Eric Boehlert, wrote it. So no one can say the author is just being paranoid. Read on…
So now the press tells candidates when to quit?
History continues to unfold on many levels as the protracted Democratic Party primary race marches on, featuring the first woman and the first African-American with a real shot at winning the White House.
Here’s another first: the press’s unique push to get a competitive White House hopeful to drop out of the race. It’s unprecedented.
Looking back through modern U.S. campaigns, there’s simply no media model for so many members of the press to try to drive a competitive candidate from the field while the primary season is still unfolding.
Until this election cycle, journalists simply did not consider it to be their job to tell a contender when he or she should stop campaigning. That was always dictated by how much money the campaign still had in the bank, how many votes the candidate was still getting, and what very senior members of the candidate’s own party were advising.
In this case, Howard Dean, the head of the Democratic National Committee, said he was “dumbfounded” by public demands for Clinton to drop out last month. (He now wants one of the candidates to quit after the final June 3 primary.) Yet lots of pundits have suggested that in a neck-and-neck campaign in which neither candidate will likely secure the nomination based on pledged delegates, Sen. Hillary Clinton must drop out before all the states have had a chance to vote.
I realize the political debate surrounding the extended Democratic campaign remains a hot one, with people holding passionate opinions about the delegate math involved and what the consequences for the Democratic Party could be. I’m not weighing in on that debate. I’m focusing on how journalists have behaved during this campaign.
And the fact is, the media’s get-out-now push is unparalleled. Strong second-place candidates such as Ronald Reagan (1976), Ted Kennedy, Gary Hart, Jesse Jackson, and Jerry Brown, all of whom campaigned through the entire primary season, and most of whom took their fights all the way to their party’s nominating conventions, were never tagged by the press and told to go home.
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