Losing Family Over Facebook

I like to think I'm rather easy going.  I mean, I tolerate pretty much every type of person there is, and I always make it a point to find something I can relate to in a person. It's rare for me to find someone with whom I cannot get along with at all.

But within the last few months, I've lost at least two family members, if not more, all due to something I posted on Facebook. It's not like I'm super confrontational or anything.  I'm honestly far from it!  I've never wanted to go anywhere near a conflict of any kind, as a matter of fact.  I'm an extremely reserved person, and fighting overwhelms my intensely sensitive mind and causes me to close myself down inside so I don't have to feel the crazy amounts of negative energy flying around.  It doesn't work all the time.  I mean I usually still feel it, but at least I'm not involved.  But then I am.  Because if I'm present during a conflict, how can I not be?  Especially if it involves me, personally?

I do have some strong morals and beliefs that I live by, and I'm well aware of how different they are from most people's, so I am always careful not to come off too strongly to people who aren't around me on a daily basis and don't share those morals with me.  But on occasion, I do like to express an opinion or observation or something pertaining to my beliefs because of certain things that may be going on in the world that bring out my passions.  As do most other people--and why not?  If I didn't, how would anyone ever know who I am? I'm not a self righteous, arrogant know-it-all just because I want to share my thoughts with the world once in awhile, but that's what the two family members thought who I have since lost. 

The first post to cause a grand family disaster was one I posted about a documentary I watched called "Last Call at the Oasis".  It was a educational film about the planet's current water crisis.  I found it to be a topic so dire to the world, it was worth sharing.  I thought it might catch the attention of a few people, and maybe get a couple likes, but usually people just ignore stuff like that.  Little did I know it would receive such bashing and all out war on my lowly random post!  It turned into a highly heated, name-calling all out war about religion vs environmentalists!!!  

The second post was a few months later.  I was on a road trip to see my parents in eastern Oregon. It's nothing but cow country from the moment we drive down from the mountains to when we drive up my parents' driveway several hours later.  So, being overwhelmed with cow manure stench for the last 4 hours moved me to mention this random observation, and I posted this: "People should stop eating cows. They are taking over the world, and THEY STINK!!!". This actually brought the attention of my uncle who had, for years now, mocked and insulted my intelligence on multiple occasions.  He loathes veganism and everything about it, and makes sure to rub it in my face at every opportunity that comes his way.  After the last time he threw a verbal punch at me on Facebook, I tried to block him, so imagine my surprise when I found him cussing all over my post! I clearly didn't block him after all.  Apparently, all I did was stop his posts from showing up on my feed.  But there he was, in all his bullshit glory, attacking every person who came at him with childish blows and insults! 

I honestly don't want to get into details about the actual words that were said, just rather the residual feelings I got in the aftermath of both these separate events. The thing is, I felt exactly the same way after both of these blow up posts.  Each of them had been stewing for quite some time, and I was at the end of my rope when they occurred. Each one ended with a block and a deleted "friend". I'm just left with a heavy heart.

I really liked my cousin Jeremy when I was growing up.  He's quite a few years older than me, but I always liked his quiet demeanor and how he muttered funny jokes under his breath.  I related to that because I, too, was an extremely soft spoken child, and he made me feel like that was okay.  But suddenly, Facebook comes along and throws me for a loop when Jeremy found out I don't vaccinate and decides to use my family as an example to his friends of what happens when you don't vaccinate, because my mother had polio as a child, and therefore me and both my siblings are apparently mutated disasters of science!  Thereafter, he made it his duty to dispute each and every one of my Facebook posts forever more.  This really crushed me, because it was like a total betrayal to me.  I thought Jeremy was one of my cool cousins, and it turns out he just wants to use me and somehow make it his life's effort to publicly humiliate and prove me wrong. :( 

When it comes to my uncle Roger, I'll admit that I never in my life had any such relationship with him.  He has always been a very harsh and unforgiving kind of man, and he scared the crap out of me as a kid.  Now he just pisses me off.  I tolerate him only for the sake of keeping the peace in the family, besides which I don't see him much more than once a year.  I thought to myself I could make that sacrifice, but not anymore.  What kind of family peace am I preserving when I, myself am not at peace?  Having someone belittle and mock your way of life on a regular basis is demeaning and juvenile.  No one should have to endure that in silence. 

One of the most trying times of my life was when my family moved to Hawaii when I was starting middle school.  My brother and I were like sheep thrown into a pit of lions at that school!  There was more prejudice there than I'd ever encountered in my life thus far.  In fact, that's the first time I ever heard the word prejudice.  It was the first word on a long list of new vocabulary words in middle school for me.  It was that school where myself as I knew it was torn down to shreds, and at the end of two years, I began to build a new self.  I had never fought back with anyone before.  I just sat and took the beatings and insults day after day, and became extremely stealthy about hiding between classes and avoiding bullies like the plague.  One day after school, my brother and I were sitting on a bench outside the library waiting for a ride when a group of bullies walked by us.  We knew what they were going to do, but there was no where to go, so we just sat there while they threw out their verbal assaults, kicked at our feet, pulled our hair, threw our backpacks on the ground to stomp on them and as they left, one of them turned around and spat in my face.  A small ball of fire burst into flames inside me that day, and I felt as it began to grow bigger.  Soon after that event, one other day after school, it's the same story.  A group of bullies followed us as we walked across the field.  They threw insults and cussed at us to go back to the mainland where we belong.  I heard it everyday, several times a day.  Then they started pulling at our bags, trying to tear them away, and one of them grabbed my brother's glasses and took off running with them.  Fuming inside with my newly developed ball of courage, I threw down my backpack and chased him across the field.  Tackling him to the ground, I pulled the glasses from his grasp and gave them back to my brother.  Then something amazing happened.  They suddenly left us alone.  It may have been short lived, because they were back at it the next day, but it was immensely gratifying to know that I stopped them that day.  It was literally the first time I ever stood up for myself and fought back.

The thing I've learned over my 35 years on this planet is that words of betrayal and insult hurt.  Words leave lasting scars on your insides that never go away.  The only thing that can ever help to fade the hurt are words of love, sorrow and kindness.  Maybe it sounds cheesy to you, but it's the honest truth.  

No one from my childhood has ever apologized to me for bullying and assaulting me in middle school, but I have grown stronger from those unfortunate occurrences because of the kind people in my life who love me for who I am.  Thank you.  You know who you are.

As for Jeremy & Roger, I'm definitely better off without them insulting me on a regular basis.  It's just unfortunate that this had to happen, because it upset several other members of my family and friends in the process.  But when it comes down to it, I know I did the right thing in defending myself.  It's my daily happiness that was at stake, not theirs.  It's really not in my personality to be selfish at all, but honestly, how can I continue to be a caring, selfless individual when I'm being insulted and verbally assaulted everyday?  I can't.  

Vaccines: a new perspective

Nearly three years ago, I blogged about my daughter's first vaccines when she was just 2 months old. She is now almost 3 years. Upon reviewing that post, it shocks me how much has changed since then. One of the first things I stated in that post was that I was not "one of those anti-vaccine extremists".

While I'm not going to chastise myself for anything I said previously, because it was all true to me at the time, I wanted to post a bit of an update on where I currently stand concerning vaccines.

Over the last three years, and especially ever since that dreaded first vaccination day in September 2011, I have done more and more looking into this whole idea of vaccinations, because it just never sat well with me--or my husband, to be honest. Neither of us could put a pin on why at first, but we decided after our daughter's first shots experience, that we would spread them out more, only doing a couple at a time. This way we wouldn't be taxing her body so much with too many vaccines to fight off at a time. It seemed like a safer way to go to us, and even now knowing the wealth of information more than I did then, I agree it was probably better that we chose to administer them that way rather than all at once. And I can't tell you how glad I am that I declined the Hep B vaccine at birth! The reaction from the medical staff to our idea was less than welcoming.  They had very little tolerance for it, in fact, and treated us with scorn and disapproval, although it seemed they had no other choice but to try to "educate" us about it, but then let us make the final decision. After all, it was our daughter. 

The reason this change of heart all came about in the first place was in part due to the reaction my daughter received on the day following her 2 month vaccines. The day following my blog entry in September 2011. Of course she got the fever and tiredness and fussiness that doctors tell you is "normal" on the first day, but they didn't tell me she would look like this:

The day after the vaccines, she awoke with dark red circles around her eyes. This is just a cell phone picture, from a really crappy cell phone at that, so it doesn't do justice to the reality of it, and doesn't show the red patchy splotches that appeared all over her body with it. I took this picture to send to my mom (a nurse) to see what she thought it could be from. But I had my suspicions then, and so did she. I'm even more confident now that it was from the vaccines. She had just gotten 8 different vaccines at once. It was just far too much for her tiny 7 pound body to deal with. After reading about what's actually in the vaccines and how they are made, I realize not even one single vaccine is safe.  

After her first vaccines, something huge changed in my daughter's behavior. She developed what is commonly referred to by pediatricians as "colic".  Any parent who has been through it can tell you it is far different than the average baby cries for food, naps, etc. She screamed and cried for hours at a time, never calming down for any reason whatsoever.  We tried rocking, nursing, shushing, swaddling, baby-wearing, car rides, giving her liquid colic remedies, changing my diet in case she's reacting to something in my breast milk, and even just lying her down in her crib by herself.  Nothing, nothing, nothing ever worked.  So we just took turns rocking her until she cried herself to sleep.  It was a tough year.  She was like that off and on until about 18 months when she gradually morphed into a happy, contented little girl.  Most notably, though, over the course of her first year, I began to notice a pattern to the colic.  Each time we went to get vaccines, it would intensify.  Every time she got vaccinated, she would cry until I nursed her, then she would sleep all day, and cry all night.  The day after vaccines were the worst.  She'd be fevered and swollen from the shots, and absolutely nothing could make her happy.

I realize that upon reading that, most people will just scoff at me and say that's exactly what vaccines are supposed to do, and brush off the connection I made with her colic episodes, saying they are purely coincidental.  Believe me, I was telling myself that at the time.  I had been so indoctrinated into believing that vaccines are "safe & effective" that I was battling with my own mother's instinct to stop them.  It took me my daughter's entire first year, plus my pregnancy to come to terms with the very legitimate idea that vaccines are NOT safe or effective!  Many long hours of research, reading article after article, watching videos of lectures, talks and interviews, documentaries and classes, scouring websites like the CDC, medical journals and vaccine research and manufacturers, giving myself history lessons on vaccines and diseases and familiarizing myself with immunology--all of this stuff absolutely amazed me, and angered me even more so because of the realization I felt upon discovering my own ignorance to the ugly world we really live in.

Knowledge is power, I keep being reminded as I uncover yet another unturned stone on my walk of life. I hate that I am sometimes the epitome of what I can't stand in most people: ignorant. Some people call it "trust" or "faith", but I think it's pure laziness to just mindlessly follow what others do instead of doing the research yourself and deciding for yourself what is right or wrong. I read a quote recently that made me think. "When you base your life on principle, 99% of your decisions are already made." So couldn't that then mean that you should stay the heck away from pre-designed principles and make your own decisions? Or better yet, make your own principles and then this quote will ring true.  

I would love to go on believing the lie that we live in an amazingly caring world where everyone's best interests are in the lives of the citizens, but I can't.  Why is it so readily believed that our government has our back?  When have they actually cared about us?  I mean really?  When do they actually listen to the people when it doesn't benefit them on a powerful or financial level?  One thing makes this world go around, and that is money.  Once you realize that, then you can understand how everything in the world works.  

Maybe vaccines once were a grand idea to end disease back in the day, but after everything I've read, I can honestly say I believe whole heartedly that they were barking up the wrong tree.  We didn't need man made immunity, we needed better sanitation and nutrition practices!  People were disgusting when disease was rampant, so naturally it was bad.  You know what happens when you don't play in the same street where your own crap is dumped, wash your hands and actually eat real, clean food?  A health epidemic, that's what.  But that's not all. There's far more to the idea of vaccines that I just can't get on board with, but that I'm saving for a whole new post because it's far too extensive for now.  Just know it's a work in progress.  I intend to answer each and every argument people have against my decision.  Given the nature of vaccine arguments, it's going to be one heck of a researched post, and will therefore need time.

So yes, I suppose you could now consider me an anti-vaccine extremist.  Although I will make one minor correction: using the term "anti-vaccine" was a bit of an uninformed mistake on my part since it is stating that I am against vaccines, and the science that developed them.  I'm not against science.  I'm I'm only against junk sciences such as the kind that only work in a biased favor like vaccine science and the well known "tobacco science".  It's a bit harsh to use the term "anti-vax", so I prefer to say "non-vax" because it simply means I don't vaccinate rather than sounding "anti" anything. So I will correct myself, I am not anti-vaccine. I am pro-vaccine choice. I believe in the science behind vaccine development, and understand why it was put into place, but it went horribly wrong, and until our scientists are allowed to do the necessary unbiased studies to find out what happened and fix this huge mess so vaccines really are "safe & effective" instead of lying to us, I will remain "non-vaccine" and "pro-choice", meaning I don't care what you all do, but don't force me to vaccinate myself or my children. That is MY choice.