PRE-PREGNANT?!??!?!??

More like pre-postal.

The latest on new CDC guidelines for post-mentrual to pre-menopausal women, here:

The guidelines themselves: A PDF from the CDC: "Recommendations to Improve Preconception Health and Health Care -- United States"

Clever Misia addresses this here and shares her letter to the CDC here (please rewrite it when you send your own).

And the indefatigable Twistedchick covers it in today's Free Speech Zone, about 2/3 of the way down.

Please send me more blog links when you find them: I'll update this.

Meanwhile, here it is in the Washington Post: Forever Pregnant

And on Salon: Holy Handmaid's Tale, Batman!

Here's my thinking. I'm all for, one hundred percent improving the health of women in this country. I'm all for improving the health of everybody: men, women, and the rest of us. That's why I continue to write and agitate for a universal health care system and information on sexuality: these are the real cause of unwanted pregnancy, crappy access to family planning, poor pre-natal care, low birth weight, postnatal depression, and the host of other problems that surround pregnancy. They're all bad news. I totally agree.

But here's the real bugbear.

45 million Americans are without a health care plan. That includes women who can't afford to get to doctors for care, whether they want a child or (god forbid!) they don't. Suck on THAT, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and stop treating decent, affordable measures for basic women's health like you're only doing it for the good of the children they might produce.

Babies are GREAT. I like babies a lot. I'd like to have or raise one someday not too far off. I've had endless hours of fun studying them in the lab and babysitting them. And I like my womb just fine, and may even one day use it for reproduction, should I decide to inflict my 23" inseam on another generation.

Also, motherhood is GREAT. I have beloved friends who are mothers, sisters-in-law who are mothers, cousins and aunts and co-workers and professors and bosses and senators and singing buddies and ministers who are mothers. Viva motherhood. It's a great choice to make, and thank goodness we live in a free society and can make it.

Right?

Look. I already went through this with the Catholic Church and I am frankly embarrassed to have to do it with a generally respectable arm of my government. I'M MORE THAN MY WOMB. I have arms and legs and a brain and by all that's holy, I have a voice, and you'd better believe I'm going to use it to scream anytime somebody talks to my womb instead of to my face.

The CDC's guidelines are good ones for women's health. So why would they say anything other than "good guidelines for women's health"? Why do they feel the need to justify a pretext for women's health based on the babies they might or might not produce? Are we in ROME here? Is this the Middle Ages?

Or should I not ask things like that ... seeing as I don't have a health care plan?

Okay. For real, now.

... is this thing on?

(It's probably going to take me five tries before it takes, isn't it? Seeing as I'm obsessed with quintessence?

Let's just assume that somewhere out in the ether I have another blog that tried to tackle some RL matters, and failed at it. So let's say that this is, in fact, the magic fifth attempt to get this party started.)

So. I'm going to use this blog to talk about two things: my mental illness and my religious faith. Hearing something like this is the sort of thing that makes me want to run away from the scary crazy people, so please. Feel free. There's a whole internet out there.

But what I'm really interested in exploring is my mental wellness and my religious doubt, because I think both of those topics require more engagement... for me, and hopefully for you.

So, as it says in the profile, I am the typical Unitarian Universalist post-ecofeminist-pagan, with Christian sauce and a side of Judaica. (Mmmm. Kugel.) I refer to you the creed I was messing around with a while back. I refer you to the leaves on the tree, I refer you to the movement of water over stones, I refer you to the process of respiration and the unfathomable brightness of the stars.

I'm an elementalist, I guess: I am convinced of the existence of the divine because of the beauty and grace and terror of the elements that I see before me, and the evidence of the fifth element -- that which we cannot see, but can experience. The tingle of sensuality up your back when you're singing with a choir. The sense of familiarity upon meeting a stranger who will become your friend. The samenesses and differences in people: what we (as society, as media, as communities) focus on, what we don't, and how that changes with a fashion as predictable as hemlines.

That's the quirky mess of life, and that's quintessence, and that's what I talk about when I talk about God. I'm not interested in a hereafter. Or rather, I assume I'll be rather interested... after here. But right now, this life, with all its crazy jumps across synapses and bold colors and brutal regret? That's the one we know we've got, and I'm more interested in having faith in it than in whatever comes next.

I'm talking about my mental wellness in this blog because my mental illness has nearly completely taken over my life, and with the help of a crack therapy team, a support structure that has the tensile strength of spider silk, and the latest innovations in biochemistry, I am slowly getting better.

18.8 million American adults suffer from a depressive disorder (NIMH). Eighteen point eight million -- and those are the cases that have been diagnosed and that are being treated. The symptoms can be found here, and they're nothing to mess around with.

I have been diagnosed with major depression, panic disorder, and adult attention deficit disorder. I take pills. I keep strange hours. And I have not successfully held down a nine-to-five job since mid-2001.

I am years behind most of my friends career-wise, relationship-wise, and wellness-wise (though granted, I do hang out with some freakish overachievers). I am several thousand dollars in medical and personal debt. I am 5'4" tall and weigh 315 pounds in my socks. I have, in short, a lot of work to do.

The good news is that I am creative, flexible, and eloquent, and that I can work very hard when pushed. I have (fairly recently, even) held down a number of jobs, including a fairly high-pressure job on a noon-to-eight schedule, where my anxiety only really started to be an issue as I was leaving the company. And I have the kind of widespread job experience human resources directors cream their jeans over.

I've set up a thousand workarounds and smokescreened my day so that it looks like I'm hard at work -- when, in reality, all those bathroom breaks are so I can shut myself in a closed little room and cry. I would say that, up until last year, the cracks barely showed, and when they showed it was to reveal someone scatterbrained, a little flaky... perhaps not too reliable on the little things but definitely a rock when it came to the big ones.

And then I lost it, one last time. Slowly, over a few months, until I became what we call "non-compliant" about my medication and ended up on a locked psych ward.

That was six months ago. I'm not going back. Understand me when I say I mean this: It was like prison, and I'm not going back.

A series of bad temp gigs and incorrect medication schedules later, I'm stuck several thousand dollars in debt, and sincerely doubting my ability to hold down a real job again.

But my therapist, whoo we'll call Sophia, says: "you have a choice. You can be defined by your illness and nobody will blame you for not trying. Or you can make an effort, and nobody will blame you if you fail."

I'm going with option B.

And a better med regime, because I'm nobody's idiot.

I'm lying in wait for a job offer that I expect will come next week. If not, I have two other possibilities that are eager for me. So I will shortly be holding down a day job again... with all the effort and time management and sanity that that requires.

I for one don't see how I'm getting through my coming workdays without a lot of faith and prayer, and without talking about what I'm facing honestly. I'm an essayist, and that's just what I do: I process externally. If you watch and learn, maybe you won't have to go through this. Maybe something that I've said will resonate.

That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

Peace be with you.

Credo Number Five.

Sometime last year, on my annual month-long fling with Christianity (we've never really broken up), I wrote a version of the Nicene Creed and stuck it up, well, in another blog (I mentioned I keep trying this, right?).

The lovely and talented Rachel Barenblat over at Velveteen Rabbi asked me to stick it up again in a place where it might be found. So here it is.

You can find the English version of Nicene Creed, which has yet to be matched for its power as poetry in Latin, here. And here's the Latin, in case you're as geektastic as I am.

Credo

We know that one name of God
is Father-Almighty,
Creator of Heaven and Earth,
source of all that is seen and unseen.

We have heard a great teacher, Jesus,
a true son of God,
an emissary for mercy and wisdom,
divine truth made flesh
as are we all --
born, not made, one in being
with all of Creation.

In imitation of him,
through our own divine incarnation
we observe and create the universe.

To teach this message he became incarnate,
by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of Mary,
entering the world in human form.

He was martyred under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered death and was buried.

His message and power rose up undaunted,
bringing fulfilment and change to the teaching of God.

He rejoined the divine source of all life.
He has come in countless incarnations
to counsel and teach the living and the dead,
and his truth is incorruptible.

We believe in the Holy Spirit,
the divine spark of all life,
one in being with the Father and the Son.

With the Father and the Son She is worshipped and glorified.
She has spoken through the prophets.

We believe in one inclusive communion
with a vast tradition of thought and memory.

We acknowledge that misdeeds can be forgiven
and guilt washed away.

We look to join again with the dead
in the time that is to come.

Amen.

I think I would change that last line, because even a Bishop-Spong-esque version of the Resurrection still gives me theological trauma -- but that's a post for another time. ;)

Third time's the charm?

Here I am, on what I must honestly admit is my third attempt to begin a regular blogging practice.

The title of the blog is based on "Number Twelve Looks Just Like You," the classic Twilight Zone episode about the dangers of conformity.

While I'm celebrating small joys that bind us, the title is a reminder that you shouldn't love everything I love. Your mileage should vary. Or get your engine checked.

Speak your own mind. It's all part of Number Five.