Breastfeeding preventing breast cancer?

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Elea Lee

I am bemused with scientific studies. There is one out now stating that the “myth” that bras promote breast cancer has been refuted.

Apparently this was based on the fact that breast cancer is more common in developed than developing countries.

Seems far more likely that the tendency of women to have fewer children and eschew nursing would be a more significant marker.

I fact the healthiest thing for women is the following:

Have children before 30
Have many children
And nurse on demand for greater than one year per child.

Many mothers in developing countries do all these things, nursing children to 2 years and beyond and nursing far more years than women in industrialized countries.

One study said that every 12 months of nursing reduced breast cancer risk by 3-5 percent.

And that is only the benefit to mom. Babies who nurse on demand get countless advantages from the process.

Grover Cleveland–rapist bully?!

Posted on September 2, 2014 by Elea Lee

This article is appalling. It outlines a story of date rape, aggression, child abandonment, and political bullying perpetrated by one of our nation’s presidents. The story was aired and well-documented before his election.

Yet none of the story is found on his Wikipedia page.

I think it is time to speak bluntly about a man who appears to have fooled a lot of people but who was a predator and a liar.

And a textbook example of a sexual predator who hides his crimes and brutalizes his victims.

If Cleveland can have fooled us all, what predators do you know who appear honest and trustworthy, even though they are decidedly not?

My Monster

Posted on September 1, 2014 by Elea Lee

My monster sits
At the kitchen table
Gnawing on the hollowed bones
Finding scraps of meat left on them
they say you can choke on these broken shards of wings, thighs
The breasts of flightless birds

Few eat their filigreed
Hearts
But when they do you can see through
Each vivisected chamber

He mutters only phrases
Like girl, you know…girl if only…
If only you had..
He is so very clever to leave out
All the
Proper nouns
Dependent clauses
Merciless verbs
years and years of completely merciless verbs

Ellipses for teeth
Never dulled to the task
Of separating bone from marrow
You tell me the vultures
Are being decimated
By poison and other modern perils
Leaving the dead all alone
In their towers of silence

And I know this must be true for Rizpah will shoo them off
Until God chooses to relent…

This drought will define us
Cotton-mouthed and bone-dry
So cavalier about our own now-
Forgotten prayers
For rain

The lottery ticket paradox

Posted on August 31, 2014 by Elea Lee

I have a bag of parables and pet theories I used to bore my youth group with…regularly.

One of them was the lottery ticket theory, which goes something like this:

If a rude person verbally assaulted you in a parking lot and insisted that they were handing you a winning lottery ticket you might be put off by the assailant, but you would be a fool not to take the ticket and check the numbers.

Jesus is that ticket.

We Christians are absolute morons–rude, pushy, myopic, prejudiced, morally flaccid.

You name it, we flub it.

But Jesus did not. He flubbed nothing. He gives us back our lousy, flea-bitten lives, whole and restored.

Why bother restating an old story from my former life?

Because I believe.

Because I still believe.

Adoption Accounting

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Elea Lee

I recently watched the movie Philomena.

There is a harrowing scene of loss in the movie. A scene I once had to endure myself.

I was a foster mother–a mere placeholder without any legal recourse, but Philomena and thousands like her were the true and legal biological parents of children who were stolen through the misuse of power and secrecy of adoption law.

We need transparency in adoption. No government entity or adoption agency or even adopting couple should be able to hide behind confidentiality to steal children.

And we need to be clear about this:

All children of adoption should have the right to know their true story, their real names, all their family. They may also need to know that this truth of who they were and where they came from…yes, and even who they “belong to” now, may have been obscured in the documentation of the adoption process itself.

For years it never occurred to me that social workers and adoption agents would lie to take a child from a parent.

And for years after I knew they could and did, I felt the subtle pressure to keep quiet about it.

We would rather some things remain opaque, because if they were transparent we would have to acknowledge all our broken stories.

And complicity in such unspeakable sorrow.

Dearest Triplet B

Posted on August 11, 2014 by Elea Lee

When I lost you
I knew you were never really mine

You have your mother’s face
Your father’s hair
Eyes all your own

For years I marked the days
Knew when your birthday came and went
Saw your face in every crowd

Missed you and wished you well
Because that is what love does

It never stops beating
Down every door for you

I saw every fairy tale through a different lens
Knowing how easy it could be
Excuse me, was…
For Rumpelstiltskin to steal a child
And teach her a world of untrue stories

But in real life
Truth
The Truth
Always sets us free

Do something (brave)

Posted on August 7, 2014 by Elea Lee

My blog is littered with drafts. I haven’t published anything for awhile because I struggle with–why bother?

In the aftermath of what happened to my family, a lot of people let us down.

It could have been because I was too vocal. It could have been because we were too risky. It could have been a lot of things.

It took a toll on my evaluation of humans. How could so many “nice people” run like rabbits? Or worse. There was always worse.

I battled insomnia. If a person you have fed peanut butter sandwiches can hurt children, the world feels permanently unsafe.

I wrote. I wrote and then wondered why?

Then I began wakeboarding.

I like wakeboarding because no one tells me I can’t do the things that terrify me. In fact, they show me how.

I like it because the people there are brave.

Not just spin-in-the-air brave, but also push-yourself brave.

Many of these brave people restore my faith in our broken world.

Which leads me to “ordinary brave”–

Men who are faithful to their wives are brave.

Judges who prosecute pedophiles are brave.

Health officials who fly into an Ebola epidemic are brave.

Paying your bills and your taxes on time

Holding a lackluster job to provide for your family

Befriending the powerless–

All brave.

When I see brave, I want to be brave.

The no-bark collar

Posted on July 23, 2014 by Elea Lee

For years I labored under the illusion that child sexual abuse was rare and that the victims could find help, even if their parents were indifferent or the abusers.

Wrong and wrong.

More than half of all children are victims of sexual assault before they reach the age of 18.

Most if not all of us have known and/or been groomed by a sexual predator.

And yet…

The pressure to not talk about the known sexual predators among us is so strong that I frequently write posts and then refrain from publishing them.

I am an old woman and a mouthy one at that, but I have been told explicitly to shut up and shunned implicitly for speaking out against child sexual abuse.

The pressuring is convincing and effacing.

Imagine what it would do to a child.

The Central American Crisis

Posted on July 9, 2014 by Elea Lee

For nearly 20 years young people, mostly women, have been the victims of rape and murder in Juarez, a city neatly adjacent to El Paso, Texas.

They even have a name for it–feminicidio, the murder of women.

Not once have I ever heard anyone in our government say we need to provide asylum to the women and children of Juarez.

Perhaps we should.

But as a one-time resident of Central America and a long-time advocate for children, especially those who have refugee issues, the sudden trucking out of an “emerging Central American crisis” feels deeply political and not very honest.

When in our lifetime has Central America been stable? The eighties?!?

Not a chance.

This particular iteration of the absolute disaster that is American foreign policy ignores completely the fact that…

These countries have been de facto war zones for decades.

The children have not just started coming, some of them came years ago. Many came to the US and joined gangs affiliated with the conflicts in their home countries.

And many also have the usual spectrum of emotional and mental problems that go with trauma, upheaval, social disintegration, and loss of caregiver relationships.

We cannot afford to anonymize these minors. Where they go, who they go with, and how they cope all matter so much.

What do you know about the gang affiliations of refugee and immigrant teens in your area? What do you know about attachment disorder?

You cannot haphazardly throw money or executive orders at children.

You gotta have an actual plan.

Yep. And I still think we owe the children of Mexico an apology.

Isn’t their failed state as disastrous as all the others?

The Symbols of a Broken Mind

Posted on July 8, 2014 by Elea Lee

He used structures, barriers, doorways, linens, athletic equipment to hide his aggressions.

And lies. So many lies.

This comes back to haunt me. I try to keep it in a mental suitcase because my grief over his aggression is still so intense.

Last night I had a dream that I saw a giant tire being pulled on a barge in front of me. I knew exactly what it meant.

I used to take children to play tennis. Right next to the tennis courts the football team had giant tires they used for strength training.

Charles used the tires to hide his broken actions, distorting play schema with devastating effect.

The elliptical nature of my description is for you, not me. I know too well what he did to hurt people with ordinary things.

I wish there was closure. I don’t really believe in it. Instead I think my unconscious mind will continue to bring to the fore these devastating symbols of lost innocence.

Barriers–he uses them to deceive and harm children, yet has no legal obstacle, tag or minder alerting others to his past.

It is one thing to not know how a predator isolates and subdues his prey. It is another entirely to know, and simply look away.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: child advocacy