Tag: life

I am an Unapologetic Rural American

by Meredith Ann, MSW, posted in Blog Post

Early on in my Master of Social Work program the question was posed “Is there anything good about White Privilege?” I am so thankful to my fellow life experienced classmate and strong woman of color stated “Yes, when it is used to uplift others”. The question was only brought to the attention of the class after the professor and I had a rich after class discussion on my thoughts surrounding her presenting herself on day one as “An Unapologetic Black Woman” and asking what my response to this was supposed to be. As a white, middle-class, rural American who comes from a place of higher means than the average Buckeye, I had been finding myself lost for direction. You see, I am from a state still being referred to by trend casters as one of “the fly over states”. I am the daughter, granddaughter, sister and more to the good White men who wouldn’t dream of standing up for themselves – but I will. When the highest suicide rate by far is middle aged white men and we can’t even say that out loud for fear of triggering someone who hates that same group, we have got to believe we are approaching this ALL wrong.

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I am a Midwest mut who knows where my roots come from. In one of the D.E.I. trainings I went through I expressed my ongoing distaste over my life for the term ‘Caucasian’ as I feel it has taken away from my heritage in my knowledge of the specific countries my ancestors come from. These are of England, Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and some potential not yet verified drops of Cherokee. The leader laughed at this idea proclaiming, “they will never do that!” This combined with the statement anticipating black and brown people to be on track to become the majority made it very clear that this was not in fact about diversity and inclusion but in a turning of the tables so to speak. The leader also spoke on the differences she has lived with coming from a small community with a population of 85,000. When I brought up my upbringing as being from the much smaller community of 15,000, she laughed in judgment rather than to ponder our unique differences. It was made clear repeatedly that this PhD of Education did not believe she had room to learn from the likes of me.

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The collectivist community in which I was raised was one which allowed space for both my top 1% Patriarchal family and my bottom 1% Matriarchal family to provide opportunity to their families through hard work, ingenuity, and a commitment to faith, family, and community. At the same time, as a primarily white farming community in origin, they have not been allowed to embrace their collectivist nature at the same rate of as any minority group. Even in this primarily industrial and agriculture town with railway roots who has embraced migrant workers from our southern border since the early 1990’s and on. This brings another conflict I attempted to bring to the D.E.I. providers attention – the diverse culture of all countries south of our location which are diluted to one term despite their unique and dynamic differences. Recent attention to the Latinx community has really disparaged the majority Latino community which is unfortunate. One group I had hoped to bring light to at a larger corporation with a D.E.I representative who saw me for my true servant’s heart and also knew I was against an insurmountable battle. That was to be a voice for the neurodivergent population – one of the largest and most over-stigmatized and underrepresented populations there is. I had evidence of facing discrimination from my colleagues up to my own manager and did not want conflict but to educate. This woman of color had of course built up this large network’s D.E.I. program, only to have a man of color hired over her – in true Booker T. Washington fashion. They then went on to do this large presentation which everyone doted over yet on my ask of what they were doing to support rural diversity as half the counties they claim to serve fall into that range. I received an email suggesting we scheduled follow up which got forwarded to some scheduling assistant and then put off indefinitely.

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Recently, I came across my original journal plans for this business which I had put into chicken scratch in August of 2016. Later that week the grandmother who had loved me like only a mother could died of a stroke. I journaled then of my need to suppress my emotions surrounding her death in pursuit of this longterm goal which involves restoring a community that had supported her family as migrant farm workers in the 1930’s, coming from a cotton sharecropping farm in Missouri – more of that Caucasian diversity. The 2016 election had been the first time I voted Democrat. This was the first time I learned the DNC thinks it knows better than it’s voters. I was a big Bernie fan as a fresh BS holder. I thought he and a Republican Congress could make real things happen in the terms of mediation and change for the masses. Then Bernie won Indiana, the state I live, but through the use of Superdelegates Hillary received more votes – again the DNC wants you to think you have a say when they know better and just fix the vote. I still voted for Hillary – I held my breath, but I did it. As I told my staunch Republican grandfather who asked what I thought of President Trump once he was in office, I am so disappointed in the Republican party which left him floored. I told him I did not think that in 2016 you could have the rhetoric about woman that he had and be elected President of the United States of America. Then all of these strong conservative men who I had respected my whole life bit their tongue – for the sake of pushing their agenda. Paul Ryan truly broke my heart. About a week before the end of 2017, I stopped following all major media sources. I did this after becoming consumed with negativity about things that weren’t affecting my day to day life. I did not vote in the following presidential election. Due to the state of the economy, I didn’t see a matter where Donald Trump was not re-elected. At the same time I could not vote for President Biden as what they were doing was elder abuse – again for the sake of pushing an agenda. In this past election, I could see that Donald Trump was likely going to win. While I was not happy about this, I could see it as a means to support my business plan in an effort to pull us back to the center.

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What I will say of Donald Trump is that my primary problem with him was his rhetoric about women – he’s not doing that anymore. As someone who truly believes in systemic injustice, I see someone really shaking up the system and think – how can I take advantage of that? I grew up under parents who did the real work of colorblindeness. This was to become enlightened and to return to their home community to teach this and work towards natural integration. The majority of their classmates fell to colorblindeness the noun – this was to take their Enlightenment to the suburbs to be together and casting judgment to those they’ve left behind. Over time we have seen this animosity of the low income urban and low income rural pitted against one another polictically, each staring to the hills in resentment towards those on the other side. As a political purple, I waited three years in that MSW program for my rural population to be acknowledged. It came up in the in-person classes one time – this was by the one openly transgender of the cohort and it was to say “farm communities are really weird” and everyone agreed in unison. What an oppressing and judgmental statement to make about an entire subgroup of humans. Another person who had been assigned to my hometown complained how awful it was – social work in an area without resources certainly is not as easy as the telehealth and hands off approach promoted by COVID. Many people in the program came from the coasts and even more left the state following their draining of resources from a primary state university in a seventy percent rural state. It was in an online course that I did get the attention of a rural engagement group. They came to do a round table in my home community and when I left I can tell you – I did not feel comfortable sending those students in to work with the people I came from as it was. I reached out to these guys in my business plans with a hope to partner with them. It was five minutes before our scheduled meeting during the month after the election that I emailed them my business plans and they cancelled the meeting. I still have hope they will encounter the humility they need to be passing on to the students they are teaching. As a member of the final graduating class of IUPUI prior to its dissolution, I can testify so much likely causal link to the lack of teamwork from each school. As it is, the psychology department I came from maintains interest in a partnership – point Purdue.

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My final thoughts on the pulling of D.E.I. initiatives is that a primary law they were attempting to bring light to – the 1990 Disability Rights Act – has not gone anywhere. As someone who participated in the flawed programs, it’s not a bad idea to refine it before we cause much more harm than the good that should be intended by this. I will refer to one more experience from the first, smaller organization training I participated in. This was two powerpoint slides after learning about implicit bias when the leader attempted to attack people using the term “mansplaining”. Now I know what she meant by this, she meant when a superior over explains something in a condescending way. I asked, “do you think they could come up with another term for this considering we just learned about the impact of implicit bias. Perhaps we should consider what we are saying explicitly about the group with the number one suicide rate in the nation”. Her response was to laugh, and declare they are working on that on the coasts. Isn’t that just it? These coastal driven policies for resources we don’t have in the middle and then judgment when we aren’t able to apply it correctly. As a multi-generation Midwesterner, I am sick of my homesteading heritage being attacked. I grew up knowing I was hated everywhere I went, just for being who I was. And I still only ever wanted to help people. I won’t apologize for that.

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#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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#msw #socialwork #psychology #selfcare #selflove #communitycare #communitylove #mutualaid #neurodivergent #recovery #equality #equity #inclusivity #antioppressive #hope #supportsmallbusiness

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#spreadlovenothate #unitedwestand #dividedwewillfall #meetmeinthemiddle

The Great Insurance Scam on My Life

by Meredith Ann, MSW, posted in Uncategorized

I was sixteen years old when I was inappropriately given a severe mental illness diagnosis. I remember my mother’s response to the diagnosis being far more dramatic than I had felt necessary at the time. She approached me in a state of minor hysteria, proclaiming, “Your father and I will always make sure you have insurance!” At the time, the severity of the grim future that was assumed to likely attach itself to this diagnosis rose to the surface like rapid fire. It was as though the world around me was expanding in size, just bigger and bigger. All the while, I sat in that doctor’s chair shrinking to an almost invisible level, the air unable to continue to be consumed by my lungs. As someone who grew up in a family whose economic status never had to consider insurance and medical care costs once I was around, I was in shock at the idea she believed I would be unable to provide care for myself. As a stubbornly headstrong and independent young woman at the time, I was terrified at the notion of remaining permanently attached to my parents from the perspective of dependency. It was at that time I began to become aware of the extreme uphill pathway I had stumbled upon by means of my entanglement in psychiatric care. This induced a sort of panic state, igniting my desperation to be self-sufficient. What I know now, is that my mother was terrified of my suffering her same experiences. This was to be economically unstable enough early in her marriage where they did not have insurance. Their first child was born while uninsured causing my mother to delay going to the hospital while in labor to the point she almost had a home delivery by accident! For me, it has caused every single decision I have ever made in my entire adult life to surround insurance and the maintenance of it.

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I began to work full-time the Monday after I graduated from high school. This was after a year and a half of tortuous psychiatric overmedication had caused me to almost fail out of high school altogether. Even with my gradually declining grades, my parents had offered a two-week European vacation that I refused. At the time, I was so disgusted with myself and what had become of me that I could not have appreciated that gift. My early high school career was revealing to my potential that at the beginning of my senior year I was accepted to Purdue University. It was sometime during the Spring, while literally barely making it to the finish line of a high school diploma, I had decided to put off going to college. This surrounded the fact that I knew, due to the condition I was in, there was no way I would be successful in my endeavors at that time. Even after making this choice myself, Purdue doubled down through the rescinding of their initial offer of acceptance – done through the usual means of cowardly avoidance that these entities tend to choose: the US postal system. Honestly, I could have done without that punch to the gut, solidifying I was not worthy. Still, I pressed forward, optimistic in my role as a dietary aid at a nursing home, a role I loved. There were times I entertained attempting to pursue the leadership there – sometimes I still wish I had. This position was not one that allowed me to fulfill the expectations of the collegial driven family I was raised and left me feeling like I needed to achieve more.

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From here, I became lost in the balance of needing to have insurance and wanting to have freedom and to pursue goals. After being raised in a small town whose roots run back four generations on both sides, I have always felt this pull within me to be on the go. I was forever held back by that nasty need to be insured. To be honest, I didn’t even know why I needed it really. It was just embedded in me that this was something one could not live without and I desperately wanted to be on my own without assistance. I attempted a brief move to a small nearby metropolitan where I would be able to find work and attend an off-chute location of a larger university. My work scheduled called for me to work late hours making attention to my studies impossible enough that I dropped out – but I kept that insurance, though. From this point, I went to work for my father who was able to provide me insurance though the coverage was lacking as it has tended to for those working for small business owners such as he. During this time, I attempted to go back to school multiple times having to drop out each time. I jumped into an impulse marriage and became pregnant within 6 months of that – all the while maintaining numero uno, you guessed it, insurance! During my time bearing child, I went to weekly therapy without medication, getting to the start of the roots of my neurodivergence and severe maternal relational trauma. It would be a post-partum event in 2010 involving the complete subjective removal of my civil rights that would cause me to a.) double down on my conviction and b). realize how small I would have to become to prove myself once and for all. It was during my pregnancy I became aware that an insurance company is unable to consider a past diagnosis as active if one does not receive treatment for that diagnosis in seven years. For the record and others sake – I do not know if this is wholly accurate, it was just something I read and latched ahold of and as I have said, give someone with OCD traits something to hold onto with a passion and forget it!

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It was after this point, without medication and with a strong will to make something of all I’ve been through, that I was finally able to return to school successfully. After four years of year-round schooling as an adult commuter student with a full-time job with benefits, it came time to for graduation. Of course, I spent my senior year pregnant and expecting to have my second child the week before finals of my last semester. It was not looking like I was going to be able to continue to hold my family’s benefits, luckily in time for the Affordable Care Act to be rolled out. So, I gave it a shot. To say this was the worst experience I have had with insurance amongst the horror stories would be an understatement. The initial application process wasn’t difficult, there really just weren’t anything but high-deductible plans that were fairly expensive to choose between. While that was the sole year of my participation in this product, I have not heard a difference in the results since then for what is available. The worst of what I would experience wouldn’t happen until the actual birth of my daughter – a qualifying life-change event for any insurance carrier to be able to make insurance changes. Usually this means a call to member services and the providing of the facts. Unless, of course, that provider received their original information through the government—then the change has to be made through the government. Well, let me tell you how disastrously they handled the onslaught of applications received which had exceeded any lawmakers planned expectations. They handled their overload by simply deleting the excess of applications they presumed they would not need to hold on to. After the early May delivery of my beautiful baby, I spent countless hours through the very last week in December attempting to get my daughter added to my policy. Of all the things I know myself to be, connected is one of them. Now, this has not gotten me much social fulfillment overall, however it has allowed me access to knowledge and professionals outside of the reach to the typical person. Because of this, my then insurance agent enlisted the support of a local Senator who reached out to Ben Shapiro who was willing to hear out our situation if I would bring my infant on the show with me. I couldn’t let myself do this as our arguments were not the same. His, a stereotypical outrage against government healthcare. Mine, a disagreement with lawmakers ability to make and enforce policy without having to present a plan on how to get there. My opinion on healthcare – no one should face bankruptcy due to a health issue. No one should fear going to obtain care due to the financial predicament it will put them in. No one should make every life decision based on whether or not they have insurance. I ended that year with an evening phone call from the White House to add my daughter successfully to the policy. Of course, it was never applied appropriately, and this cost my family thousands of dollars out-of-pocket that we did not have to spend.

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After this year, I returned to full-time work and the maintenance of my family’s benefits. This is the position I have remained bound to for nearly a decade. It was during a health emergency that I felt forced to leave my corporate position. This crisis was really the final straw in a months long string of events and so I had already taken the steps to understand what my exit could look like. This included first priority of course that my husband felt up to the responsibility of holding our family’s insurance for the first time in our 16-year marriage. He had touched base with his HR to find out the process. I had reached out to understand the outlines of my tuition reimbursement contract. My plan had been to drop to a PRN level position and slowly phase out in the hospital that had kept me miserable. Instead, I was strung along in the full time BS position I was overqualified to start and now with an MSW and no more pay. It was in the middle of a one in a million near-death reaction to the flu shot that I would be unable to care about much more than ridding myself the corporate affiliation which had plagued my life. It was smack in the middle of this I realized the significance this need to hold insurance had really held for me. This was that it kept me reeled in to the point of preventing my wild side from taking me off the deep end. The actual care it availed and costs associated with it were null and void as it would happen.

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#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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#msw #socialwork #psychology #selfcare #selflove #communitycare #communitylove #mutualaid #neurodivergent #recovery #equality #equity #inclusivity #antioppressive #hope #supportsmallbusiness

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#spreadlovenothate #unitedwestand #dividedwewillfall #meetmeinthemiddle

A Neurodivergent Leap of Faith

by Meredith Ann, MSW, posted in Blog Post

What I have come to know of myself is that I cannot help to be an outside of the traditional style of thought process thinker. It was recently that I began to visualize myself as having been placed inside this box. Over the course of my entire life what has repeatedly happened has been my slow observation and taking in of the world around me. While doing this I found myself back towards whatever corner or edge I could find. At this time, I began to work myself slowly up the side and out of the box completely. Someone would then come along and see me standing there, holding this box, pick me up and put me back in the middle once more. Finally, I realize the box has been the problem all along. Living within the confines of societies script of who and how I was to be quite literally led me to madness, and ultimately almost killed me. You know how they say what almost kills you only makes you stronger? I will affirm this in my case, but only as it pertains to the strength in my conviction. What I have gone through has weakened me physically to an unrecognizable extent by my internal self and who she has always known herself to be. My seventy-year old father whose brain works most similarly to my own and has had a front row seat to witness the fullness of my self-destructions, battles, and triumphs will tell you I am of the most sound mind he has ever seen. A lifetime of turmoil and conflicted choices added to an imminent autoimmune riddled maternal inheritance has left me physically worn and weathered. Yet, I am filled with an indescribable joy and desire to create pathways to overall healing for others.  

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We are at a unique time in mental healthcare which I have seen coming for some time. This is where we are bearing witness to an abundance of need which we do not have the services and if we’re being humble enough to admit also lack the know-how to be able to assist without many if any positive long-term outcomes as guides. I am not saying there aren’t increasing numbers of persons with complex mental health diagnosis and experiences working at the professional level. I am absolutely saying those who are in this group are largely isolated to the affluent crowd, such as myself, and most will say there is not a level of comfort and acceptance by colleagues across this board in fact the majority of challenges with stigma professionals face is that from other professionals. It is alarming to hear the rhetoric towards the symptoms that create behaviors in people experiencing mental health turmoil by those whose positions in society are maintained through the financial exchange for their ergh care to them. There is little interest in taking the perspective of how someone became the way they are and even less inkling of optimism towards real potential for recovery. It is not for a lack of good-hearted people. It’s systemic. And it always has been.

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It’s not my fault I was born to a system not ready for me. There have been extended times I have been resentful for the level of maltreatment I underwent when it came to my healthcare. As a person of privilege, my family had the means to obtain better than what I received, and for many reasons just didn’t. Of the many – I was the great-granddaughter and granddaughter to the town doctor. We trusted and supported our local healthcare options. Increase this complication with my parent’s notion that my brothers and I were not indebted to anything special in the form of accommodation. As a member of the “other side of the tracks” I did not earn the same lessons in how to use my class to my advantage from the same-sex parent, rather I was raised by a mother who taught me to fear the power it had over me. A primary pathway to my own healing has been to make purpose out of all that I have gone through. One of the silver linings that I can assess from my situation, a person who went through what’s been described by a renowned colleague as “the worst of the worst” in mental health maltreatment, is that I had the ability to make it through what most don’t. I am not attempting an arrogance in my saying that I am of the higher intellectually abled. I tend to refer to myself as having traditional intelligence as I have come to know so many other abled in ways that I can only admire. I feel a heavy amount of survivor’s guilt in regard to the less than subpar services I was subjected to and cannot fathom the increased severity with which these systemic issues have impacted those who began in far more oppressed classes and with far fewer advantages than my own. It was around this time fifteen years ago that I was processing the totality of my experiences with my therapist. I was in the middle of my post-partum psychosis when I first declared something had to come of all I learned in what I went through. At the time of course, I was speaking in riddles and sentence fragments without a ton of control. I remember a lot of 1990’s girl scout slogans coming out, “Dare to Dream” stands out in particular in my recollection. At the same time, there was an immense awareness in the need to have an inability of rushing the sequence it would happen.

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A Bachelor’s in Psychology with Spanish minor and impressive research and volunteer work to accompany it would follow the event of my postpartum psychosis. You see, I became inspired when I attempted to explain the revelation I had come to in 40 weeks of therapy during one three-minute inpatient interview with a psychiatrist. The complete arrogance in his eye roll in his refusal to make eye contact through his thick, black rectangle eye frames with his greased slicked back wavy hair that extended just as long as the back of his hairline, adorned in his authoritative white coat was enough to inspire fifteen years of action. What I would tell the Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner I saw in 2019 was that I decided to “white knuckle it to prove everyone wrong” prior to returning for my undergraduate work. What my final Clinical Supervisor for the duration of my 600-hour Master of Social Work Clinical practicum would ask me in affirmation was “are you about finished?” It was during a requested informal supervision with this person that I would share my choice in going off my medications which included for ADHD and a mood stabilizer and a multitude of physical health combats that surrounded now confirmed autoimmune symptoms. I had gone from no medications up to nine medications and it was past time for a voluntary clean out. What I shared with her revealed an immense amount of self-awareness and level headedness. In part, I also revealed my ability to experience the world, particularly nature, in a more fulfilling way.

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The stripping of my medication was done with assistance of the rheumatologist I am working with towards a goal of all out remission and no medication. These are words I never could have dreamed hearing from a doctor previously. I am fully aware that I am only prepared for the level of healing I am at due to the appropriate biomedical support I sought and received for a period of time in combination with the intense work I did to analyze and repair the complex medical and relational trauma that added up to my flawed functioning as an adult. Now, I’m left to make my way out of the mud I slipped into so to speak. This includes having engaged in an ongoing trauma bonded marriage, though rooted in deep love and commitment, is going to take extended time and intention to repair. This includes the setting of boundaries which previously did not exist meaning a need for added room for practicing new behaviors than those which have been enabled nearly two decades to this point. This also means a needed reparation to the flawed systems of attachment we have passed on to our now teen and pre-teen. While this is difficult, I believe it can be done with the addition of grace to a family unit. And change, big change.

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The ultimate healthcare dilemma I experienced led to my initial and unexpected change. This was an abrupt exit to my nearly decade long tenure in an emergent mental health intake position. You see, I had previously worked an unidentified autoimmune disorder to a manageable albeit not fully remitted level at hiring to this position. When the COVID19 pandemic came about, I was smack in the middle of processing the forced overmedication I had gone through during my teenaged years following me into my early adulthood. I was the primary breadwinner and benefits holder for my family. When the hospital I worked for mandated the shot masked as a vaccine, I was initially going to attempt a medical waiver but then the graduate school I was to begin jumped on the mandating bandwagon and I felt I had no options. The reaction to this shot has been crippling at times. The painful symptoms and persistent fatigue have at times been more than overwhelming and there was a potential TIA in there. Ultimately, it was the flu shot which I had been mandated to get that I had approval for medical exemption but did not get filed in time. I will never forget the day I went to get the flu shot, I looked to my husband and said “I will get it one last time”, words I couldn’t have known I would almost die by. This shot incited a Guillain-Barre Syndrome reaction. Something I had only previously googled to research on behalf of the maybe handful of people I met while working acute mental health who said they had experienced it. I am so fortunate to have made the richest and most robust network of trusted colleagues to seek counsel through this month-long, intense mind-body-spirit near-death experience.  I am forever a changed person because of what I have underwent through nearly four decades of mistreatment through the traditional American Medical system. I am choosing to take a leap of faith on myself for my family and for the betterment of communities like the one I was raised within. This will include a shift towards minimalism and simplicity by my family in the form of a downsize and move with a goal at unifying and learning new behaviors together. It also takes place in the form of my business plan, one with room for creative approaches and fruit-filled research and extensive long-term partnerships. It’s time to refocus on the rural neurodivergent whose population and potential have been left behind.

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#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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#msw #socialwork #psychology #selfcare #selflove #communitycare #communitylove #mutualaid #neurodivergent #recovery #equality #equity #inclusivity #antioppressive #hope #supportsmallbusiness

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#spreadlovenothate #unitedwestand #dividedwewillfall #meetmeinthemiddle

Consider Social Media the Potential Conceptual anti-Christ

by Meredith Ann, MSW, posted in Blog Post

Do you remember back in the early 2000’s when cell phones were first becoming a thing? It appeared they could become common place. Do you remember the hysteria about them? Back then there were all these warnings and concerns about brain tumors we were going to get from the magnets in them. That’s when early earpieces started – the irony of taking one electronic magnet away in order to replace it with another, am I right? I will say, at least back then we were still in a state of wonder and questioning of the potential dangers that could come from our excessive engagement in these products. We are definitely guilty of being physical beings. At what point I wonder, did they begin to question the involvement of our minds?

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I describe myself as being of the “AIM” generation. Of course, I started briefly with ICQ – my family has been Microsoft since day one. It was quite the revelation then when AOL created the crossover product of AIM, allowing Apple and Microsoft to collide for the first time. The potential connections became endless. I have noticed some long-term impacts I believe to be from this being the primary form of peer communication I had during peek social development years of middle school. Some of these include a severely monotone voice at times, though this could be linked with my autism traits. I also have a tendency towards transparency and trust – I definitely allowed people insight who proved undeserving. As a writer, it has been really problematic to my verbal communication skills outside of intonation. I need to be able to process and proofread. Ultimately, I am proving to be verbal processor. Sometimes this looks like me making a statement out loud and once I hear it I am just like “that’s not what I meant” inside my head. That is not always forgivable in the era of clickbait and “gotcha” moments.

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Back to the original topic at hand – our fear of brain tumors.. Imagine that the only risk we would actually face would be the loss of ability to make and form genuine connections with people we love. And that’s not even the worst of it. While we are selling ourself on this illusion of satisfaction through the vapid dopamine hit of that notification. We are currently actively participating in the destruction of our ability to have a sustained and functional reward system of any kind. Now we are going to hard pivot to background of my philosophical thinking which of course originates in the Evangelical Presbyterian Church. I spent my life in contest with the idea of the antichrist and my difficulty accepting this as a human being. Once I had my first child I spent a full year in prayer for the mother of the anti-Christ. While I was experiencing the passion and love of a mother, I could not fathom a God of love that would subject a mother to that level pain. Over time I gravitated towards the idea that the anti-Christ would be more likely to be a concept or broad movement than an individual. While I do not currently profess this faith in any traditional sense, I do believe value can be taken from all ancient texts and translations.

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When we consider what “the anti-Christ” is presented to be – all knowing in order to be all divisive, all seemingly good. How could we not consider this fashion of communication we are observing to potentially be this conceptual and consuming being. I see many valuable uses for social media personally, this is only because I have healed from the serious damage engaging in it brought me. I am disgusted with some of that hate I have willingly participated in, but I also have gotten to the root and forgive myself for it. I was incredibly invested in my followers and keeping everyone posted on the day to day of my world. As a working commuter student and mother, this was very useful in my feeling connected to my life and keeping me on track. Then I fell into the spiral of overconnectedness to situations which did not concern my life. In 2017, I found myself consumed to the point I was physically ill at the political spectrum of the United States, My husband would come to me and ask if I’d seen what our president had done and I would tell him at least five facts to add to it.

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A week before the end of 2017, I had to stop. I went through my social media and unfollowed every single news source. For a period, any time I saw anything that inspired negativity I unfollowed or deleted. After this I began slowly engaging in things I was interested in like fairy gardening and plants. Then I began exploring bohemian chic décor pages. Gradually this spilled over in the work I was doing on myself and I started gravitating to motivational quotes. Now that I have trained to be a counselor and have gone through extensive trauma work, there are a lot of spoofs on that. What I am saying is that Social Media can be used for good and has been so revealing to the many communities who’ve been isolated and in need of finding one another. A conflict has become the individual’s need for their side to be heard and understood by everyone – and that is never going to happen. Until we utilize the internet for the good it can be, we will continue to see it cause problems of both perversion and division.

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We are not made to sit indoors. We are not made to sit. We are not made to stare at screens. We have been uniquely designed to use our bodies to be able to explore the Earth in a rewarding and fulfilling way. We were made to dance and make music. Our artistic expression and abstract thought and ability to conceive outside of the ordinary makes us who we are. I am in a place in time where I have recognized the real damage that participation in these forms of communication have done for myself and for my family’s health and marriage. For example, my husband and I are not very connected currently. It all started when I went off of Facebook and asked that he do it with me. He would not. Months down the road, his male – woman hating friend, suggested he do it and he did. Weeks after that at a get together, my husband proclaimed how grateful he was to his friend for suggesting this. It is all to common for my husband to wince at my ideas until he hears them from male tongue. Now here we are years down the road and I only long for him to be on Facebook. To be seeing our photos and our kids and be engaging with one another. Instead he listens to overtly conservative podcasters – all male. It has caused him to further separate and this is the most discouraging feeling I can describe. My kids – also barely get out, something I am actively working to remedy.

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The way I am seeing it is that algorithms – while well intentioned, have fueled a vast division. While they are valuable in allowing a person to primarily access things they enjoy, they are severely limiting. Currently, algorithms are interfering with diversity of thought of thought due to lack of exposure. This has led to the angry woman hater having what they see be filtered to see more hate spewed about women and the vile things they have been known to participate in. By similar accord you see the Uber liberal is only buried under a pile of victim sobstories of the unhealed and are therefore inundated with legitimate trauma. These continued exposures have seemingly altered our abilities for compassion toward another. The superficial nature of online communication has become so dehumanizing, it can be difficult to continue. It is the nature of the current world that we are unable to get away from past relational trauma due to this as well. For me, I know I have had to remove people from my friend due to the triggers they cause. One has to find the discipline to not participate in the potentially damaging aspects of social media. Unfortunately, the current model is writing the code against our likelihood of moving toward more emotional regulation and impulse control, rather the exact opposite.

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On Early Grief, My Place as a Woman, & Shaken Faith

by Meredith Ann, MSW, posted in Blog Post

My first experience with death was incidentally the first time I was put into my place as a woman. It was the death of my 95-year-old great-grandmother. I don’t remember her face but I recall her presence. I was born to a home just around the corner from her and I was only 4 at the time of her death. I remember going into the funeral parlor – one of two that would be frequented commonly by my friends and family in our small town. I was not allowed in the main viewing area and instead sat in a front room with my dolls and the man that would take over this funeral home decades down the line. To follow, we were at my grandparents’ house with all these antiques lining tables. The “Big 6” as I liked to call them, were all there. My father, his sibling and their four male cousins on that side. Later in time there would be a male-like figure that didn’t quite fit with the Big 6 and wasn’t always there. Once I was older, she began to come around more, I learned this was my father’s only female cousin on that side, and it began to make more sense. What I learned in this experience was what it meant to be a woman growing up in my family – which is that no matter how hard I tried, it could never be enough. You see, my grandfather had attended an all-male college with both of his sons a nearby rival school instead. One of the Big 6 had attended, in these moments, he was always shown favor – the psychology major’s moment to shine, I suppose. Anyways, that day they were giving my two siblings and one male cousin a hard time about the potential of them attending said all male school – by this era, nearly no one was interested in anything but unisex experience. I chimed in with how I would attend that school and become a doctor, and in my spirit I added and carry on the good work of the family and make my grandfather proud. At that point it was snickers all around. My grandfather came to my level in attempt to explain this was an all-male college and I wouldn’t be allowed to attend. My then precocious self exclaimed, “I don’t care, I’m going to do it anyway!” And my grandfather just smiled. Unfortunately, the Big 6 had erupted into laughter with this and what I overheard them whisper to one another was “what she doesn’t know is that would make him more ashamed than anything.” Core memory activated.

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My next two experiences with death would come in the same year occurring during second grade. The first was the other great-grandmother I had the fortune of knowing and having regular interactions. She was ninety-nine and had fallen to break her hip – a story that leads to the demise of many late-stage deaths. For whatever reason, someone decided I was old enough to say goodbye to the physical body that had housed my nana. What I can tell you of that was that a person of her age and frailty looked no different in a coffin than she had in her chair at our weekly visits. And her withered and wrinkled skin was cold and firm to the touch, but no more than it had been This induced my night terrors of her attempts to claw her own way out of her coffin – no cinema needed, my brain thought up that one all its own. I always wonder, had that been able to be avoided would someone have explained the embalming process to this obviously precarious young girl, maybe I would not have had those fears. Even at the age of nanna’s death, I will always remember witnessing the deep sorrow of my mammaw and her sister. I can picture her bringing that handkerchief to the corner of her eye so vividly.

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Later that same school year it was the death of my first dog that would create severe eternal contemplation. This cocker spaniel had been with us my whole life. She was approaching fourteen years old, and her hind legs were starting to give out. My parents would later share that they prayed over her every night that she would go in her sleep, alas, the decision had to be made. So, my parents planned the one and only Spring break trip we ever had – my father is a CPA and break is in the middle of the heat if tax season. My grandmother drove down with us and we flew her home while simultaneously flying dad down to Florida for the last weekend. And in all of their emotional intelligence my parents did this and still told us the plan to put her down the night before we left. Instead of reminding us she is old and might die, they told us she was so we could say our goodbyes –perhaps appropriate for my brothers whose ages were six and eight years above mine. That morning before we ran out to the school bus, as we were saying our final farewells, my what I describe as “aemotional” younger older brother and really my security person, fell into a puddle of tears and I didn’t know what I was to do. I can tell you with as much vivid visual imagery as I have experienced in my life, I don’t remember a damn thing from that trip other than my father walking down the tarmac. An official representation it was done and my dog was dead. This is the death that began to shake the ground of my faith. A faith that was bragged upon by others. That’s what happens when you are around conservative Presbyterian men who are more concerned with arguing the indoctrination of their own theology than the comforting of an innocent child. For those who practice or have been exposed – I of course am referring to the argument of whether animals are in the after-life referred to as “Heaven”. For the record – in the Presbyterian Church it should be known that animals do not have souls and therefore will not be in heaven. My mother tried the consolation of her belief to little avail. She attempted to share the thought since they didn’t have souls they automatically passed to Spiritual Nirvana because they hadn’t fallen to begin. My mind had silenced her, the patriarchy was speaking at the fear of the wrath of God, hush.

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The death that would have most significance on my life would occur in February of my 8th grade year. It had only been in the past two years that I have realized when my grandfather died there was a part of my soul that completely stopped spinning on it’s axis altogether. Like, everyone around me just kept going and their worlds kept moving, and mine just ceased. I am not certain this was in any way avoidable. I lived my whole life waiting for him to die. An amazing core memory that I can pull from is the resilience that comes from my extended family when we stay and rally behind one another. I knew I came from fighters and survivors. This memory comes from before I began to second guess myself as a woman and can only be described as pure bliss. About three and a half, my mother’s parents moved to a single-story small ranch which I grew to adore. The move took place while my grandfather was recovering from a heart transplant, when a hospital born infection led to a six-month stay and almost taking his life. He was one of thirteen siblings who had experienced getting behind each other when times of need arose. He witnessed the death of his own father by heart attack on their living room floor at age 11. This threw him into the tobacco addiction that led to his heart disease. The eldest three siblings, who were grown, took care of their mother and younger children. As a family, each time they would get together conversation produced would surround “who the next one to die” was. And my grandfather was next for my whole life until his death. A year and a half before my grandfather was taken, there was an accident where he was ‘supposed’ to die. He was listed as a DNR and it didn’t get passed on. He was on a ventilator and so angry to be. My science fair project that year was an investigation of which cigarette produced the most tar. I won. I can still see him coming into the school gym with a cane, only recently home from the hospital. Over the next year and half, I would spend as much time as possible with them. I remember sitting in the other room and feeling such mixed emotions. My grandfather was so hateful towards grandma out of the resentment he felt. He never wanted to be on a breathing tube again – the reason he was a DNR. I remember feeling such guilt to witness that but to not be able to help be grateful his was still there. The day he died was a Sunday. We were in church and someone happened to be in the office to take the call. We beat the ambulance to the hospital. After making the decision to tell them to stop working on him, I stood in the hallway as my mother, aunt, and grandmother went to be with him. The double doors swung open wide as I heard the flat line. The look on my mother’s face as she screamed at his death is ingrained on my memories. After a lifetime of fighting to save him, he was gone. And I was stuck like “what do we do now?” And a hole which had once been filled by his ever-present love was there for me to carry, wherever I was.

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There would be four more deaths that had incredible significance on my evolution as a grown woman. This includes the real drive to create more meaningful opportunities for individuals to participate in life after mental trials. It wasn’t until almost a decade later when I was pregnant for my first child that my mother would come to realize just how impactful her father’s death was on me. It is that same emptiness I felt that has allowed me to see a need in others. It allowed an ability for me to recognize authentic need and provide comfort through what was completely ignored for me. Outside of traumatic events, I think the hollows of grief of loss of an individual to be the most problematic in terms of finding a means to cope. The unexplainable and unresolvable nature of death creates increasing levels of inner turmoil. As we are observing a decrease in the levels of connections and a lack of meaning in relationships in modern society, I anticipate this will only become more dynamically difficult to navigate. The DSM 5 has given specific attention through the naming of Prolonged Grief Disorder (PGD) for those experiencing long-term and complicated grief. If one were to review my earliest Psychiatric assessment, there are clear indicators, this is what I was experiencing. If only they asked more of the right questions with curiosity and without agenda – maybe they would have gotten to know me and my needs. Maybe then the maltreatment they provided wouldn’t become something else I would have to one day learn to mourn.

#alternativeswithcare #melodramaticmeredith #dearmelodramaticmeredith #holisticcounselor #holisticcounseling #alternativemedicine #mindbody #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #suicideprevention

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#msw #socialwork #psychology #selfcare #selflove #communitycare #communitylove #mutualaid #neurodivergent #recovery #equality #equity #inclusivity #antioppresive #hope #supportsmallbusiness

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