No Pledge of Allegiance or National Anthem Required

I fully support being proud of who you are. I support loving your land and culture and customs. The beautiful varities of food, colors, faces, sounds and feel of life. I'm sure other people in other countries do too.
I love our purple mountains and shining seas and the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I know other people want it too.

But freedom, oh my friends, freedom is but a shadow of the farce it feeds. And people are eating it up, all that freedom. The pot of gold that never is.

You are not free. You are bought. Your time, your blood, your obedience, and your support. The government appreciates your undying patriotism. There's nothing they like better than to know you're working hard for them, and you'll die for them.

But know this, regardless of every single right I have, whether I have to remind anyone or not what they are, I will not take up Arms with anyone, in a fight to the death, over a piece of clothe and a patch of dirt. I won't kill for your land, your oil, your gold or your minerals.

And I sure as shit am not taking an oath to die for any man, any country, any government, or any patch of dirt.

The definition of patriotism. 

I fully support NOT dying for a flag (if you move to another country, do you swear to die for that flag? What if you're a dual citizen, and they both go to war? My God, who will you die for?!)

I fully support NOT PLEDGING MY LIFE TO A CORRUPT GOVERNMENT.

I fully support NOT being police stated, while men of badge, corrupt or not, who took an oath to serve and protect, not shoot to kill innocent people, without reprimand nor do I support people killing each other period.
Regardless of the reasons that they shove in our faces, the wars they've started and ended, trampling the very rights of the bodies of YOUR family members that these few elite incite, wars and profit, while feeding on your groveling!


Who owns you?


I fully support the TEN COMMANDMENTS.
Especially those 2 about NOT killing, and NOT worshiping an idol. FYI That includes any war involving killing, and any 'thing' you pledge your life to.

I fully support anyone who stands up to injustice.

I fully support the opposition to tyrannical leadership that is clearly dictatorship, and we have a right to overturn our own government when it no longer serves the best interest of the people. IT'S IN THE CONSTITUTION, not far from the FREEDOM OF SPEECH, AND FREEDOM OF RELIGION.


I fully support ANYONE WHO IS DAMN TIRED OF THIS CORPORATE RAN, MEDIA FUELED HATRED AND GREEDY GOVERNMENT, THAT HAS YOU CONVINCED YOU SHOULD DIE FOR IT.

IF YOU are OK with being FORCED BY LAW to be one religion, to have one belief, to have no choices, to have no (real sense of) freedom, then YOU go move TO THAT COUNTRY, since you're all cool with oppressing and judging people and shit.



You must have forgotten the many men imprisoned for refusing to be drafted.

You must have forgotten how the Vietnam War soldiers were spit on when they returned.

You must have forgotten that they are a huge part of the disabled homeless veteran population that the government ALSO FORGOT ABOUT.

But I bet they said The Pledge of Allegiance and stood for The National Anthem, and everybody's awesomely patriotic with leaving home, and dying on OTHER dirt, get it?!


Ask not what your country can do for you, but what your country IS doing to you!

Happy Birthday to my lost child

Today, July 31st, marks the 26th anniversary of the day I lost my first baby. I had a few miscarriages after that, a few perfect pregnancies followed years later by surprise twins.

But nothing, not since that day, has ever come close to the emptiness I felt leaving the hospital.
I didn't leave in a wheelchair holding a baby.
I didn't go to recovery and call for a nurse to bring my baby.
I didn't get balloons or a card.
I didn't even get privacy for my mourning. I was forced to cry quietly while the woman next to me complained about her sore throat from her tonsils being removed.

I was 16. A delinquent. An unwed teenager having unprotected sex. The father, a 19 year old who figured out the 3 year difference meant legal trouble for him. No male guidance for me then.

My first taste of physical abuse. The violent kind. The kind of violence that causes a desperate disgusting man to do whatever it took to end a criminal pregnancy.

He made it his mission to punch, elbow and kick me in the stomach until I started bleeding, then dropped me off at my mom's front door and never came back.

She was exhausted from trying to control me. I was exhausted from trying to survive in my own Hell.

All I could say was "Mom, I'm pregnant. And I'm bleeding."
My single, hard working mom had to embarrassingly tell her boss why she won't be there in 15 minutes.

The whole 20 minute ride to the hospital I'm convincing myself that it's ok. It'll stop. Everything's ok.

I'm casually given a private room in the ER. And that's when contractions really started. Full on labor. I freak out and stand up to ring the nurse and blood is dripping all over the floor. I scream.

Doctors and nurses rush in. They force me back down and they tell me to open my legs. Im scared. Just leave it be, i think. He takes one look at me, reaches down and puts the tiniest most perfect little baby, in a large jar, and hands it to me.

 "I'm sorry your baby died."

A painful D & C followed, along with a wail that cried for pain, cried for my baby, cried for my poor mom, cried for life.

And that was it. My mother. My mother stood there watching the whole thing. Watched her dead grand baby come out. The look of loving admiration, the look of a proud parent, the look of unconditional love faded from her face.
Her little girl was gone. And she never came back.

The walk down the long corridor that day will forever be imprinted. I felt nothing. Yesterday, I felt baby hormones. I felt life.
Now, I felt empty. An empty I've never been able to explain, nor have I felt since.

No one got me help. No one pressed charges. No one said anything. No one bothered. It seemed to everyone that a "problem handled itself".

I was a problem that was better when I went away. I had to go to pysch. Ya, a 14 day hold should fix that right up.

I didn't realize it then, but that was Domestic Violence. It didn't matter anymore. The problem was gone.
I came home and pretended like nothing happened, just like everyone else.


Miscarriages, perfect pregnancies, surprise twins totalling five kids later..... doesn't replace the empty I felt that day. The empty that I feel every single July 31st, when I mourn a baby that never came. My first pregnancy.

That was a day that 2 women lost their daughters.
My baby girl died.
And I was no longer my mother's baby girl.

Discipline from love, or fear of anger?

            I once argued to my twins' biological father, gladly absent for many years, that you couldn't make the infants/toddlers go to sleep. It wasn't possible. They sleep and wake when they want, and if there was some trick to it, I would have heard about it somehow.
He abusively assured me it was.  And by golly he was right. If you, in fact, spank them repeatedly every time they open their eyes, they will indeed learn to keep them shut! Toddlers in diapers.

The abuse had come to a head. It involved them on a scale that would tip if I let it continue. I was gone very shortly after.

My children were going to be loving, respectful young men. They were going to be raised to obey, out of fear of disappointment, not because of fear itself.

Every disciplinary action made should involve a self-imposed question. "Am I angry?"

Your children will learn from actions made out of thought based on 'I'm doing this to protect you. I'm trying to teach you right from wrong. I don't want you to get hurt.'

Anger teaches 'If you disobey, I'll be the one that hurts you.' Fear.

Anger and fear will be the driving force of young developing minds trying to learn their way in the world.
It will breed.

There will never be any tolerance from anyone using fear to teach my kids an example. Fear of failure, fear of disappointment, fear of getting hurt are natural fears. There is no reason to install fear of pain from a parent. I do not want my children to fear being hurt by me.