Just Look At Those Eyes

Free Comments & Graphics

Being parent of your parent emotionally wrenching process

This isn't just the story of one petite brunette wtih terrific legs who was called "Shorty" by her husband, granddaughters and daughters. This is the story of millions of Americans caring for elderly parents and maneuvering in the murky worlds of medicine, law, hospitals, nursing homes, guilt, fear and family ties. You think it won't happen to you, but it can and does happen. We baby boomers are aging quickly, and our parents are going, going, gone. Next, our children will be handling our demise. And we are the biggest generation yet to hit this age. This article is a link to a several-part series of many things to consider, discussion boards, legal suggestions, and more.

read more | digg story

AFTER A PARENT'S DEATH, SOME PEOPLE BLOOM.

I could have written this myself. I was an only child, dominated by my mother. I spent a lifetime trying to get away from her, not just physically apart but freeing my mind of her condemntation and criticism. Many people are surprised when I say this. My mother was well liked by many. But few knew how she was "behind closed doors" with me. I personally allowed myself to bloom some years ago, even though she had not died, but the transformation to a halt when she purposefully moved to be near me. I summoned all the strength I had inside me to show her respect while still trying to be true to myself. I wasn't always successful. I began attending a church while she was my neighbor. I invited her; she told me it was a cult. It certainly was not, but that's the way she was. I rarely had the guts to go against her to her face. I tried to live my life and protect her from the things about me I knew she wouldn't like, my politics, my past addictions and later sobriety, my particular spiritual beliefs, and more. As the woman says below, it was a burden.

Another blooming period began when my mother slipped into Alzheimer's. But by this time, my health was wrecked, and I was losing my ability to work. Not much of a bloom developed, but at least I was free. She could no longer rip me with her tongue.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on whose perspective you see it from, I was recently unable to attend my mother's funeral. It was fortunate for me in that I didn't have to deal with it at all. Unfortunately that left my two older daughters to deal with it. And unfortunately, not being able to attend meant once again I could not visit my dear daughters and grandchildren.

I consider my life pretty much wasted. Too much energy went into resisting my mother. Not enough left for my life as a whole. But I am certainly not alone. Read on:

(LifeWire) -- The death of a mother or father can be emotionally wrenching -- particularly for children who had a difficult or complicated relationship with their parents. But for others, it can also be a time for personal growth and renewal.

Carolanne Seeger is one such person. A health-food-store manager from Philadelphia, Seeger says she finally felt free to be herself after her parents died. "I was my mother's best friend," she says, "and sometimes it was a burden."

Her parents' marriage wasn't great and they didn't have friends, so Seeger was their lifeline. "I was an only child and very co-dependent. I didn't have the courage to go against them, so I didn't spread my wings and fly when others did."

Seeger's experience isn't unusual, says New York City-based psychotherapist Jeanne Safer, author of the upcoming book "Death Benefits: How Losing a Parent Can Change an Adult's Life -- for the Better."

"We think it's unseemly to 'profit' from a parent's death, as though it means we're glad they're dead," Safer says. "But research shows that a majority of bereaved adults report significant improvements in their lives after they have grieved for their parents."

Emotional freedom
Writer Mark Louis Lehman of Cincinnati also blossomed after his dad passed away. Lehman's father, a salesman who grew up during the Depression and started working to support his family at age 16, had little respect for his son's artistic aspirations, and it was a bone of contention for them. After his father's death, though, things changed for Lehman.

He felt a new sense of freedom to pursue his goals. Immediately he took a job as a writer and copy editor for a music magazine. Then he wrote and published his first novel, "Mocky's Revinge," a thinly veiled account of his relationship with his father that touches on issues of revenge and forgiveness.

Safer says the intensity of the parent-child bond gives parents extraordinary emotional power over the feelings, thoughts, assumptions and identity of their children, and that it may take the death of a parent to allow adult children to feel liberated and do things they never dared when their parents were alive.

"They can understand their relationships with their parents in a radical new way now that they are no longer literally interacting with them," says Safer.

"Some (children) get married, some get divorced, some change jobs or become religious or atheists. They feel emotionally liberated when they no longer are dominated by someone else's values or have to be emotional caretakers ... the list goes on and on," she adds.

It doesn't work out that way for everyone, of course. A year after the death of her father, Debra Epstein, who works in museum education in New York, still feels conflicted about her relationship with him.

"It's complicated," she says. "I am less angry toward him than I was at various times in my life, but really I just feel a hole, no liberation."

Where to begin
It doesn't have to be that way, Safer says. In her book, she explains how to begin the process of transformation after the death of a parent:

• Make a conscious decision to address and learn from your parent's death.

• Allot some private time each day to think about their personalities and your relationship. Look at family photos and possessions that affect you, actively recall the best and the worst moments you had together, and try to remember your dreams about them.

• Construct a narrative of your parent's history as objectively as possible.

• Create an inventory of your parent's character, determining what to keep and what to discard.

• Think seriously about both the positive and negative impact your parent has had on your life. For example, recognize that both your sense of humor and your quick temper come from your father, or that both your pessimism and your sensitivity to other people's feelings are your mother's legacy.

• Remind yourself that you don't have to follow your parents' ideas of how you should look, feel or act ever again; you're free to question everything they taught you and decide what's right for you without worrying about offending them.

• Identify your guilt and realize it's healthy to feel liberated when even a beloved parent dies.

• Seek new experiences and relationships to support the changes you desire.

For Seeger, the transformation began with seeking therapy, which her mother never would have approved of while she was living.

"After my parents died, I could finally pursue what I wanted to for my own sake," she says.
LifeWire provides original and syndicated lifestyle content to Web publishers. Heidi Sarna is a Singapore-based freelancer who writes about travel and lifestyle issues.


Find this article at: http://edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/03/07/parents.death/index.html?imw=Y&iref=mpstoryemail

Canned Pancakes Make Breakfast As Easy as Spraying Whipped Cream

You want pancakes, but the idea of adding water to powder and stirring it around just seems like too much effort. Enter Batter Blaster, the pancake you just point and spray. Gastronomic genius? Or sign of the apocalypse? Shake the can firmly before spraying. Clean up: Rinse the nozzle under running water after using. The product is organic. Sounds kind of silly, but I'd try it!! Environmentalists worry about the product being in a can. But it is similar to cheese in a spray can and obviously the spray whipped creams. Still, it is funny.

read more | digg story

Migraine paintings by sufferers

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/02/28/opinion/20080222_MIGRAINE_SLIDESHOW_index.html?partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Absolutely accurate depictions. Those squiggly, jagged lines? Oh yeah.

Living tree sculpture aka arborscupture

Oh WOW! This is about the coolest stuff I have seen about gardening ever. This is something I'd just love to do if I had the land to do it on. Very, very cool. Check out the sites, please!!!

The last image is a Ficus House on Okinawa at this site: http://www.arborsmith.com There are many more very cool pictures there.

The other three images are from: http://www.pooktre.com

This is what their site says. They are from Australia.
In 1986 Peter had the idea of growing a chair. Nine years later Peter & Becky became partners. Pooktre was born. Together they have mastered the art they call Pooktre, which is the shaping of trees as they grow in predetermined designs. Some are intended for harvest to be high quality indoor furniture and others will remain living art.

NYT article: My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)

I hope you are as mad as I am once you read this article of ridiculous governmen meddling in our local farmers' markets, even as we realize food prices will be soaring this year.



March 1, 2008 Op-Ed Contributor My Forbidden Fruits (and Vegetables)By JACK HEDIN
Rushford, Minn.

IF you’ve stood in line at a farmers’ market recently, you know that the local food movement is thriving, to the point that small farmers are having a tough time keeping up with the demand.

But consumers who would like to be able to buy local fruits and vegetables not just at farmers’ markets, but also in the produce aisle of their supermarket, will be dismayed to learn that the federal government works deliberately and forcefully to prevent the local food movement from expanding. And the barriers that the United States Department of Agriculture has put in place will be extended when the farm bill that House and Senate negotiators are working on now goes into effect.

As a small organic vegetable producer in southern Minnesota, I know this because my efforts to expand production to meet regional demand have been severely hampered by the Agriculture Department’s commodity farm program. As I’ve looked into the politics behind those restrictions, I’ve come to understand that this is precisely the outcome that the program’s backers in California and Florida have in mind: they want to snuff out the local competition before it even gets started.

Last year, knowing that my own 100 acres wouldn’t be enough to meet demand, I rented 25 acres on two nearby corn farms. I plowed under the alfalfa hay that was established there, and planted watermelons, tomatoes and vegetables for natural-food stores and a community-supported agriculture program.

All went well until early July. That’s when the two landowners discovered that there was a problem with the local office of the Farm Service Administration, the Agriculture Department branch that runs the commodity farm program, and it was going to be expensive to fix.

The commodity farm program effectively forbids farmers who usually grow corn or the other four federally subsidized commodity crops (soybeans, rice, wheat and cotton) from trying fruit and vegetables. Because my watermelons and tomatoes had been planted on “corn base” acres, the Farm Service said, my landlords were out of compliance with the commodity program.

I’ve discovered that typically, a farmer who grows the forbidden fruits and vegetables on corn acreage not only has to give up his subsidy for the year on that acreage, he is also penalized the market value of the illicit crop, and runs the risk that those acres will be permanently ineligible for any subsidies in the future. (The penalties apply only to fruits and vegetables — if the farmer decides to grow another commodity crop, or even nothing at all, there’s no problem.)

In my case, that meant I paid my landlords $8,771 — for one season alone! And this was in a year when the high price of grain meant that only one of the government’s three crop-support programs was in effect; the total bill might be much worse in the future.

In addition, the bureaucratic entanglements that these two farmers faced at the Farm Service office were substantial. The federal farm program is making it next to impossible for farmers to rent land to me to grow fresh organic vegetables.

Why? Because national fruit and vegetable growers based in California, Florida and Texas fear competition from regional producers like myself. Through their control of Congressional delegations from those states, they have been able to virtually monopolize the country’s fresh produce markets.

That’s unfortunate, because small producers will have to expand on a significant scale across the nation if local foods are to continue to enter the mainstream as the public demands. My problems are just the tip of the iceberg.

Last year, Midwestern lawmakers proposed an amendment to the farm bill that would provide some farmers, though only those who supply processors, with some relief from the penalties that I’ve faced — for example, a soybean farmer who wanted to grow tomatoes would give up his usual subsidy on those acres but suffer none of the other penalties. However, the Congressional delegations from the big produce states made the death of what is known as Farm Flex their highest farm bill priority, and so it appears to be going nowhere, except perhaps as a tiny pilot program.

Who pays the price for this senselessness? Certainly I do, as a Midwestern vegetable farmer. But anyone trying to do what I do on, say, wheat acreage in the Dakotas, or rice acreage in Arkansas would face the same penalties. Local and regional fruit and vegetable production will languish anywhere that the commodity program has influence.

Ultimately of course, it is the consumer who will pay the greatest price for this — whether it is in the form of higher prices I will have to charge to absorb the government’s fines, or in the form of less access to the kind of fresh, local produce that the country is crying out for.

Farmers need the choice of what to plant on their farms, and consumers need more farms like mine producing high-quality fresh fruits and vegetables to meet increasing demand from local markets — without the federal government actively discouraging them.

Jack Hedin is a farmer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/01/opinion/01hedin.html?ex=1362114000&en=798dd09f9dd9f25b&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink