I'm going to admit I love social media! I became a social worker and therapist largely because I'm curious about other people and like to know what's behind the curtain. Social media affords me the opportunity to peek behind many curtains, and see what's going on with others.
Smartphones offer this availability 24/7. On my lunch break. During halftime. In the middle of the night when I wake up. Which is awesome, except that if I'm trying to attend to 800 people, I'm missing the ones right in front of me.
I signed up for Facebook in November 2004, during my first term at OSU. Since that time, the longest I've ever gone without checking it was the 2 weeks in 2005 I was in Germany.
So, I decided to try an experiment. I decided I wanted to put forth more effort this Advent into making it truly a preparation for the coming of the Christ Child. What better distraction to eliminate than Facebook.
I put up a post about it on the evening of 12/4, and changed my profile picture to let folks know how to contact me if necessary. The rest of this blog post will serve as a log of what my Facebook detox is like.
12/5: I wake up feeling smug and proud for having deleted the Facebook app from my phone last night. I simultaneously experience a strong urge to check how many "likes" my last post received. I realize I'm contemplating this as I am struggling to even move toward getting out of bed.
12/6: After a 5k in the morning, it's a lazy sunday. I'm looking for excuses to log in out of boredom, but successfully resist. I had assumed I'd have serious FOMO by this point, but so far all my urges have simply been related to boredom. We'll see how it goes tomorrow when I return to work!
12/12: Had a bit of withdrawal, maybe? I don't feel especially anxious or constantly pining to check facebook, but when I think about looking at it and seeing peoples' holiday related posts and whatnot, I do get curious and experience urges to check it all out. Still successfully resisting.
12/13: I was reading a buzzfeed article, and saw a link to what I thought was another article... but it was a Facebook page. I clicked away, but not until I saw that I had SEVENTY TWO notifications. I mean, it's only been 8 days, and I haven't been on so it can't be replies and likes to recent comments and updates! This seems unusual, but I'm sure it's good commentary about just how much we interact this way!
12/15: Ohmygosh. So many things I want to post on Facebook today.
-IN LIKE FLINT!!! I made it into my fantasy league playoffs!! First stop: playing my second cousin Charles. I'm undefeated against him so far, for 2 seasons. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. JUST WIN BABY!! Shivakamini Somakandarkram!!!!
-I've been registered independent since 2005. Today, I registered as a Republican for one reason: vote in the primaries for whoever has the best chance to defeat Trump.
-As such, I'm watching the GOP debate. Surprisingly, my favorite is Jeb Bush, however, he seems to be the most moderate so that's not that surprising. If this were SNL's Celebrity Jeopardy, Carson would be French Stuart ("Threeve...") and Trump would be Turd Ferguson ("Heh. It's a funny name.").
12/16: Urge of the day: Checking to see how many notifications I have! Successfully resisted. Giving into that kind of temptation is a slippery slope. I am kind of starting to have FOMO. Whose big news am I missing out on? Trying to re center and be more present to those around me. Why is this getting harder instead of easier???
12/22: Now this is getting easier. Maybe it's because things have been so busy. I have a vague sense of missing what's going on in the world of facebook, and am realizing I'm often using it as a main source of local/national/world news update. Maybe I should start seeking out the news on my own. In any case, I actually don't necessarily feel that my life is all that much better without facebook, nor do I think it's worse. We'll find out in what ways these things change on or after Christmas when I log back in! To be honest, I feel pretty proud of myself for resisting so far.
Saturday, December 5, 2015
Saturday, November 28, 2015
Enough
Growing up, I think that my teachers used to think I was "most likely to succeed." There was usually a kid or two in my class, at least, smarter than me, but I was more motivated. Indeed, I might be the only person from my small grade school class with a Bachelor's degree.
This may seem like an advantage, but it kind of made me stick out like a sore thumb. I had a tendency to be kind of a teacher's pet, but it was a role I hated and tried to reject where I could. My grade school was so tiny--one class for every grade, and 13 people in my 8th grade graduating class. I did not fit in well and high school was such a welcome relief.
By the time I got to high school, I think I had conditioned myself not to stand out, to just fit in. And I did, I found a large group of like-minded girls, I joined the swim team, I was liked well enough by most people when I interacted with them, just not particularly noticed. I say this mainly in terms of academic performance. I took some advanced classes and got decent enough grades, but I never pushed myself. A's and B's were good enough. And I liked it that way. I was happy. I actually mostly really enjoyed high school.
Not standing out, I think, meant I didn't get a whole lot of attention from boys, and attention from boys was something I definitely wanted. For a short period, I had a boyfriend from the next town over, and he was, and is, a nice guy. He eventually broke up with me, seemingly out of the blue, for a reason I didn't understand. I since have come to think that I was just his "Natalie," minus the Krav Maga/aggressiveness. (If you aren't a HIMYM fan, you should be, but I'll help you out by pointing you to the wikipedia article about the episode I'm talking about here.) But I had always felt he was out of my league, there were actually a couple girls from his school who hated me for being with him, so at the time I just figured I wasn't pretty or skinny enough for him. I wasn't even mad, just sad, resigned. In retrospect, this was an unfair thing to think about him, he's a good guy, I just thought about it in a very egocentric way.
Unfortunately, I think toward the end of my high school career and leading into my 2 years in community college, my strategy of not standing out started to work against me. In the first place, it was a completely unconscious strategy, plus I think it also seeped into areas of my life other than academics. I had conditioned myself to be liked at all costs, at the expense of ever standing out. However, I had other interpretations of my lack of male attention. A few things were at play here: First, I had believed that I was a little overweight since I was a child. By "since I was a child" I mean like...4 or 5. When I was very young, it kind of amused me, if I remember correctly. I felt bigger and more grown-up than my peers. However, around age ten, when I started to develop earlier than my peers, it started to become distressing.
Now, I was certainly never a 10 or anything close to it, but when I look back on pictures in high school, I was actually cute enough. I don't think anyone looked at me and saw "chubby" but that's definitely what I saw, as I think many teen girls do. I blamed my failure to land the much-desired boyfriend/male attention on this apparent chubbiness/unsightliness.
By the time I got to my junior year of college, I could do no more at a community college and I transferred to OSU. I attended a barbecue the first night I moved into my new cooperative house, but the next day I didn't eat anything all day. I befriended my next door neighbor, with whom I had a brief and miserable relationship that first term, and he got me into going to the gym with him. Soon I was eating very little and going to the gym very much. I lost over 20 pounds in my first 2 months at college. I started really liking the way I looked but came pretty obsessed with maintaining it, since after I ended the relationship with the neighbor, I still wasn't really getting the attention I wanted from the opposite sex. I was always striving to lose that next 5 pounds, thinking that would really be the ticket, I'd be thin enough, and then the guys would start noticing me. Eventually, as you can imagine, this took a rough toll on my health. That February, I made myself so sick that I passed out--twice--while showering one day. This scared the heck out of me so I called my parents and asked them to come get me. I spent about 6 days at their place, in bed, drinking gatorade and eating frozen yogurt. It was a critical event that led to a turning point in my behavior over the next several following months, but it would take years for my mindset to follow suit. The good news is that after coming through that, I think I see myself more clearly and I have a much more balanced attitude about body image. In fairness, I also got married and my husband has a lot to do with my change in attitude about body image.
After the short-lived boyfriend in college, I went through a pretty significant dry spell in the romantic department. There was the brief...thing...with the guy who was in seminary studying to be a priest who called me two to three times per day and confessed his "love" for me while drunk one time (and subsequently denied it the next morning), but it was pretty stupid of me to get involved with that in the first place. I was still in the process of figuring out how to eat normally again, but in retrospect, I was probably in a more stable place in life than he was at the time.
I started off a real career in a job I was too mentally young for, and it made me grow up pretty fast with no lack of growing pains. There were a lot of worries about getting fired and having it ruin my chances of getting into grad school, and therefore my future in my dream job (private practice counseling) forever. To deal with this, and to deal with the fact that I still wasn't getting any male attention (and felt like I had missed my "window" of finding someone in college) I drank a lot on the weekends. In my mind, I was just having "fun" with friends, but when friends started confronting me the morning after to tell me that it worried them when I would be blacked-out sobbing about what a "horrible" caseworker I was, and that maybe I should look into some counseling, I started realizing that I might be trying to escape from my emotions.
I have journals filled from times I sat in front of adoration, begging God to find me a husband. One time, I did a 9-day novena where I tried to seriously consider religious life to be sure I wasn't missing my calling, even though that's not remotely what I wanted. During that time I managed to (again) get nearly black-out drunk at a Halloween party and kiss a 19 year old named Melvin. I was 23, but in my defense he looked older. (Maybe it was the beer goggles.) (I was pretty horrified when I realized that "I graduated in 2006" meant from high school.) I decided not to count that day in my novena so I guess it actually went for 10 days.
I was getting better at my job and finding my confidence, and yet, I started to worry that my career was going to be my vocation and that I was going to always be alone. I started making really silly bargains with God, like if he just sent me a nice Catholic husband that I would be happy and never ask for anything again. I didn't put it in those words, but that was basically the spirit of it.
At the same time, toward the end of 2008, I got this idea that maybe I was going to just be single for the rest of my life and that the best thing I could do would be to find a way to accept it and be happy with it. So I started thinking about what I would want out of life. My best friend turned to the internet to find love. I was lying on her bed while she was looking through CatholicMatch.com, and she said "Oooh, this one's perfect!" Bored with the whole idea, I said "Oh, message him then." She said "No, not perfect for me, perfect for YOU." I stood up and walked over, and looked at this profile she was showing me. He was an engineer (money, CHECK!) who had studied at OSU (Beaver, CHECK!), and he was in a wetsuit holding up a kayak (outdoorsy, CHECK!). He was also a "7/7" (agreed with 7 core Catholic teachings), SUPERCHECK.
Based on this one guy, I paid a month's subscription fee, created a whole profile, and sent him a message.
He never messaged me back.
As it turns out, I was supposed to sign up for CatholicMatch, but not for Kayak Boy. (Whose name I cannot for the life of me remember, nor is it important.)
A few days into 2009, some random guy took a quiz/survey/thingy I had on my profile, with playful and intriguing answers. I checked his profile...good looking, ambitious, and a 7/7! Great! Except...he lived WHERE? Yeah, not moving to Illinois. After a little bit of (unusually bold for me, since I was assuming this would never work) flirting, I basically told him "Well, this has been fun but I want to be upfront that I'm never permanently moving away from Oregon. Have fun!" He turned around to announce that he felt no need to permanently stay in Illinois and was open to other options. He finished up graduate school in the coming months and started telling me he was applying for jobs in Oregon.
We were not officially in a relationship at this point. After a good 10 years of twistedly convincing myself that the lack of male attention meant that I was unworthy of it, it took some coaxing on Zach's part to un-convince me. Believe me, I didn't make it easy. He worked for it. But after the better part of a year, we finally met in person which confirmed what he'd let himself believe for a while and what I'd opened my eyes to over the preceding months: this was meant to be.
My prayers turned from the bargain of "Find me a husband, God!" to "Help him find a job here so we can actually be together!" Our relationship was quite long-distance for about a year and a half before that happened. In less than a year after he moved out, we were engaged, and then we got married.
Meanwhile, I finished graduate school and my career took off. I've worked hard but I've also found some lucky breaks. I have a full-time job that I love, and I have a side project working for a private group practice, which is everything I'd always hoped it would be. Over time, all these things I've desperately wanted and begun to believe I wouldn't have, have started to come true.
So the rhyme goes, "first comes love, then comes marriage then comes..." and you know how the rest goes. And what's funny is that after bargaining with God that I wouldn't ask him for anything more if I could just have a nice Catholic husband, it turns out I'm being the stereotype of a woman. I feel a little as though I would never feel satisfied if I wasn't able to have babies. And as it happens, I'm not as in control of that as I'd like to be. This past summer I was noticing that there were some things happening in my body that just weren't right, and when I talked them over with a doctor, she gave me a diagnosis of PCOS. Luckily this is treatable (doc thinks my case is actually especially mild), and I'm already on some medication for it. It's not fertility medication, perse, it's more of an attempt to help my body heal itself so I can be more fertile on my own. All side effects have been pleasant and welcome so far. (The shedding of most of my "grad school weight" has been key among them! An addendum to that: the body image struggles are so far behind me that this is just "nice," not "life-consuming.")
Still, I'm not pregnant yet, and every facebook announcement is starting to feel like my female friends are getting pregnant at me. I went to the grocery store the other day and the checkout girl kept complaining about pregnancy symptoms. I was barely holding back tears, I wanted to tell her to stop complaining and be grateful her body isn't broken like mine.
Most women with PCOS get pregnant eventually, but given that I'm over 31 and a half, "eventually" doesn't seem soon enough. I want more than one baby. I ideally want 3, and I'm starting to feel as though I've run out of time to do so, even though I know mathematically speaking that's not entirely true. Still, there are definitely people who struggle with fertility and never get there. In my brain, I'm already at the point where I'll never get there, and I'm mentally preparing for a life of childlessness, when I still have several years to make this work. What should give me hope is all the times I've believed God did not want me to have what I wanted to have, and then I got it anyway, in a way that was perfect. How my mind is choosing to think about this instead is that I've used up all my wishes. That I have so much when so many have so little, and I will just have to deal with not having babies. It makes me want to throw something at God and say "What do you want? I'll give up my career and live under a bridge. That doesn't matter, I want to trade that one in for a baby."
I really have no great way to end this post. I have a really wonderful life with a great family, great job, and doting husband. I am having a hard time loving and missing some little people who don't exist yet, and whom I'm not sure ever will, and watching other people get to that point in life. I see how happy it makes them, and I also know that raising kids is really hard, which must mean that it's really, really worth it. And I just want it too.
This may seem like an advantage, but it kind of made me stick out like a sore thumb. I had a tendency to be kind of a teacher's pet, but it was a role I hated and tried to reject where I could. My grade school was so tiny--one class for every grade, and 13 people in my 8th grade graduating class. I did not fit in well and high school was such a welcome relief.
By the time I got to high school, I think I had conditioned myself not to stand out, to just fit in. And I did, I found a large group of like-minded girls, I joined the swim team, I was liked well enough by most people when I interacted with them, just not particularly noticed. I say this mainly in terms of academic performance. I took some advanced classes and got decent enough grades, but I never pushed myself. A's and B's were good enough. And I liked it that way. I was happy. I actually mostly really enjoyed high school.
Not standing out, I think, meant I didn't get a whole lot of attention from boys, and attention from boys was something I definitely wanted. For a short period, I had a boyfriend from the next town over, and he was, and is, a nice guy. He eventually broke up with me, seemingly out of the blue, for a reason I didn't understand. I since have come to think that I was just his "Natalie," minus the Krav Maga/aggressiveness. (If you aren't a HIMYM fan, you should be, but I'll help you out by pointing you to the wikipedia article about the episode I'm talking about here.) But I had always felt he was out of my league, there were actually a couple girls from his school who hated me for being with him, so at the time I just figured I wasn't pretty or skinny enough for him. I wasn't even mad, just sad, resigned. In retrospect, this was an unfair thing to think about him, he's a good guy, I just thought about it in a very egocentric way.
Unfortunately, I think toward the end of my high school career and leading into my 2 years in community college, my strategy of not standing out started to work against me. In the first place, it was a completely unconscious strategy, plus I think it also seeped into areas of my life other than academics. I had conditioned myself to be liked at all costs, at the expense of ever standing out. However, I had other interpretations of my lack of male attention. A few things were at play here: First, I had believed that I was a little overweight since I was a child. By "since I was a child" I mean like...4 or 5. When I was very young, it kind of amused me, if I remember correctly. I felt bigger and more grown-up than my peers. However, around age ten, when I started to develop earlier than my peers, it started to become distressing.
Now, I was certainly never a 10 or anything close to it, but when I look back on pictures in high school, I was actually cute enough. I don't think anyone looked at me and saw "chubby" but that's definitely what I saw, as I think many teen girls do. I blamed my failure to land the much-desired boyfriend/male attention on this apparent chubbiness/unsightliness.
By the time I got to my junior year of college, I could do no more at a community college and I transferred to OSU. I attended a barbecue the first night I moved into my new cooperative house, but the next day I didn't eat anything all day. I befriended my next door neighbor, with whom I had a brief and miserable relationship that first term, and he got me into going to the gym with him. Soon I was eating very little and going to the gym very much. I lost over 20 pounds in my first 2 months at college. I started really liking the way I looked but came pretty obsessed with maintaining it, since after I ended the relationship with the neighbor, I still wasn't really getting the attention I wanted from the opposite sex. I was always striving to lose that next 5 pounds, thinking that would really be the ticket, I'd be thin enough, and then the guys would start noticing me. Eventually, as you can imagine, this took a rough toll on my health. That February, I made myself so sick that I passed out--twice--while showering one day. This scared the heck out of me so I called my parents and asked them to come get me. I spent about 6 days at their place, in bed, drinking gatorade and eating frozen yogurt. It was a critical event that led to a turning point in my behavior over the next several following months, but it would take years for my mindset to follow suit. The good news is that after coming through that, I think I see myself more clearly and I have a much more balanced attitude about body image. In fairness, I also got married and my husband has a lot to do with my change in attitude about body image.
After the short-lived boyfriend in college, I went through a pretty significant dry spell in the romantic department. There was the brief...thing...with the guy who was in seminary studying to be a priest who called me two to three times per day and confessed his "love" for me while drunk one time (and subsequently denied it the next morning), but it was pretty stupid of me to get involved with that in the first place. I was still in the process of figuring out how to eat normally again, but in retrospect, I was probably in a more stable place in life than he was at the time.
I started off a real career in a job I was too mentally young for, and it made me grow up pretty fast with no lack of growing pains. There were a lot of worries about getting fired and having it ruin my chances of getting into grad school, and therefore my future in my dream job (private practice counseling) forever. To deal with this, and to deal with the fact that I still wasn't getting any male attention (and felt like I had missed my "window" of finding someone in college) I drank a lot on the weekends. In my mind, I was just having "fun" with friends, but when friends started confronting me the morning after to tell me that it worried them when I would be blacked-out sobbing about what a "horrible" caseworker I was, and that maybe I should look into some counseling, I started realizing that I might be trying to escape from my emotions.
I have journals filled from times I sat in front of adoration, begging God to find me a husband. One time, I did a 9-day novena where I tried to seriously consider religious life to be sure I wasn't missing my calling, even though that's not remotely what I wanted. During that time I managed to (again) get nearly black-out drunk at a Halloween party and kiss a 19 year old named Melvin. I was 23, but in my defense he looked older. (Maybe it was the beer goggles.) (I was pretty horrified when I realized that "I graduated in 2006" meant from high school.) I decided not to count that day in my novena so I guess it actually went for 10 days.
I was getting better at my job and finding my confidence, and yet, I started to worry that my career was going to be my vocation and that I was going to always be alone. I started making really silly bargains with God, like if he just sent me a nice Catholic husband that I would be happy and never ask for anything again. I didn't put it in those words, but that was basically the spirit of it.
At the same time, toward the end of 2008, I got this idea that maybe I was going to just be single for the rest of my life and that the best thing I could do would be to find a way to accept it and be happy with it. So I started thinking about what I would want out of life. My best friend turned to the internet to find love. I was lying on her bed while she was looking through CatholicMatch.com, and she said "Oooh, this one's perfect!" Bored with the whole idea, I said "Oh, message him then." She said "No, not perfect for me, perfect for YOU." I stood up and walked over, and looked at this profile she was showing me. He was an engineer (money, CHECK!) who had studied at OSU (Beaver, CHECK!), and he was in a wetsuit holding up a kayak (outdoorsy, CHECK!). He was also a "7/7" (agreed with 7 core Catholic teachings), SUPERCHECK.
Based on this one guy, I paid a month's subscription fee, created a whole profile, and sent him a message.
He never messaged me back.
As it turns out, I was supposed to sign up for CatholicMatch, but not for Kayak Boy. (Whose name I cannot for the life of me remember, nor is it important.)
A few days into 2009, some random guy took a quiz/survey/thingy I had on my profile, with playful and intriguing answers. I checked his profile...good looking, ambitious, and a 7/7! Great! Except...he lived WHERE? Yeah, not moving to Illinois. After a little bit of (unusually bold for me, since I was assuming this would never work) flirting, I basically told him "Well, this has been fun but I want to be upfront that I'm never permanently moving away from Oregon. Have fun!" He turned around to announce that he felt no need to permanently stay in Illinois and was open to other options. He finished up graduate school in the coming months and started telling me he was applying for jobs in Oregon.
We were not officially in a relationship at this point. After a good 10 years of twistedly convincing myself that the lack of male attention meant that I was unworthy of it, it took some coaxing on Zach's part to un-convince me. Believe me, I didn't make it easy. He worked for it. But after the better part of a year, we finally met in person which confirmed what he'd let himself believe for a while and what I'd opened my eyes to over the preceding months: this was meant to be.
My prayers turned from the bargain of "Find me a husband, God!" to "Help him find a job here so we can actually be together!" Our relationship was quite long-distance for about a year and a half before that happened. In less than a year after he moved out, we were engaged, and then we got married.
Meanwhile, I finished graduate school and my career took off. I've worked hard but I've also found some lucky breaks. I have a full-time job that I love, and I have a side project working for a private group practice, which is everything I'd always hoped it would be. Over time, all these things I've desperately wanted and begun to believe I wouldn't have, have started to come true.
So the rhyme goes, "first comes love, then comes marriage then comes..." and you know how the rest goes. And what's funny is that after bargaining with God that I wouldn't ask him for anything more if I could just have a nice Catholic husband, it turns out I'm being the stereotype of a woman. I feel a little as though I would never feel satisfied if I wasn't able to have babies. And as it happens, I'm not as in control of that as I'd like to be. This past summer I was noticing that there were some things happening in my body that just weren't right, and when I talked them over with a doctor, she gave me a diagnosis of PCOS. Luckily this is treatable (doc thinks my case is actually especially mild), and I'm already on some medication for it. It's not fertility medication, perse, it's more of an attempt to help my body heal itself so I can be more fertile on my own. All side effects have been pleasant and welcome so far. (The shedding of most of my "grad school weight" has been key among them! An addendum to that: the body image struggles are so far behind me that this is just "nice," not "life-consuming.")
Still, I'm not pregnant yet, and every facebook announcement is starting to feel like my female friends are getting pregnant at me. I went to the grocery store the other day and the checkout girl kept complaining about pregnancy symptoms. I was barely holding back tears, I wanted to tell her to stop complaining and be grateful her body isn't broken like mine.
Most women with PCOS get pregnant eventually, but given that I'm over 31 and a half, "eventually" doesn't seem soon enough. I want more than one baby. I ideally want 3, and I'm starting to feel as though I've run out of time to do so, even though I know mathematically speaking that's not entirely true. Still, there are definitely people who struggle with fertility and never get there. In my brain, I'm already at the point where I'll never get there, and I'm mentally preparing for a life of childlessness, when I still have several years to make this work. What should give me hope is all the times I've believed God did not want me to have what I wanted to have, and then I got it anyway, in a way that was perfect. How my mind is choosing to think about this instead is that I've used up all my wishes. That I have so much when so many have so little, and I will just have to deal with not having babies. It makes me want to throw something at God and say "What do you want? I'll give up my career and live under a bridge. That doesn't matter, I want to trade that one in for a baby."
I really have no great way to end this post. I have a really wonderful life with a great family, great job, and doting husband. I am having a hard time loving and missing some little people who don't exist yet, and whom I'm not sure ever will, and watching other people get to that point in life. I see how happy it makes them, and I also know that raising kids is really hard, which must mean that it's really, really worth it. And I just want it too.
Sunday, October 4, 2015
I have seen the enemy, and it is us.
Recap: A horrifying tragedy happened in my home state this past week, on a community college campus. A shooter opened fire on campus leaving 9 others dead and many more injured\
Then more tragedy ensued when (predictably) everyone in Oregon (perhaps slight exaggeration) began nasty infighting which was unnecessarily rigid, refused to listen, and perplexingly, all seemingly focused on the idea that their one solution was correct.
What is really weird about that last part is that no suggestion I have heard is mutually exclusive toward other points of view. I don't know why we have this idea that a problem this complex has a really simple solution, but it is crazy.
The polarized viewpoints lead to no solutions happening, no action being taken. This is not like other political issues in which two sides actually want a different outcome. If you read no other part of this post, please read the following line, as it is really important:
WE ALL WANT THE SAME THING WHICH IS FOR THE SCARY MASS SHOOTINGS TO STOP.
This will never happen until we decide it is worth working together with people we normally oppose. Listen carefully to me: If you refuse to hear out your fellow man, I sure hope you are ok with having blood on your hands. If we can't start working together, this trend will continue and get worse.
You will lose NOTHING if you stop one time to listen to someone else's ideas on this subject without spending that time formulating a response in your head. You ONLY stand to gain. What are you afraid of? That they will change your mind? If that's the case, you may want to re-think your position.
The rest of this post will be divided into three different major parts, all with sub-parts. Here is an outline to help you avoid any boring parts you don't care about.
A. Discussion of major proposed solutions
1. Gun control or not
2. Improved mental health care
3. Empathy/improved care for others/community
B. Factors Which Predict Violence, as understood by someone who works with a bunch of risk-focused psychologists (but is not personally a psychologist, so this is professionally absorbed and applied knowledge).
C. Concluding Statements.
Ok, buckle up because here we go.
A. Discussion of major proposed solutions
There seems to be a weird argument going on about gun control vs. improved mental health care, with a third party chiming in and saying it all boils down to loving each other more. Spoiler alert: this is part of my conclusion, but why aren't we looking at MORE THAN ONE SOLUTION. We could do them all. At the same time. Really, we could, America. We're cool like that.
1. Gun Control vs. We Should All Have Guns
So, I had some opinions about this that were based on assumptions and hunches, and fully admitted that I knew little about how much access to guns contributed to violence. The republicans and democrats will tell you different things but they each have agendas so I wasn't willing to listen to any of their statistics/spins on their statistics. And I know Wikipedia isn't the #1 most reliable source ever, but it is a good place to find information that can't be polarized too far one way, plus it's a great place to get lots of stats.
I started out by comparing each state's or district's rate of gun murder to their rate of gun ownership. I didn't do this in the most statistically illuminating way. I scored each state/district (hereby just referred to as "state") by rate of gun murders, giving 51 to the state with the highest rate, 1 the state with the lowest rate. Then I did the same thing with gun ownership. I even made a super unsophisticated graph of it which may not make much sense to others (plus it's kind of clunky) but I'd be happy to show it to others if you're interested.
The results were disappointingly very inconclusive. Supporting the side that controlling gun ownership increases gun violence was Washington DC. DC ranked the highest among rate of gun murders, and lowest among gun ownership, and there was also Alaska which ranked very high in gun ownership and very low in gun murders.
On the flip side, we have Hawaii which is both low in gun ownership and gun murders, and Mississippi and Louisiana, which both rank high in gun ownership and high in gun murders.
Looking over the list of states, I'm noticing some regional trends. In the south, there tends to be high gun ownership and high gun murder. In very sparse states (Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas) there tends to be both high gun ownership and low gun murder. In more laid-back places like Colorado, Washington, New Hampshire, Hawaii, there tends to be low gun ownership and low gun murder. And in densely populated states with very busy and fast paced cities such as DC, Delaware, New York, Florida, Illinois, there tends to be low gun ownership but high gun murder.
What this suggests to me is that the answer to how we regulate gun ownership must be much more nuanced than "yes" or "no," and the answer needs to be localized to the local culture. If you live in rural Alaska, you need a gun to protect yourself from wild animals--to suggest otherwise is honestly pretty crazy. On the flip side, to suggest we need to bring more guns to Hawaii to make Hawaii safer is equally crazy. Do we need to encourage more gun ownership in places like DC, and less gun ownership in places like Louisiana? Those suggestions don't really sound right to me either. Am I proposing that we need to leave things how they are? NO. I'm proposing we need to bring in some cultural anthropologists/sociologists to look at how guns are part of local cultures and how people can own guns safely, because I do not believe there is a one size fits all answer here.
*I would be happy to talk about knife control when we face an epidemic of mass stabbings. So far I haven't heard any. If I'm just totally in the dark about this awful epidemic, please let me know.
2. Improve Mental Health Care
A MOST IMPORTANT POINT: Sufferers of mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than they are to act violently. Sometimes being mentally ill can lead to violent behavior, but in the vast majority of cases it does not.
I hear this usually thrown out as a real solution, but I do sometimes hear it as an attempt to deflect from needing to look at how we own guns. I don't want to lump people together, but I do know lots of people who support gun rights who also do not typically support additional funding for this kind of thing. As someone who expended thousands of dollars and several years of my life to become a mental health professional, I wonder sometimes if these people think I should be volunteering all my time instead of making a living ;). Good mental health care comes with a monetary price, because it is something that has value for society at large, so I just want to be clear about that.
I usually hear 3 diagnoses discussed as possible reasons for violence, and though there are more, I am going to focus on short descriptions of each of these, as well as what it can take to treat them, just so we are aware of what it means to invest in better care for each. (To my fellow mental health professionals, I am trying to give cliffnotes versions here, so I am probably not going to elaborate a lot more, but if I have facts wrong, please chime in and help me out.)
a. Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is characterized by psychotic symptoms. They are usually categorized into positive (adding something to your presentation) and negative (taking something from you) symptoms. Positive symptoms are things like hallucinations (perceiving something that isn't there) and delusions (beliefs that continue to be held despite lack of evidence/existence of evidence to the contrary). Negative symptoms are things like withdrawl from social relationships, lack of talking. An extreme example would be catatonia. Some cases of schizophrenia can be treated fairly well by medications. Some require heavier medications with worse side effects, so they require a lot of monitoring to ensure that the person stays healthy and complies with the medication. Sometimes extreme, few cases never respond well enough to restore functioning, and the person requires care and may never be able to maintain in an independent living situation. Most people with schizophrenia are not dangerous, but some hear malicious voices that tell them to do awful things, and threaten to harm the sufferer's loved ones if they do not comply. In addition, sometimes street drugs can feel soothing to people with schizophrenia, but they exacerbate symptoms and risk for dangerousness.
For someone with a severe case of the illness, treatment likely comes at the tune of several thousand dollars per month. If they are in the community, between housing in a group home plus medication and other treatments like CBT for Psychosis, I am going to hazard a guess of at least $4,000/month. If they are hospitalized at Oregon State Hospital, it is somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 per month. Month, not year. I am so in favor of better treatment for people with this illness, but if you are going to make this claim, I want you to look at the price tag. That does not even include costs of researching better treatment.
b. Autism
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder. It primarily effects social development, recognition of social cues, and understanding that other people have the same emotions that they do. There are no cures and no medications that get at the heart of the disorder. Care often involves skills training and lifelong support, though many higher-functioning cases of autism live independent and virtually undetected in society.
In several mass shootings in recent years, the shooter's actions have been attributed to autism (formerly known as asperger's, but the phrasology is changing). I have yet to hear of a case where this was 100% confirmed. People with autism may sometimes be prone to frustrated outbursts which can be violent, but it's not quite so planned and premeditated.
That said, it is absolutely possible that someone with autism may become obsessed with committing a violent act, especially after being subject to social rejection, and I totally support research efforts that move toward helping people with this disorder integrate better into society. (P.S. research trials are not cheap. I don't know an exact price tag, and I have every faith that your google skills are as good as mine.)
c. "Being a psychopath" aka Psychopathy aka Antisocial Personality Disorder
Say it with me: "Being a psychopath is very different from experiencing psychosis." We defined psychosis above as experiencing hallucinations and delusions. Basically the only thing psychosis and psychopathy have in common is that they both start with the same 5 letters.
Psychopathy is the outstanding quality of someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder, now abbreviated to ASPD. Research is increasingly demonstrating that there is something different about the brain of someone with ASPD, specifically the part that allows feelings of empathy. They have dramatically fewer emotions than your neurotypical person, and are motivated by different things because consequences that deter most of us (feeling shame for one) do not deter someone with ASPD. The disorder is more common than people realize, partially because many people with this disorder learn to act as if they do have an average amount of emotions.
For people with ASPD, life is a constant question of whether the methods of getting what one wants are worth the potential consequences. They are masters of understanding risks, as defined by their own priorities. Therefore, if someone decides that, say, notoriety, is worth the loss of their own life, then realizing that shooting up a school may cost them their life is a fair trade for them, on balance.
There are no medications known to treat this disorder. The only treatment we know about is properly motivating someone with ASPD to behave in pro-social ways, and having safeguards to prevent them from acting in ways we don't want them to. And, as with the other disorders, more research to see whether there is, indeed, more that we can do. Bottom line, while research may eventually find an effective treatment for ASPD, right now "improving the mental health system" in hopes that people with ASPD will cease with their antisocial behavior is completely unrealistic.
One last note on this topic: Other mental health conditions can contribute to violence too, including PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, and others, and they are all also expensive and time intensive to treat.
3. Empathy
This line of reasoning suggests that we live in a very isolated society anymore and don't even know our neighbors. That reaching out to others and connecting with them as humans can reduce their risk of violence. That becoming involved with a high-risk kid can make him or her a low-risk kid.
This is all correct. I don't really see how anyone could argue against it. So...first of all...do it! :) (I can do so much more in this area myself.)
Secondly, STOP decrying anti-bullying programs in schools! And/OR, implement pro-empathy programs in schools! Maybe we will never fully stop bullies, but we can make progress and we can change lives of at least a good portion of the bullied AND the bulliers. Maybe kids learn from adversity, but many of the kids who are being bullied (and who are bullies) already experience significant adversity. Plus, bullying is not the only type of adversity a kid could experience, but it could be one of the more impacting ones.
Thirdly, this can be done in conjunction with examining our use of guns and our mental health care system.
B. Factors Which Predict Violence
There are so many of these. I work two jobs, and my husband, friends, and family like to spend time with me on occasion too, so I am not going to go through every one. I am going to lump some into groups, and quite honestly, even then I'm not going to discuss each one. For more information, I suggest using your local library. Or Google. There's Google. (Just be sure to check the source; if it comes from a news site, it's probably got an agenda. Anything that sounds psychology-ish is probably a better bet.)
1. As a child, difficulty meeting behavioral expectations in school. Of note, having brought a weapon to school previously, though I am assuming this means intentionally with thoughts of harming others, not "I live in a rural area, go hunting on the weekends, and forgot to take my hunting rifle out of the bed of my truck."
2. Past violent behavior, including violent outbursts/tantrums, harming others, harming animals, bullying (oh goodness, can't we please stop writing off our modern kids as pansies and actually look at this?), a pattern of violent threats when angry, firesetting.
3. Recent experience of humiliation, loss, or rejection/poor peer relations/being socioeconomically disadvantaged (see the importance of using empathy??)
4. Past suicide attempts (see: supporting better mental health care)
5. Preoccupation with weapons or explosives (this is a researched risk factor for violence. But we don't need to examine the ways in which we own guns? Guns count as weapons, right? Look, I'm not saying that nobody should ever have them, but I just don't see how we get around examining this as a real issue.)
6. Low neighborhood attachment and community involvement (EMPATHY!!)
7. Access to guns or weapons. In isolation, this is not so much of a risk factor. BUT IT CONTRIBUTES. This is supported by psychological research. It's not really up for debate that this does contribute to risk, and we need to take a deeper look at how to proceed.
8. Poor home environment growing up. (Oh goodness...empathy...we need to re-discover community!!)
C. Concluding Statements
If you have good suggestions about how to reduce these horrifying, deadly attacks, please be prepared to discuss with the people around you in an intelligent and informed manner, and more importantly...
Remember that you have two ears but only one mouth. So listen more than you speak.
AND...
The
solution
is
multifaceted.
This is not either/or, and it never will be.
Please engage in a civil manner. If you cannot, step away from the keyboard, and come back after you have taken a time out.
If you cannot collaborate YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Then more tragedy ensued when (predictably) everyone in Oregon (perhaps slight exaggeration) began nasty infighting which was unnecessarily rigid, refused to listen, and perplexingly, all seemingly focused on the idea that their one solution was correct.
What is really weird about that last part is that no suggestion I have heard is mutually exclusive toward other points of view. I don't know why we have this idea that a problem this complex has a really simple solution, but it is crazy.
The polarized viewpoints lead to no solutions happening, no action being taken. This is not like other political issues in which two sides actually want a different outcome. If you read no other part of this post, please read the following line, as it is really important:
WE ALL WANT THE SAME THING WHICH IS FOR THE SCARY MASS SHOOTINGS TO STOP.
This will never happen until we decide it is worth working together with people we normally oppose. Listen carefully to me: If you refuse to hear out your fellow man, I sure hope you are ok with having blood on your hands. If we can't start working together, this trend will continue and get worse.
You will lose NOTHING if you stop one time to listen to someone else's ideas on this subject without spending that time formulating a response in your head. You ONLY stand to gain. What are you afraid of? That they will change your mind? If that's the case, you may want to re-think your position.
The rest of this post will be divided into three different major parts, all with sub-parts. Here is an outline to help you avoid any boring parts you don't care about.
A. Discussion of major proposed solutions
1. Gun control or not
2. Improved mental health care
3. Empathy/improved care for others/community
B. Factors Which Predict Violence, as understood by someone who works with a bunch of risk-focused psychologists (but is not personally a psychologist, so this is professionally absorbed and applied knowledge).
C. Concluding Statements.
Ok, buckle up because here we go.
A. Discussion of major proposed solutions
There seems to be a weird argument going on about gun control vs. improved mental health care, with a third party chiming in and saying it all boils down to loving each other more. Spoiler alert: this is part of my conclusion, but why aren't we looking at MORE THAN ONE SOLUTION. We could do them all. At the same time. Really, we could, America. We're cool like that.
1. Gun Control vs. We Should All Have Guns
So, I had some opinions about this that were based on assumptions and hunches, and fully admitted that I knew little about how much access to guns contributed to violence. The republicans and democrats will tell you different things but they each have agendas so I wasn't willing to listen to any of their statistics/spins on their statistics. And I know Wikipedia isn't the #1 most reliable source ever, but it is a good place to find information that can't be polarized too far one way, plus it's a great place to get lots of stats.
I started out by comparing each state's or district's rate of gun murder to their rate of gun ownership. I didn't do this in the most statistically illuminating way. I scored each state/district (hereby just referred to as "state") by rate of gun murders, giving 51 to the state with the highest rate, 1 the state with the lowest rate. Then I did the same thing with gun ownership. I even made a super unsophisticated graph of it which may not make much sense to others (plus it's kind of clunky) but I'd be happy to show it to others if you're interested.
The results were disappointingly very inconclusive. Supporting the side that controlling gun ownership increases gun violence was Washington DC. DC ranked the highest among rate of gun murders, and lowest among gun ownership, and there was also Alaska which ranked very high in gun ownership and very low in gun murders.
On the flip side, we have Hawaii which is both low in gun ownership and gun murders, and Mississippi and Louisiana, which both rank high in gun ownership and high in gun murders.
Looking over the list of states, I'm noticing some regional trends. In the south, there tends to be high gun ownership and high gun murder. In very sparse states (Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas) there tends to be both high gun ownership and low gun murder. In more laid-back places like Colorado, Washington, New Hampshire, Hawaii, there tends to be low gun ownership and low gun murder. And in densely populated states with very busy and fast paced cities such as DC, Delaware, New York, Florida, Illinois, there tends to be low gun ownership but high gun murder.
What this suggests to me is that the answer to how we regulate gun ownership must be much more nuanced than "yes" or "no," and the answer needs to be localized to the local culture. If you live in rural Alaska, you need a gun to protect yourself from wild animals--to suggest otherwise is honestly pretty crazy. On the flip side, to suggest we need to bring more guns to Hawaii to make Hawaii safer is equally crazy. Do we need to encourage more gun ownership in places like DC, and less gun ownership in places like Louisiana? Those suggestions don't really sound right to me either. Am I proposing that we need to leave things how they are? NO. I'm proposing we need to bring in some cultural anthropologists/sociologists to look at how guns are part of local cultures and how people can own guns safely, because I do not believe there is a one size fits all answer here.
*I would be happy to talk about knife control when we face an epidemic of mass stabbings. So far I haven't heard any. If I'm just totally in the dark about this awful epidemic, please let me know.
2. Improve Mental Health Care
A MOST IMPORTANT POINT: Sufferers of mental illness are more likely to be victims of violence than they are to act violently. Sometimes being mentally ill can lead to violent behavior, but in the vast majority of cases it does not.
I hear this usually thrown out as a real solution, but I do sometimes hear it as an attempt to deflect from needing to look at how we own guns. I don't want to lump people together, but I do know lots of people who support gun rights who also do not typically support additional funding for this kind of thing. As someone who expended thousands of dollars and several years of my life to become a mental health professional, I wonder sometimes if these people think I should be volunteering all my time instead of making a living ;). Good mental health care comes with a monetary price, because it is something that has value for society at large, so I just want to be clear about that.
I usually hear 3 diagnoses discussed as possible reasons for violence, and though there are more, I am going to focus on short descriptions of each of these, as well as what it can take to treat them, just so we are aware of what it means to invest in better care for each. (To my fellow mental health professionals, I am trying to give cliffnotes versions here, so I am probably not going to elaborate a lot more, but if I have facts wrong, please chime in and help me out.)
a. Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is characterized by psychotic symptoms. They are usually categorized into positive (adding something to your presentation) and negative (taking something from you) symptoms. Positive symptoms are things like hallucinations (perceiving something that isn't there) and delusions (beliefs that continue to be held despite lack of evidence/existence of evidence to the contrary). Negative symptoms are things like withdrawl from social relationships, lack of talking. An extreme example would be catatonia. Some cases of schizophrenia can be treated fairly well by medications. Some require heavier medications with worse side effects, so they require a lot of monitoring to ensure that the person stays healthy and complies with the medication. Sometimes extreme, few cases never respond well enough to restore functioning, and the person requires care and may never be able to maintain in an independent living situation. Most people with schizophrenia are not dangerous, but some hear malicious voices that tell them to do awful things, and threaten to harm the sufferer's loved ones if they do not comply. In addition, sometimes street drugs can feel soothing to people with schizophrenia, but they exacerbate symptoms and risk for dangerousness.
For someone with a severe case of the illness, treatment likely comes at the tune of several thousand dollars per month. If they are in the community, between housing in a group home plus medication and other treatments like CBT for Psychosis, I am going to hazard a guess of at least $4,000/month. If they are hospitalized at Oregon State Hospital, it is somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000 per month. Month, not year. I am so in favor of better treatment for people with this illness, but if you are going to make this claim, I want you to look at the price tag. That does not even include costs of researching better treatment.
b. Autism
Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder. It primarily effects social development, recognition of social cues, and understanding that other people have the same emotions that they do. There are no cures and no medications that get at the heart of the disorder. Care often involves skills training and lifelong support, though many higher-functioning cases of autism live independent and virtually undetected in society.
In several mass shootings in recent years, the shooter's actions have been attributed to autism (formerly known as asperger's, but the phrasology is changing). I have yet to hear of a case where this was 100% confirmed. People with autism may sometimes be prone to frustrated outbursts which can be violent, but it's not quite so planned and premeditated.
That said, it is absolutely possible that someone with autism may become obsessed with committing a violent act, especially after being subject to social rejection, and I totally support research efforts that move toward helping people with this disorder integrate better into society. (P.S. research trials are not cheap. I don't know an exact price tag, and I have every faith that your google skills are as good as mine.)
c. "Being a psychopath" aka Psychopathy aka Antisocial Personality Disorder
Say it with me: "Being a psychopath is very different from experiencing psychosis." We defined psychosis above as experiencing hallucinations and delusions. Basically the only thing psychosis and psychopathy have in common is that they both start with the same 5 letters.
Psychopathy is the outstanding quality of someone with Antisocial Personality Disorder, now abbreviated to ASPD. Research is increasingly demonstrating that there is something different about the brain of someone with ASPD, specifically the part that allows feelings of empathy. They have dramatically fewer emotions than your neurotypical person, and are motivated by different things because consequences that deter most of us (feeling shame for one) do not deter someone with ASPD. The disorder is more common than people realize, partially because many people with this disorder learn to act as if they do have an average amount of emotions.
For people with ASPD, life is a constant question of whether the methods of getting what one wants are worth the potential consequences. They are masters of understanding risks, as defined by their own priorities. Therefore, if someone decides that, say, notoriety, is worth the loss of their own life, then realizing that shooting up a school may cost them their life is a fair trade for them, on balance.
There are no medications known to treat this disorder. The only treatment we know about is properly motivating someone with ASPD to behave in pro-social ways, and having safeguards to prevent them from acting in ways we don't want them to. And, as with the other disorders, more research to see whether there is, indeed, more that we can do. Bottom line, while research may eventually find an effective treatment for ASPD, right now "improving the mental health system" in hopes that people with ASPD will cease with their antisocial behavior is completely unrealistic.
One last note on this topic: Other mental health conditions can contribute to violence too, including PTSD, Bipolar Disorder, and others, and they are all also expensive and time intensive to treat.
3. Empathy
This line of reasoning suggests that we live in a very isolated society anymore and don't even know our neighbors. That reaching out to others and connecting with them as humans can reduce their risk of violence. That becoming involved with a high-risk kid can make him or her a low-risk kid.
This is all correct. I don't really see how anyone could argue against it. So...first of all...do it! :) (I can do so much more in this area myself.)
Secondly, STOP decrying anti-bullying programs in schools! And/OR, implement pro-empathy programs in schools! Maybe we will never fully stop bullies, but we can make progress and we can change lives of at least a good portion of the bullied AND the bulliers. Maybe kids learn from adversity, but many of the kids who are being bullied (and who are bullies) already experience significant adversity. Plus, bullying is not the only type of adversity a kid could experience, but it could be one of the more impacting ones.
Thirdly, this can be done in conjunction with examining our use of guns and our mental health care system.
B. Factors Which Predict Violence
There are so many of these. I work two jobs, and my husband, friends, and family like to spend time with me on occasion too, so I am not going to go through every one. I am going to lump some into groups, and quite honestly, even then I'm not going to discuss each one. For more information, I suggest using your local library. Or Google. There's Google. (Just be sure to check the source; if it comes from a news site, it's probably got an agenda. Anything that sounds psychology-ish is probably a better bet.)
1. As a child, difficulty meeting behavioral expectations in school. Of note, having brought a weapon to school previously, though I am assuming this means intentionally with thoughts of harming others, not "I live in a rural area, go hunting on the weekends, and forgot to take my hunting rifle out of the bed of my truck."
2. Past violent behavior, including violent outbursts/tantrums, harming others, harming animals, bullying (oh goodness, can't we please stop writing off our modern kids as pansies and actually look at this?), a pattern of violent threats when angry, firesetting.
3. Recent experience of humiliation, loss, or rejection/poor peer relations/being socioeconomically disadvantaged (see the importance of using empathy??)
4. Past suicide attempts (see: supporting better mental health care)
5. Preoccupation with weapons or explosives (this is a researched risk factor for violence. But we don't need to examine the ways in which we own guns? Guns count as weapons, right? Look, I'm not saying that nobody should ever have them, but I just don't see how we get around examining this as a real issue.)
6. Low neighborhood attachment and community involvement (EMPATHY!!)
7. Access to guns or weapons. In isolation, this is not so much of a risk factor. BUT IT CONTRIBUTES. This is supported by psychological research. It's not really up for debate that this does contribute to risk, and we need to take a deeper look at how to proceed.
8. Poor home environment growing up. (Oh goodness...empathy...we need to re-discover community!!)
C. Concluding Statements
If you have good suggestions about how to reduce these horrifying, deadly attacks, please be prepared to discuss with the people around you in an intelligent and informed manner, and more importantly...
Remember that you have two ears but only one mouth. So listen more than you speak.
AND...
The
solution
is
multifaceted.
This is not either/or, and it never will be.
Please engage in a civil manner. If you cannot, step away from the keyboard, and come back after you have taken a time out.
If you cannot collaborate YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
Let Down
My first full time job out of college was with Child Welfare. Because I was hired in a bigger county, they had a couple of units designed specifically with Child Welfare rookies in mind, where the new workers could start with lower caseloads and get more attention and training. Because they were sister units, we sought advice and help from the supervisors of both. Overall, I really respected and looked up to my supervisor. But I also couldn't help but look up to the supervisor of the sister unit as well. He had worked in Child Welfare a long time, and had a gentle, but hilariously sarcastic, personality. He was kind and patient and grandfatherly, and gave great advice on how to keep children safe.
A couple of years after I left that office, the kind, patient, grandfatherly supervisor, who had given so much great advice that had stuck with me, was indicted by the federal government for distributing child pornography.
Hearts broke all over that office, and all over the state, as he had worked in many offices. There was denial, there was confusion, and none of the details were released, as you might expect. However, the fact that some of his colleagues who loved him the most accepted the situation and ultimately believed he was guilty led most of us to accept the same, at least eventually.
Those of us who had spent time under his tutelage felt understandably conflicted about what to do with the wisdom we felt we gained from him. There were varying thoughts about us, but eventually most of us could come to a place where we felt that even though this supervisor, this mentor had committed unspeakably evil acts, that this doesn't mean that his ideas, his insight (which were in direct conflict with his behavior), were worthless. They may have been ideas and insight we gained from this person, but that was because they made sense in the context of our own values. They were worth keeping.
Everyone has role models that will let them down. Some of these "let downs" will be of the "people are imperfect" variety, and some of them will be shattering. If you haven't been shattered, it is likely that it will happen at some point. It might make you question what you learned from that person, and it will be up to you to separate the wisdom from the person.
I have never watched 19 Kids and Counting, but I understand that in the past couple of weeks some scandal has come to light. I understand that many fans of the show share values with those expressed by the family. I understand that the family are devout Christians. I also consider myself a devout Christian.
As a Christian, it feels hard when a major leader (or public figure of varying types) fails hard. I feel defensive because I worry that the individual's activity will be interpreted as an inherent value of the belief system.
That's simply not true. People who do outrageously awful things fall in all categories of people: rich, poor, Christians, Muslims, atheists, social workers, accountants, Americans, people in far away countries...all over. However, people who do outrageously wonderful things also fall into those categories. Someone's actions do not negate an entire belief or value system.
In the case of the 19 Kids family, what I understand is that the kid molested several children during his young adolescence, among them were siblings. He did come forth and tell his parents, who, in my opinion, failed to fully remedy the situation. They did more than nothing, but less than enough. Having the kid talk to a family friend and go away for 3 months simply isn't enough to fully understand the underlying reasons for why he did what he did, and what needed to be done to keep him from such behavior again. You simply cannot treat a huge issue like this in-house; there is too much bias, even if you try not to be biased. (It is for this reason that professional counselors cannot treat family members and friends; they are too close to the situation to be objective.)
I am just hoping that not too many of my fellow Christians feel they have to somehow "soften" the actions of a famous Christian, in order to profess the same values that the famous person professed. I do not disagree with the family's devotion to their faith, but I do disagree with an inadequate response to a serious crime.
Thursday, April 30, 2015
The trip of a lifetime: Slowly exploring the life-changing Oregon coastline
Several years ago, I came up with this idea that it would be fun to really explore the Oregon Coast in-depth. There is so much there, from the tacky tourist traps to the majestic viewpoints, and everything in between. I started thinking about how much there is to do in even one small area, and how a road trip from Astoria to Brookings, that really encompassed everything, would have to be quite long. I came up with an outline that does it all in 31 days--a perfect summer month! (And I would envision this trip happening during the summer, for maximum benefit.)
And yet, still, this doesn’t encompass everything. I did not list every single state park, golf course, lighthouse, etc. There is simply too much. You could spend a whole year along the Oregon Coast without doing it all, but this was designed to give folks a heavy sampling!
That said, not everybody has a month to take off and do something like this. If this idea appeals to you, but you have a shorter timeframe to work with, an itinerary like this can be massaged to fit your own schedule and priorities. (I tried to make sure there was something for everyone with regards to things like hiking, golf, fishing, but if you need more, all that stuff is an easy google search away! Insert as needed.)
Notably absent from this guide are lodging and dining recommendations. I am kind of envisioning this trip as an RV trip, but you could also camp, stay in the cheapest motels possible, or only the most grand. And the Oregon Coast has all of it! There are also too many places to dine, and too much difference in taste to adequately pick out places to eat for anyone who might happen upon this blog post. I did make one recommendation in Lincoln City for a spot to eat breakfast. Other than that, you are on your own for these accommodations! If you end up making this trip or one similar, maybe you can let me know about some of your best recommendations for food and dining.
In addition to all the other preparations one might make for a 31-day trip (and possibly longer, depending on how long it will take you to get to Astoria/home from Brookings), I would highly urge anyone embarking on this journey to purchase a 12-month pass to the State Park system in Oregon. Lots of the attractions I mention are part of this system, and while a one-day pass will cost you $5, a one-year pass will cost you $30! (And you will have it for 11 months after your trip is over, too, to explore some of the other great wonders of Oregon.)
Without further ado, I present Megan’s One Month Guide to the Oregon Coast! Don’t forget the camera, you won’t want to forget this trip of a lifetime.
Day 1
Though this journey is meant to be about Oregon, I actually recommend starting on 101 in Washington and coming south into Astoria, so as to experience the largest truss bridge on the continent, at 4.1 miles long! It is a sight to behold.
Once in Astoria, go check out the Goonies House. You can’t go in, but it’s a great photo op. While you are in the area, check out the Oregon Film Museum. It’s an old jail, and there are displays set up in the cells. The Fratelli Brothers’ RV is parked outside!
Next, take in the Maritime Museum. It contains 30,000 maritime artifacts and 20,000 maritime photos of the Columbia River and Pacific Northwest, for $12 per adult.
Finish off the day’s sight-seeing by warming up those legs...there are LOTS of walking and hiking activities ahead for you in the next month! Go to the Astoria Column, with 164 mural-lined steps and magnificent view on top!
Day 2
Get a fairly early start today. Go out to Fort Stevens, and explore there. Don’t miss the Peter Iredale shipwreck while you’re there!
Next, head to Fort Clatsop, and explore all the Lewis and Clark exhibits and artifacts. Then, find the visitor center there to start the 6 mile Fort to Sea Trail hike. Arrange for a shuttle car or cab pickup on arrival, or be prepared to hike the 6 miles back after exploring the beach!
You can either drive to Seaside tonight or tomorrow morning, it is only a 15 or 20 minute drive.
Day 3
This is your day to experience tourist Seaside. Walk the promenade, browse the shops, ride the carousel, eat some maple-covered bacon, go down to the beach and swing on the swings, rent a boat for the canal...take your time!
Day 4
Head out of town a bit to hike Saddle Mountain! It’s a fairly difficult hike, gaining 1800 feet in elevation over the course of 2.5 miles, but the views and wildflowers should be worth it!
If you are still recovering from Fort to Sea and the Astoria Column, you can instead elect to go golfing. Highland is one of the better courses in the area, $28 gets you 18 holes.
Day 5:
Drive down toward Cannon Beach and enjoy Ecola State Park. It offers 8 miles of beach trails with secluded coves and even an abandoned lighthouse! You can take your time here and just meander and explore.
Haystack Rock is the only other item on your agenda today. It’s a 235 foot tall seastack, great for photographing, and a great beach to explore and relax on.
Day 6:
Continue south and explore the towns of Manzanita, Nehalem, and Rockaway. If you happen to be Catholic like me, and can time this day to be a Sunday, I recommend taking in mass at St. Mary by the Sea in Rockaway. It is a very sweet little parish, and as you leave mass, the doors pretty much open right up onto the beach!
Recommend making it to Tillamook, as that is when your next day starts.
Day 7:
Work up an appetite by going out to the Bayocean Spit, and doing the 7.6 mile hike out to the end. Despite the distance, it is easy, being very flat. Bayocean was a planned resort community that was not well planned--it got wiped out by the ocean going over the peninsula.
After all the hiking you have done in just the last 7 days, it is time for a treat! Head over to the Tillamook Creamery, widely known as the Tillamook Cheese Factory. Take the tour and get some cheese, but for the love of all that is good and holy, do NOT pass up getting an ice cream cone!!
If you still want more to do, you can check out one or both of a couple local museums, the Tillamook County Pioneer Museum or the Tillamook Air Museum.
Day 8:
This is really the one time your main route veers off Highway 101. Instead, you will be taking the Three Capes Drive, as 101 goes inland a bit and this keeps you closer to the ocean. Follow signs for Cape Meares, and head south on Highway 131 from there.
At Cape Meares, visit the “haunted” lighthouse, take in the ocean views, and enjoy some short nature walks.
Continue south to Cape Lookout State Park for views of hang-gliders and the majestic beaches and cliffs.
The third cape of the Three Capes is Cape Kiwanda, renown for it’s photography opportunities. Some may say it is the most beautiful spot on the Oregon Coast, but with nearly 400 miles of rugged coastline, that’s a pretty tough call!
Settle into Pacific City for the evening
Day 9:
Splurge option: Hang gliding lessons with Oregon Hang Gliding school, $130/person
Active option: Hike Cascade Head, 4.2 miles round trip, for impressive views over the coastline
Low key: Rent a bike, explore Pacific CIty, whale watching, golfing in Nestucca
Low key: Rent a bike, explore Pacific CIty, whale watching, golfing in Nestucca
Head to Lincoln City
Day 10:
The ONE AND ONLY dining recommendation I will make: Nelscott Cafe for breakfast. It’s small, and recommended you get there fairly early to beat the crowd.
Lincoln City boasts an outlet mall that seems to attract a lot of people. It’s worth exploring, if for nothing else than killing a little time. There is something kind of fun about strolling through a mall while you can smell the salty ocean air.
If you did not get your shopping fill at the outlet mall, you can find lots of little shops all up and down 101 in Lincoln City. Make sure to get some saltwater taffy, many shops sell it!
This is probably also the only time I will recommend taking in a movie, but check and see what the Bijou is playing. It is an older theater with a sweet old-timey feel to it. They tend to play older movies or less popular movies, not your typical current blockbusters.
Finally, Lincoln City is known for kite-flying! Stop at a shop and get your kite on! Go run into the surf where the D River enters the ocean, while you are at it! (D River is reportedly the shortest river in the world!)
Day 11:
Get up a bit early to enjoy the morning air, and take a long drive to find a short hike. Look up directions to Drift Creek Falls. Getting there is not easy, but from the trailhead, you hike 1.5 miles to a place where the creek you’ve been following...jumps off a cliff and joins a bigger river!! It is quite the sight to behold. In addition, you get to cross the bigger river...on a super awesome suspended bridge!! At that point, you’ve seen the best of the hike, so you can feel free to turn around and come back to your car.
If you are feeling up for it, Lincoln City still has more to offer. You can choose to spend your afternoon on Devil’s Lake, fishing, swimming, and boating, or you can instead check out Salishan Golf Course if you are so inclined.
I also have great childhood memories at Fogarty Creek State Park just north of Depoe Bay. If you just need a little more beach time, I suggest getting on the road south toward Depoe Bay and stopping here on the way.
Day 12:
Wake up in Depoe Bay, and choose either the 8 o’clock trip or 10 o’clock trip on the Whale’s Tail Zodiac Boats out into the ocean for some whale watching! A 90 minute trip is well worth your time and $35 per person
Continue south toward Newport. Near Otter Rock, stop in for some tasting at Flying Dutchman Winery, then go and see the Devil’s Punchbowl, where the water sprays up from the rocks as the waves come in. There are some tidepools near Otter Rock, I suggest going down to them to explore the underwater ecosystem. Sea anenomes are my favorite, but keep an eye out for starfish and other creatures.
Settle in to Newport for the evening.
Day 13:
Spend some time at the Oregon Coast Aquarium. Among other things, they have a huge underwater glass tunnel where you can see all sorts of water creatures, including small sharks, swim all around you.
Head to Agate Beach for some exploring and agate hunting! (Full disclosure: I was privileged to spend one summer living on Agate Beach...like the house I rented a room in looked over the beach. I watched the ocean while I ate my cheerios. So I have special sentimental attachment to this beach, but really, it’s amazing.)
Schedule this ahead of time, as tours fill up, but take a tour of Yaquina Head Lighthouse at 12, 1, 2, or 3.
Spend some time relaxing, and end the evening with a bonfire on Nye Beach!
Day 14:
Drive inland on Highway 20 about 7 miles, and take the business route through the small town of Toledo. Explore the downtown area, which is along the Yaquina Bay. (It could be argued that it’s more of a river at this point.)
Take Highway 229 across Highway 20 to Siletz. Not a lot to see or explore here, other than to maybe find a spot for lunch.
From Siletz, take County Road 410 abou 12 miles to Moonshine County Park. Locals to the general area rave about this swimming hole!
Head back to Newport
Day 15:
Start your day at the Hatfield Marine Science Center, kind of a more academic aquarium, run by Oregon State University. (Personal bias: it has to be good!) I have been here, but not since childhood. My outstanding memory of it is that I got to touch an octopus, and that was pretty cool.
Next, while you are in the bay area, get a tour of the Rogue Brewery, some of the best beer in Oregon. Stay for samples if it suits your fancy!
The Nye Beach area has lots of fun shops and eateries, mostly with a lighthearted “new age” feel to it, so spend some time here.
Beverley Beach State Park would be a nice place to wind down in the evening, and maybe take in a sunset.
Day 16:
Down by the bay (sorry, no watermelons grow here…), you can take in some great tourist kitsch, with the Wax Museum, the Undersea Gardens, and Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, I believe all for $25 per person, last time I checked.
Walk the shops and restaurants on the bay, spend some time watching the seals
Visit Yaquina Bay Lighthouse and State Park
Day 17:
Newport is going to be your longest stay at one spot, and this morning you leave it! Head south a little bit to Seal Rock. Explore to your heart’s content, including shops and Seal Rock State Recreation Area, where you will have the chance to explore some more tidepools.
Continue south to Waldport, where you can take in the Alsea Bay Interpretive Center, including crabbing and clamming demonstrations, and a bridge walk tour. Waldport is a very quiet town without much of a tourist presence, and it would be a nice place to just take it easy for the evening.
Day 18:
Admittedly, I have never really stopped to explore Yachats, but it has been sworn to me that this is the best town on the beach, and perhaps the best kept secret. It may be worth exploring to see why!
Then visit Cape Perpetua for some of nature’s wonders. Tidal pools, coastal forests with pristine ocean views, a spouting horn, and something called Devil’s Churn, which I am told you have to experience to fully appreciate.
Continue south toward Florence, and visit the Sea Lion Caves. You start at a great lookout, and then an elevator takes you down into the caves where Sea Lions live and feed.
Head into Florence and explore shops and dining.
Day 19:
Honeyman State Park sits just south of town, at the beginning of the Oregon Dunes. You may frolic in the dunes, and one of my favorite things to do is go down to Lake Cleawox which is excellent for swimming. The fact that it is surrounded by sand keeps it fairly warm. You can also rent some non motorized boats.
For some adrenaline-pumping fun, check out Sandland Adventures for a wild dune buggy ride!
Day 20:
I am advised that the Hobbit Trail, which is near Heceta Head but quite hard to find, is a great thing to take in. It is ¼ mile down to a quiet beach, which you may have to yourself! It’s reportedly good for finding sand dollars.
Heceta Head Lighthouse is regarded as maybe the best lighthouse on this trip. It sits atop a cliff and promises some of the best views in the region.
Finally, you may finish out your time in Florence with the Florence Historic Walking Tour. It is self-guided, with stops suggested by a local museum.
Next, head south to Reedsport, and inland 3 miles to Dean Creek Elk Viewing for a relaxing end to your day, observing the natural world.
Day 21:
Explore Reedsport area:
Overlook Trail
Umpqua Discovery Center
Umpqua Lighthouse
Loon Lake
Day 22:
Head to Winchester Bay for more Dunes fun with Dune Country ATV Rentals. They are reportedly incredibly friendly and helpful toward first-timers.
Visit Tenmile Lakes for fishing, swimming and boating.
Head to the North Bend/Coos Bay area for the night.
Day 23:
It has been reported to me that as you are passing through North Bend, at one point just off the highway, you can see a model Beaver seated atop a pile of woodchips. Know that being a Beaver fan is a huge part of Oregon Culture. You’re not cool unless you’re a Beaver fan ;).
Visit the Coos Art Museum
Visit the David Dewett Veteran’s Memorial
I have never seen Shore Acres State Park personally, but from people who have lived in the area, I have heard very good things, and the pictures look stunning. More than just a State Park, it has botanical garden, a japanese garden, and a gift shop.
Day 24:
Southern Oregon and Northern California, along the coastline, are famous for the Oregon Myrtle Tree, which produces a beautiful wood product. Visit the Oregon Connection House of Myrtlewood and look over their gorgeous products, maybe take home a souvenir!
There are a few casinos along the Oregon Coast, and you may have squeezed in Chinook Winds in Lincoln City or Three Rivers in Florence, but this is also a great opportunity to explore the Mill Casino in North Bend.
Check and see what is playing at the Egyptian Theater. It is an old renovated theater with a Wurlitzer organ.
Day 25
Bias here is that my brother is deep into the world of golf (he is a golf course superintendent) so when I think of Bandon, I think of how he loves to play golf here! And indeed, there are some world-renown golf courses. I think his favorite is Bandon Dunes. It’s a bit of a splurge, but I’m told that if you are a golf lover you won’t regret it!
If you are not much of a golfer, you can still take in this part of Bandon by playing the Bandon Preserve, a par-3 golf course. It’s less expensive than some of the regular golf courses, and the money goes to a good cause.
If you are not much of a golfer, you can still take in this part of Bandon by playing the Bandon Preserve, a par-3 golf course. It’s less expensive than some of the regular golf courses, and the money goes to a good cause.
Like many other coastal towns, Bandon has a fabulous boardwalk of shops. Be sure to take some time to explore them!
Bandon is the self-proclaimed Cranberry Capital of the World, and has lots of shops with all things cranberry, but visit a farm (they grow in a bog) to get the full cranberry experience! Faber Farms is one that offers tours.
Bullards Beach State Park, with dunes, beach, crabbing on the river, and a lighthouse seems like a great way to end the day.
Day 26:
I have regrettably never been to West Coast Game Park Safari (still Bandon), but I know people who have. And those people have held baby tigers. So I suggest checking this out!!
Bandon also boasts a lavender farm (Merritt Lavender Farm) with a labyrinth, which probably smells amazing. Probably a great way to get some zen, since you have now been on the road for nearly 4 weeks!
Finally, visit Face Rock State Scenic Viewpoint. From the Oregon State Parks website: “There is an American Indian legend about this spot. Some say they hear a maiden's voice on the wind, and standing on the cliff overlooking the ocean you can easily pick out the face on Face Rock. There is a well-kept trail to the beach, and several rocky intertidal areas to explore at low tide.”
Day 27:
Continue south, toward Port Orford. Visit Cape Blanco State Park. This is the home of the westernmost point of the continental United States. It is recommended to have both a windbreaker jacket and sunglasses, to protect your eyes from the sand! Some visitors report that the sand blows in ripples, like waves.
There are lots of walking trails, and the oldest working lighthouse in Oregon, along with tours of the lighthouse.
If you were inclined to do any camping, there are 22 spots here, but they are first come first served.
Day 28:
Explore the Port Orford Lifeboat Museum, Port Orford shops, and maybe Humbug Mountain State Park for a hike which, at 6 miles is “Lush, green, narrow, steep, and divine” according to one yelp reviewer.
On the drive to Gold Beach, don’t miss out on visiting the Prehistoric Gardens with huge, kitschy models of dinosaurs, or the views at Sister’s Rock State Park.
Once you get to Gold Beach, take in the sights of the Mary D. Hume Steamship remains, a steamboat that sunk and just has stayed over the years, but a great photo op, and if you need more to do, check out the Curry Historical Museum.
Day 29:
This one is not for the faint of heart! Jerry’s Rogue Jets will take you to places you can only otherwise get by hiking, and it’s a great, beautiful, scenic trip up the Rogue River. There are day trips, but I recommend getting away from modern life for a night, and staying at the furthest point this boat goes, at Paradise Lodge. You will need to leave at 7:30 in the morning. Pack light, but bring the essentials, and maybe some spending cash!
Day 30:
You will be returned to Gold Beach, arrival time about 3:30pm. Relax and enjoy the town of Gold Beach, as well as it’s beautiful (and typically warmer than most places on the Oregon Coast) beaches.
Day 31:
Head down to Brookings for your last day of this journey! Enjoy the beaches, the town, and maybe go see Oregon’s largest Monterey Cypress tree!
If you made it this far, congratulations! I hope this Oregon Coast Binge is a life-changing experience. It will probably be years before I get to do something like this, so if anyone out there reading this does this trip, or a similar one, please let me know about anything I missed, or anything that should be struck from this itinerary!
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