A Thinking Mom’s Letter to St. Nick by The Rev

Dear Saint Nicholas,

What a year it’s been!  Our book having gone to publication in
April was really an incredible way to help us all kick off 2013. 
We are so thankful for its outrageous success and for all the beautiful people it’s brought into our lives.  It’s made me realize the sky is the limit for us. So let’s get to work in 2014!

First order of business:  Do you think we could do away with the DSM?

As all thinkers, real doctors and scientists know, there really is no such thing as “mental illness.”  It’s really biochemical toxicity via our environment and, more directly, through our food and medicine in conjunction with ongoing spiritual crises and genetic susceptibility.   Since doctors are no longer calling autism “autism,” but rather, “multiple developmental delay,”  and so many children in need of early intervention are being denied services as a result, it just seems like this book is more trouble than it’s worth.  Plus, it slaps a label on folks that can be very detrimental to their futures.  We have whole social movements against such practices.  So I say we just nix the whole thing.

Second:  I’m having a BIG Christmas-cookie-making playdate that will be my first effort at combining neurotypical kiddos with their food-sensitive, brain-damaged peers.   I am going to great lengths to ensure the cookies we will be making and decorating are safe.   Now, I hustled off to purchase food coloring for the frosting, and the lesser version, that will have even the most spectacularly detoxifying child in fits of hysteria within an hour of consumption, is only $1.94.   The non-toxic, vegan version imported from India . . . a whopping 18.99! As our beguiling Sunshine would say, “WTF!?”   In America, you have to literally PAY to keep your child safe from harmful food.  Surely you’ve got pull in this area what with your international connections and such.  Do you think you could hop in bed with some of our government officials while you are planting the goods under their trees and let them know that the Thinking Moms and Dads of this country know that other countries’ governments are refusing our food because it’s not safe? And we don’t understand why this is okay with them?

Surely, poisoning one’s own people is disturbing in and of itself, but in an effort to appeal to the greed which lies at the heart of our corporate dirigisme — they are ALSO poisoning taxpayers!  Who will be left to quietly pay all the hefty awards coming down the pipeline in Vaccine Court once the BIGGIE case they have pending right now hits the fan?  It’s going to take billions and billions and billions to do right by all these families.   They need our kids alive and working to pay.

Third: Could you please help special education professors specializing in behavioral therapy STOP teaching the outdated and horrific practices of punishment to extinction?!   In a world where so very many truly sick brain- and nervous-system damaged children carry the labels of autism, ADD, ADHD, bipolar, etc., it is really important these paragons of behavioral science get a clue.   I cannot tell you how many brilliant students, who know my son’s story, have appeared at my door to inquire as to whether or not this sort of behavioral training sounded right, and, when they CHALLENGED their instructors with real world data, they were reprimanded.   This is not acceptable.  You have got to give them a beat-down Big Papa.

Fourth: So the new generation of vaccine-injured kiddos’ mamas?   Daaaayyyyum, Santa.   I thought Kim Spencer, Alison MacNeil and I could be street.  This new generation of ladies?  They are gonna take the system DOWN.  But I don’t want them and their kids to go down, too.   Can you please let them know we are here to receive their anger . . . but our kids only get better when we move past it?   When we are stuck, our kids are stuck.  Cardinal rule.  We know it is a horrible injustice.  We know the cost.  We know what has happened to our precious babies.   We have been chosen (I know everyone hates that phrase, so give me a better one) to FIX IT.   When I first started screaming years ago people told me I had so much to offer this community, but they couldn’t really hear what I was saying because I was so full of rage.

Uhm. My baby’s body was destroyed by a doctor, and the government covered it up.  YEAH!!!!!  

But, the truth is . . they were right.   Now I speak calmly and with the facts often and in my own community.   I am heard.  I have mainstream doctors, medical people and educators telling me they read our book.  This, compared to the year Noah was diagnosed, 2008, is monumental progress.   We have to stop expressing our outrage that those in the “know” do not know.  We have to take responsibility for educating them with nutrition labels, vaccine inserts and the multitudes of studies and court awards that prove the truth.  Until these amazing mamas can print off all the proper educational materials, do you think you can you keep them out of jail?

Thank you for your patience, Santa. I’m almost done.  Not gonna lie, I hit the nog tonight and I am feeling sentimental and . . . a bit judgmental.   It seems, everywhere I went today, I heard people bitching.

“Yeah, I’m here at the mall, can you believe they didn’t have it? What the hell am I supposed to do now? He is going to be so pissed.”

“Man, that asshole wasn’t looking where he was going.”  

“The service here really sucks.”  

“If she thinks I am going to two houses in one day she can kiss my ass.” 

And the grand finale, “You are being so f*&king stupid.”   Said by a teen, to his mother, who was unfazed, tapping away on her iPhone.  

Why all the drama, Santa?   What are we doing wrong in this country that is making us so uptight and miserable?

Could you please tell these people I had one item on the Christmas list I submitted to my husband.  Several t-shirts, long- and short-sleeve that all say the same thing, in clear block print.  On the front: “INSTEAD OF STARING, PLEASE ASK ME HOW THIS CHILD WAS BRAIN INJURED AND HOW YOU CAN HELP.”  On the back: “THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMPASSION AND UNDERSTANDING.”  Please help them understand that if they are healthy, their children are healthy, and they have the capacity to love,  they have much to celebrate?  I’ve become quite a student of human nature these days, and much of what we put out into this world is complaining.  “This is not right, good enough, easy enough.”  “That person does not measure up to our expectations.”   “Who does so and so think she is?”  Sweet mother of God! The country with the greatest conveniences, supposedly the highest standard of living, the land of opportunity — and we are missing it completely.   My husband often says, “The world is a banquet, but we are too busy fighting over the scraps to notice.”  This Christmas I pray the hearts of people will be opened so they can see the many blessings they have.

Last but not least, in the spirit of Mother Theresa, I would, once and for all, like to replace that lovely but not applicable “Holland” poem (no offense, Emily Perl Kingsley) with one that is more apropos for our community. Can you get a copy in everyone’s stocking Santa?

“Do It Anyway” by Mother Theresa , Adapted for Thinkers, by The Rev

Pharmaceutical lobbyists, the Department of Justice (a.k.a.  Vaccine Court), Monsanto, Kathleen Sebelius and the whole of the Department of Health and Human Services and SOME doctors are often unreasonable, illogical and self-centered; Forgive them anyway.

If you are calm and kind while conveying your vast knowledge of autoimmune illness in the face of your child’s iatrogenic suffering, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives; Be calm and kind and educate them anyway.

If you are successful in recovering your child, you will win some false friends and some true enemies; succeed, for your child and the innocent children of your false friends and true enemies, anyway.

If you are honest and frank, people may hate you because they believe you have something to sell or hide. What has happened to the children of our community causes great distrust and post-traumatic stress that is often untreated and unidentified. Many of our sick kids have sick moms and dads who do not, and sometimes cannot, care for themselves. Be honest and frank anyway, your message is too important not to be heard.  Every time you tell your story, a life may be saved.

The child you spend years recovering, rebuilding his brain, central nervous system, vestibular and proprioceptive functioning, recovering his bowels and esophagus, someone may bully and ridicule. It is not safer for him to be “special” no matter how many times you try to reason it out.  RECOVER HIM ANYWAY.

If you find serenity and happiness amidst recovery, if you find a place of inner peace and true joy . . . you have found the GOD that philosophers, scientists, musicians, artists and poets have known since the beginning of time. Many will say you have gone crazy and that your child’s condition caused it.  Be happy anyway.

The intensive labor you put into teaching your child to go to the bathroom, the hand-over-hand gestures you may do up to 75 times a day to help him or her develop muscle memory, the 20 attempts you make to get them to eat healthy food that will heal their gut that ends up on the floor or in your face,  the hours of food prep,  and poop analysis, you will have to do over again tomorrow — all those efforts may not take for weeks . . .  months . . . perhaps, years.  MAKE THE EFFORT ANYWAY.  Your child is worth it.

Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough; Give the world the best you’ve got . . . anyway.

You see, in the final analysis, it is between you and God, It never was between you and them anyway.

The last two stanzas are all MT.  Too good to change.  Thank you Santa, Thank you Thinkers.  Thank you egg nog.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

Love,

~ The Rev

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