Fear Not

Not only do we need to take back the planet but our minds as well! They are just as polluted as the planet - filled with all kinds of craziness, manipulated with fear based tactics and disoriented by mind- altering toxins. This "swine flu" is just yet another, among many, attempts to attack not only our bodies but our our psyches as well.

As a mother of 6 - I am extremely concerned about the future of the world, mandatory vaccinations, aerosol spraying, intentional pandemics and so on.... I do my best to stay in the present moment, learn from the past and prepare myself and my family for the future. This is part of what we are currently working out through mindful living and the practice of the art of living in community.

We stay busy with our day to day activities yet remain very tuned into what is going on in the world - we follow the mindset of the postings found on Natural Solutions and have been showing free films at our organic cafe to empower and educate. This past week we began meditating before the film to help make it easier to absorb the information without becoming depressed, apathetic or detached. It is about balance.

This is part of the lesson of living during these times - discernment, truth and integrity....not an easy path!

Get informed www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org - http://www.HealthFreedomUSA.org

Together we are more powerful than we are alone.

A Day to Honor Mother Earth

I am Mother Earth. Earth I am. No divisions exist between myself and the Divine Mother whose resources are dwindling. It is both exhausting and exhilirating to be alive on the planet at this time.

Giving endlessly of ourselves as the ultimate sacrifice - without martyrdom. Are we merely reducing ourselves to Nothingness to be reborn again? How do we delicately balance the worlds of fear and love? How do we distinguish between faith and despair?

Staying present to the sensations of life. Feeling the searing pain of every mountain rendered from the curves of her body; gasping for breath as the trees continue to fall; leaving vast areas of clearcut scars across her surface; I quiver with each collision between science and nature in every cell of my being.

I am drowning from the crashing waves - left deaf from the pollution that fills my ears. Contaminated waters fill her veins and mine. I pause. We have drunk endlessly from her breast until the milk has run dry.

Here we are - clinging to parched desserts begging for rainfall. Acid rain scorches our skins; no longer barriers for the poisons that seep into my blood.

Are we participating in the extinction of our own species or evolving to the next phase in our consciousness? How do we hold both to be true simultaneously...better yet, how do we live our lives from a place of action while promoting peace and forgiveness in the world?

This Earth Day honor yourself. Feed your body organic food. Protect your children from the chemical laden lawns, GMO foods and synthetic fragrances that waft through our airs. Do it today and everyday and in doing so we give thanks to the Mother of us All.

Blessed Be Mother Earth.

Check out “What’s Your Big Green Lie?!” at http://www.biggreenlies.com.

Organic vs Local

Wow! All this talk about going local is great! The one problem posed for those of us living in small states like Connecticut is access to it (one of the motivations behind the state-wide delivery service we are launching!) And buying local ORGANIC can be even more challenging.

Which is better? local products drenched in chemical fertilizers or organic products shipped 3000 miles? Hmmm... In our family we choose organic over local but actively seek out as much local organic stuff we can get our hands on. More challenging in New England is seasonal availability as well...hard for those of us eating mostly raw food to live without avocados, oranges, nuts and seeds that aren't grown here.

The craze for LOCAL is going to push prices sky high in states where there is more demand than is able to be produced. We loose more farmland to development every day, yet more people are seeking out local growers. We need to begin to understand the relationship between us and the land. We need the land to grow the food and the land needs to be chemical free!
What seems outrageous to me is non-organic locally grown products that cost more than organically grown non-local products! That's just not right! The whole point of local is to make more sense. It's about access and growing the local economy. Yet, here in Connecticut the only ones that can afford the local organics are the country clubs and high end spas (unless of course we grow our own! - watch out Codex Alimentarius!) Kinda crazy living in a state where we have the poorest and the richest cities in the nation in such a small little area.

The bottom line is we should have access to BOTH! Be a WISE consumer - whatever you are buying! Always ASK QUESTIONS!Inquire about your farmers about their growing practices. Make sure to show your support for farmers in your communities committing to growing organically (even if they are not certified). Grow your own garden, join a community garden, start a seed swap or support a local CSA this season! Let's take the hand back into our hands! and let's support Michelle Obama as she does the same! Read on:

The Mid America CropLife Association (MACA) has a bone to pick with Michelle Obama. MACA represents chemical companies that produce pesticides, and they are angry that Michelle Obama isn't using chemicals in her organic garden at the White House.

In an email they forwarded to their supporters, a MACA spokesman wrote http://www.lavidalocavore.org/showDiary.do?diaryId=1309 , "While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made [us] shudder." MACA went on to publish a letter it had sent to the First Lady asking her to consider using chemicals -- or what they call "crop protection products" -- in her garden.

This is CRAZY! Sign the petition telling MACA's board members to stop using Michelle Obama's garden to spread propaganda about produce needing to be sprayed with chemical fertilizers at the link attached. Go Michelle!

The Healing Power of Water

A series of unending currents has washed throughy my life in the past two months since I last wrote...my 40th birthday has come and gone. The last chapter of my book written (conception) as I open myself to the next phase of birthing it out into the world (active labor).

In addition to my DETOXIFICATION birth day celebration (green drinks, sacred chocolate & my new infrared sauna - who knew you could have so much fun!), we spent many evenings showing and discussing the film FLOW (For Love of Water) - a new release that poignantly depicts the coming water crisis. Our eldest actively worked on collecting pledges for the Take Back the Bottle Campaign (http://www.thinkoutsidethebottle.org/)

If you haven't yet seen the film or don't know the details about companies like Poland Spring then now is the time to get informed. It is in the process of becoming informed that we send ripples of change out into the world. These ripples turn into waves that when we persist and follow our truths can change the tides for the future.

Now is the Hour

Are our actions consistent with our actions? Raising children in times of constant distraction and looming sadness can challenge the depth of our beings. It is in such times that our ability to stay focused and grounded is most needed. Now is the hour when we must stay clear and on task. We do that simply by living in ways that reflect the truth.

It is easy to get off center: everyday crisis, children that require special attention, partners that are feeling neglected, mounting to-do lists, demanding bosses to our own distracting natures. How do we instill a practice of returning to our centers over and over again? How do we reclaim our children from the $15 billion dollar industry that has been designed to take them away from us?

Every where we turn there is some kind of something luring them away to be brand consumers for life. Perhaps we ourselves have fallen prey to their tactics. Maybe we have bought in to the idea that what we buy identifies who we are. Maybe we think the characters that plaster every baby item at Babies-R-Us are cute and have become numb ourselves to the 3,000 commercial media blitz we are inundated with daily.

Yet, when we begin to unravel and understand the depth of manipulation and impact of this 360 degree immersive marketing world we now live in, we begin to see things a bit differently – especially when we see the intentional manipulation of the minds of children who are helpless against the minds of MIT grads who spend their days analyzing and observing the behaviors of kids to ensure cradle to grave brand loyalty.

We now have a booming toddler industry that is capitalizing on the research that children recognize brand logos at the age of one. We have a $10 billion infant educational video industry that has led parents believe that their children will be smarter when in reality that are making them dumber according to recent studies. NO CHILD UNDER THE AGE OF 36 MONTHS SHOULD WATCH ANY TV.

We have a tween industry that has gone from 10-12 year olds to as low as four to six year olds. Our children are being sexualized and encouraged to want products like make-up, designer clothes and expensive gadgets like ipods and cell phones. The innocence of childhood is disappearing before our eyes. Creative play in 12 year olds has decreased 94% in the past decade. Our children are not given chances to play, and when they do play it is modeled after some show or character that has been invented for them rather than their own mind.

Our kids are becoming Super Consumers and in the process they are being dumbed down, fat and sick. We need to take our children back from the clutches of consumerism. We need to instill values and keep them safe. We do this by knowing what our values are and standing up for what we believe. There is no self in consumerism – just selfishness.

Mothering in this time is not an easy task when we must battle every day for our children. We live in a country where government agencies are refusing to do their job to help protect our children who are the target of money hungry marketers. Tactics continue to worsen since Congress took the authority away from the Federal Trade Commission in 1979 to regulate advertising towards children when there was concern that they were being targeted to want sugary cereals.

Since that time our children have been at the mercy of marketers. Combating this goliath requires much hard work and energy. To effectively counter their strategies we must develop our own. We must be grounded in our own truths and not bend for our children’s sake. By just living what we know to be true we are powerful.

Take for example the knowing that TV (computer, cell phone…) is bad for our children (and us). GET RID OF YOUR TV. Take back your children and stop letting them be brainwashed! Spend moments of silence with your children. Meditate with them. Listen to them. Bring them back to a point of balance. Bring yourself back. Quiet yourself long enough to hear what’s true without being distracted.

YOU are the last link between the worlds. Our children are being raised without any knowledge of the past. The consumer world of today is their reality. Show them another way. Connect them with the MOTHER, the Earth. Join together with other mothers who are stepping up for the RIGHTS OF CHILDREN. You are not alone!

Buy a copy of Consuming Kids: The Commercialization of Childhood from the Media Education Foundation at www.mediaed.org Watch it and show it to as many other mothers you possibly can. Join the Mamalution by clicking on the icon on my page.

The Year of Synergy

I find myself gravitating to certain words at different times in my life....trying them on like coats until I absorb the fullness of their meaning. My word for this new year is synergy. This word stood out like a mantra in one of my latest reads... The Hundred Year Lie by Randall Fitzgerald (an absolute must read and one of the most comprehensive books I have read hands down on the subject pertaining to our toxic world).

In his book he speaks of the toxic synergy we have infiltrated into our world from the misuse of synthetic chemicals. He defines synergy as "the simultaneous acton of two or more chemicals (or processes) in which the total effect is much greater than the sum of the individual effects." He eloquently points out that we have yet to discover the outcome of this chemical stew we are living in and scarier yet are the unknown affects these chemical combinations (will) have on our overall health and survival as a species.

The body burden of chemicals we each walk around with (over 700 each according to the EPA) has become normalized in today's society. We accept this toxic world as if we have always been a species laden with chemical properties when indeed it has only been 100 years since they were first introduced. This ongoing low exposure to all kinds of chemicals is not well understood, nor safe. Rachel Carson brought to light this exact concern in the 1962 with her book Silent Spring, yet from 1964 to 1992 chemical pesticide use in US agriculture increased 300 percent. What is the effect of just this one chemical spewed out into our air, dumped into our soil (food) and washed into our streams and rivers?

"An important factor rarely considered for apologists for the synthetics belief system is how single chemicals that seem benign by themselves can become monsters when they interact as an additive effect or synergistically with other chemicals to greatly magnify their effects." (p.29) We are living in a world out of control and instead of throwing our hands up in the air we need to plant our feet in the ground. We need to demand change.

How can we take this concept of synergy and apply the same principals to this new way of life we are defining? How can each of us individually come together and blend in ways that are not hazardous, but instead healing, as we reclaim our planet? If we each keep holding our point yet willingly reach out to others who are doing the same we will begin to weave together a tapestry that will take on a life of its own. Together we can make our own magic that will be the balm that nurtures our wounds rather than the poisons that are silently killing us.

I feel the synergy in my conversations with others who are seeking the same. I feel the possibility in moments when we come together and allow our energies, visions and intentions to intertwine and let goodness unfold. In a time when our senses have been manipulated and confused to an extreme, I trust in our instinctual, intuitive selves to know the difference between right and wrong and find our way home again.

May 2009 bless us with health and new beginnings.

Comfortable Consumerism

Ah...tis the season when consumerism is in full swing. I have emersed myself the past few years with trying to understand this complicated position we human beings have manifested for ourselves. We have become so comfortable with the convenience of having practically "everything we need" at our disposal here in America and yet remain blind to the cost.

We showed the film The 11th Hour last night for our free film series at the co-op (one of my favorite films ever) and the same feelings flooded my mind as the first time I watched it. The film brilliantly depicts the relationship between our current crisis on the planet and the incessant greed humans have for more. It clearly correlates our role as consumers and the impact our consumption has had (and continues to have) on Nature.

The question is...how do we wean ourselves from our addiction to convenience? How do we shift the mindset of millions to a worldview that embraces frugality - not scarcity, but rather frugality where there is a balance...where we actually consider the economic value of what Mother Nature herself contributes on a daily basis rather than just taking and taking.

It is this call to action that I am constructing with every insight I have come to understand as I reach out to other mothers through the pages of my book. It is a sense of values, a getting back to what is real, an appreciation of life itself that so many of us are yearning for but not knowing quite how to find.

In our states of consuming, we have become numb and dumb. Our brains are foggy. Yet, slowly, we can begin to clear our minds by eating less packaged, processed foods...by watching less tv....by trusting our own inner selves.... In time, we come across information that resonates some cord of truth and we let go of yet another artificial habit that we have been sold.

We begin to question. We begin to say no. We meet others who share similar ideas. We find our voices and in time we change the world.