BARBARA'S TCHATZKAHS

Summer of 2003 saw myself and my children finally moving into a house and out of the personal and ultimately, spiritual entrapment I found us in. I moved away from a marriage that wasn't working and was, in fact, harming me no matter how hard I tried to repair it. I finally dealt with the facts that I had been working on the relationship alone far too long. I moved back towards a solitary sort of existence, with only my children to break my emotional numbness. I was half-alive and half-dead and making bad choices. Things were too broken. My ability to feel was cross-circuited, my trust was shattered, my peace of mind gone, my self-esteem had been shredded; all too far gone by the damage of a psychopath for me to simply repair. I couldn't start over but I had to salvage what I could and go forward. Not forgetting but rebuilding. The purchase was a brick row house built in 1933 that needed a lot of TLC. When the money allowed I embarked on making it over. And in the pro...

I don’t mean to dismiss the Obama myth, his words, the change we need is real, its just his actions don’t even come close to measuring up. Just read the legal documents he has signed his name to. Read them. His actions are most often the opposite of what he says. I venture to say a 10 year old can recognize that after doing a school day’s worth of research. Obama is a national tragedy. He is a symbol of the times. He is not a leader, just a symbol. He projects the change we need. He was our shortcut to correcting our diseased political system, a way to rid it of corruption. He symbolized the change millions so desperately need. People came out in the millions for the first time “hoping” if they could work and organize to put him in office, we would have some representation to defend against the economic elite that have put the overwhelming majority of US politicians on the payroll and brought humanity to a breaking point. People just need to research how the Obama myth was hatched. Gol...

(Remember: October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month) I will keep saying as long as I can type and have breath in my body. Victims need to tell. Victims need to talk about it. The only way they move forward, heal and get validation is to tell. Not 'get over it' or 'just forget about it' or "move on" but to tell and be heard. I have yet to meet a victim that was only interested in revenge. Yes, the thought crosses their minds but I talk them out of it easily. Why? Because for the most part - they want some sort of closure. Closure they won't get from their abuser(s). Usually because the abuser is too busy projecting , blame-shifting and trying to paint themselves (and sometimes their families) as the 'injured party. ' And abusers see themselves as entitled and above reproach. No, the overriding reason I hear for victims to tell - is the hope that the abuser will GET HELP. While the chances of a person who sees nothing wrong with usin...

The adage that laughter is the best medicine has been backed by an unusual investigation which says that people who seethe with anger take longer to recover from injury. Previous studies have linked ill tempered behaviour, whether brow-beating or road rage, with higher incidence of coronary heart disease, hypertension and stroke, especially among men. But the new study, published on Wednesday in the British journal Brain, Behaviour, Immunity, is the first controlled experiment that directly measures the impact of ire on the healing process. Researchers at the University of Ohio inflicted minor burns on the forearms of 98 volunteers who were then monitored over eight days to see how quickly the skin repaired itself. The subjects had each taken a battery of psychological tests beforehand to assess how easily and often they felt and expressed wrath, and were then ranked on an "anger scale." Persons who took certain pharmaceutical drugs, smoked cigarettes or drank excessive quant...

TOTO, WHERE'S THE DISASTER HELP? In my opinion, I find this UNACCEPTABLE in my own country to fellow Americans. I am distrubed but not surprised that the Bush Administration continues to take a page from their Katrina Screw-Up and blame the Governor of Kansas. Extreme Home Makeover can't do everything. Where the heck is FEMA? There's been a systemic lack of empathy for this and blindness to reality on the part of our current administration. And personally, its criminal. Why don't they ask those in the adminstration who got loads of deferrments or just went AWOL and had Daddy smooth it out to pitch in? Lack of equipment in Kansas is symptomatic of a larger problem By Lt. Col. Rick Francona Military analyst, MSNBC The governor of Kansas claims that recovery efforts in the tornado-devastated town of Greensburg are being hampered by shortages of Kansas National Guard equipment – Humvees, front loaders, trucks – currently deployed to Iraq and not in her state. Okay, let’s...