In which she gives Eve a break.

But the Lord God warned him, "You may  freely eat of every tree in the garden - except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. If you eat its fruit, you are sure to die."

Genesis 2: 16 & 17
The New Living Bible.

I've been listening to Triple J for a couple of years now. I like that I am hearing different artists than the usual Beyonce, Brittney and Bieber offerings of other radio stations. A few months back I heard Hilltop Hoods, Cosby Sweater and liked it from the start. I liked it because...well...I don't know why. It was different to what I normally like, it was catchy...and I liked it. I didn't even know the lyrics apart from most of the chorus. This is most unlike me. I like knowing lyrics. Always have. In any case, I enjoyed Cosby Sweater every time it came on.

Recently one of my friends posted about Cosby Sweater on Facebook, saying how much of a good song it was until she discovered what it meant.

I tried to resist folks! I wanted to keep singing along to that song and believing that it was simply referring to the sweaters the Huxtable family would wear on The Cosby Show.

But there it was - that tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in the form of Google.

And I couldn't resist...and now I know what kind of Cosby Sweater the songwriters are referring to...one that I never knew existed until half an hour ago.

*blinks*

Ignorance actually is bliss sometimes, and I find myself wondering if all we do is lose our innocence in the relentless pursuit to know things. Once you know the truth about something then you're no longer innocent...and then...guilt comes in simply because you think, "I shouldn't like this." Well....that's what it's like for me.

(I think I'm working out the Genesis stuff as I ponder this.)

I remember as a child singing the original words to Eenie Meenie Minee Mo, Rock-a-bye Baby and Ring-a-Rosie with reckless abandon. Choosing who was "It" in Tiggy or captain of a team was always decided by the Eenie Meenie Minee Mo method, and back then we didn't sing about a Tiger being caught by his toe...it was something else. None of us had any idea that we were singing about something from the days of slavery, nor did we know that we were singing a song about the Black Plague when we sang Ring-a-Rosie.  It was all innocence.

In the 1980's I heard Led Zepplins Stairway to Heaven played backwards and heard the infamous line about "My sweet Satan". I still can't hear that song without thinking about it and feeling terribly guilty and sinful if I listen to it. (Although I have been known to bellow along to it out of defiance from time to time!)

Going to hell in a hand basket...

And yet we relentlessly pursue knowledge. We just have to know what's behind the curtain, what it looks like,  sounds like, feels like, tastes like. What is there that lies beyond ignorance and innocence? Maybe it's ok not to know. Maybe it's ok to remain blissfully innocent and ignorant of things we don't really need to know about.

At our place we give up this exasperated cry from time to time;

"For goodness sake, Eve! You had ONE JOB!!!"

We shake our fists at the woman who legend says, took the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil even though she was told she shouldn't.  She took it and ate it simply because she just had to know what it tasted like.

I think we can all agree that we would've ended up doing the same.

Sorry Bill...I don't think I can look at your sweaters anymore...

In which she berates herself for being a bad blogger

Well, no, not really.

I posted a status on Facebook the other day that read:

  There honestly is no place like home. I need to set myself up a little business from here. 

Travelling over an hour to get to work is really starting to grow mould. I've been doing it since 2007. Don't get me wrong, I like the organization I work for, the people I work with and even the location; but I really don't like the commute.

And, as I have said a billion times before, I would much rather be home doing things here and somehow earn money to support myself.

Akash said to me that I could totally do it, considering all the pies I have my fingers in, the things I am interested in, working on or good at. He said I should earn money from my writing because I'm good at it.

That may be so, but the problem is I write too sporadically and I tend to procrastinate when it comes to writing. What makes interesting writing? I probably think of many topics a day but I just don't pen them. Maybe one day we'll have some kind of chip implanted into our brains so that when good, cohesive thoughts come we can somehow save them and then download them for editing later.

Scary stuff.

Another part of me is extremely private and baulks at having the interwebz reading my thoughts so that when I meet people they know more than I realize. In fact, I've consciously cut back on posting daily status updates on Facebook for that very reason. I keep an online diary but I don't write in it often. Having a private-ish online diary is one thing. Having a public blog is a whole new ball game.

I guess I'm yet to learn the art of blogging whilst keeping my Leisa-ness just for me and those I love.

Speaking of earning money as a result of blogging, I have my second ever paid speaking engagement coming up soon. This proves to me that earning money from this is indeed possible if I just put myself out there and connect with all the right people and places. I'm both excited and nervous about it. Excited, because I really do enjoy public speaking and nervous because I just feel like this very inexperienced little fish in a very big pond and I don't know anything about anything. I have to keep reminding myself that people just want to hear my story and I alone, am the expert when it comes to my story.

It reminds me of something a doctor said to me once. He explained that as a person with achondroplasia I am one of the experts in the field and all the scientists, geneticists and doctors are learning from me; learning about the nuances of the condition, how it works and how to treat it. It was quite humbling.

(That was quite a little detour we took there, wasn't it?)

Anyway, I'm berating myself for not blogging like I should because if I don't tell my story then how's it going to get out there with any form of accuracy and truth? Time to be making sure I carry around a notebook and pen everywhere I go to make sure I write, even if all I write is just streams of consciousness. 

Be excellent to each other.

You Told Me

You told me to believe, have faith, trust.
You told me to ask, seek, knock,
You told me that the door would be opened.
You told me that I was loved so much that I was enough to die for.
You told me that heaven's riches were mine...
Health
Wholeness
Healing

Healing
healing...

That I only need ask
have faith
believe
You told me it would be mine.

You told me that I would not be given anything beyond what I could bear.
Endure.
Enduring
Endurance

You told me
I believed
trusted
hoped.

With the passage of time the endurance
and patience
and hope
and trust
Eroded and fell into the dust.
Pleading, ferverent prayer gave way to angry fists shaken at the silent heavens.
Heavens that offered no deliverance,
comfort,
solace
or relief.
Just the echoing silence of unanswered hope.

The anger burned and the fire raged,
pointless in it's severity.
For heaven was silent.
Even rage prompting no response.
Rage gave way to resignation.

The yoke was not easy as promised, nor the burden light.
Mine to carry, not His.

Wisdom was gleaned from the fathers of old
Those who went to the pits of hell
to wallow in the shit
for dreams never realised.
Abraham
             Isaac
                    Jacob
                            Joseph
                                      Moses
All believing in dreams
and dying without seeing them realised.
Never knowing if the dream was real or the delusions of madness.

Believing something contrary to ones own truth is madness.
Is it madness to believe in a benevolent god when the reality of existence screams the truth of the contrary?
To believe in divine healing in the face of death

Day
      after day
                  after day

A gamut of things contrary
                                          to
                                           what
                                                  one
                                                      has
                                                          been told.
Until I no longer believe in the goodness of the benevolent god
And it becomes easier.
logical
intellectual
to think of it all as meaningless and random
and the task is to let go
                                   enjoy
                                          and simply exist
                                                                   and end in blissful nothingness......
And yet...
When I let go of all you taught, told, insisted was true...

Something calls
Promising nothing
No visions of the future,
No riches
              nor health,
                             healing
                                       nor deliverance
Nothing.

Just the gentle calling of Spirit to spirit
Logic to logic
Heart to heart
Expecting nothing, assuring everything.
I breathe, slow, cease
and become part of something bigger than everything

Nothing is confusing or contrary.
I breathe and again face the reality that remains unchanged
but has somehow become less burdensome.
The yoke still not easy
nor the burden light,
but the delusions have gone;
the hopeless hope released and scattered to the four winds.
And I find peace in what is beauty in the journey.
Strength in the struggle.

Sunday earthing

Today has been the day I needed in such a long time. Life has been go, go, go. Busy, busy, busy and concentrating on the have - to's. Nothing wrong with that, mind you, but I was slowly becoming disconnected. Yes. That's the word.  Disconnected.

I didn't know how important being connected to the earth was to me until I found myself disconnected from it. I've been longing to just get out into my yard and garden and just dig and weed. I got filthy dirty, sweaty and a little bit sun - kissed.  I weeded and hauled logs, found lots of juicy, fat worms. I chatted away to the dogs who kept me company. I felt my over - active mind chatter just quieten and then stop. I felt peace again.

My Mum and Dad stopped by for a visit on their way back home from house sitting in the city. Dad came out to the garden with me and together we pulled weeds and chatted away about memories and family. Mum busied herself inside, helping me by cleaning up the kitchen.

I am so blessed.

Simplicity. I love it. I love reconnecting to what really matters. Family and earth. Simple things. All the dirt from my gardening endeavors has been washed away now but I feel the connection to the earth once again and feel ready to face what this week will bring.

Wanderlust

"I want adventure in the great wide somewhere."

Belle - Disney's Beauty and the Beast.

Back to the mundane sameness of the everyday.

I sit here in the train and wonder again who I am, where I'm going and what my dreams are. I seem to have lost my Leisa-ness somewhere. That wide-eyed hippy girl (yes, I still think of myself as a girl) enamored with the amazing-ness of life, contented to just potter amongst the veggies, create new things and just sit and breathe seems to have flitted off somewhere, replaced by this person who is again so bogged down by sameness, overwhelmed with the "have to's" and so very, very bored.

Disappointed is the word that comes to mind. I'm disappointed that I have once again slipped into this funk without warning. 

As usual I have tried to analyse this and what I kind of think is that I have had too many fingers in too many pies and have been too busy. I haven't been able to just centre in at home and breathe. Being centred is a very necessary part of my mental and physical health. It's well known that I am a homebody. Nothing makes me happier than pottering about at home; putting things in order, making my space (our space) a place of order and calm and peace. Over the course of this year I haven't been able to do that at all. Too much going on. Too many things jumping out from left of centre to cope with, deal with and manage. 

My mind is cast back to about eighteen months ago when everything seemed to be flowing smoothly. The house was neat, ordered, clean. Everything was done by 8:30pm - including a wipeover and disinfecting of all bathroom surfaces, vacuuming, mopping of the floor and all laundry. We had healthy dinners at the table. 

These days I can't remember the last time the bathrooms were cleaned. The animal hair and dietrus lies thick on the floor and the carpet, people fossick in the laundry basket for clean clothes and mealtimes are pretty much, "Get your own and come and eat it at the coffee table in front of the TV." I don't function well like this. I'm functioning, but not well. I don't feel grounded, I don't feel connected to the earth and those around me. I no longer know where I'm going and what I want. 

I've always said that the state of my physical environment is a direct reflection of the state of my inner world. 

Still, there are a lot of exciting things happening out there and I am a part of them and happy to be a part of them...but my heart is longing for quieter, simple times and my mind is starting to plan towards how to make that happen once again. I'm thinking of taking the entire month of January off work. A whole month of reconnection and reflection seems like balm to my soul even just thinking about it. 

Images out there

I'm usually hesitant to share images on this blog. Let me clarify. I am hesitant to share photographs of myself, my partner, my children, my family and my friends. I'm not really au fais with how this internet thingo works but I am kind of becoming pretty aware that whatever you post on this big webby thing is permanent. Even if you delete something people are able to access cached files somehow and gain access to what you no longer wanted them to see.

I know that sounds so very naieve, the way I have described it....but I'm a wordsmith, not a computer programmer, mathemetician or scientist......which reminds me.....did I ever tell you about the time I got 4% on a Maths exam once???

That's for another day.

But yes, I am very aware of what I post because I know that there are people out there who think nothing of right clicking, Saving As and then using my precious images for their own means... And I am no longer a firm believer in the goodness of all mankind. There are some nasty people out there. Go have a look at GOMI if you don't believe me....but then again....no, don't.

The fact that people can use your own images without permission for their own means came screaming out at us in technicolour this weekend. My eldest daughter became aware that her image was being used on some kind of health information website. The image is a nice one, don't get me wrong, but the point is, somehow someone Right Clicked on one of her photos from back in the day when she wrote a blog, saved it and then used it to add to their rather dodgy information about dwarfism. I'm not going to link it here because the information isn't accurate at all. This image is being used without her permission.

She then Google searched the image and found it has been used in other places as well as being someone's Avatar on a not so very nice forum which seems to dedicate itself to bashing Christianity.

Wow.

So...what to do?

Personally, I'm rethinking the images I will post here. I'm asking my loved ones if it's ok to post their images and how they want me to edit them. I'm considering just head shots that reveal very little of people's conditions. Although we like to think we live in a world that embraces difference I am very aware that living with a physical difference, particularly dwarfism, can still evoke the worst in people and making fun of people with dwarfism seems to still happen on an alarming level.

I'm still learning. I wish I didn't have to be shocked to learn though.

DwAM four days in

It's Dwarfism Awareness Month.

It's four days in and I haven't posted a thing about it. Not a sentence. Not a word.

I kind of feel guilty about that.

I also feel frustrated about it.

Months ago I was all fired up and sought out people to tell their stories right here on this blog. I wanted stories from short statured individuals, parents, siblings, average statured children of short statured parents, friends.

Only one person responded.

To say I was disheartened would be an understatement.

Then I thought that perhaps I could interview people who were in my life about their experiences of knowing, working with and dealing with short statured people. I was going to interview my personal trainer, my chiropractor, my best friend, my hairdresser, my sister.

I didn't do any of it. My sister is writing her reflections and they've been a great talking points over coffee. I do hope she finishes what she's working on. She's so articulate and I'm sure you'll enjoy reading her beautiful words.

But here it is. Dwarfism Awareness Month Day 4 and I've not written a word.

Until now.

Did you know?

● Achondroplasia,  the most common form of dwarfism occurs once in approximately 20,000 births.

● There are over 200 different types of dwarfism.

● Dwarfism occurs as a random mutation of a gene. (I'm an X-man - mutant and proud!)

● 80% of people with dwarfism have average statured parents and siblings.

● Dwarfism is not a disease that needs to be cured.

● The life expectancy of a person with dwarfism is the same as for an average sized person.

● People with dwarfism have careers and jobs in all fields - doctors, nurses, midwives, accountants, nutritionists, mechanics, actors, architects, psychologists, vet assistants, teachers, shop owners, computer programmers, entertainers, truck drivers, pastors, painters, editors...you name it!

● People with dwarfism are able to drive.

● They can also be parents.

● People with dwarfism would prefer to be called short statured, "a person with dwarfism" or as a "Little Person"...but most of all we would prefer to be referred to by our names!

I'm hoping to have other posts up this month that will help to raise awareness of dwarfism - not only in Australia, but around the world.

How it's done - by me.

When I tell people that I'm a runner and the distances I've done the comment I get most often is, "I could never do what you do."

To which, my most likely response is, "You don't know what you're capable of until you try."

Once upon a time I didn't think I could do this either. I didn't just suddenly wake up one day and decide to run ten kilometres, or fifteen, or seventeen and just put on my running shoes and do it. No, I worked up to it. It's taken me three years to get to this spot.

The thing is, I wanted to be able to run. That's what the motivation was and still is. I wanted to run and so I started. The people who say, "I could never do what you do," might not want to run anyway. And that's perfectly ok. It's not for everybody.

But being healthy and active is, in whatever form that takes. A healthy body is for everyone.

So, what do I do to stay healthy?

1. Food.

Once upon a time I struggled with a pretty intense eating disorder. Food was the enemy, regardless of how hungry I was and how much I wanted to eat. Thankfully, with the help of counselling, I got my eating disorder under control. I hesitated writing that sentence. I was thinking of saying that I beat that eating disorder, but I know this would be untrue. My eating disorder was like being an alcoholic...in a sense. I have a friend who, although she had been sober for ten years, still understood that she was an alcoholic. It was laying latent and under control. she could not injest anything that contained alcohol - not even cough syrup - knowing that the beast could awaken if she didn't control it.

That's what my eating disorder is like. It's under control but it whispers now and again and I have to control it with logic, sensible thinking and activity.

But I digress...I now view food as fuel for my body. I do love food and I love trying different cuisines and tastes. I am a vegetarian and this choice is primarily a moral one which follows my own personal convictions. I love healthy, wholesome foods most of all - foods that are fresh and simply bursting with goodness. A plate piled high with greens, grains and pulses make my body feel vital and alive. A bowl of grainy muesli topped with berries and chia seeds makes me feel fuelled and ready to face the day so much more than a plate of egg, bacon, sausage and toast.

I also eat because I'm hungry, not because the clock tells me it's time to.  Sometimes I wonder if people are really hungry or if they're just associating the feeling of "not full" with hunger. I have my suspicions...

Yes, I indulge my sugar/salt/fat cravings sometimes. Oh how I love me a bowl of fries of a piece of cake or some Doritos! However, these are occasional foods and I don't see them as "a treat" or a "reward". They are neutral to me and just a food choice I am making at the time. Sometimes I wonder if people set themselves up for failure by labelling their food choices as "good" or "bad". Indulging a craving should never (in my opinion) be labelled as "bad" because bad is associated with shame and guilt.

Treat your body with respect and reverence. Do you want it to function in the best way possible for as long as possible? Then fuel it with foods that will promote that! Take notice of how your body feels after eating an enormous plate of wholesome, nutritious foods brimming with goodness and then compare how it feels after eating a big meal of processed, food-like products - chips, pies, burgers. There's a difference. I guarantee it!

2. Activity.

I think one of my mantras is "An attitude of activity". I build activity into my day. If there's an opportunity to take the stairs rather than the lift or travelator, I will. Cleaning the house, gardening, walking the dogs are all activities I do with energy. Park the car a bit further away from the shops so you get some walking in. Take a walk during your lunch break. You don't have to take out a gym membership or run 10km to be active. You can build activity into your day in whatever you're doing.

3. Sleep. 

After giving your body healthy fuel and being active all day, sleep is wonderful! Honestly, if my dogs didn't bark for a toilet run at 2:30am I'd sleep a solid eight hours every night. Sleep is so important. It's your body's chance to do some repair work, reset hormone levels, rest and recover. Get into it! It's one of my favorite activities!

4. Time Out.

I've finally woken up to the fact that all work and no play makes Leisa a very dull, irritable, emotional and fractious girl indeed! Making time for myself has been instrumental in improving my mental health. Over the past five years I have discovered new passions and uncovered talents I never knew I had! I've become acquainted with myself and discovered a new best friend, which has enabled me to reach out to others with a new understanding and acceptance. I've started to know what my limits are and I stick to them. That's not to say that I don't fall into the trap of overscheduling. I do sometimes! Life just keeps offering so many opportunities these days! However I am getting better at recognising my own limits - physically, mentally and emotionally.

So, that's holistic health Leisa-style for you! I'm constantly aware that we human beings are most definitely works in progress so I no longer beat myself up so much when I fall down or miss the mark that I've set. (I possibly set benchmarks too high sometimes anyway!) Life is a learning experience and I'm so grateful to be learning every day.