Book Review: Rethinking Women's Health: A Guide for Wellness

When I first moved to Starkville, MS, there wasn't much here. A handful of restaurants, three grocery stores, none large. Certainly no health foods - I had to join a cooperative that bought from a business in the Ozarks. Slowly, resources for health and wellness are growing: a large health food and bulk section in Kroger, a summer farmer's market, a CSA buying club - and Alison Buehler.

Alison lives a couple of miles down the road from me, in the Homestead Education Center, where she and her family have founded a way of life they share with others. As well as offering classes in health and homesteading, she's worked hard to attract nationally-known figures such as Sandor Katz and Glennon Melton (of Momastery fame) to Starkvegas (local joke).  I don't get out to her programs as often as I would like, so, when I saw in her newsletter that she was offering a year's membership for those who pre-ordered her book, I thought I had nothing to lose and might just give myself the nudge I needed to take advantage of what's on offer almost on my doorstep. So any bribery involved in this review is by me to myself ;)

The book is divided into three main sections: maiden, mother, and wise elder. Each is part manifesto, part resource, and part memoir of Alison and her family's journey into health. Alison begins by setting out her passionate vision for how we as a society might better manage each stage of life. She then moves into a survey of current options for health issues related to these stages, with an extensive bibliography for further reading. Alison is trained as a qualitative researcher (among many talents!), and applies it to women's health, looking for places where data, stories, and observations point to the same solutions. Not only has she trawled the latest information to bring solutions to women's health problems, but she models a research process that everyone can use in their own health plan. All this aside, I find Alison's voice at her best when she is sharing her personal story, illustrating her belief that stories themselves have the power to heal.

Published by Mississippi press, Sartoris, the book has a regional feel, speaking to a state that badly needs to focus on health issues. [Side bar: as I found out when I was pregnant, there isn't a single birthing center in Mississippi.] Yet the message is national. If you're looking for resources, inspiration, or affirmation that you are not alone in your struggle to achieve wellness, Rethinking Women's Health is for you.

Looking for more? Connect with Alison on her site The Healing Wall or the Homestead Education Center.

Seven Quick Takes 20: The Duchess and I

Seven topics I'd discuss with the Duchess of Cambridge at our children's wedding. I'm calling that Seven Quick Takes. I did four in a row - I deserve a little slack :)

As soon as I knew the Duchess of Cambridge had given birth to a girl, I had to give serious thought to my role as mother to her future husband. For example, what name would look good on a commemorative tea towel? I've been contemplating the moment when the other royals and the Beckhams have gone home, and the Duchess and I are sitting with our feet up on the sofa in Windsor Castle (she will have kicked off her four-inch heels; I will have slid off my one inch sensible shoes that I spent a month practicing in). And we'll think back to 2014-15...

Duchess: Hyperemesis gravidarum was a terribe. I was prostrate in bed in Kensington Palace.
Me: I thought people who said you didn't deserve sympathy hadn't ever had 'morning' sickness. I only wished I could be hospitalized. Three months of twenty-four hour nausea, vomiting violently at least once a day, trying not to throw up on my students, even when they deserved it - I would have taken a palace bed and doctors on call, but I didn't begrudge you. There should be palace accommodation for all mothers with morning sickness - maybe you should call the NHS and suggest it.

Duchess: I felt so fat at the end.
Me: I looked like I was expecting you.

And Charlotte weighed more than Alcuin...

Duchess: Facing the cameras the same day I gave birth was scary.
Me: I didn't even let anyone take a picture of me the day I gave birth. My eldest graduated two days later, and we took photos outside. My husband put one of me on Facebook without permission - if I hadn't needed him to help take care of the baby, I would have murdered him.

If she was twelve years older and it was her third child, she would so have looked like this.

Duchess: And then the christening. Pushing that pram in high heels was hard work.
Me: While you were doing that, I was hobbling around my parents' house bemoaning the fact that all those youth-giving pregnancy hormones had finally worn off, and my hip pain had come back.

The pram my mother wishes I had.

Duchess: The Archbishop was fairly accommodating.
Me: Well, we did have a canon of Salisbury Cathedral.

Duchess: I was a little worried Charlotte would spit up on my cream suit.
Me: I was fat and flustered in a charity shop dress I bought because it was the only thing that almost fitted and had buttons so I could breastfeed. I had to keep mouthing at my husband to cover up my bra straps while I was holding the baby.

We flew thousands of miles for this moment.

Duchess: I need a pick-me-up after all that. Fancy a little champagne from His Majesty's cellars? I hid this bottle behind the sofa. And please, call me Kate.
Me: Don't mind if I do, Kate.

Phew, made it to the end of Link-toberfest. "Mommy blogger" should not be a name of derision - I don't know how many of the people who link up week after week find time for one regular post, let alone several.
Kelly's question of the week is : What is your most popular post? Curiously, it's this mini-post. A close second is this series on one of my favourite children's authors, E. Nesbit: "More than Just Red Flannel Petticoats" - parts one and two.

Hop on over to This Ain't the Lyceum for good reads and prizes!

7QT9: The Waiting Game

What does one do while pretending not to wait for a birth?

 1. Read something BIG
After coming across happy readers of Kristin Lavransdatter for maybe two years, I got a copy of the Norwegian trilogy, which won the Nobel prize for literature in 1928. One thousand pages of a historical (medieval) novel in the tradition of a Norse saga. I always thought that the concept of Ragnarok could only come from a people who spent half the year in the dark - I think the same goes for the reams of introspection and general sense of fate in this story. I have to say that some of Krtistin's interminable mental self-flagellation did get to me - by half way through I was beginning to sympathize with her feckless husband. On the whole, though, a read to satisfy grown-ups, as Virginia Woolf would say. It will take you to the heart of medieval Norway, and into the hearts of two people passionately in love and completely ill suited.

2. Tackle the almost-final frontier of decluttering
... in the shape of our wine closet aka living room cupboard. I forgot to take a before picture, but to give you some idea of the overall clutter, here is a picture of the living room after I recently rescued a flying squirrel from the cats:

I did not buy the boxed wine.

And here is the Konmari-ed cupboard: Not a squirrel in sight.

The final frontier, by the way, is photographs, but I don't have a spare six months for that yet.


 3. Become an independent trader
Our area has several great swap/sell Facebook groups, one exclusively for all things children. I've managed to sell my daughter's American Girl doll plus paraphernalia for a couple of hundred dollars (after she Konmari-ed her room) plus pick up some cheap baby items. We're giving her a cut on the principle that she should learn early that her unwanted stuff is worth money.

Lovely jubbly!

4. Spend too much time online looking up signs of labour, even though I know the only real sign is the appearance of a baby at the end of it. Start to hate Braxton Hicks.

5. Revisit my television youth
We were sporadically watching All Creatures Great and Small, but now we're getting in an episode a night. My younger daughter wants to be a vet so I thought she'd appreciate the series - and she loves it. Being an accurate portrayal of the British professional classes in the 30s, there is almost perpetual drinking. But boy... are some of those episodes really almost 40 years old? Something apart from the MCMLXXVII at the end of the credits that tells me I'm older: I would have had a thing for young Tristan Farnon (Peter Davison) first time around - now older brother Siegfried (Robert Hardy) is looking pretty handsome.

6. Wait, just wait...
Sometimes feel hopeful, sometimes cry a little...

7. And be rewarded
Alcuin Edward St John, who, at three days past his due date, is obligingly our earliest child ever!

For more Seven Quick Takes, join Kelly at This Ain't the Lyceum

Seven Quick Takes 4 A Pregnant Lent

I decided to take up Kelly's invitation to share Lent in my own way and offer seven quick takes on why 2015 may just be my Best Lent Ever.

1. I'm unexpectedly pregnant in my mid-forties. My other children are 11 and 18. Surely that alone gives the blessed Zelie Martin a run for her money.

The big three:
2. Prayer. Lots of opportunity for spontaneous prayer. Oh God, how long am I going to be pregnant? Please let me get to the loo in time. Why is everyone around me suddenly so irritating?

3. Fasting. Being pregnant, I already can't eat anything I actually like. Spinach-yogurt-flax seed smoothie, anyone?

Maybe not today

4. Almsgiving. We got rid of most of our baby stuff years ago, so we're pretty much a charity case in that department. Plus, I have to give away a least a tithe's worth of our belongings so we have somewhere to put the baby.

Plus:
5. Lots of opportunities to resist temptation, such as: speeding on campus because they're not real police, plus I can just tell them I have to get to the bathroom RIGHT NOW (see #2). Or, not snapping at the woman who thought it was OK to get into the elevator in front of me, even though she has all four limbs intact.

6. Following the "action" part of my Lenten study book is super easy.  Take time to contemplate the mysteries of creation. Glance down at belly. Check.  Put up with someone to the point of complaining today.  Ok, so about two minutes, then.

7. Need some sufferings to offer up? Pregnancy has it all. Nausea, vomiting, random excruciating pains. Worst of all, I have to grade essays without the aid of any alcohol whatsoever.

For more Seven Quick Takes, join Kelly over at This Ain't the Lyceum.