NYC English teacher here. Follow me for my thoughts on teaching, educational policy, mental health, my ramblings, cute animals, and other silliness. Fellow Nerdfighters, DFTBA! PS: My posts express my opinion, which I'm usually in the process of figuring out, and not that of my employer, school district, grad school, husband, best friend, tooth fairy, etc.
So these are both “Aw Fuck I’m outta real food” meals BUT ALSO: if you’re learning how to cook, these are great “baby steps” meals to learn how to cook basics into something enjoyable without “wasting” anything expensive. Though I maintain that even cooking screw-ups are valuable in terms of lessons learned.
Also they’re great for when you get absorbed in something and you realize your blood sugar is dropping and you need to make something Quick.
I don’t think of myself as a cook at all, but I looked through this list and was like “if you have [center] and [any item on a surrounding ring] how do you sit there thinking you’ve got nothing to eat?” Like, I buy a fair amount of staples knowing that I’ll be able to quickly assemble them into something tasty if I’m hungry and don’t have anything instant (or in a leftovers container because I made it earlier in the week specifically to eat for a week): butter, cheese, noodles, and more.
It still impresses people how I can go into random kitchens with no food in them and emerge with Filling Snacks for Five People. This is the secret: knowing how to assemble Cupboard Meals. And these charts are incredibly well-laid-out too!
I did this last year and inexplicably turned out to be eligible for Medicaid in WV, which I STILL have. Absolute and total lifechanger that’s letting me go to school instead of having to work full time.
hi I’m a therapist
some people come to me to break down severe childhood trauma
some people come to me because their job is super stressful
some people come to me because they’re worried all the time about stuff that they know they shouldn’t be worried about but they worry anyway
some people come to me because they’re bad at focusing
some people come to me because their mom said they should but they’re enjoying the experience anyway
what i’m saying is there is no wrong time, reason, or explanation to come see a therapist. we’re ready for you.
Ruby Bridges was the first black child to desegregate the all-white William Frantz Elementary School in Louisiana during the New Orleans school desegregation crisis in 1960.
This movie made me cry, I was so heart broken by how Ruby Bridges was treated! She was only 6, but was so strong. She is a very brave girl and she did not care what the white folks called her.
People are simply disgusting to minimize people by skin color!
Ruby you might not think you’re a hero… But to other people you are! You are A HERO and you are A PERSON WHO MADE AMERICA CHANGE!
“As Bridges describes it, “Driving up I could see the crowd, but living in New Orleans, I actually thought it was Mardi Gras. There was a large crowd of people outside of the school. They were throwing things and shouting, and that sort of goes on in New Orleans at Mardi Gras.“ Former United States Deputy Marshal Charles Burks later recalled, “She showed a lot of courage. She never cried. She didn’t whimper. She just marched along like a little soldier, and we’re all very very proud of her.“
U.S. Marshals escorted Bridges to and from school
As soon as Bridges entered the school, white parents pulled their own children out; all the teachers refused to teach while a black child was enrolled. Only one person agreed to teach Ruby and that was Barbara Henry, from Boston, Massachusetts, and for over a year Henry taught her alone, “as if she were teaching a whole class.”
Every morning, as Bridges walked to school, one woman would threaten to poison her; because of this, the U.S. Marshals dispatched by President Eisenhower, who were overseeing her safety, allowed Ruby to eat only the food that she brought from home.
Another woman at the school put a black baby doll in a wooden coffin and protested with it outside the school, a sight that Bridges Hall has said “scared me more than the nasty things people screamed at us.” At her mother’s suggestion, Bridges began to pray on the way to school, which she found provided protection from the comments yelled at her on the daily walks.”
More info on Ruby Bridges on Wikipedia
THIS SHIT WAS ONLY 58 YEARS AGO. PEOPLE WHO PARTICIPATED IN THIS RACIST TERRORISM AND ACTS LIKE IT ARE STILL ALIVE, AND THEIR KIDS ARE IN THEIR 40′S AND 50′S.
DON’T LET RACISM APOLOGISTS GET AWAY WITH “WHY ARE YOU LIVING IN THE PAST,” BULLSHIT ARGUMENTS. WE ARE LITERALLY STILL DEALING WITH THE FAMILIES THAT FORMED HATE MOBS OVER BLACK CHILDREN ATTENDING SCHOOL WITH WHITE KIDS.
"Many effective strategies that treat anxiety and depression don't work for trauma survivors."
I’ve been living with the effects of complex trauma for a long time, but for many years, I didn’t know what it was. Off and on throughout my life, I’ve struggled with what I thought was anxiety and depression. Or rather, In addition to being traumatized, I was anxious and depressed.
Regardless of the difference, no condition should ever be minimized. If you are feeling anxious or depressed, it’s important and urgent to find the right support for you. No one gets a prize for “worst” depression, anxiety, trauma or any other combination of terrible things to deal with, and no one should suffer alone. With that in mind, there is a difference between what someone who has Complex PTSD feels and what someone with generalized anxiety or mild to moderate depression feels.
For someone dealing with complex trauma, the anxiety they feel does not come from some mysterious unknown source or obsessing about what could happen. For many, the anxiety they feel is not rational. General anxiety can often be calmed with grounding techniques and reminders of what is real and true. Mindfulness techniques can help. Even when they feel disconnected, anxious people can often acknowledge they are loved and supported by others.
For those who have experienced trauma, anxiety comes from an automatic physiological response to what has actually, already happened. The brain and body have already lived through “worst case scenario” situations, know what it feels like and are hell-bent on never going back there again. The fight/flight/ freeze response goes into overdrive. It’s like living with a fire alarm that goes off at random intervals 24 hours a day. It is extremely difficult for the rational brain to be convinced “that won’t happen,” because it already knows that it has happened, and it was horrific.
Those living with generalized anxiety often live in fear of the future. Those with complex trauma fear the future because of the past.
The remedy for both anxiety and trauma is to pull one’s awareness back into the present. For a traumatized person who has experienced abuse, there are a variety of factors that make this difficult. First and foremost, a traumatized person must be living in a situation which is 100 percent safe before they can even begin to process the tsunami of anger, grief and despair that has been locked inside of them, causing their hypervigilance and other anxious symptoms. That usually means no one who abused them or enabled abuse in the past can be allowed to take up space in their life. It also means eliminating any other people who mirror the same abusive or enabling patterns.
Unfortunately for many, creating a 100 percent abuser-free environment is not possible, even for those who set up good boundaries and are wary of the signs. That means that being present in the moment for a complex trauma survivor is not fail-proof, especially in a stressful event. They can be triggered into an emotional flashback by anything in their present environment.
It is possible (and likely) that someone suffering from the effects of complex trauma is also feeling anxious and depressed, but there is a difference to the root cause. Many effective strategies that treat anxiety and depression don’t work for trauma survivors. Meditation and mindfulness techniques that make one more aware of their environment sometimes can produce an opposite effect on a trauma survivor. Trauma survivors often don’t need more awareness. They need to feel safe and secure in spite of what their awareness is telling them.
At the first sign of anxiety or depression, traumatized people will spiral into toxic shame. Depending on the wounding messages they received from their abusers, they will not only feel the effects of anxiety and depression, but also a deep shame for being “defective” or “not good enough.” Many survivors were emotionally and/or physically abandoned, and have a deep rooted knowledge of the fact that they were insufficiently loved. They live with a constant reminder that their brains and bodies were deprived of a basic human right. Even present-day situations where they are receiving love from a safe person can trigger the awareness and subsequent grief of knowing how unloved they were by comparison.
Anxiety and depression are considered commonplace, but I suspect many of those who consider themselves anxious or depressed are actually experiencing the fallout of trauma. Most therapists are not well trained to handle trauma, especially the complex kind that stems from prolonged exposure to abuse. Unless they are specially certified, they might have had a few hours in graduate school on Cluster B personality disorders, and even fewer hours on helping their survivors. Many survivors of complex trauma are often misdiagnosed as having borderline personality disorder (BPD) or bipolar disorder. Anyone who has sought treatment for generalized anxiety or depression owes themselves a deeper look at whether trauma plays a role.
The internet went from showing food recipe videos to alchemy in less than a decade. There’s going to be a quick video on how to make the philosopher’s stone from tomato sauce next week.
This is one of my favorite things about being a parent: how you learn things that you might not have had to otherwise. That’s the thing about it–yes, I love my daughter and she is the focus of my parenting goals, but my experiences with her have helped me learn and grow in ways I never expected, and I’m grateful.
This really is beautiful, and this is why I love children. Though I don’t want any kids of my own, I adore how healthy relationships between parents and their kids help both grow and become better people.
