Who’s in charge of this body?

Posted on March 26, 2014 by Sherrie Cronin

I do tend to latch on to things and get enthused. My latest fixation is a blog called This Gives Me Hope by Cathryn Wellner. She is a woman determined to locate 1001 things that, well, give her hope, and then to tell me and you about them.

Thing #585 doesn’t sound terribly hopeful at first. Cathryn had a friend tell her that folks with multiple personality disorders sometimes have better or worse eyesight depending on which personality is in charge. That seems odd. She did further research and [I quote directly from Ms. Wellner’s wonderful blog]

“Her comment about visual acuity and MPD sent me on a search. PubMed has a link to research that appeared in the 1996 Journal of the American Optometric Association. The New York Times still has a copy of a 1988 article online that says, in part:

For more than a century clinicians have occasionally reported isolated cases of dramatic biological changes in people with multiple personalities as they switched from one to another. These include the abrupt appearance and disappearance of rashes, welts, scars and other tissue wounds; switches in handwriting and handedness; epilepsy, allergies and color blindness that strike only when a given personality is in control of the body.”

The very idea of rashes, welts and scars appearing at the mere behest of the personality currently in charge has an almost eerie feel of demonic possession to it, until you think about it more. What this tells us is that the human mind is a powerful thing, certainly in terms of the control it wields over the body to which it is connected .

In my novel x0, I join countless others in postulating that our minds are capable of far more than we generally acknowledge. A brain that can create a scar can also reduce one. If a rash can be created, a rash can be eliminated. And so on. If you think about it, there is tremendous hope in this message.

The wonderful poster above is from the Facebook page of Raising Ecstasy, and it makes me wonder if what weighs us down the most is often the negative thoughts that we foist upon ourselves. Thanks Ms. Wellner for passing along the hopeful message that research and observation support the theory that each one of us is in charge of our own bodies, and we can do far more good for ourselves than we realize.

The True Children of a Lesser God

Posted on March 15, 2014 by Sherrie Cronin

I know that people want to read light happy things, but every so often I find a blog that tears at my heart and screams for me to pass along the message. This post says to me, think of the children everywhere. In Syria, absolutely, but also in every other repressive and war torn society that we prefer not to consider.

Attenti al Lupo

We are not talking about it. It’s a shadow. Just far and away. We are not talking about it.

We are not talking about the children of Syria.

In February a report was presented to the U.N. Security Council that verifies the terror suffered by Syria’s children during three years of an insane conflict. But they don’t care. No action.

Children have been sexually abused. Raped. Executed. Children have been used as human shield. Their relatives have been tortured before them.

More than 10,000 have been killed. We are silent. They don’t exist. The children of Syria are far and away. Shadows and ashes that we ignore.

They are the true children of a lesser God.

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Frustration

Posted on March 8, 2014 by Sherrie Cronin

$fractal 1$ Momma said that their would be days like this, or so the song goes. We all have them. Not just days, but weeks when both the big and the little annoying things of the world overtake everything.

I’m struggling with writing momentum right now. The plot for my latest book, d4, has spiraled out of control and I’ve spent a whole painful month reigning it back in. That’s way too long and I am so frustrated. Meanwhile my to-do pile is overflowing with real world problems like bills and taxes that I cannot keep ignoring. Breathe. It will all get done. My own job has been unusually demanding these past couple of weeks, so I can add a new chronic right shoulder and neck ache that is clearly computer related to my list of frustrations. Keep breathing.

As is so often the case when I am floundering, my immediate loved ones all have issues in their own lives right now that I cannot fix. There is a downside to having a very empathic nature, and as I turn on the news to relax, I know deep inside that isn’t going to help.I can’t explain why, but war anywhere frightens and depresses me. So does tyranny and repression. My heart goes out to the people of the Ukraine and Venezuela, both of which are now exploding. Breathe. You don’t help anyone by being agitated.

We just finished a primary here in Texas in which candidates in my area battled each other to prove how each was more conservative than the other. The message was non-stop, delivered via unwanted phone calls and unavoidable fliers in the mail. The spiteful nature of much of the rhetoric was so depressing to a middle-of-the road independent like me. What to do, what to do.