• The Negative Side Effects of Anti Depressant Medications by Sonya Vatomsky

The Negative Side Effects of Anti Depressant Medications by Sonya Vatomsky

I took physician-prescribed anti-depressant medications (about two or three types at different dosages) and about two anti-anxiety medications off and on over a period of about 17 to 18 years. None of the medications helped me.

There have been many articles and studies published (that I can remember) in the last 15 years disputing if anti-depressants are effective for most.

Here’s an article about the negative side effects some people experience when taking anti-depressants or anti-anxiety medications:

When Medication Side Effects Make You Rethink What It Means to Have a ‘Good Life’

Snippets:

by Sonya Vatomsky

Even if you aren’t aware of it, the chances are good that someone you know is taking some sort of psychiatric medicine.

According to the most recent research, an estimated one in six adults in the U.S. have a prescription for antidepressants, anti-anxiety pills, or some other drug to help them manage their mental health.

And with those drugs, for many of those people, come the side effects — some of which can feel dire enough to become a problem in and of themselves, requiring a second treatment to offset the first.

• Man Copes With the Death of His Wife By Hiking

 Man Copes With the Death of His Wife By Hiking

What may become my standard opener for posts about death and grief:

My mother died a little bit before the year 2010 (yes, I am being intentionally sketchy about specifics because I would like to remain anonymous).
I discovered the hard way after my mother’s passing, and I was shocked and deeply saddened and disappointed to find, that most Christians are terrible at helping someone who is in grief.
Many Christians do not even want to try to be there for someone who has experienced loss, whether out of laziness, selfishness, or feeling uncomfortable with open expressions of emotional pain.
Whatever the reason, most Christians do not want to weep with the one who weeps and therefore leaves them to cope with the loss completely alone, which I feel is terrible and insensitive.

---

I watched a Christian program that involved a man whose wife died of breast cancer. He started hiking to cope with the loss.

Before I get to the link and his story, I wanted to use his story as a reminder: conservative Christians keep offering this fairy tale story that marriage will solve all a person’s problems.

The conservative church portrays singleness after the age of 25 as being second class or merely a waiting period until one eventually marries (what if one never marries? they never address this possibility).

Getting married is not a solution to loneliness, financial problems, or about anything else problematic, as so many Christians like to portray it.

Should you marry, your spouse may turn out to be abusive (whether physically, emotionally, verbally, or financially), your spouse may announce one day that he’s not in love with you any longer and wants to divorce you to marry another; or, your spouse may come down with a mental health problem or get into a car wreck and become paralyzed.

And, of course, as this post shows, should you marry, your spouse may die from a physical cause.

Hiking Through – One Man’s Great Adventure on the Appalachian Trail

Snippets:

Each year thousands of people attempt to hike the entire Appalachian Trail from start to finish. Only one in four completes it. When then 58-year-old Paul Stutzman took his first steps on the 2,176 mile journey, he wanted more than a great adventure. He was looking for an encounter with God.

Years before, Paul was busy living life. He was happily married, had three children and a great job managing a large restaurant in Ohio’s Amish country.  Then in 2002, doctors diagnosed his beloved wife Mary with breast cancer. Although they did everything they could and believed God would heal her, Mary passed away four years later.

• Should You Stay In A Bad Church To Try to Fix It, or Leave It?

Should You Stay In A Bad Church To Try to Fix It, or Leave It? 

I don’t know the person who tweeted this. I think her Tweet came through my timeline because I follow one of the people who left her a reply.

She said in her Tweet,

“Leaving bad churches is wrong. Change the church you’re in. If you don’t, it never changes & healing never comes. Don’t #EmptyThePews …”

Leaving bad churches is wrong. Change the church you're in. If you don't, it never changes & healing never comes. Don't #EmptyThePews 1/2

— Valerie Ohle (@SheSeesFar) August 17, 2017

Ohle also Tweeted that if you are in a bad church, you are obligated to stay in it to protect other members:

everyone sitting there with you. I'm not built to leave them sitting there without an attempt to save them.

— Valerie Ohle (@SheSeesFar) August 17, 2017

The majority of people who left her comments disagreed with her position.

• Museum Highlights Elvis Presley’s Personal Bible

Today, August 16, 2017, marks the 40th anniversary of singer Elvis Presley’s death. I saw this story and found it interesting:

Museum highlights Elvis Presley’s personal Bible

Online display includes the King’s handwritten notes

by Jennifer Harper, Aug 16, 2017

Many fans around the nation will observe the 40th anniversary of the death of music icon Elvis Presley with concerts, look-a-like contests and peanut butter and banana sandwiches. TheMuseum of the Bible, however, is offering an online look at Presley’s personal Bible, complete with his handwritten notes in the margins, and underlined passages.

“Celebrities don’t get much bigger than Elvis Presley,” said Steven Bickley, vice president of marketing for the new 430,000-square foot museum, which opens in the nation’s capital in November.

…In partnership with Bible.com, the museum has provided a seven-day reading guide for the Presley Bible, found here.

• The Death of a Child: Understanding the Grief Facing Charlie Gard’s Parents by Jessica Firger

The Death of a Child: Understanding the Grief Facing Charlie Gard’s Parents by Jessica Firger

I don’t think most people, Christians above all, have a handle on how to minister to someone who is in grief. It’s a topic I wish were covered more often on spiritual abuse type blogs.

The following editorial focuses on the loss of an infant, but I think a lot of the advice the expert gives is applicable to about anyone who has suffered loss, regardless of the age.

The Death of a Child: Understanding the Grief Facing Charlie Gard’s Parents

Snippets:

This week, Connie Yates and Chris Gard said goodbye to their son, Charlie Gard. On Thursday, a judge of the British High Court ruled the 11-month-old, who had been suffering from an extremely rare and untreatable genetic disorder known as mitochondrial DNA depletion syndrome, should be taken off life-support and moved into a hospice facility. He died the next day.

The story of the young boy has stirred up an international and contentious debate about the limits of hospice and end-of-life care.

…Newsweek spoke with Dr. Joanne Cacciatore, a grief counselor whose area of expertise is traumatic death, particularly that of children. Cacciatore is professor of psychology at Arizona State University and founder of the MISS Foundation, a nonprofit that provides social support services to families grieving loss.

Although Cacciatore has published more than 60 papers on the subject of bereavement and traumatic death, her expertise is also firsthand. More than two decades ago, she lost her daughter, Cheyanne, at birth.

What makes grieving the loss of an infant different from grieving an older child?

The death of a child at any age and from any cause is life-changing for parents. It’s always extremely painful. What makes the death of a young baby different is that often the family grieves alone.

Very few people knew the child intimately other than the parents.

And because babies are, of course, highly dependent on the parent for care, such a death is different in some important and really painful ways. Many parents who experience the death of a baby feel a tremendous sense of responsibility for their baby’s death.

….Does the bereavement process become easier over time for parents that find themselves in these circumstances?

I’m not a fan of the idea of “recovery,” because I don’t think we ever recover from a catastrophic loss. But the grief can become lighter. I try to teach people how to carry it, how to turn toward it, and how to stay connected to the child who died. We need space and people to remember with us in nonjudgmental ways.

• Complementarian Marketing To Men Doesn’t Work, but It Doesn’t Stop Comps From Blaming Women – Churches Are Not “Too Feminine”

Complementarian Marketing To Men Doesn’t Work, but It Doesn’t Stop Comps From Blaming Women – Churches Are Not ‘Too Feminine”

Gender complementarians have turned male leadership, masculinity, and the male biological sex into idols that they worship.

And this obsession and strategy has not worked to draw in men to churches or to keep them in church – and complementarians, most of them anyway, keep assuming it will work.

This fixation on masculinity and making churches more masculine in feel does not account for women who have begun dropping out of church in large numbers the last several years, either (The Resignation Of Eve).

Male hierarchy, and defending and promoting it, now takes precedence over about any thing else with complementarian Christians, and, at times, it causes them to do and say some very weird (and unbiblical) things.

• Rejoinders to Wartburg Whiner Posts: Women Navy Seals, Damore’s Google Memo, and Notice How Griggs’ Sexism Extends To Secular Life; It Is Extra- Biblical

Rejoinders to Wartburg Whiner Posts: Women Navy Seals, Damore’s Google Memo, and Notice How Griggs’ Sexism Extends To Secular Life; It Is Extra- Biblical

Re: woman trainee dropping out of Navy SEALS training:

Men; Women: – Viva La Difference – post on Wartburg Whiners blog

First of all, it’s a good thing, or just a neutral thing, that women are allowed to even to try out for the Navy Seals. How is it bad that the Seals allow women to apply?

Is Griggs implying no, it’s not a good thing that the Seals are open to women members?

Or is Griggs just happy that a woman tried out and dropped out? What if she had stayed in and passed the course, what then?