Cooling from a meltdown

[or heating up together]


Meltdown is the topic of a blog carnival sponsored by Chronic Babe, so if you go there after July 27, you'll have access to lots of cooldown tips.

For Cancer Bitch, a meltdown means feeling hopeless and helpless, out of control. It's easy to feel out of control when your body has started acting badly, and when professionals are delineating the ways your body is doing that bad thing to you, using words you've never heard before, and offering treatment that might be painful, expensive, confusing, inconvenient, lonely, messy, experimental and/or detrimental to your health in the long run.

What I've found to work well: Cry. Talk. Write. Find something cool and soothing to eat, such as frozen yogurt. And yes, make sure that the milk used does not have bovine growth hormones. Cry a little more because: you live in a world where we give hormones to cows, you have to be vigilant in order to get dairy without the hormones, in Europe it's banned, and the hormones may be linked to estrogen-positive breast cancer, and extrapolating, what else in our food, water and air supply is detrimental to the health of the planet?

Then link up with an organization that works on these issues, because they don't feel hopeless. Acknowledge that that's hard, especially if you're feeling faint, are in pain, and have been handed a death sentence.

[What would Mother Jones do?]

Mother Jones (the person who inspired the founders of the magazine) was born Mary Harris in Ireland in 1837, and immigrated to Canada and then the US. In 1867 her husband and four children died of yellow fever in Memphis. She moved to Chicago, where her home and dressmaking shop burned in the Chicago Fire.

By her 50s she was a radical, working mostly with mineworkers. In 1903 she led a children's march fom Pennsylvania to New York to protest child labor. She helped found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, the "Wobblies").

She's buried in Downstate Illinois.

If you're able, after your meltdown, you might want to heat up, as the IWW says, and help fan the flames of discontent.
Check out the research/activist groups such as: Breast Cancer Action; Collaborative on Health and the Environment; Our Bodies, Our Blog; Organic Consumers Assn. Feel free to list your recommended organizations and meltdown tips in Comments.


[Order your IWW songbook for Labor Day. Disclaimer: Cancer Bitch does not endorse all stands/actions taken by IWW.]

Don't mourn...organize!--Joe Hill