Quotes to Live By @fetuswinning

Quote from the author and president of FAFASD, @fetuswinning and “The Safe Pregnancy Vision.”

Quote from Anthony Baker: “Women and men too – your addictions will kill your child’s chance for any sort of fame. Don’t drink your baby to a life of despair.”

To the people who believe in hopes and dreams…this is the beginning of only one FASD story. My beginning is merely one in thousands of children and adults living across Canada right now.

My beginning goes a bit like this (1961):

It was my “older sister” who pulled “baby me” and “baby brother” to safety behind the couch. Each night there were beer bottles breaking and noisy, uncontrolled visitors screaming over loud music, lamenting their heartbreak stories until the real crying began. Sometimes it ended up with both my birth mother and birth father falling down drunk and occasionally with the police hammering on the door. It took six months for Children’s Aid to save us. Away we were whooshed to safety but the government had made a horrible mistake. Somehow we were separated. The adoption “laws” were that the children were to remain together for any new adoption home. However, I went to one home near Kitchener, Ontario while my other two siblings went to a different home in Montreal, Quebec. Thus marked and signified the loneliness my life would endure. Already I had lost everything including the first crucial year of rooting with a nurturing mother.

I didn’t have the advantage of intervention. For me it was already too late in the womb and “FAS,” as it was originally termed in 1973, had yet to be identified. But after a life of living with this inescapable syndrome I now understand my sufferings, my losses and my loneliness for I cannot hold a single deep and meaningful relationship and failures inevitably follow me everywhere I go. In a tongue in cheek sort of way, I usually have myself completely cornered. It is this, this life; this knowing that puts me on mission to save babies, not after the fact, but before the damaging effects of alcohol or any drug can leak in and destroy brand new developing brain cells. It is a formidable task to completely avert every (FASD) alcohol-related birth for today there are still up to 10 in 1,000 Canadian births – babies – born each year with one of the syndromes. These are the ones we know about. There are even more that go completely undetected.

So I cry in my understanding heart for those, unknowingly inflicted, of whom are still going from home to home as youngsters or from relationship to relationship as big people. I speak from experience. And I think everyone should understand it so that when any fetus says, “SPEAK FOR ME,” we are all listening and can all find some way to rise up into action to stop the most unbridled birth defect in Canada.

Quote from Dr Seuss: “A person is a person no matter how small.”

Theodor Seuss Geisel, (March 2, 1904 – September 24, 1991) was an American writer and cartoonist most widely known for his children's books written under the pen names Dr. Seuss, Theo LeSieg and, in one case, Rosetta Stone. He published 44 children's books, which were often characterized by imaginative characters, rhyme, and frequent use of trisyllabic meter. His most celebrated books include the best-selling Green Eggs and Ham, The Cat in the Hat, One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish, Horton Hatches the Egg, Horton Hears a Who!, and How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Numerous adaptations of his work have been created, including eleven television specials; three feature films, a Broadway musical and four television series.

 

Geisel also worked as an illustrator for advertising campaigns, most notably for Flit and Standard Oil, and as a political cartoonist for PM, a New York City newspaper. During World War II, he worked in an animation department of the U.S Army, where he wrote Design for Death, a film that later won the 1947 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Geisel's birthday, March 2, has been adopted as the annual date for National Read Across America Day, an initiative on reading created by the National Education Association.

Quote from Bob Hope: “If you do not have charity in your heart, you have the worst sort of health problem.”

Bob Hope has become the most recognized talent in the world. Hope has more than 2,000 awards and citations for humanitarian and professional efforts, including 54 honorary doctorates. Hope has a Doctorate in Philanthropy, over 10 Doctor of Humanity Degrees and Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. Most of all, he had a charm that made millions laugh and cry for over 6 decades.

Author note:

Bob Hope made a good life. Not the same can be made by the child that is born with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), a lifelong disorder. Making a good life is a huge challenge for victim and family. Health Canada estimates that 4 to 9 of a 1000 children will be born with the full syndrome this year. For the child, expect a future of behavioral problems, social problems, detainment, prosecution, institutionalization, or incarceration.

Up to 50% of pregnant women aged 18 to 44 years have 3 or 4 drinks per occasion.

1 drink can lead to a loss of fetal cells resulting in brain damage.

Photographer, Michael Clancy quote: “It was the most profound moment of my life,” referring to an award winning and remarkable snapshot of a fetus holding a surgeon’s finger.

Below is the image of the fetus:

Below is a picture of Michael Clancy with Baby Samuel Armas, the owner of that tiny arm above:

Michael Clancy, the photographer who snapped the photo in 1999 of Baby Samuel Armas reaching out of his mother's uterus to hold the finger of his surgeon, attended a pregnancy care center banquet last month, where he and Samuel's mother Julie spoke.

Wrote Michael in an Email to me, "It was a God moment when at the end of her presentation, Samuel, at seven years old, climbed the stairs and took his place beside her at the podium. A standing ovation ensued and it was one of several times that night I more than teared up, I cried."

George Straight quote: “Most of the information we receive about alcoholism is invented by outsiders. Rehab and AA do not work.”

Since his 20th Century Masters Millennium Collection Best of, Straight has earned 25 platinum albums, including discs that have gone seven-times platinum, (’95,s Straight Out Of The Box) and six-times platinum (’92,s Pure Country), with four more that have scored triple-platinum. Not to mention his four American Music Awards, 11 Academy of Country Music honors and 15 Country Music Association nods, among his 70 record nominations. He had 50 #1 Country Hits. One of his best achievements was beating alcohol.

George relates: “The small percentage of people that actually remains sober remains so because they are ready and willing to change, not because of the twelve steps. Some of these very people might argue with me, but I don't buy it. Many drug addicts reach a point in their addiction at which they realize they cannot do it anymore. They come to a cross roads, so to speak, a place where they finally understand they have to make a decision: life or death? It is for these people that I write this.”

Author Note:

This is AA’s 5-Step Process from their very own Website. They were forced to be honest about their 5% success rate. See “5 Stages of Alcoholism” Go to: http://alcoholselfhelpnews.wordpress.com/2008/05/24/5-stages-of-alcoholism/:

1 Early Stage

2 Middle Stage

3 Late Stage

4 Treating Alcoholism

5 Relapse to Drinking

Jack Trimpy, Rational Recovery quote: “12-step recoveryism is a mental wheelchair in which you will remain the rest of your life.”

Due to Jack’s insistence that all his writings remain intellectual property there really is not anything I can use here except to say that his “big book” has a 65 % success rate, the last I read. His book, The New Cure For Substance Addiction as seen below is available in all bookstores and all you have to do is read it.

Another Rational Recovery Expert, Dr. Albert Ellis, Ph.D. 1913-2007, relates: “If you honestly take some time and trouble to think seriously about, experiment with and really test this out in your life, I guarantee you will see the changes REBT can have on your life.” (Rational Emotive Behavioural Therapy)

Author: Albert Ellis freely shares Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy by pronouncing in one his latest books (2003) Anger: How to Live With and Without It:

“Read this book, help yourself by its messages of collaboration and peace, and do what you can to spread them widely to your relatives, friends, and everyone else. What better can you do for yourself and the world?”

 

 

I spoke to his wife, Debbie, in New York about REBT and asked if I could teach it since I’ve taken a long course on it and understand its finesses. Her answer was basically, “Yes, but you may not profit from Albert’s work.” Obviously, I would respect that if I ever taught the course, which I might. I would only use it in my mission to save the fetus.

Albert says: “In psychology, most psycho-analytical approaches are ineffective, inefficient and fail to meet the problems of most of the people who seek the therapy. Therefore conventional therapy can take years.”

Dr. Ellis combined philosophy with psychotherapy. The clients could then enjoy the fruits of two sciences.

Dr. Ellis says: “Adding philosophy will enable you all to ‘therapize’ yourself, so to speak, thereby spending no money and doing it quickly.”

 

 

Final Note:

These are the quotes I have. The last two authors of quotes of whom both work in Rational Recovery are relevant to FASD because, if you remember, I am doing FASD prevention – not aftercare. There are hundreds of aftercare places to go in Canada. But it feels like only I can tackle the big job of prevention. I would need a lot of help, that's for sure.

So by using Jack Trimpey's Book (AVRT), clients have a much greater chance of succeeding with their own recovery. And by using Dr. Ellis’ book, it will come in handy when one realizes that self-recovery still has to deal with strong negative emotions at times. When they come, one can therapize him or herself and regain a positive attitude by doing what Albert instructs: Work at it and he guarantees success. I know. I do it all the time. When you get used to it, it is almost automatic. Perhaps in a later blog, I will explain some of the tenets of this valuable course that is made not just for addictions but for the angry boss, the angry newscaster, the angry housewife, and so on…

Let the fetus do its job of becoming your baby.

No Booze. No Drugs. Being Real.

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