Freedom

I’ve not written for quite some time. Life on a personal level has been tough, though day to day I remain happy and ever hopeful. My daughters health declined over a period of about a year, slowly but surely slipping back to crisis, unable to function, leave the house, attend her last year of school or even get into a car without OCD taking up 90% of her actions. 2021 and all the chaos and restrictions from outside forces, paralleled the internal restrictions we have lived with for many years.

For anyone who has followed me over the years, since her breakdown at aged 12, you will know that we had been making really good progress with bio medical intervention and diet. Our focus had been on that area because she had been unable to make any appointments or even speak to a therapist or Doctor from years of built up trauma and her brain being so closed down to achieving tasks, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant to most people.

We continued to work very closely with our wonderful practitioner and we tried a few new things across the year of 2021, all of which created huge set backs and major side effects. A few months ago, we re visited the investigations around the possibility of PANS/ PANDAS, for those who do not know what these conditions are, and for anyone searching for answers to their children’s chronic mental health changes or similarities on the PDA profile, please do take some time to look into it. There are many support groups for people whose symptoms and presentations overlap and there are things to be learned in all camps. Techniques for every day parenting and coping at home with younger ones, to ideas about neurotransmitters, diets and alternative help, it is with thanks that we are able to fast track learning and ideas via the internet. Mainstream failed to hear or support us when we needed help so desperately nearly 8 years ago, but the good side of that was that it pushed me to step up into my power, to take responsibility for my daughters and my own health and to become the mother Lion who still continues to roar.

So, we managed to get bloods done, and although infection is not always a clear cut find, my daughters bloods were showing markers that there was an underlying infection at work within her body and this was enough for me to find a GP to prescribe antibiotics. Yes, conventional meds for a controversial condition where infection or environment causes some children’s immune systems to respond with inflammation of the brain, causing symptoms such as OCD, anorexia, mood disorder and massive regression in abilities. We may never be able to prove definitively that this is the cause of my daughters OCD, but I can happily report, that 2 months into the antibiotics, huge improvements are finally here.

I’ve entitled this post Freedom. Without freedom of choice, freedom to select who or what we want to support our health, freedom to stand up and speak our minds, freedom to respect everyone’s choices, freedom to challenge and question the opinion of others, freedom of information, freedom to travel and freedom to protest, freedom to emigrate, we would not have been allowed to travel our journey of discovering PDA, understanding OCD and changing our views and perspectives, values and truths. The one size fits all public mental health system did not offer us those freedoms. So we left. And we survived, and we thrive.

At this moment in time, freedom for humanity is at serious risk. Freedoms have been taken and many around the world are living that reality right now. Some, those who have not yet had to experience their freedom being threatened or taken, are still in denial or complete oblivion that others are suffering. If their lives have not yet been effected by being coerced, forced, bullied, threatened or denied, because they have so far gone along with what they have been told to do and that is fine for them, then I ask them, please ponder this question. Is it OK for some people to have freedom and not others? Or should we all be free as our human birthright? Should all humans be free to chose, or should freedoms be removed for the greater good? If so, where is the line for the greater good and how do you know it really is for the greater good? Who gets to decide what the greater good is and can we trust them?

From a PDA perspective, those born with brains who have an inbuilt, neurological response to say no when their freedom is being threatened, so powerful is its way, so unmovable is its setting that even the smallest request from someone else is felt like pain, right through to their very core of being, I wonder, how is it feeling to them when a mass threat of loss of freedoms is being executed on all humans.

If it hurts to be PDA because demands hurt, how are they feeling when they are being forced to take experimental meds with no long term data? Are they hurting to be forced to wear a mask for 6 hours a day? I for one am hurting. I’m really hurting.

Here in New Zealand, over in Australia and around the world, a massive uprising has begun. Many are carrying the torch that has been lit in Canada and its gaining momentum based in love. My gut feeling and my heart has never felt so called and so proud of these people who are standing up for freedom, coming from love, uniting in love. Yet many, most of my friends do not see it this way. Not only do they not see it that way, but they are laughing, name calling and anti the people who are standing for freedom. In some ways, if mankind can form into just 2 groups instead of many, then unity is getting closer. But my heart hurts for those who do not feel the same way as me, I am in pain and I need to write it out. I don’t want to lose my friends, but how can a friend look at people who hold the same view as you and hate them, surely that means they hate me too? So many families and friends are separating. Maybe this needs to happen. Everything is as its meant to be….I lost many people in my life when my daughter fell ill, but I gained many too. Do we carry on when the very core of ones being is in disagreement? Do we find a way through? Or do we walk away? I’ve lived these lessons already, so many times in my life. Here they are again, only this time its not just my journey, it is, as far as I can see, the journey of all mankind.

When we are ill, in mind, or body, when the manifestation of illness and wellness is reality, there is always always more than one way to work through that.

Some of us didn’t come to be data analysts, scientists, academics, so we came with knowing. Some of us didn’t come to make rules, to teach or to tell, so we came with creativity. Some of us didn’t come to obey and follow without question so we came with an ability to say no. We need freedom to be unique. No one government or body should have the power to take the freedoms I speak of in this post today. No reason is ever more important than freedom.

I want to use what I came here with to say what I need to say, while I still have the freedom to say it. To create through vision and thought and energy the world I want to see. Perhaps the biggest freedom of all is the freedom of thought. But even that feels like it is slipping away as actions and opinions are echoed from external sources, not ones own true knowing.

Some of the world is waking up. Some of the world is going to sleep. The gifts you were given need to be used now. It is safe to stand and say no, to stand for freedom, to do things differently. Its is safe to question and debate and speak. But it might not be for ever. Now is the time. My message, as it has always been, from day one of any problem, any difficulty, any darkness is love, so please, find the things or the ones you love, find what it is that makes your heart light up. Light your heart and infect another.

I’d love to know your views and thoughts on what I’ve spoken about today. How is your PDAer coping with restrictions if you still have them in your country and how have they been effected with what’s gone on in the past 2 years? What do you think about the uprising convoys across the world for freedom and do you use the mainstream media to show you what’s going on or do you look at all perspectives and different sources? Do you ask your gut? Or do you rely on facts? I’d love to chat about it, and appreciate that being done with respect.

Thanks, thanks for reading.