Alejandra Hope

our common life depends upon each other's toil

The social media demand that everyone pronounce their stance about every single horror and the suggestion that people are indifferent if they haven’t is one of the most annoying things of this era.

Right! Like cool if that's how you wanna express yourself online but not everyone wants to see it, and it should be much easier to avoid than it is

"Reproductive rights" includes **the right to raise one's own children**... or it's bullshit.

...this might be my biggest complaint about Bluesky, haha. Like my "following" tab is 99% fine but the tab for my city? So very NSFW most of the time

A toxic environment poisons people. We should make the environment less toxic so people don’t get poisoned.

But just removing someone from the toxic environment doesn’t mean they will no longer be poisoned.

We should make less toxic environments AND help people recover from being poisoned.

Compression gloves have been helpful for me when my wrist/thumb/finger joints are acting up

Incredible!

and I think it’s appropriate to point out on International Women’s Day that the often horrendous trauma that birth mothers suffer from being caught up in the #adoption industry is a moral stain on our society that no one wants to talk about.

~Apparently~ [redacted] institute will raise their tuition fees by $500 for the next cohort (so, $200 more than what I'd budgeted for CEs over the year!), which is fiiine but it also feels shady that this info isn't on the website, which ultimately doesn't help resolve my ambivalence re applying!

I was heavily overmedicated (stimulants, multiple classes of antidepressants, &antipsychotics) as a teen/young adult so I absolutely have a bias but,

You do raise a good point re how we talk about these meds- describing what they do vs just what class they're in is important

Tonight's our first 7pm sunset, not that you would even know 😭😭😭

our culture, which views #adoption as a way to build a family that *just happens* to be non-gestational, won’t reckon with the implications of the facts that to be an adoptive parent is to raise another family’s child and that children, even infants, have rights & histories like everyone else.

Here's the full article:

In recent years, scientists have uncovered a striking pattern: regions with higher natural lithium levels in their water supplies tend to have lower suicide rates, fewer cases of depression, and even reduced violent crime. Some studies have even linked lithium exposure to a lower risk of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.

I see your point.

Personally, I'm on the fence about it. There's data to back up the idea (much like fluoride), particularly as we compare between where lithium is naturally present vs not- but given the impact on brains/minds, the hesitation around actually doing so certainly makes sense.

*hard to imagine, *be a net positive

Freakin' typos 😤

Hard time imagine there'd ever be enough public support to actually do it but there definitely are psychiatrists (and the research to back them up) who think it would beat net benefit to society to add lithium to the water supply

Ahh, yes, I suppose so

Wow. That's quite an attachment to one particular name!

Hahaha. When I was a kid, we had a Calico Bandit (Callie for short) for a cat.

Beetie comes over and tries to eat the Cattos' food and drink their water and plays (chews!) with all their toys... but at least there was minimal chasing and hissing this time!

A French bulldog with a tennis ball in her mouth

Big fan of this pupper... the Cattos, not so much 😂

Baby orca named for Olympia man who saved its relative from capture 50 years ago He helped fight to free the whales known as the Budd Inlet Six. It was the last time orcas were captured in United States waters.

On this day 50 years ago, a group of Bigg's orcas was captured near Olympia, WA. Fortunately, someone special was watching that day, and his fight led not only to the release of the "Budd Inlet Six", but to the end of North American orca captures for good.

www.theolympian.com/news/local/a...

Lil dude loves that catnip penguin. And tennis ball (which I almost lost in the QFC parking lot just after we moved, hahaha)

Beautiful!

Abstract The Preliminary Exploration into Adoption Reunions (PEAR) survey examined the mental health issues faced by adoptees and first mothers. Data were collected from 1313 adoptees, first mothers, and first fathers. Study results indicate that adoption has lasting adverse effects on both adoptees and first mothers. Adoptees and first mothers are significantly more likely to attempt suicide (35 times and 37.7 times, respectively), abuse alcohol, display hypersexual behaviors, and restrict their eating compared to their peers: While first mothers have a lower life expectancy and are more likely to die by suicide than women who did not lose their children to adoption, adoptees frequently struggle with their identity and sense of belonging. They expressed experiencing trauma from their separation from their first mothers, regardless of the quality of their adoptive parents. The findings also highlight the negative impact of the secrecy surrounding adoption. Themes of secrecy and shame were prevalent in the responses from both adoptees and first mothers. The findings highlight the importance of listening to and validating the experiences of adoptees and first mothers and that there needs to be transparency in adoption practices, which may reduce the stigma associated with adoption, and facilitate healing. Keywords: adoption; adoptee; adopted people; first mother; birth mother; biological mother; adoption reunions; mother-child separation; adoptee experience; first mother experience

I have frequently cited a well-known study that found that adopted people are 4 times likelier to attempt suicide than are non-adoptees. Other adoptees often mention another much higher estimate: 35 times likelier. Here is recently published research that makes that claim. 🥚
www.mdpi.com/3758352

^that's such a good way to describe it!

💯

Haha, see, Japanese ketchup omelet rice sounds like it makes sense. Whereas "wet burrito" is just... bougie white people nonsense 😂

Right!? 😫