My child doesn’t know it yet, he is too young to express it, but he is in “pursuit of happiness”, this happiness is not too far from reach but every time he gets a glimpse of it, it is being snatched away from him, just like this. His life is a complete emotional roller coaster, and this has been a battle for the last four years.

I am his mom, and one day in my life I made a mistake, I met the wrong man, my son was born out of this relationship, my child is a gift to me. But my mistake with this man has affected and still affects my son. Basically, he is paying the price and now has, by court order, to visit his dad. From the very beginning my little guy showed negative behavioural and emotional signs after a visit with dad, I don’t need to go in all the details of what we have been living for the last 4 years, it is like a nightmare that never ends, not the worst story out there I am sure, but we live a very real nightmare….my son’s nightmare is this emotional up and down he goes through, feeling helpless, going through the motion waiting for it to end and go back to normal, he is in pain; my nightmare is to see my child suffering and not being able to help him more; It reminds me everyday how my child is paying the price for my mistake.

His dad is not emotionally stable; anyone who lives around him gets hurt. It took all the strength I had to leave. If it was this hard for an adult imagine what it is like for a child to make the decision to let go of the person he loves.

My son knows and is very much aware of what is happening in his life, he has so much wisdom for his age, but he is young and he can only make a child’s decision. How long does he have to wait until he can’t not take the pain anymore and decides on his own that spending time with his dad is detrimental to him? Probably a few years, until he reaches an age of reason. But in the meantime a part of his childhood is taken away.

When my son is well he plays soccer and learns how to swim, he has a big smile on his face and his eyes are wide open, he enjoys learning and gets along well with his friends. Why should this be taken away from him? Isn’t it what being a child is all about? This story is not about his mother who made a mistake in her life or about a dad emotionally unstable, this is now about a little boy, and about what I can do to help him…..After a visit with dad, he can’t focus anymore, he goes to a different world in his mind, his behaviour changes, he is full of anger and resentment and is stricken by very painful migraines that force him to stay in bed, in the dark… in silence…. while his soccer team mates and swim buddies play and learn.

In other words, he has to be heavily medicated to withstand the emotional/physical pressure of a visit with his dad and this for what? For the right of a father to see his child? For his father to have the pleasure and the right to emotionally and physically hurt him more? Something is wrong here!!!

Now what did I do for my son?

When he very early on expressed abnormal behaviour I simply follow the normal steps a mother would follow and I contacted the authorities that are supposed to help our children, I contacted them not just once but several times. They did nothing but interrogate a 3 years old boy at the time that could feel the tension and anyway did not know what to say. It turned out to be a nightmare and the reason for more anger and tension between mom and dad, this poor little boy was first in line for target. In the end this institution wrote in their report that there may be exposure to pornography and closed the case, I got a nice letter telling me that basically I am a trouble maker and may be even a liar ( all put in nice words of course!!). My child kept on going for visits, was still showing disturbing sexual behaviours and his migraines got stronger and stronger. I was shocked with what had just happened, I never had to deal with such institution before and I trusted them. This was my first exposure with any authority group supposed to be there to help the children.

I went to get help through a psychologist and social workers, we tried a few things thinking it would help him, but here again I had to put an end to it, the questioning we had to go through was unbearable, it only reminded my son of the conflict he was caught in between. I could see the pain in his eyes; I could see him entering his own little world with this heavy glaze in his eyes, basically begging me to stop. So I did, I managed to work everything out through the court system to protect myself and minimise conflict thinking it would stop the nightmare, but it didn’t, it kept going for this boy. Visitations kept on happening…

We asked for a children lawyer to be involved, here again we went through the painful process of questioning and being watched and judged, despite some people testimonies of what we were going through and what my son was going through, it was concluded that actually he would benefit more if he saw his father more often. I could not believe of the verdict, so for my son’s “well-being” his visitations with dad increased and my son gets sicker more often now, so much for looking after his well-being. My kid’s well-being was not in my hands anymore, but in the hands of strangers who did not live on a daily basis the roller coaster and did not physically see what this boy was going through. And these people decide of the fate of a child.

His paediatrician was also involved for a while, trying to understand the origin of these headaches, Lazaro here again was so uncomfortable, dreading those appointments. In the end nothing happened and I was basically told that he could do nothing for lazaro, just to give him his medication. The doctor tried to get an appointment with dad who ignored them and never went to see the doctor. And it stopped there. And here again I did not pursue, it was too painful to see the roadblocks no matter what I did, and it always stopped at the same place: when someone else needed to get involved to help. No one will stand up; children’s custody and visitations are a taboo, everyone is so afraid to speak up, by fear that if the child does not see his dad he would be emotionally unstable and damaged. Well what is worse, not to see a dad and have a chance to know happiness, or see you dad and be sick, with all the consequences of being sick. When this little boy is sick, he can’t do all the things he would like to, he has a hard time studying, playing sports, plus the emotional roller coaster he is going through, this is definitely not good for his self-esteem and his health.  

So for a long time, I did let go, telling myself all I can do is watch my son go through the process, I even had to learn how to detach my emotions, telling myself this is what he has to live, trying to find happiness despite the pain he is going through. But I can not detach from this, how can a mother not feel the pain her son his going through. Tonight my son his screaming in pain in his bedroom, he can’t take the migraines anymore, he has enough, he said to me “mommy I can’t take the headaches anymore, they are so painful”, all I did is cry with him, trying in between his screams to get some Motrin down his throat.

That’s what our life is all about. And tonight I decided to write about it.

Does anybody truly care about the future of our children? Do you hear me….Does anybody care?

Does anyone realise that the well being of a child is important, children are the future, and they are the ones who will take care of this planet when we are gone. We all say yes that we care but we don’t take a stand, everybody is scared.

The government has all those groups and associations in place, what for? No one wants to take responsibility, children’s custody and arrangements are a taboo, no one wants to get involved. There is no room for emotions in the court room.

I took responsibility for the mistake I made, I help my child in every way I can with what I can do, we have made progress, but that’s not enough for him.  I can not on my own take on a whole system based on laws not made to protect children but to protect criminals and sick minded people. I did go back to a lawyer for may be the fourth time, and I was told that even with a doctor’s letter proving his state of health it would cost me $12000 to have a thorough assessment done that could “may be” prove the father’s inability to take care of the child and that I am among the lucky ones nowadays to have full custody of the child and that I should be happy with this. $12000 is a lot of money that may not even help in the end. The law is a money market, and I refuse to feed this market with my precious money anymore.

There are many cases like ours but no one can hear us or wants to hear. Everyone is treated according to the same laws and regulations, but you know what! We are all different, every case is different, and every child is different. There is no room for emotions in the court house and I have lost faith in the court system, I did not feel that our case was treated any differently; we are all in the same bag.

For now my child is stuck, no way out of this nightmare. What are his rights? Isn’t it Love and Peace or is it dread, pain and cruelty. Emotional abuse is horrible because you can’t prove it. All the money in the world could not prove it. So what are we left with, what are his options for now… just a “pursuit to happiness”…..

So I decided I don’t want to have anything to do with the court system anymore, or the lawyers or the doctors, they have all been trained to think and respond the same way, and anyway a lot of those wonderful professionals feel helpless in front of the system. I reclaim our individuality, I believe there always is an answer to a problem, and there is one for us. I am not giving up, I am often discouraged but I refuse to give up. We will take the time it takes, but I will give my child self-esteem, health and strength in any way I can so one day he can say “no more” and stand up for himself, his answers will come from within. And when he is ready I will be there for him and support him along the way. That’s my promise to him so he can find happiness.

And if you have a similar story, share it with me, and if you want to know how I manage to help my child the best I can, contact me I know great professionals who have helped us make life easier.

Christele

Article based on the DVD “Knowing The Unborn” from Pre-Birth Parenting Inc.

Did you know that the sense of taste is fully developed at birth and at fourteen weeks of gestation? Did you also know that the foetus begins an exercise program called “spontaneous activities” ?
Very early in the wombs babies are very sensitive to their environment, at six months of gestation they respond to sound, touch and taste. They know when your play with them, they respond to tapping and poking on the belly.
Growing in a positive and supportive environment is the key to help baby develop fully. It is important to help baby’s brain develop properly. Their brain is organically linked to the hormonal and immune system, so all weeks of gestation have an importance in the development of the brain. At 7 weeks of gestation baby’s brain can secrete ß-endorphins which are pleasure molecules, and it is important for the mother to be happy to help baby feel this relaxation and happiness.

How to help baby develop fully?
Pre-birth bonding is the most important part to help baby. Happy thoughts of awareness of baby, thinking of baby, playing music, touching, rubbing and massaging the belly.
It is vitally important to bond with the baby very early, to communicate and relate to the baby as this will help the finger like axions within the brain to spread out and create nice firm attachments. This proper attachment of axions are called synapses is depending upon sensory stimulation of the baby.
So talk, play with baby, tell her that you love her, pick a cute name.
Babies have the ability to remember unborn moments, like the voice of their parents, so singing and playing music is great. Singing will help develop the left side of the brain while playing music will help develop the right side of the brain.
It’s a good idea to stimulate both sides of the brain while in the wombs, and babies do remember the music they listened too. Music will also increase their level of endorphins leaving the baby with a feeling of happiness.
“Drinking lots of water during pregnancy will also support baby’s healthy development”
The role of the father in pre-natal bonding.
The father has a very important role to play before birth. His involvement with the baby during pregnancy has tremendous positive effect on the mother. The mother feels loved, supported and cared, leaving her happy. The number one stress to the foetus is the mother feeling stressed about the relationship. When mother is confident about her relationship with the father, she transfers her feelings of happiness and relaxation to the baby (remember the endorphins!!).
Fathers who communicate before birth with their baby are more confident holding the baby after birth, baby will respond to him, to his voice. Bonding is much stronger, a bond that will last a lifetime!

Christèle Rousse, MSc, CMHt.
HelpCare Canada
Editor of Women’s Voice and National Leader
Certified HypnoBirthing Practitioner
(613) 878-3460
www.helpcarecanada.com

By Wendy Knight Agard, DMH, DHHP

Anger. Most of us don’t like it – whether it’s directed at us or we’re directing it at others. What is it about this emotion that makes us so uncomfortable? We all experience being angry, but few of us have developed the skills to effectively process and express our anger.

Why have we not learned this skill? From the time we learn to talk, we are told “don’t raise your voice, please”, “speak in your inside voice”, “we don’t yell in this house/classroom”. Without knowing it, our parents, teachers, coaches and other influencers are delivering the message that we ought not get angry – that this feeling is negative or harmful in some way. When we are young children, the odd tantrum tends to be tolerated without too much intervention. But as we move into our teens this becomes less and less tolerated and we are expected to control these outbursts.

This expectation would be fine if we were taught to effectively process our anger. But what typically happens is that we aren’t provided with this training and a pattern of suppression begins. We learn to suppress our anger in order to be “nice” and “polite” and to “get along” with others. We gradually find ways to manage our suppressed anger in order to divert our attention from it. There are so many ways that we do this, from using exercise, food, alcohol and cigarettes, to taking depression and anti-anxiety medication.

Over time, this cycle of suppression eventually leads to illness. The feeling of anger does not just disappear because it is ignored or suppressed. Its energy stays within our system, wreaking havoc over time and eventually it will erupt either emotionally or physically or both. Many women experience this monthly in the form of PMS. Have you ever wondered why many of us are more irritable at this time? The reality is that the hormones simply act as a “truth serum” for emotions that were likely present all month long. The hormonal changes simply make it more difficult to suppress the anger, so it comes out despite our best efforts to control it. It can be a helpful exercise to examine the emotions that come out during PMS, to provide insight into emotions that may have been suppressed all month long. Anger is often one of them.

The same is true of menopause. Menopause can be an extended version of PMS, where hormone fluctuations cause emotions such as anger to surface like they never have before. This anger has been stored up, so to speak, over years on many different levels, and the hormonal changes make it difficult to keep a lid on it.

It is important to understand that this suppressed anger has just as much of an effect on our physical bodies. Most of us can think of someone we know who has a serious illness or condition that we instinctively link to their state of mind. For example, we may believe that the reason behind their symptoms is that they are stuck in a state of bitterness and resentment. When we make this kind of judgment about someone else, we consider them to be entirely different from ourselves. But are they really that different?

We may feel “fine”, but many of us, through continual suppression of anger and other emotions, are allowing damage to happen on a physical level that we are not aware of. We don’t link our suppressed anger to our physical symptoms such as high cholesterol for many reasons; it happens gradually over time, our doctors don’t make that link for us, we’re told the symptom has arisen due to natural aging, the symptom runs in our family, and so on.

Anger can be expressed without hurting the person who has made us angry. To the contrary, being truthful enough to express your anger is an act of love – for yourself and for the other person. When you express your anger instead of suppressing it, you are saying to yourself “my feelings are important. I matter.” To the other person, you are saying “our relationship is important enough to me that I want it to be based on truth, and the truth is that I am angry about what you did/said”.

So how can we learn to effectively process our anger so that we can feel it and express it in a healthy way? How do we acknowledge it fully, without judging ourselves so that we can be clear as to what we are angry about? If we get that far, then do we express it if someone else is involved? And how do we express it? Is yelling ok? In what circumstance?

For many women, these questions are difficult to answer but there is help in the form of Medical Heilkunst. Heilkunst is a system of medicine that can be extremely helpful with helping clients to effectively process emotions like anger. A Heilkunst practitioner has an understanding of the links between suppressed emotions and dis-ease and knows how to use tools such as homeopathic remedies to help clients effectively process emotions.

Wendy Knight Agard is a Doctor of Medical Heilkunst and Homeopathy at True Health Holistic. She provides consultations by phone or in person to clients in Ottawa and anywhere in the world. Call 613-864-WELL or visit http://www.truehealthholistic.com for more information.

Helpcare Canada is now up and running! It all started with a desire and a vision five years ago and it is now officially ready!

 With a desire to help women on their journey, I wanted to create this special place, kinf of a “one stop heaven” for women to find the tools they need to feel empowered in their life.  This could relate to any topics since women of the 21st century face many challenges.

This is the beginning of HelpCare Canada, and my dream is that it becomes #1 place for women, a place where everyone will feel united, empowered, inspired and as a result will see their life being transformed.

The resources you will find on this site are the fruits of my life’s journey, my studies, my research as well as the people I was blessed to meet in my life. I did not walk that path alone and I am very grateful to be surrounded with the best therapists and professionals without who this dream would never have been possible. You will find these very special people in the resource tab of the site.

I hope you will see HelpCare Canada as a place you can trust and rest, knowing that you are in good hands.

When women go for a check up, there is one thing they surely don’t like to hear, it’s that there is something wrong with their femininity. Why do we always think that wrong is bad? We have been raised to think that way; no one has taught us, it may just be it’s a time for us to reflect on our lives, to find out how this could have been created in our bodies. We have been instead conditioned to be scared and to believe that our body has failed us.

During a check up I was told that I have ovarian cysts. I left the office not scared but rather feeling emotional, this did not come as a surprise. After the impact my last relationship had on me and the on-going effect of my son’s struggles with his father, I am not surprised that the abuse, the betrayal, the abandonment and manipulation  that I  was an object of and my son as well went right to my ovaries.

I thought I dealt with all this already, I thought I had released all this anger and resentment, but my body was proving me wrong. The anger has not been completely released; it has built up in my ovaries. I realised how I was never in touch with how much all this has deeply affected me and still is deeply affecting me, I keep talking about how much it hurts me but never really felt it, never really allowed a good cry for myself simply feeling the emotions of betrayal and abandonment.

So I did some research on ovarian health, and fair enough this is what I found on ovaries, remember while reading a book or an article, the parts that usually jump out at you are the ones that speak to you. So this is what I gathered:

Women not in tune with their creative side may develop ovarian problems

Women holding on to anger and resentment may develop ovarian problems

Women feeling stuck in life with a sense of no control over their life may develop ovarian problems

Women not in touch with their feminine side and living life pushing themselves, basically behaving like a man in this male oriented society may develop ovarian problems.

These are very common problems for women, we play so many roles: the mother, the lover, the worker and more, all in one day, so no wonder why we are loosing touch with our feminity, no room for us for creativity, no time for us to take care of ourselves, it becomes very easy to fall in this vicious circle. We are paying a high price for getting our so-called freedom and so-called equality; we have been dumped with the expectations to fulfill all these roles.

So it takes a lot of courage to reclaim our feminity, to get in touch with ourselves and to feel what we need to feel. It takes for us to stop…. and feel….what are your feelings right now…..don’t think what you are feeling….feel what you are feeling…. where do you feel it……just feel…..this is the art of being a woman….just feel…..

Not so easy to do for those who have lost the ability to feel. So for the next few days spend some time with yourself to just feel, feeling is good, it slows things down. If you have ovarian issues, talk to your ovaries and then stop and feel… Listen to what they are telling you. How about that! I think it’s a good start.