nakedjen

Marching Off the Edge of My Map

1.  "We feel that medication is not effective for the treatment of your specific condition."

I really could not believe the words that I had just heard, so I asked the woman at Humana to please repeat what she had just said.

"We're declining to pay for that specific prescription because we do not feel it is effective for treatment."

"Can I just ask, please, when you became the doctors and got to decide what might or might not be effective for treatment of my very specific medical conditions?"

The woman at Humana didn't even pause and continued, "We're partners in your excellent medical care, Jennifer.  Your prescribing doctor will need to call us to discuss and authorize that medication for you."

"The same medication that I have been taking to help control my seizures for the last ten years?  That exact same medication?  The one you have decided with my excellent medical care in mind is not effective for treatment of my medical condition?"

"You will need to have your doctor call us.  Is there anything else I can help you with today?"

It's no secret that for a lot of my life I haven't even had medical insurance.  I happen to have it right now, but I'm not even certain how it is helpful when the people who are in charge of actually providing it get to make decisions about what is and is not appropriate in terms of medication for my specific condition. 

How is this good medicine? 

I do understand that there are profit margins to be considered, but the health and well-being of our fellow human beings should always come first.  I do not believe that allowing a computer generated data program to decide that one drug is more effective for treatment than another drug just because it costs twenty five cents less per pill is the best possible treatment for anyone. 

I have paid for my drugs out of pocket for a very long time.  Last week, I paid for my drugs out of pocket, again, simply because I couldn't wait for the insurance company to have a conversation with my doctor about what might be the best course of treatment for someone in my condition. So I'm paying insurance premiums for drug coverage that I really do not even receive. 

God Bless America.

 

2.  "I'll pray for you."

J is sitting across from me in the very crowded waiting room at our public mental health facilities.  I'm there because life turned upside down, as it sometimes does.  A trip here to find an angel in torn jeans and an ancient Ramones t-shirt and paint splattered shoes who can help make sense of the cacophony of voices screaming in my head just feels like a better option than another manifesto written in sharpie on the walls.  At least this time around.

"What are you here for?," J asks me.

"My head is full of all kinds of noise. I need help."

"Oh, are you schizophrenic, too? I am. But they're really good here. They'll help you. Do you do drugs, too, to shut everyone up?"

"No. Not anymore."

"Oh, that's so lucky. I try to not do them, but it's so hard."

"Are you here to get off drugs?"

"I'm here to stay off. I've been sober for five days. But it's so hard.  I was on Meth and I don't want to do Methadone.  But they're really good here.  They're going to help you so much."

"How were you paying for all those drugs?"

"Prostitution. I am always terrified I was going to get chopped up by a chain saw.  Getting in cars with strange men.  I'm usually so high, though, I don't even know what I'm doing.."

"I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry for me. My mother did it, too. I've been out there since I was 16.  Do you read the bible?"

"I have read it.  I don't have a lot of faith in organized religion."

"You need to find religion, Jennifer.  It's the only thing that's going to save you.  Well, it will help you save yourself."

I hear my name called.  Intake. To sort demons from angels. To hear my own voice the loudest.  To love me.  Again.

"I'll pray for you."

 

3.  He slammed his fist on the counter and erupted.  In that instant, in that single moment of his anxious frustration, everything changed.

I had to leave.

In the leaving, in the walking out, in the moments of deciding that it was safer for my heart to not be there with him than to be there with him, I was so hurt and confused and small and broken that I lost all parts of my voice and could only barely whisper.

"I don't know."

I really did not.

Know.

We walk, in each relationship that we choose, on a fine edge between all that has come before and everything that we're choosing and hoping will be. We're not alchemists, exactly, of our hearts, though the wishes for just that can be bigger than either of us dancing the dance. 

My edge has thorny branches that reach out and stab at the most unfortunate moments. His edge is unchartered territory for me and the guazy veil that hides it makes the navigation to leap from my edge to his, the alignment of our selves against each other, sometimes more difficult than I wish it would be.  We have our old maps that we're trying to use and they're failing us.

Wishing and twisting and trying to find North, though, doesn't make either of our edges any softer or the navigation any easier. 

These moments of breaking happen, the cracks appear in the surface, the veil slips and allows a better view of things that truly terrify us.

The very bad endings of old fairy tales should never be allowed to write the beginnings of your new romance.

I love my professor in ways I did not even know I was capable of loving. 

This is all brand new and un-chartered territory.

That is what I know.

 

 

Life is merely a fracas on an unmapped terrain, and the universe a geometry stricken with epilepsy.

Hello my name is Jennifer and I am an Epileptic. 

I do not think that is a surprise to any of you.  I feel compelled to share, though, that while epilepsy has been a very present part of my daily life for the last (wow...it really has been 16 years!) sixteen years, it still feels strange to me to identify as someone with epilepsy.

I am, though, an epileptic despite my own reluctance to admit it.

Actually, I do admit it and acknowledge it and at one point realized that the way through my seizures and towards better health was to actually embrace them and integrate them as part of me.  So this business of not identifying says a whole lot about me, I suppose, as someone who also just has difficulty, still, sorting out exactly who she really is in this world.  It's a constant journey for me, as I know it is for so many of us.  Who am I?

I learned yesterday that November is National Epilepsy Awareness month and this is the month that is dedicated to better education and awareness and even funding for epilepsy research. Our brains are interesting and fascinating and there are a myriad of types of seizures and just as many ways that have been found to treat them. One in one hundred Americans have epilepsy so you can just imagine how very many treatment plans have been devised by the neurologists who help all of us!

I am not seizure free, as we know.  I am treating my own seizures, these days, with a combination of alternative remedies and two different medications that I've found I can tolerate, but that I take at what my neurologist considers to be homeopathic dosages.  Of course, it is working "well enough", but the goal is to be seizure free as it is for all epilepsy patients. 

I'm sharing all of this because I know that the face of epilepsy isn't one that is easily recognized and it feels important to add my own to help increase awareness, understanding and acceptance of all of us who live with epilepsy.

Epilepsy doesn't define me, but it is a part of my life.

I am Jennifer and I am an epileptic, but I also am so very, very much more. 

 

Melancholia

Love.

I've got a lot of it, especially lately.  I'm so very grateful that in spite of myself love keeps finding me.  In all the best and most beautiful ways.

I'm also suffering and it seems ridiculous to write about that here, but it is the current state of affairs and I feel that if I don't write about it I'll only be further consumed by it.

I've got some massive debts, both real and psychic, that are currently haunting me.  The debts belong to me, of course, not to any of you, and I don't expect anyone else to take care of them.  However, I need to just be honest and share that right this minute I am having my own small series of panic attacks and seizures and, yes, I also know that I am completely responsible for this particular and awful state of affairs, as well.

My biggest fear my entire life has been that I will be the bag lady living under the bridge with my dogs.  I've had this fear as long as I can remember.  I have no idea why, honestly, but it is very real and very deep-seated.  Palpable.  I find myself checking out various shopping carts and their worthiness for holding my belongings. 

I know, it's a full dish of crazy with a side of lunacy.

I'm just not sure if I have the spoon, or the stomach, to actually eat it.

Naked With Intention

I get asked this question a lot.  A whole lot.  I also get asked, a whole lot, how I keep from getting arrested since I seem to just show up naked in the most unlikely of places?  Is there some sort of special something that I do to avoid arrest?  Is there some sort of practice to becoming as comfortable as someone like me seems to be as I am in my own skin, willing to just be naked in the presence of others, clothed or not, without really batting an eyelash?

I think if you've read my words for long enough you already know these answers so you can skip this post and just carry on with whatever it is that you happen to be doing on your own Friday evening that makes you happiest.  I might suggest that it include hugging a few people that you love, perhaps even a few that you don't even know, sharing some glitter just because and if you happen to be living on the East Coast of these United States, making certain you have some drinking water, a working flashlight or three, DOG FOOD FOR THE DOGS, snacks for you, and to just get ready to even, maybe, have a little naked dance in the rain.  I would do it, but we all know I'm bat shit crazy.

Back to Phil's question.  The thing is this all just takes practice.  It really does.  There are those places where public nudity is actually accepted and encouraged although I am going to be the first to admit that I'm not even a big huge fan of those particular places.  I'm far more of a fan of natural hot springs or places like my beloved Oregon Country Fair where we have sanctioned communal nudity and everyone is so relaxed and nonchalant about it that you really do realize that good heavens all bodies are just so incredibly beautiful in their unique differences!  Seriously.  When you see so very many naked bodies all together, each one just as beautiful and different and special and exotic as the next, you realize that we are magical creatures and our bodies are all as unique as our voices and our hearts and should absolutely be shared.

Now, I'm not suggesting you take off your clothes and go walking down the streets of your neighborhood. (Or, actually, maybe I am). I realize that when I do that many people exclaim that I'm an exhibitionist, that I do it to shock people.  My own mother, Emily Gilmore, insists that I do it because I have some screws loose and just absolutely MUST have people STARE AT ME. 

It really isn't about that, actually.  Not really.  I actually even have my own very strict internal set of rules about where and when I'll get naked, even in the very most public of places.  I will admit that if there's just a bit of shock value, that's okay.  But it is more, for me, to get others to reconsider their own individual notions about nudity.  About our bodies.  About exactly why it might be so offensive, so wrong, so awful to have a fully naked woman standing on a street corner.

However, I am suggesting, I am, that you dip your own toes as far as you can into the places where it feels the most comfortable for you.  I have always said that we can't exactly go about fighting wars if we're all standing around naked because there's no where for us to keep the bullets.

I live in this world naked. I can't live in this world any other way.  What I am enchanted to know is that there are others who can't live in this world any other way, as well. 

Naked with intention.  Now, there's a political platform we should perhaps all consider.

 

I been away a long time.

I have absolutely horrific timing.  I'm a terrible dancer, for starters.  You do not want me as your dance partner.  Ever.  Do not even ask.  I will embarrass both of us, more you than me, even, and you'll wish to the heavens that I'll just hurry up and take my clothes off and get naked just to create a larger and more dramatic distraction that actually gives people a more reasonable purpose to point and laugh. 

You think I am making that up.

I promise that I am not.

Next time, just ask me to dance.  Then, see how fast you beg me to get naked.

The timing business is crashing down around me today and it has nothing to do with dancing and it has nothing to do with being naked.  Wait. Actually, maybe it has everything to do with dancing and everything to do with being naked.  My heart is so full of the sad that my head can't even wrap around what it is that I need to say.

I know I need to absolutely say this: The Oregon Country Fair begins tomorrow and as the fates would have it I am not going to be there.  Naked and dancing and covered in glitter with my fine fairy family celebrating the best that is me.

I just typed that sentence and I'm not going to lie to you.   I'm now the naked girl at her computer screen with tears streaming down her cheeks.

SUCK IT UP, NAKED GIRL. 

(That was from all of you, Internet.  I hear you, loud and clear.)

I'm sucking, oh goddess, yes I am. At a whole lot of everything in quite spectacular ways right now.  But, yes, Internet, I promise that I'm sucking it up, too.

100% Pure Love

Remember last summer when I thought I was absolutely going to just fall over and die, perish even, because they had removed my beloved Kombucha from the shelves of all the stores?  How I went into a true spiral of depression?  How Emily Gilmore told me that I was an addict, that I shouldn't have such a visceral reaction to a juice, that I was surely an alcoholic because I needed my daily 4:00 p.m. fix every single day or I just did not feel like myself?

It was a long and awful drought of a life without my special elixir while the FDA and the makers of kombucha sorted out the ins and outs and details and I was kind of like a rabid dog in my quest to find it.  In Oregon, while I was at the fair, there were home brewed versions available that I purchased and carried back with me to Utah like some sort of bootlegger during the prohibition and then there were all kinds of crazy rumors that you could get Kombucha here and there and everywhere else but in Utah and in late October, just as I was ready to pack up my dogs and move us part and parcel back to California where I was certain I could get my magic juice, on the very day I had made this declaration truthfully, I walked into Whole Foods here in Salt Lake City and it was as if choirs of Mormon angels were singing choruses of hallelujah because the refrigerator shelves were literally sagging from the weight of the multiple bottles of GT Dave's kombucha that had somehow miraculously reappeared.

God truly does work in mysterious ways.

The truth of the matter is that GT Dave's, the maker of my favorite kombucha, had to reformulate their magic potions and what was inside the bottle no longer was quite exactly the same as what used to be inside the bottle.  Now, psychologically, I was oh so grateful to be holding and drinking my daily bottle of elixir that I tried to convince my physical body that it was all just exactly the same.  My physical body, though, can not be fooled so easily.  

The good news, though, is that I am one very resourceful and determined naked girl who happens to also not be afraid to ask a lot of questions and ask the universe to help her to find the answers she really needs.

The answer, in this case, turned out to be right in my own kitchen.  I just started brewing my very own kombucha.  I happen to be (sometimes even I forget) a master herbalist and a person who actually understands the medicinal benefits of tea.  I owned my own organic medicinal tea business for the last five years.  Kombucha is nothing more than fermented tea.  It turns out, actually, that I've not only been able to make some pretty magical kick-ass delicious kombucha that my body truly loves and appreciates, but I also have been able to apply my own herbal wisdom and create some brews that are truly medicinal for the specific needs of my own body, as well.  I've only shared it with friends, so far, and I'm not sure how I could possibly grow this to share with all of you, but I'd really love to be able to do so.  Dreamsweet Kombucha feels like such a beautiful possibility.

GT Dave originally brewed kombucha to help his own mother's battle with breast cancer.  He started in his mother's kitchen and he had no business plan and only wanted to provide the gift of kombucha with anyone who might benefit from it. It was quite successful for her and his promise is to provide the freshest, purest, and most potent kombucha available.  (Sounds like a little company like Dreamsweet, doesn't it?) I know that's still his promise, even now, despite the very long and intrusive fingers of the FDA getting all complicit in the special bottles of organic and raw kombucha he provides.  Which is why, honestly, I'm very honored to be a part of his relaunch and reintroduction of his products back to a public that, well, already loves and adores him.

Now appearing on ENLIGHTENED bottles of GT Dave's SYNERGY Kombucha at a health food store near you, Nakedjen, The Beet Fairy.

As I said, I've always believed there's magic in those bottles.  Somehow, honestly, I can't think of a better place for a naked beet fairy to be. 

P.S.  Buddha and Stella are trying to win a vacation! If you've read this far, can you be a dear and go LIKE them in their effort?

 

 

Terror is Not Dead

I read the news today, that Osama Bin Laden was dead and that my fellow Americans were dancing at the White House and Ground Zero.  That justice had been served.  I can't be jubilant.  Not over the death of anyone.  It isn't who I am.  I can't even feel relief.  I can only think of the TRILLIONS of dollars we have spent, as a country, the hundreds of thousands of civilian lives that have been lost, the thousands of soldiers who have lost their lives, the military families, some of whom are my very own relatives, whose lives have been turned upside down and sometimes shattered because we were so hell bent on revenge. 

This is our longest war engagement in the history of our country and for what real reason?  The terrorists have still won.  Killing Osama Bin Laden has not resolved anything.  Perhaps some of those who lost dear loved ones on 9/11 now feel that justice has been served, but at what cost to this entire country and the countries we have invaded under the pretense of our fight on terror?

I truly try my best to live my life from my heart, in love and peace.  A war without end, that costs our country in literal dollars over $300 million dollars a day, but so very much more in psychic and karmic debt, is not the war I wish to fight.  Ever.

Innocent people are dying at our hands, American hands, every single day.  There is blood of children and mothers and fathers and peopl who had nothing to do with any attack on our country staining my heart.  I am an American.  I am responsible.  The only thing the bullet to the head that brought Osama's death has really done, I believe, is to create more anxiety and to change the media's focus.  We are no safer, we are no closer to peace, we are still mired in a war we started for all the wrong reasons.

Orange Frisbee

When it was really dark and the outside was quiet and the inside was quiet and we were all in our sleeping places, he came.

He broke the lock on the door to get inside.

He took lots of HER things, like that thing that rings and bings and sings. He took it from HER. He took the box that held the woman from England who told us to turn this way and that way and who was always doing her math problems as she recalculated.  That woman from England was a part of our family.  He took her from us.

He took the fuzzy yellow ball. The orange and blue ball. The green ball that had feet and squeaked.  It was really dark, the outside was quiet and the inside was quiet and we were all sleeping in our places, and he took all of our toys. Even my orange Frisbee.  My favorite orange Frisbee.

Gone.  All gone.

SHE called the police.  I heard her tell them that he took all the toys. My favorite orange Frisbee and the balls and the squeaky ones and the rest of them, too. I heard her tell the police officer that he had squawked with that things that rings and bings and sings and that SHE knew where he might be, but the officer didn’t seem to care, not even about my Frisbee.

There were gray skies and clouds and the cold winds were blowing and there were no balls to chase. He had taken all our toys.

SHE told a little blue bird.  In the dark he had come and taken our toys and her gadget that rings and bings and sings and couldn’t anyone help?

It was a newspaperman, kind and sincere, who called HER.  He wanted to know about the fuzzy yellow ball and the orange and blue one, too.  The green ball with feet and the squeaky voice. He wanted to help us get back my beloved orange Frisbee.

If he had asked HER, she would have given him whatever he wanted.   SHE always does. 

When the sunlight came, peaking just around the edges of the grey, pink and golden and very soft like feathers, SHE took us all for a ride to a place where broken dreams leaned in shadowed doorways just waiting for me to fetch them.

My orange Frisbee was at the bottom of the motel’s dumpster.  Discarded with hypodermics and grease stained Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets and shattered beer bottles. 

SHE fetched it.  I haven’t let it go.

When it is really dark and the outside is quiet and the inside is quiet and they are in their sleeping places, I am watching and I am waiting.  For him.

Family is Everything

I wanted to think for myself.  I wanted to become somebody.

One of the best documentary films that I saw last year was SONS OF PERDITION, a truly thoughtful and provocative film directed by Tyler Measom and Jenny Merten that followed the lives of three boys who were outcast from The Crick, Warren Jeff's FLDS polygamist community that is found in Colorado City, Arizona and Hildale, Utah. 

It is no secret that boys are a threat in polygamist communities, especially teenage boys, and these boys are systematically exiled from the only homes and community they have known their whole lives to a world that they are ill-equipped to live in.  Known locally as the Lost Boys, there are limited resources available for them and many turn to drugs and alcohol to cope with the separation from their families and often find themselves on the wrong side of the law. 

This is a very real problem, a human problem, and this film follows the journey of three Lost Boys for four years as they navigate life outside their community attempting to sort out the scars of their former life, their individual heartbreak and losses, their struggles with post-traumatic religious stress disorders and their true discovery of real independence.  

SONS OF PERDITION is a film I believe that absolutely everyone should see because the more we understand, the more we all know, the more compassion we all share for one another. 

 

Lucky for those of us living in Utah and Arizona, SONS OF PERDITION is now screening locally.  I want everyone to go see this film and the first five (5) of you who leave me a comment saying you can join me will get to go for FREE this FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 18, 2011, at the TOWER THEATRE in Salt Lake City, Utah.  You'll be my special guests and I'll do my very best to make certain you get a chance to meet Tyler Measom and the special guests in attendance.

* Remember that the first five commenters will get to be MY GUEST for the Friday the 18th 7:00 p.m. screening ~ this is my gift to you!

 It took lots of guts from lots of beautiful people to share this story.  I hope you'll share it with everyone you know.

ADDENDUM:  I want to personally thank all of you who joined me at the Tower Theatre in Salt Lake City to see this film.  We had a huge turn out and there were lots of thoughtful questions asked to both the director and to the boys who were there for the screening.  My sister, NeverNakedBeth attended and her one criticism of the film that I hadn't even thought about was that it did not do quite enough to establish that the FLDS church and tenets are truly separate from those of the LDS church.  She is concerned, as a practicing and faithful Mormon, that this film will confuse those beyond Utah about the Mormon Church.  I believe, honestly, that any film or media that encourages us to examine and question our own beliefs and what we think we know is always a welcome addition to the dialogue.  My hope is that those who see this film would not just assume this film holds the gospel truth.  Each of us, actually, holds our own truth, as I believe all of you know.  The common ground is where we all meet to share our truths and love one another through our differences.

There's been quite a bit of traffic here looking for specific information about the FLDS, Warren Jeffs and polygamy.  Today there was an article published on SALON that further illuminates the troubles in the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saint church.  I'm linking to it as a courtesy. 

I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but I'm going to douse them in LOVE all the same

There is so very much swirling about in my head these days.  I keep writing off dashes of spouts of half jotted notes to myself to remember that, "Oh yes, self, you want to perhaps write about that! And, yes, that, too! That seems like something that deserves a bit of exploration. Oh, and here, don't forget about this..." 

Meanwhile, I'm living.  Life.  You know that whole complicated bit of breathing and talking and walking and sleeping and waking and getting on with it.  It is consuming.  Or can be, I suppose.  I do know that there's mindful living and then there's the whole non-mindful living and I've been making an effort lately at more mindful living, truthfully.  I'm probably going about it in all the wrong ways if I were to actually study it closely or follow somebody's ascribed lessons for mindful living that have, you know, already been written and studied and DONE FOR YOU. 

But where's the fun or the real living in that?  I don't mean to discount those ways of doing things and I'm quite certain, like therapy is helpful, that following step by step instructions for LIVING can certain be helpful for so very many of us, but for me it feels like not very much living would be happening at all but instead, because I'm the VALEDICTORIAN of all things it would turn into some sort of obsession where I would have to perfect the exercises meant to allow me to let go and I'd be so focused on doing everything perfectly I'd end up in the hospital suffering from some sort of exhaustion caused by my quest to be calm and meditative.

Surely that would be counterproductive.

Instead, I'm living my life by saying YES more often and by sharing every possible ounce of love I can possibly muster with every possible molecule that exists on the planet.  Love, people.  I'm giving it away by far more than spoonfuls.  I'm shining it off in buckets. 

It's really true, that old adage.  The more you give, the more you've got to give.  I just find myself so, well, full of it.  It's also totally free and pretty easily accepted.  I highly encourage all of you to just go out and give the love you have to everyone.  Love really is contagious and it really is fabulous medicine.

In other news...

I received an invitation today to go to Taiiji, Japan on September 1 to protest the beginning of their annual dolphin hunt.  I want nothing more, truthfully, than to be there to stand up for the dolphins.  I've been speaking out on their behalf and against this senseless slaughter (and dolphins in captivity) for a very long time and I really believe that showing up is important for them.

I am the woman who shows up.  I just do.  I am uncertain how, exactly, I will get to Taiiji as that is a long way from Salt Lake and one very expensive journey, but it seems like life has a way of making these kinds of things happen.  It would be an honor to stand with Ric O'Berry, to speak for those beautiful dolphins.  Remember, a dolphin touched my heart, quite literally one sunny afternoon in a cove in Hawaii.  I can't help but think he was giving me a message for all dolphins that day.  I have to help them.  I can't not help them.  It's just what I do. 

It's why I live.  It's most certainly why I love.