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May 26, 2008
Twin Empowerment
I've often said that I see organizing nurses and blogging about CR as parallel tracks. By organizing nurses, I help individual people improve their own lives, their family's standard of living, and the quality of care that their patients get in the hospital. On the larger scale, as we build a movement of health care workers, we can take back health care from the corporate interests who are more concerned with making money off the patients and put the decision making in the hands of the people who actually care about human beings. It's empowerment on the small scale, leading to empowerment on the larger scale. And in the end, it makes the difference between life and death for a lot of people.
CRON is a very empowering way of life. It's about taking control of your health, defying a food environment that is toxic to humans, and doing what makes you feel good, even when it means swimming upstream in a world of Krispy Kremes and extra value heart attack meals (more cholesterol and saturated fat for your dollar! Yippie!) It takes hard work and discipline. It's not easy. You have to be willing to be different, to defer gratification, and to believe that your health is worth more than the brief pleasure of eating whatever you "want," whenever it's in front of you. Real, hardcore CR isn't for everyone, in fact it isn't for most. Just like union organizing isn't a profession that most normal people would choose, hardcore CR is for those with unusual goals and an unusual willingness to be weird. But the principles of CRON can be applied by anyone to lose weight, be healthier, and enjoy life more.
So my "real" life and my side life, my CR practice and blog, are very different on the surface, but they're largely about the same thing: empowerment. That's what I've always said anyhow. But it's rare that it actually works that way in practice. On a daily basis I fight work-related stress that makes it hard to stick to CR, even though CR itself helps me deal with stress. I go to meetings where nurses are eating tons of extremely unhealthy foods, even as we're talking about how they won't have the physical strength to do the hard work of nursing past sixty. A lot of the time it feels like organizing nurses and practicing CR are about as opposite as can be.
Until in one of those moments that Shawn Colvin would describe as "Sometimes the beauty of life hits light lightening washing everything clear," I got to catch up with Annie at our annual union all-state meeting.
Annie, whose name I picked because she is a younger version of Anna in many ways, was the person who called us the first time to organize the older of the twins. She did some very important organizing during the campaign, even though she had just had the second of her children and was out on leave until well into the campaign, and she was even more critical to the contract negotiations, which she helped to lead even though she was a) working b) teaching c) raising two very small children. Now she is co-president of the local. We hadn't gotten to talk in a long time, since right after the contract was settled at the older twin I left town entirely to do the contract in Scranton, leaving the older twin in the very capable hands of Asparagus-Phobe, who is quite good at his job, in spite of his bizarre quirk of being afraid of asparagus.
Shortly before we settled the contract, I'd had a brief chat with Annie about CR and the blog. She was thinking of losing some weight now that she's done having babies, so I preached the gospel of eggwhites and the high protein breakfast, and gave her the address of the blog. I wasn't sure if she'd had any use for the info, and I hadn't seen her in months. But sure enough, at the House of Delegates, it was quite obvious that she'd lost a lot of weight. Right around 30 pounds! She looked great: thinner, healthier, and happier too. Of course I was pretty overwhelmed when she said she'd been following the blog and trying some of my recipes.
You see, I know this stuff works, but in the day to day grind of trying to get through life, fighting the bosses at the hospitals, fighting the urge to give up and devour the giant tower of cheese that smirks at me for hours throughout negotiations in Scranton, as well as trying to help nurses gain a voice on the job in a world that is carefully constructed to prevent workers from having power, I sometimes forget that empowerment, real, lasting empowerment, is possible. To be confronted with an example of twin empowerment: nurse empowerment and food empowerment, all in one, was one of the most proud moments of what has been a year of pretty tremendous successes.
We have a date to go shopping at the Ann Taylor outlet when we reach our goal weights.
It was especially funny to go around introducing Annie to the blog characters she didn't know. She knows Edward and Susie, but she'd never met Lisa or Danny California, or Luke or Christine. It just goes to show... you never know who's reading.
Like Anna, Annie had no way of knowing that her revelation of twin empowerment hit me at a particularly meaningful time. While it's been a year of tremendous career success, it's been a very hard year on me personally, and I'd just spent the previous few days feeling rather in the depths of despair. Those terrible feelings of worthlessness that we all have sometimes were spending a lot of time circling around my mind like vultures checking out a fresh carcass. The last six months were especially hard, and it would seem that I would make so much progress, getting most of the pieces of life working together just right, only to be smacked down by some unexpected horror. That conversation with Annie, and the knowledge that something I'd done had helped someone in a way I didn't realize, threw me a lifeline at a time when I needed it most.
The next day I gave my annual report to the House of Delegates, and Edward always says that I should be less dramatic but I'm always really dramatic. I can't help it... organizing is dramatic! There is real heroism as real nurses confront their fear and their boss and wrestle power away from the capitalist system to protect their patients and their families and their co-workers... what I do is actually exciting! I very happily reported on the twin victories to an enthusiastic audience of nurses who eagerly welcomed their new sisters to the union. Then I got to make Edward turn beet red and nearly pass out by publicly thanking him for all his work. He got a standing ovation. He looked like he was going to kill me, but he can't kill me because he can't figure out how to run the union without me. Hehehe.
Now the twins are off at school, both with excellent contracts, with their local leadership learning and growing and becoming independent. I am very proud of my twins. And at least one nurse is enjoying the fruits of the other kind of empowerment, the kind of empowerment that you can have even if you can't get a majority of your co-workers to vote for it, which is the power to control your own weight and health. Damn, it's been a good year!
Perhaps this year will bring more victories on both scores... as I go harder core with my CR, as we organize more nurses, and perhaps, dare I hope, that a new administration will bring some glimmer of progress on the national health care agenda. Nurse empowerment, food empowerment, and national health care empowerment? Triplets?
Wait, triplets???!!! Who said anything about triplets? The twins nearly killed me! Triplets???
What victories will I have to report at the next House of Delegates? Stay tuned...
But seriously... TRIPLETS???
Posted by april at May 26, 2008 5:00 PM
Comments
Hi April, I’ve enjoyed reading your blog and with your knowledge of CR I’m hoping you can help me. I have been trying to find information on CRON and mental health. Specifically beneficial or negative impacts on mental health and female hormonal changes. Do you have any resources you could suggest?
Posted by: Kaya at May 28, 2008 10:23 AM