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Victim’s Husband Tells Terrorists, ‘I Will Not Give You the Gift of hate’
http://www.nytimes.com/live/paris-attacks-live-updates/victims-husband-tells-terrorists-i-will-not-give-you-the-gift-of-hate/
Antoine Leiris, whose wife was killed when gun-wielding militants invaded a crowded concert hall in Paris, has this message for the killers: “I will not give you the gift of hate.”
Mr. Leiris, a journalist for France Bleu, a network of local and regional radio stations, met his wife, Hélène Muyal-Leiris, 12 years ago, and has been left to raise their toddler son, Melvil, on his own.
Of the 129 people killed during the attacks on Friday, 89 died at the Bataclan concert hall, where Ms. Muyal-Leiris had been attending a rock concert.
In a moving tribute on Facebook that had been viewed more than 90,000 times by Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Leiris said he would not allow his grief to turn into hatred.
Addressing the attackers, he wrote: “You won’t have my hate. On Friday night you took the life of someone exceptional, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but I will not hate you. I do not know who you are and I do not want to know. You are dead inside. If the God for whom you blindly kill really made us in his image, then each bullet in my wife’s body is a wound to his heart.”
He went on: “So I will not give you the gift of hate. Even though it is what you were hoping for, responding to hatred with anger would be to fall to the same ignorance that made you the people that you are. You want me to be scared, to distrust my fellow citizens, and to sacrifice my liberty for security. I will play on.”
Mr. Leiris said he had seen his wife’s body after the massacre, after waiting for several days. “She was as beautiful as she was when she left on Friday night, as beautiful as when I fell forever in love with her more than 12 years ago,” he wrote.
“Of course I am devastated by grief, I will concede you that small victory, but that will not last long. I know that she will watch over us always and that, one day, we will meet again in that paradise of free souls where you will never be admitted.”
He ended on a note of optimism. “Now it’s just the two of us, my son and I, but we are stronger than all the armies of the world. In fact, I do not have any more time to waste on you, I need to go and get Melvil, who is waking up from his nap. He is only 17 months old, he will eat his afternoon tea as always and then we will go and play as always, and this little boy’s entire life will be an affront to you by being happy and free. For he will not hate you either.”
After the terror
I haven’t written or posted anything in a few days. At first I was just in shock from the terror attacks. Then I have been reading everything I can find, all the news reports, all the historical data, the commentary, anything I see that has to do with the events in Paris. I still don’t know what to say. Of course I condemn them, the acts, the people who perpetrated them. No matter what’s been done to the Middle East, and there has been a lot, such as the destruction of Iraq for no reason, such as the Palestinian issue, such as many things, why is IS the result of that? What I mean to say is no matter what happens to a region, why are cold hearted, deluded, murderous young men the ones to rise and take control of areas? Why IS? Why couldn’t it have been loving, peaceful minded, constructive people who took over? As I write this, I also come up with possible answers to that question. There is poverty, no education, no food, lawlessness. But many people are experiencing the same things and only a few of them join or become IS. So then what? Mental illness that is untreated, not even recognized? Who could set a living human being on fire? A sane person? Not by my definition. But if it is mental illness, then which one is it and what is the treatment? I don’t know. I have no answers. I just know I am beyond upset, beyond upset. My condolences go to the families of all those lost in the attacks. Are there going to be more? We are all fearful. I went to see the Bond movie, and for the first time in my life, I wondered if someone would blow themselves up or shoot me there. Also most of the objects of these attacks are other Muslims. People in Lebanon, Syria, Nigeria, Kenya, Pakistan. It’s awful, it’s heinous, it’s mad. What can we do, I don’t know. Rewire these mad people’s brains? If only.
Aujourd’hui, hier, et demain, je suis une Parisienne
Finding Alice’s ‘Wonderland’ in Oxford
“Alice in Wonderland,” a story very close to my heart, as in my first full blown manic phase, I WAS Alice, was written by an Oxford Mathematics lecturer for the daughter of the Dean of Christchurch College. The little girl’s name was Alice.
I always thought Lewis Carroll must have been on hallucinogenic drugs when he wrote “Alice in Wonderland” but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even Lewis Carroll! He was a Mathematics lecturer at Oxford named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. He was a brilliant story teller, a mathematician, a great photographer, a man with a vivid and amazing imagination! Below is a very detailed history (from histoire in French, meaning story) of the writing of Alice in Wonderland. Fascinating. The pictures included in the article are beautiful, clear and serene.
NEW DEVICE COULD RESET BRAINS OF VETERANS WITH PTSD
http://abc7.com/health/new-device-could-reset-brains-of-veterans-with-ptsd/1079871/
WESTWOOD, LOS ANGELES (KABC) —
The horror of combat is something many veterans live with, but a new study at UCLA is underway to see if administering mild electrical currents into the brain can reset its networks for those dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder.
One Gardena veteran said this new research is giving him hope.
On May 3, 2006, retired Army Sgt. Ron Ramirez was on night patrol in Iraq when a roadside bomb blew up under his truck.
“I saw a bright light. I couldn’t see and I couldn’t hear,” he said.
The machine gunner suffered a traumatic brain injury and a perforated ear drum.
While his body has healed, “invisible wounds” continued to haunt him.
He’d have night terrors and couldn’t sleep. His violent outbursts scared his 12 and 13-year-old daughters and everyone he was close to.
“I would yell. I’d throw things. I couldn’t see it,” Ramirez said. “Everyone else told me there was something wrong, but I couldn’t see it.”
Ramirez said he tried to avoid people as crowds over-stimulated him and noises often set him off.
A year after the explosion, he was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder, and psychotherapy and medication did little to alleviate the anxiety, nightmares and anger.
Soon after, Ramirez heard about a new study for veterans with PTSD.
Researchers at UCLA’s Semel Institute for Neuroscience are studying how stimulating a nerve on the side of the face, called the trigeminal nerve, might reset brainwaves.
Dr. Andrew Leuchter said TNS therapy has been used to treat epilepsy and depression, but it holds great promise in treating chronic PTSD.
According to Dr. Leuchter, the brains of people who go through a traumatic event in some ways get rewired.
“What we’re doing with TNS is we’re sending electrical signals that can help reset the function of the brain networks that can help them get over their illness,” he said.
Doctors say many people don’t realize that the language of the brain is electricity, and it doesn’t take a lot to make a change.
The current of this device is similar to that of a nine-volt battery.
Researchers say from what they can tell, it’s very safe, very effect and has very few side effects.
Dr. Leuchter is working with the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System to recruit more veterans who’ve served since 9/11.
Half of the vets will receive the treatment, while the other half will get a fake TNS patch to test the placebo effect.
Meanwhile, Ramirez continues his treatment as he places an electrode on his forehead and sleeps with the device.
After using the TNS therapy for two months, Ramirez said he feels like he can win his family back.
“It gave me more confidence,” he said. “It gave me a sense of happiness.”
For veterans interested in learning more about this trial, they can go to brain.ucla.edu and click the “contact us” link to get more information.
Insights from feeling awful
FEELING BETTER! (video)
Hello my dear Blog fellows, my friends, my family, my readers! Yes it’s a miracle! A Seroquel miracle! Increased my dose from 100 mg to 150 mg and it did the trick. I do feel almost back to my normal cheery self. The gloom and doom is gone. Whew! I am breathing a sigh of relief and gratefulness!
Feeling Better!!
https://www.facebook.com/samina.raza/videos/10153319289537711/
Hello my dear Blog fellows, my friends, my family, my readers! Yes it’s a miracle! A Seroquel miracle! Increased my dose from 100 mg to 150 mg and it did the trick. I do feel almost back to my normal cheery self. The gloom and doom is gone. Whew! I am breathing a sigh of relief and gratefulness!
Must be the season
This blogpost, posted by Hannah Crowley on Healthyplace.com, took the words right out of my mouth! Feel like a fraud, feel like I am not good enough, all that is spot on. Now just waiting for the recovery after the relapse. How can this happen to me over and over again? And yet, each time it happens, it feels like it will never end, It feels like I’ll never get better, the hopelessness, the shame, the self blame and recrimination, the gut wrenching heartbreak, not pretty. Just waiting it out, don’t feel good enough to do much else. Tomorrow, I will go to the gym, tomorrow, I will feel better, tomorrow, I will be me, I promise.
http://www.healthyplace.com/blogs/toughtimes/2015/11/09/mental-illness-relapse-recovery/
Is Mental Illness Relapse a Part of Recovery?
A mental illness relapse tricked me into thinking I was a fraud. As the author of the blog entitled Getting Through Tough Times, I am required — by the very delineation of the phrase — to speak about my own tough times. It’s my job to share obstacles I have overcome and urge other people to do the same (Mental Health 101: Developing Coping Strategies). But recently I’ve felt like a fake, a fraud. I’ve sat in front of a computer screen with my fingers poised above the keys, ready to type a stream of words that sound fancy and wise, and I’ve stood in front of a camera with a bunch of rehearsed clichés, prepared to spout them out robotically.
But I could never go through with it because I was struggling with my own form of mental illness relapse. And for those with a history of mental illness, that is what struggling so frequently means (Anatomy Of A Mental Illness Relapse).
I Felt My Mental Illness Relapse Coming On
Over the last few weeks, I’ve gone through a series of “tough times” that have left me reeling. Somehow I’d trained myself to believe that I was invincible; that I was no longer drastically affected by pithy little “bumps in the road” or any type of mental illness relapse. As an individual designated to helping others, I felt that I wasn’t allowed to struggle. That somehow struggling made me a counterfeit blogger (Denial Keeps Those With A Mental Illness From Getting Better).
But I was wrong. Every individual is not only entitled to face adversity, but we should expect it — and if we can, we should embrace it. Breaking away from the passé injustice of life, I believe that hardship only highlights our strengths. Instead of retracting into an introverted mass of reticence and self-flagellation, we can take comfort from the age old idiom that where there is life, there is hope.
Mental Illness Relapse Is a Part of Recovery
Mental illness relapse doesn’t have to manifest itself physically, or drastically. It can be a series of distorted thoughts, a heightening of anxiety or the brutally incessant urge to cut. It can even just be that dark, destructive thought that “I am not good enough for this.”
But I am good enough. And today I am going to take my own advice. I’m going to toss aside the masochism and work through the darkness. And if I can get through to just one individual — this will all be worth it. Because “every wound leaves a scar, and every scar tells a story. A story that says I have survived.”
