Waking up – post Roe V Wade

It was an average June day in 2015. My biological family was about to visit and hubby and I had been busy cleaning things to make sure they would be comfortable. I was on my way home from work, hubby called and asked if I could pick up a pizza for dinner.  I turned right at the intersection. A few blocks later, everything changed…

A young woman was attempting a left turn into traffic. Instead of inching out to see if the road was clear, she went all out and flew into the intersection, inches in front of me as I entered the intersection. The next few hours and days were kind of a blur, I messed up meetings at work and times on projects, I started getting major migraines and massive neck and shoulder pain.  The roller coaster of western medicine had begun for me.  And for the next 8 years, I was in a fog that rarely lifted, pumping myself with so many opioids I don’t remember most of it, and had so many side effects we are still not sure what was the accident and what was the medication.

Jumping past all the pain, agony, emotion and physical trauma of those years.  Thats a whole nother jerry springer Im not ready to get into just yet.  My neurologist retired. And a younger doctor came in. We switched up my pain therapy and tried something very fringe. Low and behold, it worked!!  The next few years were about getting the pain down enough to absorb the pain education I was being exposed to. This allowed me to wakeup.

maybe this story starts at my waking up. See, when I had my accident, I was at the height of my career in software engineering.  I was managing the research and development department at a local technology company.  I was breaking the glass ceiling. I was making more than guys 20 years my senior. I was a badass bitch. And contrary to what most of america seems to think, I didn’t sleep with anyone to get that status.  I busted my ass three times harder than the men in my profession. I worked over time without extra pay. I worked at home, I worked weekends, I worked nights. I worked my ass off to get there. I was a leader in my field, I educated those coming into my field. I traveled the world and I led with a fierceness that every woman has a right to feel in her life.  Whether it is in corporate america, at the local burger joint or any where in the middle. WE DESERVE to be fierce.

Then my accident…  And everything I worked my ass off for disappeared in a matter of months.  The benefits I worked so hard for because they were supposed to take care of me if anything ever happened, those went away. Those companies I paid my entire career, dropped me like a hot potato.  The long term care and accident insurance was a joke and we spent the next several years scraping by and fighting for those benefits.  Finally the government program I never thought I would use, social security, saved the roof over our heads and put food in our mouths.

When I started waking up, I was appalled by what I was hearing and starting to understand about what had become of America. Roe V Wade had been overturned!!!  W the FUCK!!!  Overturned!?!?!??  I didn’t even know that was possible. And for the first time in my life, my body was not my body. Suddenly the government thought they had a right to a say in what happened with my body.  And then I find out my entire biological family supports this.  Yes, supports it.  Not only did they vote Trump the first time.  But I wake up and they vote for him a second time.  The same people who say they love me and care about my future are suddenly voting my rights away.  They smirk about it and laugh when I bring up trump.  They say things like ‘I knew you were going to say something’. Or ‘we are not going to talk about politics, but we want you to come have a holiday dinner with you’. Why? SO they can mock me and my rights. They want me to be ok with them voting me into slavery?!?!??!?   We should be talking about this.  But not in the way they are talking about it.

More to come… my reaction to how the people who say they love me with be in my next post. Stay tuned. Also interviews from women dealing with post Roe V Wade reactions and trying to discover what we can do now..

Part 2 is here.