Today’s newsletter is all about celebrating a book and a movement called The Thinking Moms’ Revolution.
To the women (and one man) who are TMR: You are courageous, brilliant, articulate, honest, funny, passionate, heartbreakingly honest, compassionate, and righteously angry, and boy, do you ever challenge everyone to think about autism in a new way!
The TMR book and website are the culmination of years of mom wisdom and learning from the gut. Trusting instincts, connecting with others, wading through medical literature, laughing, crying, and daring greatly; this group is taking a stand, moving forward, healing, speaking out, and ready to risk it all.
BLAST FROM THE PAST
When I was a young mom in the mid 1980’s, I had no idea that vaccination was optional. A good mom vaccinated. Then, you dealt with health issues, learning difficulties, ADD, ADHD, and even though you were told it was not vaccine related, you somehow knew in your gut that there was a vaccine connection. You soon noticed all these other kids your kids’ age being diagnosed with similar conditions and illnesses. The medical answer? Better diagnosis of learning disabilities. Ha! Guess what the TMR parents are being told? Better and earlier diagnosis of autism!
Did vaccines cause my boys’ ADD/ADHD? No, vaccines didn’t ‘cause’ ADD/ADHD.
Did vaccines contribute to other health issues and add another layer to the ADD/ADHD? Yes. I believe they did. I look back and see that the children born in the 1980’s and 1990’s were the beginning of the first wave of severe chronic brain/gut inflammation conditions that has led directly to the huge numbers of children now being diagnosed on the spectrum.
There was no Internet then and the early pioneers making the connection between SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome) and vaccines were Dr. Viera Scheibner, Barbara Loe Fisher (nvic.org), Dr. Harris Coulter, and Hilary Butler (beyondconformity.co.nz). Attending a seminar with Dr. Viera Scheibner (her book Vaccination: 100 Years of Orthodox Research Shows that Vaccines Represent a Medical Assault on the Immune System is hard to find now) in the late 80’s reassured me that, in fact, I wasn’t crazy. I could trust my gut that there was a connection between the vaccines, chronic illness, and learning. Vaccines weren’t the whole story for my kids, but it was a layer. With a little bit of family research, I learned that learning disabilities were on both sides of the family; genetically my boys came into the world ‘wired differently’…before the vaccines.
The fact that there are groups on social networking sites doing the work that the thinking moms are doing makes my heart sing! You are doing what I only wished I could have done all those years ago—having like-minded parents to share with. As a parent in the 80’s, we were still at the kitchen table trying to make sense of it all. What took us weeks and months in terms of sharing information can now happen in a click of a mouse.
FROM THE BOOK
Here is a quote from the introduction in the book The Thinking Mom’s Revolution: Autism Beyond the Spectrum:
All families facing autism need support, and we have found it in each other. Thanks to the modern world of social networking, a group of biomedical moms and a medically minded dad found each other and started talking. It began as a small group of people whose children were seeing the same homeopath, but it quickly transformed. The forum changed, other friends were added, and the group of strangers who once talked about homeopathic remedies became family.
…Learn from our mistakes. Listen to what we have to say, and please, educate yourself when it comes to your children’s health. We all dutifully listened to our physicians, and they came up short for our children with lasting consequences. Your children need you to be judicious about everything that is put into their bodies. Examine the ingredients in the foods they eat, give them pure drinking water, keep the toxic chemicals out of household cleaners, and read your vaccine inserts so you know what is going into them. The Thinking Moms’ Revolution is about taking back the health of our children whether they have autism, asthma, sensory processing problems, or any of the other disorders that are found so frequently in our children today. We ask that as you read the pages of this book you do one very important thing. Think.
And from Money’s “Two Cents” chapter:
As time goes on, I am getting much better at listening to my inner guidance. Take homeopathy, for example. It has been a big intervention for my daughter. I knew it would be important long before we started it. I read about author Amy Lansky’s son’s recovery on the webs and got immediate goose bumps. I devoured her book The Impossible Cure. I had this deep inner knowing that homeopathy was one key to solving my daughter’s puzzle. The time it took to get started with it was not simply due to my being slow or in denial. It was a matter of finding the right practitioner who could treat autism and all the complicated medical issues that go right along with it. I live in the sticks. We don’t have many homeopaths around here, and I had no idea how to find a good one. I emailed Amy to see if she knew anyone in my area, and although she gave me a suggestion, it did not ‘feel right’ to me. I knew my intuition would tell me when I found the right person. That took one full year. I knew I had found the right person when I got goose bumps again…and when I called to find about the waiting list it turned out there was a cancellation only two days later… It took about four months of doing homeopathy before we began seeing enormous gains. Homeopathy brought speech, receptive language, cognitive gains, and increased awareness. The best part was that, for my daughter, it did not come with regressions. Homeopathy is so gentle and easy. It is by far my favorite intervention to date.
HOMEOPATHY CAN HELP
I do not have children with autism. I cannot begin to know what is involved as a parent, but as a homeopath, I can use my training and skills to help parents help their kids heal.
We can listen. We can offer support. We can choose. We can think.
Join me today. Buy the book. You will be compelled to read each and every story. These days I love getting my books FAST, so I ordered the digital version for my iPad. Nice.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Access articles by Dr. Viera Scheibner, Dr. Harris Coulter, Barbara Loe Fisher, Hilary Butler.
www.whale.to
Amy Lansky’s story of her son Max and his recovery from autism.
http://www.renresearch.com/autism.html
Miranda Castro’s “How to Find the Right Homeopath For You”
http://www.mirandacastro.com/articles/ht/finding_the_right_homeopath.html
Now I’m going to go reread TMR’s most recent book:
Yours in health and healing,
Donna
