When it comes to female celebrations it becomes clear pretty quickly, “It’s MYYYYY Day!” and, “ It is all about Meeeee!” We’ve all heard, “If Mom ‘aint happy, ‘aint nobody happy’.

Pretty embarrassing, really.

Think about it: engagement parties, wedding showers, weddings, baby showers, birthing, anniversaries, sitting Shiva, etc.  “It is all about Meee!” Of course, Mother’s Day is no exception. We want gratitude, thanks, acknowledgement and to be lifted onto the pedestal of Motherhood. We want to know YOU know we have done a good job. It is our report card. And it really feels good to us when you give us accolades in one form or another. At least we have ONE day of thanks for all our thankless day-to-day sacrifice and toil, we think.

But what if…

What if we are wrong……?

What if it is really the other way around and that our kids are our real gift and reward, our everyday Mother’s Day gift? What if they offer us a chance to do life over again with awareness this time? What if they are our true healers, spiritual guides, our mimes, jokesters and charm the laughter out of us, oozing our original childlike nature up and out us? What if they are here to help us remember what heaven, connection and love is all about because they are closer to it by birth date? What if we are missing the point about Mother’s Day and it is really about us thanking our kids?

What if we thank our kids for being our living lab rats to test out our belief systems, ideals, and trial and error? What if we thank them for letting us use them as surrogates to risk where we had a lack of courage? “Do as I say, not as I do,” right? They are so young, they don’t know yet they can say , “NO!”  to us. They don’t know better that they don’t have to be the mirrors to our soul.

They say that God loans us our children. Just like birds in a nest they will fly away someday when they are able and ready. As Mothers, we see our place as one of responsibility to protect, feed, clothe, educate, heal and make sure they have skills to survive. But what if in the even exchange of the ecosystem of life they give us exactly what we need in that moment in return? There is no sacrifice, just connection and love.

In Chinatown they sell an herbal product called Birds Nest. It is a healing mixture of a type of bird saliva that comes from a specific bird species in China. This bird leaves this saliva as a ring around her nest for her baby bird to feed off of while she goes out to find other nourishment. The Chinese know this is the oldest, finest and purest form of an anti-aging potion. It is very expensive and rare. But it is never created without a baby bird present. Maybe we can learn from this bird species that there is an exchange of life between Mother and baby that creates and ageless immortality. The gratitude, thanks and acknowledgement goes both ways.

I have two daughters. Each one of them has given me many physical and spiritual gifts in my lifetime. I cherish each of them. My daughter, Chelsea is a muse, Athenian Goddess of music, beauty, creativity, charm and light. One day she wrote and sang this song to brighten my dampened spirits from loss and grief. See for yourself if you don’t feel the warmth of her gift. It is just one reason I should say thank you to her on Mother’s Day. Here is her gift to me. I share it with you. Let her charm the child like Happy right out of you.  Happy Mother’s Day!

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Drug overdoses are like suicides.

They are a needless waste of human life.

They make us feel sad, angry and helpless.

They leave us in shock with the unexplainable.

We ask ourselves where did they cross the line from instant gratification to self destruction? When does enough become enough? What made them seek their edges, their horizon, and their boundaries? Didn’t they include us in their decision?

Philip Seymour Hoffman’s untimely drug over dose death bears a gift for all of us.

We can see how he took his illusion over the edge in a way that we do not have to do. Instead, we can use his life experience to gift our own lives. By doing so, we give even more meaning to his professional ability as an actor to make us think and feel in the grand stage of life.  We can self reflect to see how his passing relates to our lives too. He always wanted to do the impossible. Let’s give him what he wanted.

Do we ourselves have behavior that we get instant gratification but that is self destructive too? Do we eat sugar when we are diabetics? Do we drive even when we have been drinking? Do we have sex ‘just this once’ without a condom? Do we jaywalk on a busy street because we are late? Do we ignore a shooting pain or an unusually looking mole because it is a nuisance to call the doctor?

The list is endless.

We all have our secret personal reasons. We play games with ourselves.

We deny it.

We rationalize it by comparing it to something worse.

We justify its necessity.

We put it off until tomorrow.

We ignore it as if it is not there.

We pretend the worst scenario will never happen to us.

We cling to our youthful idea that we are invincible and nothing can harm us.

We isolate ourselves to make it artificially OK that no one will get hurt but us.

We take away anything or anyone that reminds us of the consequences we might have to face.

We forget the ‘close calls’ in the past, that gave us a reality check, and we promised to change our ways.

We say we have lots of time to get to it.

We tell ourselves it is because we have earned it and it is a time to celebrate.

We convince ourselves that our close ones who are warning us, threatening us, or giving us ultimatums just don’t understand, or are jealous, ignorant or sheltered.

We minimize that one small choice could not do that much damage.

But call a rose by any other name and it is still a rose. By the same token, call destruction by any other name and it still destroys.

Go moves you. Death kills you. Love enlarges you. Forgiveness connects you.

But it is your decision….to what?

As a Classical Homeopath, my colleagues and I make prescriptions based on the type of destructive behavior of Philip Seymour Hoffman, Kurt Cobain, Heath Ledger, Cory Monteith, John Bulushi and countless others. We prescribe remedies that fall into a ‘Syphilitic Miasm’. A syphilitic miasm does not mean that the person has syphilis. A syphilitic miasm is a state of being where the organism has tried everything else possible to heal them and it has not worked. So their last ditch option is to kill off the thought that keeps them coming back to the edge of destruction where they left the healthy part of themselves. That thought resides in the brain. They think, “If only I could eliminate that one compulsive thought, then I can get myself back. I will be OK.” Suddenly, the person in the syphilitic miasm kills himself or herself in a drug overdose, suicide or some other risky behavior. This person just wants to kill off the compulsive thought like a cancerous tumor. This compulsive thought is like the end stages of syphilis, a disease that ultimately destroys the brain so that behavior looks destructive and insane.

The innocent quest underneath all the destructive behavior is really just a quest for life. The person just wants to excise the cancerous thought so they can get back to themselves. The self destructive behavior is not just for pleasure, not just for a quick out or wanton abandon. No, underneath it is all just the soft whisper and hope of life to spring forth like a weed through the concrete. It is a desire for life under the heavy weight of self destruction. Just like chemotherapy that destroys all cells to start from a clean slate, sometimes the patient dies in the process of trying to ‘clean the slate’ to start anew.

For Philip Seymour Hoffman, he couldn’t live long enough to extinguish every last destructive thought.

As his audience, let us stand and clap together, in unison for an encore, by soaking his very last profound performance for all of us to see and reflect upon our own destructive ways. Let us look to ourselves. What thought are we trying to excise with destructive behavior, that in so doing we are destroying ourselves little by little; extinguishing our whisper of life, and our unique, beautiful spark of God?

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Death By Any Other Name

By Dr. Aviva Boxer, OMD

Just mentioning the word ‘Death’ makes even the most callous of persons stop in their tracks and pause with the dear-in-the-headlights look before they can collect their thoughts and then respond.  To circumvent this problem we have come up with many ways to say death. Below is just a few interesting ways we have referred to the word death. Can you add any other ways to communicate death to this list?

• Cash in
• Check out
• Croak
• Cross over
• Cut one’s stick
• Drop the Hooks
• Go Home in a Box
• Go the Way of All Flesh
• Go Up Salt River
• Go West
• Hop the Last Rattler
• Kick the Bucket
• Pass out the Picture
• Pay the Debt of Nature
• Push up Daisies
• Rest in Abraham’s Boxom
• Ride the Pale Horse
• Take the Big Jump
• Toss in One’s Alley

Add to the list if you can. How do you or your family refer to death?

Photo credit to sacredsquare on WordPress

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Cause of Death Then and Now: It’s All Relative

The leading causes of Death in London in 1665, when statistical data was just beginning to be collected, were documented on what was called “Bills of Mortality”.

The tabulation on the leading causes of death was collected at the height of the Black Plaque. Compare it to the leading causes of death today in 2013.

Are we so different in disease or symptoms in the last 348 years? Or have we just mixed and matched symptoms and given new labels to the names of the diseases that choose us? Could it be that the difference is just how they looked at death as an end 348 years ago? What do you think?

Year 1665 Leading Causes of Death       Year 2013 Leading Causes of Death

Abortion                                                                            Heart Disease

Aged                                                                                    Cancer

Ague                                                                                    Stroke

Apoplexie                                                                         Chronic Lower Respiratory Disease

Bleeding                                                                            Accidents

Burnt in His Bed by a Candle                                   Diabetes

Canker                                                                               Influenza & Pneumonia

Childbed                                                                          Alzheimer’s Disease

Chrisomes                                                                       Nephritis

Consumption                                                                 Septicemia

Convulsion                                                                     Suicide

Cough                                                                              Chronic Liver Disease

Dropsie                                                                           Primary Hypertension

Fever                                                                               Parkinson’s Disease

Flox and Small Pox                                                   Homicide

Frightened                                                                    Road Injury

Gowt                                                                               Prematurity

Grief                                                                               HIV/Aids

Griping in the Guts                                                   Diarrhea

Iaundies                                                                       Trachea, Bronchus & Lung Cancers

Imposthume                                                             Chronic Liver Disease

Infants                                                                        Tuberculosis

Killed By a Fall                                                        Malaria

Kingsevil                                                                   Measles

Lethargy                                                                    Syphilis

Palsie                                                                          Epilepsy

Plague                                                                        Hepatitis

Rickets                                                                       Meningitis

Rising of the Lights                                              Pertussis

Scowring                                                                   Asthma

Scurvy                                                                        Fire

Spleen                                                                        Poisoning

Spotted Feaver                                                      Drowning

Stillborn                                                                   Congenital Heart Defect

Stone                                                                         Dementia

Stopping of the Stomach                                  Cirrhosis

Strangury                                                                Stomach Cancer

Suddenly                                                                 Sepsis/Blood Poisoning

Surgeit                                                                     Alcoholism

Teeth

Thresh

Tiffick

Timpany

Vomiting

Winde

Wormes

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Are You A Grave Groupie?

By Dr. Aviva Boxer, OMD

The Kabbalists believe if you sleep on the grave of the deceased on the anniversary of the day that they died you will gain access to all the skills and knowledge that the deceased had in their lifetime. They believe that the deceased soul comes back to visit the physical meeting point on that death date once a year.

For those that have always aspired to be a rock and roller below are the grave sites of 10 famous rockers. Would you want to fast forward the musical learning curve? Maybe you would like to hedge your bets.  Could you call yourself a “grave groupie”?

Allman, Duane (Howard) (1946-1971). Founder of the Allman Brothers. Rose Hill Cemetery, Macon, Bibb County, Georgia, USA

Hendrix, Jimi (1942-1970) guitarist The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Greenwood Memorial Park Renton, King County, Washington, USA

Holly, Buddy (1936-1959). Lead singer The Crickets. City of Lubbock Cemetery, Lubbock, Lubbock County, Texas, USA

Huchence, Michael (1960-1997). Lead singer INXS. Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens & Crematorium, Sydney.

Morrison, Jim (1943-1971). Lead singer The Doors. Le Pere Lachaise, Paris, France.

Presley, Elvis (1935-1977). Singer. Graceland. Mansion Estates, Memphis, Shelby County, Tennessee, USA

Scott, Bon (1946-1980). Lead singer AC/DC. Fremantle Cemetery, Gremantle, Australia.

Spungen, Nancy (1958-1978). Sid Vicious’s girlfriend (his ashes, allegedly, were scattered on the grave). King David Cemetery, Bensalem, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, USA.

Thunders, Johnny (1952-1991). Guitarist The New Your Dolls/Heartbreakers. Saint Mary’s Cemetery, Flushing, Queens County, New York, USA. Plot: Section 9, Grave R78-82.

Valens, Ritchie (1941-1959). Guitarist/Singer. San Fernando Mission Cemetery, Mission Hills, Los Angeles County, California, USA. Plot: Section C, Lot 248, Grave 2.

The Uncyclopedia by Gideon Haigh, Hyperion Press, NY, P.26

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