Elena 
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1.The ABC drama Private Practice
has a story line that I find very compelling right now. One of the show’s characters, Violet Turner, was savagely attacked in her home at the end of last season when a delusional patient attacked her and literally cut the unborn baby out of her womb. This season Violet has been dealing with the emotions and feelings surrounding her attack and the birth of her baby.
Now I’ll grant that Violet’s attack was horrific, dramatic and horrible. However, many of the emotions and thoughts she has been expressing on the show are very, very familiar to the ones I experienced and heard other women express about their unwanted and unneeded unexpected Cesarean sections.
2. Speaking of medical rape, I found this on the internet last night– the forced Cesarean of a healthy mother with a healthy baby. Stunning.
3. This weekend is my last wedding this year as the coordinator at my parish. It has been a hard month! It’s hard to explain but while I always look at Fridays as the beginning of the weekend, on weekends I have weddings it is just a lengthening of the regular week. So I am looking forward to the end of the wedding season for this year. On the 7th though, I am participating in a wedding as the flutist – which has its own set of challenges including ongoing practice beforehand!
4. All Saints Day looms in the near future. The celebration that the kids want, but no visiting the retirement home where my mom lived, making new traditions and memories, and also the anniversary of my own baby’s death. I am a jumble of mixed thoughts and feelings about it.
5. A few weeks ago I went to the funeral for a little baby in our parish. Last night I made it out to the cemetery and noted that little one is there, about 24 feet or so from my own baby’s grave. I couldn’t help but remark to Sam that the community in the cemetery reflects the community in the parish and the diocese. I’ll bet just about everyone we know at church has someone, somewhere at the local Catholic cemetery.
6. Gabriel asked his cross country coach to be his confirmation sponsor. That was totally Gabe’s idea and the coach was very happy to have been asked. Coach said some really sweet things about Gabe at the cross country banquet last weekend.
It was something like, “Gabe you have the perfect body – for football,” which is true. At 14 years of age, 6 foot 1, 215 pounds, he is not built for cross country but has the structure and the brawn for football or some other contact sport.
Coach went on, ” but you never gave up, you always practiced hard and ran your own race. You have the heart for cross country.”
And everyone applauded. Gabe came in last or almost last at every meet. But he always wanted to go and he never complained (much) about practice. I’m going to miss his participation on the team next year.
7. In the 1980s I participated in a community regional ballet company. This year they were asking all of the alumni dancers to submit photos so that they could decorate a wall with scenes from Nutcrackers past. I managed to dig up some pictures and found some with me in costume for the Arabian in Nutcracker. I was surprised when I found them – I didn’t remember that I had danced that role – so much has happened since then. But the very interesting thing is Mr. Pete took the shot, with an old Argus camera of my grandmother’s. And he was shooting film. Considering all of that I think he did a pretty good job. When Mr. Pete saw the old picture of me in the Arabian costume he exclaimed, “Look how beautiful you were!” What a difference 20+ years and 7 pregnancies make!
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