WHAT IS HAPPENING WITH HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA?

THE UNDERCURRENT

What is happening with healthcare in America?
You may think it’s about politics. It is not.
You may think it’s about policy. It’s not.
You may believe it’s about good financial planning. No, it’s not.

If you know people who will be impacted by the Graham-Cassidy bill up in Congress now, you can clearly see that the bill will cause great harm to them. It will cause great harm to millions of others in our country, too. Perhaps even you, yourself … if not now, at some point in your life.

Physicians, as part of their passage into practicing medicine, commit to do no harm. Some of them do anyway, but many don’t. Have you ever heard of a governmental leader committing to do no harm? I haven’t either. But it needs to be part of the passage into governing or leading in any way.

So, if what’s happening with healthcare in America isn’t about politics, or policy, or good financial planning, what is it about? It’s about human willfulness. My understanding and definition of willfulness is when you do or attempt to do something – the consequences be damned. The key phrase: “the consequences be damned.”

And that is what is happening with our healthcare. That is what’s happening with our ability to have safe, secure, affordable, and accessible medical care when we need it. People are willfully attempting to destroy our healthcare system for their own benefit . . . under so many guises.

And how do people become willful? It is a defense we create when we’re young, a defense against wounds we experienced in our lives long ago. Perhaps our parents, or someone else in our young lives, willfully did things that harmed us … the consequences be damned. Perhaps we reacted in kind. Perhaps we passed it on to others more vulnerable than we were, or maybe even willfully harmed ourselves.

Willfulness is a current in each of us. Some of us don’t know about it at all. Some of us know about it and have healed it. Some of us know about it and try to keep from acting on it, not knowing it is possible to heal. Some of us know about it and act on it with awareness and intent.

Most of us deny it even exists – in others and in ourselves. How is it that so many of our leaders are acting on their willful aspects all at the same time … in relation to our health and well-being? Our denial has allowed it to come so far out into the open that it has become undeniable.

So now we have a choice.
Even though it is undeniable, we can still attempt to deny it – in ourselves and our leaders. We can, like little children who want to deny that mommy or daddy is willfully doing harm to them, transfer that onto our leaders, and want to deny that in our leaders. And we can, like little children who don’t want to “get in trouble” deny it in ourselves.

Or … we can see the willfulness, name it, hold our leaders accountable for their willfulness, and stop them … while at the same time exploring, discovering, finding, and healing our own willfulness. Then, and only then, can we be certain that we are not coming from a place of willfulness, but rather that we are coming from a place of real truth within ourselves, and from a truly loving place at the same time.

© Judith Barr, 2017.

WHAT’S HAPPENING WITH THE WOMEN?

We have been hearing, especially lately, so much about the destructive attitude towards and treatment of women in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and Africa . . . among other places. We have been learning about the inhumane treatment and the torture of women in these places . . . and more. They are treated like possessions of the men in their lives and in their society. They are sold into marriage by family. They are not allowed to divorce. In effect, they are trapped. They are tortured if they disobey — anywhere from acid thrown at them, being stoned or killed some other way, or raped and beaten at home. Some even have their clitoris destroyed (female genital mutilation) to deprive them of pleasure and their right to pleasure! And to show them “who has the power.” We have been told, even in the news, how poorly treated women abroad are.

But who’s telling us of the destructive attitude towards and treatment of women right here in the United States of America? Who’s telling us of the inhumane treatment of women right here at home? Who’s aware of the torture women experience in our “civilized” country already, with attempts to expand that torturous experience?

  • There have been escalating attempts to deprive women of the right to choose what happens to them – physically, emotionally, financially, and health-wise – under the guise of protecting life. *
  • There was recently an attempt in our House of Representatives to redefine rape – limiting it to forcible rape and excluding date rape, statutory rape, the rape of a woman who has been drugged, the rape of a mentally incompetent woman, the rape of a woman who “gives in” in order to avoid being killed by her attacker, and the cases of incest who are not minors . . . under the twin guises of protecting life and our economy.
  • And now a bill was just passed in the House (and will go to the Senate) that does not allow government funds to be used for abortions except in cases of rape, incest, or when a woman’s life is in danger. But . . . small businesses and individual women who themselves buy insurance that covers abortions will have imposed on them tax penalties. Perhaps the worst penalty for women who survive rape and incest and seek abortion care will be that they have to provide proof to IRS investigators of their assault. It’s not torturous enough to be assaulted the first time. It’s not traumatic enough to have to relive the assault when reporting it to the police and going through a court proceeding. There is no excuse for adding the inhumane torture of having to live through it a third time with an IRS investigator. This, once again, under the guise of protecting life and our economy.

What is really happening is that there is a backlash in our country against the empowerment of women that has been growing for decades. Certainly at least since 1919 when the 19th amendment was passed legalizing women’s right to vote; and then growing still in 1973 when Roe v Wade was decided, giving women the right to make choices about their own bodies in a new way. This backlash is an extreme misuse of power by those scared of the power of women. And believe it or not, those scared of the power of women are not only men; they include women themselves. **

How could this be?

I invite you to honestly look at yourself. If you are a man, do you prefer to have the power, rather than share it equally with a woman? Do you have unresolved, unconscious feelings of powerlessness from early, primal experience with the first woman in your life, your mother? Feelings that beneath your awareness feed your wanting to be the powerful one in relation to women? If you’re a woman, are you somehow, out of your early wounds, stuck idealizing men who have power over you? Or ceding your rightful power to them? If you are a woman, do you know in the marrow of your bones and the substance of your soul the experience of being devalued, disempowered, objectified, belittled, and more in a society that is still struggling with its relationship with women and the feminine? Do you take for granted the rights you and other women fought so hard for? Do you disconnect from your innate power as technology seems to offer you a gift – to use a pill to avoid going through the monthly cycle of menstruation? Have you lost all touch with the true power of that time?

Who is going to help women now? What are we going to do about this? We women who feel the agony of it? And the men who support women and women’s causes, who have watched their mothers and sisters and wives and daughters suffer, and who have come to understand?

Look within for your own growth and healing. Look within for the future of women. Look within for the future of our society and our world! For without women being equal, empowered partners in our world, the future is at risk. And then take actions – inside and out – that help to heal us all.

© Judith Barr, 2011

* Although I do use words such as abortion and pro life in this post, that is not what this post is about. This post is about the destructive treatment of women not only abroad but also here in America, both out in the open and also under the guise of other things!

** To learn more about my work with Women’s Mysteries, click here.