On my mind these days, holidays and the Mothers.  As a midwife, there is a special moment in which mothers become… although that ‘moment’ is often days, weeks, months long, and for sure, it’s not often that exact moment that so many expect.  When do mothers ‘unbecome’ – do they ever?

My mother passed on this season two years ago.  And this season, a dear friend’s mom just did the same.  Memorial services 2 years apart, same day.  In both cases, these fine ladies were given home funerals by their daughters.  My sister & I for Sharon, our friend for her Mom, Nancy.  This ancient way of caring for our dead, of honoring our mothers, became true expressions of our loss and grief and honor and respect.   Many who attended these services shared how healing they were to their own losses;  the stories of unmet needs at the time of significant deaths came pouring out.   So much like birth, where whole authentic experiences bring growth and healing not only to those present, but to so many who touch in.  Like birth, so many stories of unmet needs pouring out.

Perhaps we may choose, in this candlelit time of winter solstice, of holiday reflections, of the blessings & trials of family times, to welcome in authentic moments of true expression.  Perhaps first we dare to invite these moments with the relatives with the bright eyes and genuine questions.  Later, perhaps we explore authentic connections with the more challenging people in our lives.  Perhaps consider how we are going to care for those we love when they pass.  How will YOU be cared for?  By whom?  Efficient strangers?  People who will weep as they wash your hands, blessing and thanking them?  Authentic moments are indeed strong ones – richer, deeper, perhaps intense too.   Aren’t these the moments that we remember when we pause in ceremonial times?  When we pause to breathe deeply in remembrance over the candles of our chosen holiday?   There is a magnet on my refrigerator, “We don’t remember days….we remember moments.”   What moment are you remembering now?  We have a choice about what moments we create this today, this week, this December.

Here’s to our Mothers. To our Moments.  No, I do not think they ever “unbecome,”  not in our lives nor in theirs.  I miss my Mother so terribly, as so many do, even as I cheer her release and transformation.   And even as I welcome space from the tough work of that relationship.  Let us all hug a mother in this candlelit season – and if you know mothers, most of them will hug you just for being someone else’s child!  As the brave heroine of movie, “The Other Side of the Mountain,” once said, “I’m glad to have known someone that it is so damn hard to say good-bye to.”

This year promises to be the best yet, with……

15% off store wide (every single thing included, except essential oils)

20% off every single children’s toy, game, book, and treasure

$1 and $5 tables, each loaded down with new & old favorites with savings ranging from 30-80%!

30% & 50% off many, many other items!

Brand new items in arriving for the holidays – cooperative games, beexwax crayons, blank Waldorf school notebooks,  ‘Waldorf’ style notecards and card holders for nature tables, Italian Washable Window Crayons, addictive gluten & dairy-free chocolates, wooden knights & other wooden toys, extensive new collection of Waldorf & Steiner books, and beautiful (guaranteed) glass straws!

Look for savings in every area, and a lovely serene shopping environment as only Indigo provides!   Enjoy some chocolate or mulled cider while you’re here, it’s our chance to enjoy your company AND help you shop for Hanukkah, Christmas, and more!

Elderberry is your friend!   Look around your neighborhood, and you are likely to see these luscious dark berries hanging ripe and heavy, waiting for their chance to do their healing work.

Loaded with Vitamin C &  Vitamin E (great anti-oxidants), as well as Vitamin B, amino acids and so much more, Elderberry is a wonderful immune booster of the best kind.   Approved in Germany to medicinally combat colds and flues, it lowers LDL cholesterol, improves eyesight, and helps maintain good heart health.  However, elderberry’s primary value is its ability to combat bacterial and viral infections by providing aid to the immune system.  It secretes an enzyme that neutralizes a virus’s ability to corkscrew into your cells to insert it’s DNA strand!   Wow – nature’s anti-viral!   Do check out the greater details about elderberry through links such as the one above.  At Indigo Forest we have both dried organic berries that can be used to make your own syrup or added to tea, and also encapsulated blends for immune support by Nature’s Sunshine.

Or – if your neighbor has some fruity gifts, as mine did, it could be as easy as making a syrup:

Gently pick the fruit at the base of the stem where the big bunch comes together.  My kids and I laid them stem up on a plate until we were ready.  Gently hold them upside down and pull the berries off in clumps, avoiding stems as much as possible without getting too worried about it (bitter.)  Rinse if you really need to, hopefully not.  Put in non-reactive (and non-staining) pan like stainless, with a bit of water (more better than risking burning) and lid.  Low simmer while you are busy doing everything else in your life.   After they’re well cooked down (an hour?   I turned it off, went to bed, ignored it the next day, and continued the next morning!),  strain through your finest sieve.   While wearing your oldest clothes – this stuff STAINS, possible splatters.    Smoosh gently with a spoon until no more juicy drips release themselves.   Toss the mush with gratefulness into the compost or under a bush in your yard.  Pour still warm into a friendly jar, and then pour an equal amount of raw honey in as well.  It melts nicely without losing raw benefits as you stir it together.   Storing mine in fridge to avoid molds if we’re lucky enough to have it last through the winter.   It was well-received by the middle school testers last night, barely diluted in a tiny shot glass, with their probiotics and other lovely remedies in it’s friendly sweetness.   They woke without a sore throat complaint for the first time in a week.   Thank you elderberry!

Remember – THIS IS NOT MEDICAL ADVICE!  This is sharing an experience, please research in more detail for further medical qualities and full information.

Instructor Stephannie Moore is a Certified Instructor of Baby Signing Time, an amazingly interactive system that teaches ASL (American Sign Language) to babies aged 3 to 36 months through songs and play.  More info about the Signing Time system is found at: https://www.babysigningtime.com/.  The method can be started as early as 3 months, and many see their babies begin signing as early as 6-10 months.  Indigo Forest is proud to host both group and individual classes, enrolling now for Fall classes.

First series begins Saturday, September 24th, 2011.  4:00 – 4:45 pm, $15/class for child and all the family members they want to bring!   8 Class series.

Next classes include:

October 20:  Introducing First Solid Foods & Avoiding Allergies

November 17:  Homeopathy for Children:  Colic, Teething & More, Oh My!

Below are some of the characteristics & properties that have been attributed to amethyst………

Amethyst is purple quartz, and is a meditative and calming stone. It works in the emotional, spiritual, and physical planes to provide calm, balance, patience, and peace. Amethyst is also beneficial when dealing with legal problems and money issues, which can lead to prosperity and abundance.

Emotionally, amethyst can help heal personal losses and grief. Amethyst has a gently sedative energy that promotes peacefulness, happiness, and contentment. It also brings emotional stability and inner strength, and can enhance flexibility and cooperation. Amethyst can help get rid of addictions (alcohol, drugs, smoking, etc.) and compulsive behaviors of all kinds.

In the psychic and spiritual realms, amethyst is an excellent all-purpose stone that can increase spirituality and enhance intuition and psychic powers of all kinds. It does this by making a clear connection between the earth plane and other planes and worlds. Amethyst is also excellent for meditation and lucid dreaming. It is known to open one’s channels to telepathy, past life regression, clairaudience, clairvoyance, and communication with angels. Amethyst also protects against psychic attacks, especially during spiritual work, and protects one from thieves, and protects travelers.

Physically amethyst is said by spiritual healers and mystical lore to heal the withdrawal symptoms of any sort of addiction, help with headaches, insomnia, arthritis, diabetes, pain relief, circulatory system issues, endocrine system problems, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, immune system deficiencies,asthma, phobias, pregnancy and preventing miscarriage, menopause, PMS, and general healing.

Amethyst is associated with the third eye and crown chakras primarily, but can also open the heart chakra.

Lifeguards role in preventing childhood drowning

You can be watching, and still not know someone is going down

By Keith O’Brien Globe Correspondent  |  August 8, 2010
THE SCENE in the popular imagination is almost always the same. A swimmer in the water — typically a child or a young woman in a bikini — calls out for help, splashing and screaming for a lifeguard. The swimmer is drowning. Of this, there is no doubt. And depending on the narrative, one of two things happens next: After more splashing and screaming, the swimmer will drown. Or the lifeguards will hear the person’s calls for help and make a daring rescue.

It’s a dramatic, often horrifying, moment, depicted in television and film again and again. And thanks to these pop culture portrayals, it’s what we look for while we’re at the beach or the pool. We think we know what drowning looks like. Surely, we’d be able to spot the signs. But what if we’re wrong? What if it’s possible to be an attentive parent and still not see that a child is drowning? What if the reality — the truth about how a drowning victim really goes down — is far scarier, and more silent, than we’ve been led to believe?

Four decades ago, Francesco A. Pia — then a young lifeguard on one of New York City’s busiest beaches — began exploring that very idea and came to some startling conclusions. He paid a student to train a 16mm movie camera on his beach, filming near-drownings and rescues. When he analyzed the results he found that Hollywood’s version of what happens in a drowning was complete fiction. And far more alarming than that, he found that water safety experts had it wrong, too. There is, in fact, almost never any shouting or waving involved with a drowning. Quietly and quickly, usually without a word to anyone, people struggling to stay afloat slip beneath the surface of the water — gone, sometimes, in cases involving children, in 20 seconds.

“It’s the rule rather than the exception,” Pia said, “that a drowning person is often surrounded by people who are unaware that a drowning is taking place. We had one case where a boy was drowning — he was probably about 12 years old — and there was a man side-stroking right in front of him. You can see the boy’s eyes tracking him as the man is swimming and he just keeps going by. This is not a case of the side-stroker not caring. He simply did not know that the boy was drowning.”

Pia’s findings, released in an instructional video called “On Drowning” in 1971, didn’t initially revolutionize water safety. One longtime expert said Pia’s views were so unorthodox at the time that many dismissed both him and his film. But in fact his conclusions echoed an earlier study which looked at 248 near-drownings. That study, done in 1966, reported that in nearly one-third of the cases the victims provided the lifeguards with little or no sign that they were in trouble. And ultimately, the water safety industry came full circle on Pia. In recent years, he has literally written the textbook on preventing drownings. Today his findings are widely accepted as fact, and he is considered the go-to expert on the topic by organizations like the American Red Cross.

But despite Pia’s efforts to spread the word over the years — first to lifeguards and later to the public — most beachgoers and parents still have no idea how to spot someone struggling in the water. Raised on the movies and, of course, “Baywatch,” we’re often looking for drama, thrashing, and panic. But the truth is, Pia said, we could be looking right at someone who’s drowning, even a loved one, and not think twice about it.

It is every parent’s summertime horror and, this summer, it has come to both Lynnfield and Brockton. Last month, twin sisters, not even 3 years old, drowned in Lynnfield after somehow managing to slip unnoticed into the family’s backyard swimming pool. And just last week, 4-year-old twin sisters in Brockton did the same.

Such tragedies, according to studies by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, account for more than 200 deaths every year. And parents, seeking to assure themselves that such a thing could never happen to their family, tend to blame inattentive parenting as the real cause.

Certainly, that’s a key issue. But even parents who believe they are paying attention while their children are swimming spend too much time texting or talking to friends, according to longtime water safety consultant Gerry Dworkin. And even if they are engaged and watching, he said, they are often watching for the wrong thing.

“They may be looking for somebody who’s actively struggling in the water, with the victim calling for help, waving for help, and so forth,” said Dworkin, vice president of Lifesaving Resources Inc., a New Hampshire-based water safety consulting and training company. “And drowning victims don’t look like that. To an untrained observer, a drowning victim looks like they are playing in the water when, in fact, they’re engaged in a life or death struggle.”

Statistically speaking, drowning is a rare occurrence. In 2007, the last year with complete data, the Centers for Disease Control recorded 682 drowning deaths among children under age 15. And yet, drowning is the second leading cause of accidental death among children in that age bracket, just behind car accidents. Among children under the age of 5, drowning is the leading cause of accidental death, according the CDC, far more likely than other things that parents routinely fear: fires, suffocation, poison, even guns. And on Pia’s beach in the Bronx, drowning wasn’t all that unusual. By the Fourth of July every summer at Orchard Beach, he said, at least two people, maybe more, would have drowned.

Pia had been taught to spot potential drowning victims, he said, by looking for “convulsive agitation” in the water. But he soon realized that most near-drowning victims agitated very little whatsoever, and rarely called for help. Instead, they exhibited something that he called the instinctive drowning response.

In his grainy, color footage gathered at Orchard Beach, the victims time and again flap their arms at their side, as if trying to use the surface of the water as a platform. They go vertical in the water, straight up and down, angling their airways toward the oxygen. And the goal, he pointed out, is not yelling for help — that almost never happens — but something far more primal: just breathing for as long as possible.

“They are trying to avoid suffocating in water,” Pia said. “And the elegance of this particular theory is that whether they’re male or female, old or young, heavy or thin, African-American, Caucasian, or Hispanic; whether they’re drowning by themselves, drowning with another person, drowning with three people, or even, in one case, we had four people on film drowning — the same arm movements are there, the same body position, the same activity. So this is instinctive. Hence the term ‘instinctive drowning response.’”

These days, from the shores of American beaches to the offices at the CDC, lifeguards and policy makers know better what to expect from a drowning victim. Even if they are not taught the term that Pia coined, instinctive drowning response, they are taught the central idea: that drowning victims will not likely wave or yell for help; that they will look like they are “climbing a ladder” in the water; and that the struggle, much to a parent’s horror, will not last long.

“Most children don’t even understand what’s happening to them, particularly young children,” said Dr. Julie Gilchrist, a pediatrician by training and a medical epidemiologist at the CDC. “And that’s why we warn parents of young children that drowning occurs very quickly and very quietly. Descriptions from children who have survived a near-drowning say, ‘I went underwater and I went to sleep.’ They just don’t understand what’s happening.”

This knowledge, Gilchrist said, helps explains the typical response we often hear in the aftermath of a drowning: “He was there one minute and I turned around and he was gone.” Victims, especially young children, can drown in 20 to 60 seconds, Dworkin said, and it’s not only parents who fail to see that someone’s drowning. Sometimes, Dworkin said, trained lifeguards sitting right there miss it, too.

“I’ve had several major cases where the victim has been in distress — and you can see it on the security video camera footage,” said Dworkin, who also works as a forensics expert in drowning cases. “But after the distress, the victim has been unconscious at or below the surface of the water for six or eight minutes, and the lifeguards failed to recognize that there was a problem.”

One such case involves a 4-year-old named Jonathan “Yoni” Gottesman. In August 2005, he attended a day camp at an athletic club outside Santa Barbara, Calif. Near the end of his first day there, he and other campers hit the pool, where, according to grainy security tape footage shown at the civil trial and posted on Yoni’s memorial page on the Internet, one counselor dunked Yoni and other children multiple times.

As the counselor and the other children swam away, continuing the game, Yoni swam toward the pool’s edge, but could not make it and soon stopped swimming altogether. For the next eight minutes, no one in the crowded pool noticed the limp body of the little boy floating face down in the water. Not his fellow campers, not the counselors, not even the lifeguards — negligence that is almost inexplicable, and which led to Yoni’s death and, just last year, to a $16 million jury verdict against those charged with watching him that day.

But lost in the shocking outcome is a moment that is subtler, but almost as frightening to a parent. It comes in the video footage as Yoni tries to keeping swimming, to keep up with the others. One moment, the 4-year-old appears to be paddling, pushing through the water and toward the wall, toward safety. And the next moment, literally a few seconds later, he’s not moving at all. Just like that, the little boy stops breathing and begins to drown.

Freelance writer Keith O’Brien, winner of the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism, is a former staff writer for the Globe.—– List usage guidelines:  http://listserv.dartmouth.edu/Archives/LYME/lymelistnetiquette.htm

Ann Arbor Events with International Speaker/Teacher Ardis Ozborn

Are your ready for an adventure?

Are you ready to take a deeper look at the road you are currently traveling?

Maybe it’s time to click your heels and invite Ardis to join your journey!

As a well traveled guide, Ardis steps right into the middle of wherever you are in your struggle and starts putting the pathway together right along with you: yellow brick by yellow brick. In these guided explorations, Ardis works organically, pulling from a long-acquired wealth of knowledge, skills and resources to help you identify some of the obstacles you are facing. She will draw your attention to exactly what is operating behind the curtains of your psyche, and show you how to get back to the “great and powerful” position of pulling your own levers in life.

Ardis Ozborn

If you feel you’re lacking the brains, heart or courage

To reach your destination,

It may be time to take a journey with Oz!

See more about Journeys with Oz

Ardis Ozborn has been studying energy & systems of energy for 20 years, and in her journey events shares what she has learned with you!

Everyday Abundance

Are you weary of stressing over bills, health or the state of the world? Come join a transformative evening to ‘reset’ your inner compass to smoothly accomplish your goals & desires!

Tuesday, July 5^th 7:00 – 9:00 pm $25 preregistered/$30 door

Becoming the Person You Want To Be

Let’s take an afternoon for ourselves, removing barriers and & gaining insight to staying centered through busy, changing times such as parenting, aging, job challenges and more!

Sunday, July 10^th 2:00 – 4:00 pm $25 preregistered/$30 door

Preregister:  734.994.8010 or Beth@VisitIndigo.com

Hosted by Beth Barbeau, Resonance Repatterning Practitioner

Held at Indigo Forest:  Growing Healthy Naturally

4121 Jackson Road, Ann Arbor, MI  48103

734.994.8010

Health Club!

Practical 1-hour *Saturday classes

*10:00-11:00 am: Class,

11:00-11:30 am: Q & A.

Wish you felt more confident using natural remedies?  Are you eager to try natural health solutions, but feel unsure about the next step?

We are offering a new series of classes to celebrate Indigo’s 4^th year of empowering healthy families!  In a handy, information-packed hour, we’ll take your knowledge & confidence to the next level!

Beth & Juliana will help you build your naturopathic foundation,

suitable for beginners and intermediate level students alike.

If you’ve ever been that customer that always wanted to know more,

or wants to use the remedies you have with more assurance,

these mornings are for you!

Saturday May 14

Natural First Aid & Your Car Travel Kit: Everyday Basics (Emotional upsets, bumps & bruises, cuts, & punctures)

Saturday May 28

Natural First Aid & Your Car Travel Kit: Seasonal (Sunburn, bites, stings, heat exhaustion, hypothermia, food poisoning)

*Thursday June 2nd, 1:00 – 2:00 pm

Fevers in the Family: Prevention, Understanding & Management.  (Afternoon series is Young family oriented, bring your babies, your floor blankets and your sense of humor!)

Saturday June 11

Essential Oils – Top 10 oils, uses & applications

Saturday June 25

Cell Salts: A Part of Homeopathy Mineral combinations that are some of the most versatile in your medicine chest!

Saturday July 16

Healthy Homes – Lessening the toxic burden – startling information on indoor air quality, antibacterial soap, and mulitpurpose products (good for both home AND body!) 

$10 per person when preregistered prior to Friday 6 pm.

(734) 994.8010,

$15 drop-in’s welcome.

10% topic products same day for class students!