my little brother.

So... if my brother knew I was about to post something like this he might shoot me :) Too bad he is at boy scout camp this week and will NEVER know.

I was searching through our family desk today and found a paper written by my brother. It's really sweet and reminds me that he is growing up and not the little baby that I used to tease, torture, and love to death. He is becoming a young man- weird.

Written by James 6/3/08

Great-Granddad the Hero

A hero can be seen in many people from both now and the past. Donn Ashcroft was one person that I have look up to and admired. He is my great grandfather and I consider him to be my hero. He has supported me through thick and thin as I have grown up. My grandfather was a very hardworking person and was once a boy scout. A hero can sometimes be seen as someone famous, but my hero is someone in my family. Donn Ashcroft is my hero because of how he has pushed, and loved, me through the years.

My grandpa was born on May 21, 1914 in Wisteria, Michigan. He never had a lot of money, but always seemed to live well. His parents taught him how to work hard and be successful in all that he did. As a kid, we was in boy scouts. He made it all the way to an Eagle Scout. Becoming an eagle scout is a very high honor and he told me that he wants me to join the boy scouts and earn the same rank. He was very proud of my when I started boy scouts, and he couldn't wait for me to get my first class rank. He came to all of my court of honors and saw me get my medals. I have looked up to his standards and watched my hero become more and more proud as I grow. My grandpa was a very courageous boy scout and he has taught me to not be scared during camp outs.

A hero is a man admired by achievements and qualities. My grandpa did many things in his lifetime that I am very proud of. He wrote many stories for the newspaper and people were able to read them and see what he has done. He would give advice and people would write letters to the editor thanking Mr. Ashcroft for his thoughts. I look up to my grandpa and am proud to say that I am his grandson. He was the only person in my family to ever call me Jimmy Cedric. I am proud of him for caring for everyone in my family and taking care of each of us. I thanks him for always making sure that I am safe and cared for. I admire all of his achievements and qualities, which makes him my hero.

My grandpa is someone who could hardly walk her on earth, but he is now walking in heaven. He supported me in everything that I did. My great-grandpa always made sure that he came to some of my football games even though he could barely move. He would rent a special van for wheelchairs and come out to see me during the coldest of times. He had always pushed me to do my hardest at what I do. He taught me not what a man is, but how to be a man. A hero cares for people and wishes them the best. He was someone who could do anything he wanted. He used what he had and made the best out of everything. A hero cared for people and does whatever the can to help, and grandpa always did.

Before my grandpa's death, I headed to the hospital to see him. My older sister went to touch his hand and say good-bye, he was still quiet and didn't move. When I touched his hand to say good-bye, he perked up and started looking around for me. He stayed strong and fought to stay alive for a few more hours. It was hard to watch my grandpa suffer in a hospital, but his love ones, especially his Jimmy Cedric, surrounded him. As I watched him in the bed I could remember all of the times he had helped me. I knew that we would want to say good-bye to his family one last time. As I hugged him one last time I could see that he was still making sure I was okay. He is my hero and I will always miss him.

On March 7, 2008, my grandpa passed away at 8:00am. Even though he may not be with me here on Earth, I can still share what my hero taught me. He's not only a hero or a grandpa. He was also a man who could be counted on. Through his writings, boy scouts, and love, I can show my friends and strangers what it means to be a hero. My grandpa showed me a hero doesn't have to be famous or rich. He showed me that hero's could come to us as family too. A hero needs to be looked up to and admired. My great-grandfather, Donn Ashcroft, was a true hero.

** My brother is my best friend. I am so thankful for the laughter and insight he brings into my family. I can see his personality in his writing. I was always jealous of his relationship with our great-grandfather, but I can see that he was someone he truly loved. James may not always share his emotions, but he is a sensitive human being with a lot of potential and love for the people around him.

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mood ring.

Mood rings... are cool. I purchased such an object today. The sales woman at the store quickly stated that she had only seen one color on each mood ring she sold. I shrugged her unwanted commentary off and splurged on a cheap ring. I assumed the ring would stay blue. Past experiences concluded that blue would dominate over the other colors. I was incredibly wrong. Throughout the evening the ring has varied between purple and a mix of all the colors. Apparently, I am a freak. I'm sure this is probably my tenth mood ring in my life, but I love watching it change colors as my body temperature rises and falls. It's just a piece of cheap plastic.

Mood rings bring me joy

You should probably get one

Go buy a cool ring

Red, Green, Yellow, Blue
Changing as your mood does too
Orange, Black, Purple

women in my life.

One example of a strong woman in my life is my mother. I am not just saying this due to the fact that I feel the need to express my deep, loving gratitude for her raising me, but for the reason of her being a strong woman. My mother was married at the age of twenty one, and had her first child (me) at the age of twenty-two. My younger brother came into the family just four and a half years after my birth. She was a Navy wife and was responsible for packing up the house and transporting the precious valuables from one state to another. She was a caring, thoughtful, devoted wife who cared for her children. Around the time that I started pre-school my dad started to have a severe attitude change. He was no longer considered the "typical" dad. During this intense mood shift he started to become more abusive both verbally and physically. My mom had to make the choice to protect her children, and decided divorce this threat and move to a state with very little money and hardly any possessions.

After the long move to Michigan, my mom became a single mother of two- who didn’t receive child support. She had to deal with the sadness of losing the man that promised to love and care for her, a brand new infant, and five year old daughter completely distraught from the losing the greatest man in her life, along with two new jobs that could barely pay for the two bedroom apartment that the broken family occupied. It was a tough time, but my mom became superwoman and found the strength to continue working.

My mom is one of the best role models in my life. The man she married (my dad) was a great guy who had suffered from a terrible brain tumor that dramtically changed his personality for the rest of his life. Although most people might think that she should have stayed with him through “sickness and in health,” people don’t realize what an unhealthy relationship stemmed from her still being married to him. With his brain tumor also came thirteen different mental disorders ranging from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder. It’s hard to keep a promise to a person when the person giving the promise is no longer there.

I greatly admire my mom. She will always work hard and finds simple pleasures in sewing and crafting for people around her. Whenever I need a person to talk to I will always think of my mom, and she always listens.

She is an example of a strong woman partly due to the fact that she had to become a single mother before the age of thirty, but for also accepting the bad in her life while embracing the good. She was able to recognize the importance of her family and went above and beyond to make her children comfortable. An example of her love can be seen in my tenth birthday. I was in fifth grade and my mom had just lost her job a few weeks before my special day of double digits. This was an unexpected shift in her life plans and she didn’t know how to give a gift when I was praying for some great birthday bash. That year she not only allowed me to invite five girls over for cake and a sleepover, but she stayed up late almost every night to make me a beautiful patchwork quilt to go in my newly designed “grown-up” room. She is an extraordinary woman who puts love in all she does. She is the strongest woman I know.

There are two more incredibly influential women that have shaped my outlook on life today. I call both of them “Grandma.” Both happen to be on my mother’s side of the family. Technically speaking, one is my step-grandmother, but I have never considered her to be this. She is my Grandma Mary DeWitt. My mother’s biological mother is my Grandma Janna South DeWitt. Janna passed away when my mother was three years old. She has suffered from breast cancer and had to leave behind four children with the oldest in elementary school and a great husband, my grandpa. I hear stories all the time about my Grandma Janna. When I see her brothers and sisters they talk about how I look and act like her. Although I have never met her she still plays the role of someone who made a difference in this world. She didn’t win her battle against cancer, but she truly loved her children and I think that motivated her to stay alive as long as she did.

Shortly after Janna’s death my grandpa married my current Grandma Mary. I love that woman with all of my heart. She came into the marriage after a difficult first marriage. She brought three children into the marriage with my grandpa and the two of them had to raise seven children, my aunts and uncles. I can only imagine what a difficult time this was for my grandma. Of course, the step-mom is always wicked and hates her stepchildren, but somehow she remained strong and kept praying for the returned love she so desired. Not only did she help her family, but she also went back to college and got her degree in teaching. She is one heck of a woman... and I love her for the passion she spreads throughout my family.

I know in my heart that I was meant to have two grandmothers: one to watch me from heaven and the other to help me grow here on Earth.

<3
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strong women

(Photo by Sally Vanderploeg)

Three weeks of my May 2010 consisted of eleven, wonderful people, one motor pool bus #8 (Mo), one trailer, and one adventure on the Pine Ridge Reservation (the Rez) in South Dakota. There was no way for me to have ever known what I had gotten myself into. I was incredibly nervous about going to a new place where I might not be accepted. This experience would require a lot of patience and hard work to help bridge understanding between the travelers and the Lakota.


The tradition of the Lakota people emphasizes the importance of women. There is a belief that women are sacred. Women have the ability to cleanse themselves once a month during menstruation. As an American woman entering into a new place from a culture extremely different to that of Pine Ridge, I have had to re-evaluate the way I think about this topic and how it’s portrayed to the people around me. I have never considered myself to be sacred. They also believe women deserve the highest respect. Traditionally, the women in the Lakota culture take care of the family, prepare the food, keep stories, make the clothing, produce the children, build the teepee, and much more. The women of the culture are a large part of the community. The power of women is too strong to fully describe.

While on the Rez, I had the opportunity to see the crafts and artistry from the Native American culture. This included beautiful pieces of beaded jewelry, porcupine quill artwork, paintings, dream catchers, and star quilts I was introduced to a newer dream catcher design: the strong woman dream catcher. During my stay on the Rez, I was able to encounter a newer dream catcher where the web of sinew was shaped like a tipi. The dream catcher symbolizes the role of women and emphasizes their needs to be a key reminder.

The strong woman tepee dream catcher also reminds the people that it is now the female’s turn to try and fix the problems of the world. Not to bash men, but the men have done a great job ruining the beauty. The women can now come, with a patient heart and the knowledge of the past, to build a bridge of understanding between all of the cultures. A large part of the Lakota tradition is the Medicine Wheel. This wheel consists of the colors: red, black, yellow and white. The four colors represent the many races, the cardinal directions, stages of life, and much more. There is a popular saying Mitakuye Oyasin among the Lakota people, which translates to “We are all related.” The women have to take it upon themselves and start to connect the people of red, yellow, black and white. I am willing to help spread this way of life.

Out of the eleven travelers that went to South Dakota, ten of us were young women. Those selectwomen helped me grow more into my womanhood more than any single person. We were together (nonstop) for three weeks. We laughed together and cried together. We sang together, worked together, and played together. We fought with one another and made-up again with a reunion of relief. We opened our hearts and minds to new concepts and ideas that shape the problems and benefits in our world today. We lived in one building, ate the same food, shared razors, shampoo, paper, discussed our bowel movements, and we journaled together. You take ten strangers, each with their own, beautiful personalities, and put them in a room you get a new family. And that’s what we were: a family. I was proud to call the women my family. They follow the idea that there is no one right way to think or act. Each of the girls is beautiful. We were one unit for one set of time. We may not ever be in the same room again, but no one will ever know exactly what we experienced together.

It seems to be a strange place to really see strong women. The Rez? It’s a place where the unemployment rate ranges from 85-95%, where teen suicide is six times higher than the United State National average, where gang violence and drug abuse is part of daily life, where alcoholism consists of about 80% of the population, where the life expectancy for women is fifty-four years and men a grand total of forty-seven, and where there is more domestic violence than any other specific location that I know. The people I have met on the Rez always seem eager to share and ready to learn about the empowerment, or even the simple basic rights and equalities, of women. There needs to be a basis of respect. Between my new family and the strong woman dream catcher, I am reminded of the fact that women are strong.

words used in our culture to describe/name women:

There are many words we use in conversation that are attributed to the traditional genders: male and female. With a group of ten female classmates, who quickly became my great friends, we prompted two simple questions: What words are used to describe women? And what words are specifically associated with women? My initial reaction concluded that this would be an easy task and a complete waste of my time. Soon after the process began, I realized what this really meant to me. I found out quickly that there are many words that are both positively and negatively prescribed for the female species. Words like bitch, slut, cunt, and whore stuck out as condescending and hurtful. My girlfriends and I had to constantly remind one another about the positive aspects women have to offer, but it was mucheasier to come up with the slander.. Attached is our final list of terms.

Bitch Slut Cunt Whore Lady Female
Ho Squaw Aunt Grandma Miss Ms.
Flapper Bride Wife Ditz Blonde Hot
Love Chick Talkative Pregnant Angel Girly-Girl
Witch Mom Tomboy Baby Mama Sweetie Mother
Daughter Girl Delicate Beautiful Dyke Giver or life
Babe Cougar Maid Missy Mrs. Honey
Motherly Sister Temptress Gem Flirt Puppet
Gal Pet PMSing Lesbian Pumpkin Mademoiselle
Sex Butch Sugar Belle Sexy Voluptuous
Tramp Dainty Weak Hussy Dame Baby
Dear Ball&Chain Ma’am Madam Cow Queen
Nanny Siren Boob Flower Tease Friend
BFF Nurse Skank Miss Thang Great Gma Pure
Madonna Lover Straight Adulteress Bag Lady Feminist
Feminine Caregiver Strong Domestic Sassy Devoted
Prostitute Doll Darling Other Half Old Maid Sweetheart
Sex Kitten Princess Muse Harpies Dominatrix Playboy Bunny
Piece of Ass Virgin Goddess Vagina Baby Cakes Cat Lady
Play Thing Mother Hen Peach Starlight Goody2shoes Titty
Hooker Mouse Jewel Peanut Wench Drama Queen
Guys Fox Damsel Cat Homemaker Chica
Vixen Diva Hag Amazon Nun Daughters of Eve
Maiden Double-D Venus Shorty Pussy Bimbo
Teacher Prima Donna Waitress Skirt Debutante Duchess
Mistress Oma Caretaker Cook Baker High-heels
Babushka Roxy Sex Slave Woman Brat Bootylicious Seamstress Girly Nurturing Girl Friend Hormonal Cheerleader
Soprano Alto Toy Senorita Amigas Hourglass Figure
Gentle Bras Thongs Diamonds Pretty Hoochie Mama Sacred Soft Model Crafty Simple Passionate Wicked Poised Tight Ass Pole Dancer Stripper
Birth Control Bountiful Fertile Bosom Playful Classy
Manly Womanly Big Booty Cranky Loverly Bridesmaid Anorexic Bulimic Overweight Slave Emotional Fashionable Fragile Seductive Caring Property Irritable Babysitter Lady of the Night Maternal Misses Menopause Estrogen Tampons Breast Cancer Ovulating Menstrual Varicose Veins Nursing Lactating Osteoporosis Pads Pedicure Ovarian Cancer Curvy Diva Cup Smooth Precious “Hawt” Domesticated Catty Porn Star Soft Spoken Intelligent Make-up Stretch Marks Manicure Polished Trophy Wife Starter Wife Bossy First Lady Secretary

I'm positive this list is incomplete, but that's not the point. We applied that same questions to men and came up with a significantly smaller list... we found many of the derogatory words to be feminine. As a developing girl, I thought I was cool to use words like: ho, bitch, fat, bootylicious. I had always wanted to be skinny, sexy, and not too smart. Fortunately, I had amazing role models who made me feel comfortable in my own skin, and the books I read were full of positive female role models that made me realize I could be smart, curvy, talented, and most importantly, confident. Stop and reflect on your words and actions. Do you categorize people? I challenge you to make a list asking these questions: What words are used to describe men? What words are specifically associated with men?

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