Pray for France

If 30 Australians drowned in Sydney Harbour, it would be a national tragedy. But when 30 or more refugees drown off the Australian coast, it is a political question.

Richard Flanagan

I woke up this morning angry. Angry that this happened. And angry at the reaction from many of my friends and family. I usually try to stay quiet on issues such as this because I live in circumstances where expressing a differing "opinion" from those around me results in being a labeled a "crazy liberal looney" or being accused of "attacking" those with a differing opinion, rather than just offering a different point of view (which is 99.9% of the time the reality of the situation). But I have been moved past fear of ostracization during this time of tragedy and wish to present you all with a quick history lesson. 

On December 7, 1941 tragedy struck the United States Naval base on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese forces violently attacked our nation seemingly unprovoked and this made us understandably very angry. 

Our nations reaction do these attacks however, would live on as a glaring black spot on our history. 

Japanese internment camp after the Pearl Harbor attacks

The American people were quick to generalize and as a nation we came to the conclusion that our Japanese enemies represented all people of Japanese decent. Thus resulting in the internment of all American citizens of Japanese decent. 

actor George Takei shares his experience in a Japanese Internment camp

And now I see friends and family suggesting we do the same, or worse, to our Muslim neighbors. We yell, "The Muslims did this! The Muslims must pay!". The Muslims did not do this, a terrorist extremist group called "ISIS" did. 

If the anti-Muslim sentiment wasn't bad enough during this time of tragedy, the world is also in the midst of a massive Syrian refugee crisis. Being confused about the crisis when it first hit the media I did some research into the situation and found these helpful video's that really sum up the situation well that I'd like to share with you all now. 

 

I've seen many people on my facebook feed claiming that we absolutely cannot let these refugees into our country now! They are Muslims! They are terrorists! 

Some quick research taken from mostly unbiased sources can prove that this is simply not the case. The refugees involved in the crisis are not even all Muslim, many our Hindu, or Christian. And the purpose of their fleeing is not to bring the same terror of their home country they are trying to escape to us, if you think about that for more than a second you realize that conclusion simply doesn't make any sense. 

Muslims are not synonymous with ISIS anymore than Christians are synonymous with the Westboro Baptist Church or the KKK. 

The enemy here is not Muslims, people of Muslim decent or the refugee's from Syria. 

The enemy here is ISIS. 

And now more than ever we must unite the world against their evil ways.

Thank you for your time. 

-Ellen 

Most of My Friends are Boys

“I'm ADD and psychic. I know things ahead of time but lose track of which is which.” 
― S. Kelley Harrell



Living with ADD/ADHD can be a daily struggle for anyone. It's hard to sit through a class, it's hard to know what thoughts are worth saying and what thoughts should be kept to yourself and you usually have a minimum of 10 ideas colliding in your mind at once.
While living with ADHD is tough for anyone who suffers from the illness I want to use this blog post to talk about girls. Being a girl with ADD/ADHD is especially difficult because most of society doesn't expect it from you. I remember sitting in my Ed Psych class my freshman year and being told, "ADHD is usually found in boys, it's actually fairly rare to have a female student with this disability". I remember sitting there after being told this and thinking, "wow... I really must be weird then".

Girls with ADHD suffer from many alienating difficulties specific to their gender. To name a few;
-Acing "lady like" is harder for us. We have trouble sitting still and reading social cues.
-We often have messy handwriting. And believe me, there's nothing more embarrassing than the teacher calling out, "There's a paper with no name on it if somebody wants to claim it, it has messy handwriting so I think it's a boys" and then having to sulk up to the front of the class to claim your paper with "boy handwriting".
-girls are expected to be more still. More preserved. (Which is garbage but that's a blog post for another time) Needless to say girls with ADHD are not that.
-Girls with ADHD are messy. They often times simply forget to clean up after themselves. Which is another trait more often contributed to the male gender (again this is garbage, but a blog post for another time).
-We often have difficulties with fine motor skills as well, which makes doing "girly" things like putting your hair up, doing make up or crafting, very difficult for us.

I can speak from experience when I say growing up as a girl with ADHD often times makes it very hard to fit in, in traditionally feminine spaces. A lot of my close friends growing up were boys because I simply fit in with them more. I had a much better time running around outside than staying inside and playing house. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!

I wrote this post to let the girls with ADD/ADHD know that they aren't broken. You aren't weird. You're you and that's fantastic!

This is for the girls who have always had to say,  "Most of my friends are boys".
-Ellen