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The Alexandria Papers Newsletter #61

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The Alexandria Papers Newsletter #61 | Dr. Alexandria Szeman 11 December 2022

 

No newsletters for the remainder of December, for the holidays and the new year. I’ll see you in January 2023. Meanwhile, here’s a picture of my youngest cat (11.5 years old) on the blanket I’m making for them, and she’s wishing you a happy end of the year.

 

Mindfulness

If you suffer from chronic conditions such as anxiety, depression, or posttraumatic stress disorder, meditation may worsen your symptoms. Traditional meditation, such as sitting silently and relaxing your mind, is very challenging when your inner world is in chaos. Consider nontraditional forms of…

When we feel mentally and physically well, we’re better able to care for ourselves and others We can try using these 5 tips to practice self-care during the holidays Try 10 meditations for holiday self-care When there’s a lot going on in our lives, we tend to deprioritize taking time to care for…

Migraine

According to a new survey, no, most of us would not feel comfortable talking about our migraine and mental health with our doctor. A whopping 77% of people with migraine and depression or anxiety say they hesitate to talk about their mental health with their medical provider, according to the…

As a physical therapist, there’s one thing I am sure about when it comes to the human body – it is meant to move. Our anatomy and physiology are fine-tuned to navigate and interact with the world.

Trauma and Sexual Abuse

Year-round, we encourage providers to adopt a trauma-informed lens-to use knowledge of trauma and its impact to make decisions about all aspects of their relationships with clients and how they run their program. During the holiday season, the need for a trauma-informed approach is critical.

Interest in psychological manipulation has never been so high, according to online dictionary searches. “Gaslighting” beat out other words such as “oligarch,” “cancel culture,” and “Omicron.” The US dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster announced on Monday that their 2022 word of the year is…

Mental Health

Journaling does more than just help you record your memories or find self-expression. It’s good for your health.

You don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving to practice gratitude – you can do little (and big) things all year round to express your generous spirit. It’s easy to get caught in the stress of the day-to-day and forget all the things that are actually going your way.

Books

“The main thing you’ve got to overcome is getting discouraged… writing pros is the hardest thing in the world” – Ernest Hemingway (July 21, 1899-July 2, 1961) Arnold Samuelson refused to hand over the $5 fee to get his diploma in journalism at the University of Minnesota.

“I need your John Hancock.” “He’s the prodigal son of our family.” “That job was like working in the seventh layer of hell.” “He has a Willy Loman-esque resignation about him.” “We’re navigating between Scylla and Charybdis here.” Anybody with the literacy of an eighth-grader could read those…

Cooking and Baking

Here they are, the holiday classics! These are the top-rated main dish and side dish recipes you need for a perfect traditional Christmas dinner. They cover the savory side of Christmas dinner, from prime rib, baked ham, and roast turkey to scalloped potatoes, green bean casserole, and cranberry…

Christmas lunch and dinner would be nothing without the comforting classics we love to eat year after year. These 49 recipes are the ones we hold dear at this time of year, whether they be classic through and through or with a slightly modern…

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Filed under #CSA, Baking, Cats, chronic pain, Cooking, hemiplegic migraines, Meditation and MIndfulness, Mental Health, migraine, migraine self-care, Migraine Treatment, Migraine with Aura, Migraine Without Aura, migraines, Newsletters, PTSD

The Alexandria Papers Newsletter #58

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The Alexandria Papers Newsletter #58 | Dr. Alexandria Szeman | 13 November 2022

For the past two years — ever since Twitter bought it — I’ve been using Revue to make my weekly newsletters. Unfortunately, Twitter has decided to shut Revue down. So if you think the newsletter looks different this week, you’re right. I’m using a new app to create it.

No newsletter next week. It’s Thanksgiving in the US, and my kitties and I will be celebrating the holiday weekend by eating turkey and all the usual side dishes, including pumpkin pie with lots of whipped cream.


Mindfulness

The Transformative Effects of Mindful Self-Compassion – Mindful
Leading experts on mindful self-compassion Drs. Kristin Neff and Christopher Germer share how self-kindness, recognition of our humanity, and mindfulness give us the strength to thrive. An explosion of research into self-compassion over the last decade has shown its benefits for well-being.

Migraine

Migraine: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment, Triggers, and More
More than just the cause of “really bad headaches,” migraine is a neurological condition that can cause multiple symptoms. While intense, debilitating headaches frequently characterize it, additional symptoms may include: The condition often runs in families and can affect all ages.
Can Epsom Salt Help Anxiety?
Magnesium sulfate bath crystals, more commonly known as Epsom salt, has been used medicinally to treat a wide range of conditions, including muscle aches and pain. In addition to these benefits, research has found that Epsom salt baths may be helpful for some individuals as a natural treatment for…

Trauma and Sexual Abuse

Grounding Techniques: Exercises for Anxiety, PTSD, & More
Grounding is a practice that can help you pull away from flashbacks, unwanted memories, and negative or challenging emotions. Grounding techniques are exercises that may help you refocus on the present moment to distract yourself from anxious feelings.
Recovering from Rape and Sexual Trauma – HelpGuide.org
Sexual violence is shockingly common in our society. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), nearly 1 in 5 women in the U.S. are raped or sexually assaulted at some point in their lives, often by someone they know and trust.

Mental Health

What Is an Existential Crisis?
An existential crisis is the feeling of unease people experience about meaning, choice, and freedom in life. This existential anxiety often causes people to feel that life is inherently pointless and that existence has no meaning. An existential crisis can also lead to feelings of confusion about…
Need Help Finding Mental Health Services? Start Here
We include products we think are useful for our readers. If you buy through links on this page, we may earn a small commission. Here’s our process. Despite the stigma that surrounds conversations on mental health, many people have experienced mental health symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Books

Five Magical Realist Novels with Murder Mysteries At Their Center
When I started writing my novel, The Storyteller’s Death, I didn’t plan on putting a murder mystery at its heart. In fact, if you had asked me when I’d first started in this craft if I’d ever write a murder mystery, I would have said, “Oh HELL no! They’re too hard.

Cooking and Baking

Which Superfoods Are Worth It?
We’ve got news for you: technically, there is no such thing as a “superfood.” That’s a term created by the food industry. Many of the so-called superfoods do deliver significant nutritional benefits, but beyond that, there’s nothing magical about them. They certainly don’t have the power to cure or…
Create Your Own Spice Blends, Based on the World’s Cuisine
Each culture is known for its particular use of spices and herbs and learning to make your own version of these blends is a great way to deepen your knowledge of different cuisines, as well as cooking.

 


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Books by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman

 

 

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The Louisville Slugger

I did my last three years of high school in a district that was cramped for space. Because there was only an elementary school and a high school, and the district had decided to create a “junior high” category but didn’t have the building done yet, the high school building was used for both groups of students. The high school students started at 6:00 a.m. and were done by 1:30 p.m., allowing us half an hour for lunch. Then, at 2:00, the junior high students came to school. They had to stay late in the evening, and the parents didn’t like it very much, but until the new Junior High building was completed, it would have to do. That’s how I was able to work two jobs in high school. We lived near a mall, so I could be at work by 2:00 every day and work any time on weekends.

In one of the stores, I worked in the credit department, calling customers to remind them their payments were due, stuffing envelopes, and eventually, becoming a supervisor and approving borderline credit purchases when the stores called in to our central location. My other job was in a prominent retail store’s catalogue department, which was located next to Sporting Goods.

That’s where I first saw the display of baseball bats. As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to have one. I let the Sporting Goods manager help me narrow down the selection. I don’t recall whether aluminum bats were available then, but I was convinced that a wooden one would suit my purposes better.

I got permission from my one of my teachers (and the principal) to take Spanish class, which was my last class period of the day, during my lunch period. (They knew I had two jobs so that I could save money to go to college, which my parents and the rest of my family violently opposed, and I think they were trying to help me out.) That released me from school half an hour early, since, technically, my lunch period was at the end of the day. I couldn’t leave the school grounds, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t spend my lunch period outside, at the edge of the parking lot, with my baseball bat. So that’s what I did.

I practiced every day with that bat, slamming it as hard as I could against the trunk of the stoutest oak tree on the school’s property. At first, my arms, shoulders, and neck hurt so bad from batting practice, I thought it would kill me. But when I remembered my plan, I got back to work.

I attracted a lot of attention from some of my fellow students, most of them guys, virtually all of them “dead-heads,” as we called the students who used illicit drugs back then, because they were the ones who skipped their classes but, for some strange reason, didn’t leave school grounds, though they all had access to cars. At first, they just watched me. Then Leo, whom I knew from my Political Science class, sent his girlfriend, Nessa, over to inquire what, exactly, I was attempting to do “by beating that tree to death with a baseball bat.” After she returned with the answer, Leo and several of the boys came over.

They all had girlfriends. They all knew I was a “brain,” a “teacher’s pet,” a “brown-nose,” a “suck-up,” and everything else that the College Prep students got called by everyone in the school because we made good grades. They all knew I didn’t wear make-up, dress in all-black clothes, dye my hair purple or blue with Kool-Aid, or skip classes to roam the hallways or smoke marijuana in the bathrooms. They knew I’d never had a boyfriend and that I didn’t drink, do drugs, or party. In short, I was the complete opposite of all of them.

None of that stopped them from teaching me to correctly use the bat, however.

I slept every night with the bat under the edge of my bed. I’d cleared a wide space in my room so the bat wouldn’t connect with anything except what I wanted to hit. I kept the curtains open, though I found it difficult to sleep with the streetlight shining in, because I needed to be able to see my target. I even practiced reaching under the bed, grabbing the bat, jumping out of bed, and swinging it in that virtually empty room.

When my stepfather Fred finally came for the last time, I heard him sneaking down the stairs to my bedroom, which was now on the lower level of the house, so I was already standing in the dark with the bat. It was the middle of the night, in the middle of winter, in the midst of my most extreme discontent.

He came into my room, dropped his pants, felt around the empty bed, stood up, turned his back to me, and cursed under his breath.

That’s when Mr. Louisville Slugger and I struck.

His bellows brought my mother Maida, who didn’t come near me. Instead, she ran out of the bedroom to call the number Fred gave her. About an hour later, one of his employees came from work. The employee said nothing when he was taken to Fred, writhing, without control of his limbs, on the floor of his stepdaughter’s bedroom. The employee said nothing when he saw me, teeth clenched and eyes narrowed, standing in the corner with a raised baseball bat. He said nothing when he put his hands under Fred’s arms and dragged him, screaming through dishtowels stuffed into his mouth, out of my bedroom, across the laundry room, through the dark garage, down the driveway, and to the bed of the employee’s pick-up truck.

As instructed, the employee drove to work and dutifully deposited my stepfather on an icy bridge over a ravine in the parking lot. Taking Fred’s keys, the employee retrieved Fred’s walkie-talkie from his office. The employee returned to the building in which he himself worked. He dialed our home phone number. Maida answered. She screamed. She ran out of the house, jumped into Fred’s car, and sped off to his workplace, a government installation that required high security clearance.

Here’s how their story went:

The employee, who worked third-shift, had phoned Fred, who was the Manager of Physical Plants and who was always on call in case something went wrong with any of the facilities, to inform Fred that something had happened to one of the generators and that no one could get it started. Later, after Fred had arrived at work, he radioed said employee, informing him that Fred had fallen on the bridge which led from the parking lot to the main building, and hurt himself bad. The employee called Security, who, after finding Fred, immediately contacted the hospital. An ambulance raced Fred  — and the stalwart employee, who refused to leave my injured stepfather — from the ice-covered bridge at work to the emergency room. My mother, who was not legally permitted to even be in the parking lot, accompanied them.

One week later, the stalwart, taciturn third-shift employee, now promoted to day-shift supervisor, came to the house to inform my mother that the company had installed a hospital bed, along with all the equipment necessary to care for Fred, hired several shifts of nurses, and was transferring Fred to the “hospital room” at work. It seems the company was not about to lose its hundred-trillion-hour accident-free safety record simply because my stepfather had slipped on an icy bridge. By keeping Fred hospitalized on its premises, Fred would technically be at work every day. Thus, despite the eight months that Fred would be unable to actually work due to his numerous and complex injuries, the company would not have to re-set its neon Safety Hours sign at the entrance to zero.

Fred’s injuries were reported as having occurred after his falling on ice on the very same metal bridge that Fred himself had apparently reported as “extremely dangerous during inclement weather” several weeks previously, when Fred’s newly promoted stalwart employee had slipped but, fortunately, not been seriously injured. Paperwork detailing Fred’s report concerning this very dangerous bridge as well as the stalwart employee’s minor accident was discovered in Fred’s office files by his equally trustworthy and ambitious personal assistant three weeks after my stepfather’s unfortunate mishap.

My mother bitterly and angrily related all this to me during the period Fred was not allowed to come home because of his grievous injuries, during the many long months she was not permitted to visit him since she did not have the security clearance to see him in the hospital room constructed for him at work.

A hospital room which absolutely no one was supposed to discover, not even his family members, as it was not only illegal, but unethical as well.

Medical Summary of Fred’s Injuries:
Fractured hips, pelvis, upper and lower left leg, upper and lower left arm, left shoulder, left collarbone, both hands, wrists, thumbs, multiple fingers

Words cannot begin to express my severe disappointment.
I’d been aiming for my stepfather’s spine.

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read another excerpt (chapters 1-6) from my memoir
and related chapters that are not in the final, published version

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  • This chapter, slightly modified, is an excerpt from my true crime memoir, M is for Munchers: The Serial Killers Next Door © 2014, 2017, 2019 by Alexandria Constantinova Szeman. All rights reserved. No content may be copied, excerpted, or distributed without the express written consent of the author and publisher, with copyright credit to the author. Please don’t support the piracy of Intellectual Property.

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Filed under #CSA, Childhood Sexual Abuse, Memoir, Sexual Abuse, Sexual Violence