Mama Bean lurves her rhetoric metre

rhetoric noun: 1. the art of effective or persuasive speaking or writing. 2. language designed to have a persuasive or impressive effect on its audience. [more in-depth at the wiki]

How sensitive is your rhetoric meter?

Rhetoric isn't quite the word I'm looking for, but propaganda seems excessive. (Almost) None of the information we 'download' these days is pure fact, free of opinion, or some underlying agenda. Well, that seems harsh, too. It all has a message, anyway, it seems. I feel. There, this is all just my rhetoric, too.

This is the problem with calling this the information age. It's not really just information. And as a parent, I'm faced with how to teach my children to navigate an informational playing field vastly larger than the one I learned on, which was already larger than that of my parents. I suppose I could rely on the old chestnut 'don't believe everything you read' but it's harder than ever to control what enters our family environment to be read. I think I lean towards less enforcement/freer access, but this will mean more discussion, more tough questions with no answers, and more time. And I must keep in mind the time-line - that the skills of literacy, comprehension, critical analysis, they build on each other, much more slowly than I liked (going through it) or will like (trying to help my children through it.) And then too also, it's even more critical for kids to understand this, to be actively critically analyzing their environment, at a younger age than me or you, because the consequences (seem to) get more dire with each generation (is that in my imagination?) 

I'm not sure I can accurately remember my own trajectory in Rhetoric Management. I suppose I built those literacy and comprehension skills through my undergrad, and started a foundation of critical thinking skills, but I didn't gain any proficiency then. I have thought of four major areas where I find it most important, and I can roughly put them in order. [ETA: I started this post when Bean was a baby, it originally referred to teaching "my child" and I'm only getting around to finishing it now. For pete's sake, none of the personal pronouns are even capitalized! /sigh]

Area the first: Religion/Christianity. Boy, was this a trial by fire, when I moved to the US midwest (during the run-up to the 2004 election no less, but we'll get to that later.) I had often felt buffeted by conflicting positions and rhetoric during my angsty teenaged faith, and had trouble reconciling what I felt was right with the oh-so-persuasive arguments of more extreme opinions. I had to learn to trust myself, and my interpretation. I had to know it was okay to read a persuasive argument for something I disagreed with, and just politely acknowledge it was well argued without feeling the core of my beliefs had been shaken. I had to stop taking things personally. People have opinions, people like to share them, people now have the internet to do so freely and loudly and without restraint - but I don't have to listen, and even when I do, I don't have to feel like my beliefs are being attacked or destroyed or even challenged. Because it's just their opinion. We can all be grown-ups and exist in this world together with different opinions just fine.

[Here I'll add: since 2004, the internet itself has matured in many ways, I find particularly when it comes to religious discourse. I think in large part because we've all conglomerated into our meta-tribes, and there's so. much. room. for as many small niches of religious thought, it's really fantastic. So not only is it easy to ignore rhetoric you disagree with (and I mean truly ignore, without trolling) but it's also really easy to find those you do agree with, and just (virtually) pet and rub each other all over with mutual love-festing.]

It's a good thing I got a handle on that, because I was about to get a crash course in American partisan politics - area the second. I truly didn't have a clue. I thought Canadian and US politics were pretty similar, 'cause we're pretty similar in general. Not so at election time. It was (toooooooo) easy to get caught up, to get emotionally invested. It was easy to be (utterly, distractedly) engaged by so. much. rhetoric. But after a few exhausting, commercial-filled months, man oh man did I have to turn that shit off. I had to handle the rhetoric, and remember that opinion is just opinion, even in these matters of Great National Importance (and not for my nation, mind you lol.) I had to remember that politics don't need to be personal, and I was still friends with my same friends I was friends with before I found out if my friends were Republican or Democrat. We are all grown-ups.

[It helps that I moved away lol. If I thought the 2004 election was bad, I cannot even imagine living through the 2008 or 2012 ones. To my American readers, I salute your perseverance! As much as the internet has matured for religious discourse, it has devolved when it comes to politics. My facebook feed is evidence enough of this. As a way of contrast, the development of my Rhetoric Management toward religion was to broaden my horizon; for politics it has been to narrow my focus/position. And I think it's interesting that these two areas required such opposite solutions.]

Area the third: Scientific Literacy. Given my BSc. I suppose my critical thinking skills developed earliest here, but didn't really... settle, until I was learning to navigate the morass of medical science and effective vs. ineffective healthcare. And I did this while entering a young, controversial, not-yet-completely-scientifically supported profession (don't kill me, Chiropractor friends, for that edgily wishy washy description.) Because I have the background for this, it maybe wasn't so thorny as the religious and political arenas. But it is life and death stuff being discussed at times, and certainly the ethics of healthcare in our (so privileged, so first world) society gets increasingly muddy. In general, I am saddened by the general public's scientific illiteracy. Research is presented so journalistically as to be virtually useless, especially on the internet. And I'm not sure any amount of interwebz maturation is going to compensate for the lack of quality science education being provided our children. If I'm going to be a Tiger Mom in any fashion, it will be drilling the scientific method into my poor children's heads and hearts until they weep for the sheer joy of deductive reasoning (lol... kind of.)

Ah yes, won't someone think about the children? Well, parenting is the most recent and, frankly, batshit crazy arena of rhetoric and flat out propaganda I've been thrown into navigating. Just when I think I'm getting a handle on it, I'm thrown into a fit of self-recrimination or sputtering indignation once again (from "I'm a horrible mother!" to "JFC shut your judgmental pie-hole!" and back again. Repeat.) If I hadn't honed my chops or whatever leading up to this, I would go crazy. Because when it comes to our children, everyone's opinion is the only way and everyone else is ruining their children's lives and there is just. no. end. If a mother isn't willing to just turn it off, walk away, and trust in her heart that she is doing the loving, most bestest job she can with the resources she has, she will be destroyed. I like to dabble and read and engage with both sides of any debate, and I find it all pretty entertaining. I'm not always the best at articulating why I make the choices I make (homebirth, for e.g.) and my lack of articulation can feel pretty weak in the face of so much interneticulation (can I make up that word? I think I just did. But do you know what I mean? The voice of the articulate internet - anybody can sound totally reasonable or totally unreasonable to anybody else on the internet.) But every day is an exercise in filtering parenting rhetoric, and I wouldn't say that exercise is best performed by the sleep-deprived haha.

[Speaking of internet maturation, I think since Bean was born (when I started writing this) the way parenting is treated on facebook and twitter, and even blogging to an extent, has really changed - I think people are starting to get the message that kindness matters. The trolls have been ignored out of existence, maybe a little? At least, I get the sense parents are less willing to rise to the Polarizing Bait - there's more focus on being supportive? Maybe this is also in my imagination...]

[I'm sorry this ended up so disjointed. I just know that my emotional health depends on my rhetoric metre - I sense the rhetoric, I sense how it could elate or enrage me, I evaluate if I feel like or have the resources for elation/enragement, I proceed accordingly. This is just my story of traveling the steps of Rhetoric Management. Critical thinking keeps me sane, in a crazy world. I hope it does the same for you.]

Mama Bean's Chiropractic ego is a bit bruised tonight

I am having an off week en generale and in specific at work. (En generale because Sprout had a bad night before my early work morning and that just made everyone tired and cranky...) Yesterday and today, I've had a string of patients return for second treatments of problems they presented with last week (Thursday and Friday of last week, in particular). They are returning because their problems are not better or have worsened. Tonight, after the fifth or sixth such incident, I started to take it a little personally.

Not to toot my own horn or anything, it's just that usually I make people feel better. That's, like, my job. (Oh oh Chiro friends, please don't lecture me about Innate. For the purposes of this post, it's my job, okay?) Usually, if people come back for a second treatment, it's a week later, and they tell me they feel better but it's still there a bit, or they feel better but they just want to be sure. Or they come back in a month for a regular tune-up and tell me how great they've felt. Or they don't come back for awhile, for whatever reason, and that's just life. But overall, I do my job, and folks come back and tell me I've done it well. Good for the ego, my job is.

Except when it isn't. Like when a gobsmack of patients come in after four days and tell me I didn't do squat. Oof.

It's hard not to question myself - what was happening last week? Was I not paying attention, was I not fully present, was I half asleep? (I have a baby, I am frequently tired, this is not beyond the realm of possibility...) I have doubts, and then I feel terrible. These people trust me, with their money, with their health, with their bodies.

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons why this has nothing to do with me. Sometimes (often) one treatment is not enough. And for some of the folks this week, we're dealing with significant injuries that I should know will take more time to resolve. It is much more likely that this is all a case of bad timing, because in any given week I'll have a patient or two with persistent or stubborn situations, and they don't cause me a crisis of self doubt - it's only that all these cases seem to have ganged up on me in a few short days.

This is a paradox of Chiropractoring for me. My Chiropractic education drilled into me that people are their own healers - that this is what our bodies are designed to do! Fix! And so the Chiropractor cannot get too proud or too invested in their abilities, because fundamentally, the patient is the real Healer. On the other hand, I don't do nothing! (Obviously, I hope...) Chiropractors move things that need moving, remove Interference that's getting in the way of Healing. We do Something! (How's that for a professional motto? "Chiropractors: We Do Something!")

Paradox. On the one hand, I wield influence over people's health. They come to me requesting aid, and I know I do Good. On the other hand, I am only one tiny part of their life - ten minutes in my office is followed by the next ten days of where they work and where they live and where they parent and where they have hobbies and where they sleep and where they wake up to do it all again. I have no control over all that other stuff (all my suggestions about ergonomics and stretches and icing aside.) So in that grand scheme of things, I bear comparatively little influence. It is a paradox to mentally balance my perceived impact on people's lives versus their expectations of my impact versus the realities of their daily lives. And somewhere in there is the true change an adjustment can bring. Which is real. Which is what they pay for.

Anyway, I continually find this to be the hardest patient education lesson to teach: I do Good for you, but you are responsible (and able! and naturally designed!) to do much more Good for yourself.

It is especially hard after a day like today. However! Tomorrow = new day, new opportunities. Tomorrow also = my day off (Huzzah!) And maybe that is exactly what my bruised self-confidence requires, so I can face Thursday with a bit more verve. And whatever it is that shadowed last Thursday will not re-create a dismal Tuesday like I had today.

(The picture is bachelor's buttons and poppy seedpods from a neighbour's plot at our community garden. This year, before we leave the garden, I am running around asking folks for seeds from their wildflowers - poppies, bachelor's buttons, borage, cosmos, lavatera, all of it!)

Mama Bean really likes being a Chiropractor. Again.

I've been practicing in my little corner of the Prairie Valley for a year now. On the one hand, I can't believe how quickly it passed. On the other, it feels like a long year, because we packed so much into it, not the least being my pregnancy and the arrival of Bean!

When we arrived here, I wasn't sure I even wanted to be a Chiropractor anymore. We left Cowtown demoralized on many fronts, most of them financial. By the end of our first year of marriage, we were each working 60+ hours/week, myself as a full-time Chiropractor and part-time SBUX barista, Papa Bean as a full-time IT manager and in the tire shop at Wal-mart part-time. We had no weekends, no time off, only one or two evenings a week together, and no time for family or friends. We did this to pay The Bills, in particular the Cowtown-sized mortgage on our so-called starter home, and my considerable student debt, which I sort of jokingly (but mostly seriously) call the second mortgage. (Not meaning to sound too whiny here, we lived quite comfortably in Cowtown, and were happy and in love like proper newlyweds LOL. Just painting a picture of the circumstances...)

Moving two provinces over cut our debt load in half. Our house (and mortgage, and mortgage payments) cost $100000 less. We paid off half my student debt. I transferred with SBUX and PB found low-stress IT work with the school division, and we had evenings and weekends to, like, talk to each other. Buy groceries together. Have a weekend, and a yard. Grow a 1500 square foot vegetable garden. It's not that we wouldn't have been able to do these things in Cowtown, it just would've taken over ten years (conservatively) to get there. Who can say what that would have cost our friendships or family relationships - or our marriage? This is the foundational reason why we love living here.

There is a world of difference between associating in a practice and owning your own. When I graduated, I didn't think I could handle the weight or complexity of being Responsible For Everything - so I assumed associating was the way to go. Well, as Henry Ford said, whether you think you can, or that you can't, you are usually right. Which is to say, I probably couldn't have handled being my own boss right away, and there were a pile of lessons I needed to learn that only the experience of associating would provide, but I do wish it could have been a somewhat less painful learning process.

The responsibility of ownership is heavy, but it is not crushing. Certainly not as crushing as the weight of my Cowtown failures, which made me question my entire career. Really, ownership is freeing. Of course, I was blessed to join the most perfect clinic in the wholeworldever. The woman who founded this clinic twenty-some years ago is pretty much everything I want to be. Plus, she manages most of the nitty-gritty of keeping our doors open, for a measly little fee on my part, which appeals to my laziness and aversion to paperwork.

But here is what I really love: in my clinical decision making, I answer only to myself and my patients. So my decision is based on what I think is best for them. I know this sounds really obvious, and how every healthcare provider should make decisions - I mean, it's not rocket science. But when I was working for someone else, I felt pressured to make decisions that would benefit them as well, and benefit their practice, of which I was merely an employee. And so I compromised - not because they asked me to (in so many words) but because I felt responsible for more than just my patient's well-being, and more than just my well-being, but also for the whole clinic's (financial) well-being. And that is just no way to practice.

The Chiropractic profession is rife with practice management companies offering professional coaching. The Masters Circle bases their coaching on the mantra Be Do Have. Which means Be the person you envision you'd like to Be, Do the things that Being that person entails, and you will Have the things that vision entails. You have to start with Being first. I didn't want to Be the Chiropractor I was in Cowtown anymore. I wanted to be compassionate, and clinically honest, and have work-life balance with my husband and family. So I did what was necessary to work in a practice that allows me to Be That Way. And now I have the family, lifestyle, and career I love. One year down...many more to go!