Childhood Rape Linked To Obesity
There’s no way really to put a positive spin or a clever title on this bit of research, which shows a link between childhood rape and obesity in women.
Researchers surveyed about 2,500 men and women aged 21 and found 7.5 % had had intercourse against their will before the age of 16. While the men had no significant weight difference to other men, female victims were much more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) over 25, making them officially overweight…
Dr Mamun said the link was not entirely understood but it was believed sexual abuse victims were more inclined to be heavier because they would “comfort eat” to cope. What they have been through is very traumatic, so binge eating may be a way of dealing with that emotional overload,” he said. “The fact that men did not do the same shows that sexes process these things very differently, and it may reflect the specific body image pressures on women.”
The researchers also suggest that female victims may purposefully try to alter their lifestyles to increase weight as a means of protecting themselves from further abuse.
I have heard this theory before (that overweight is a way to protect ourselves from unwanted sexual attention) and I have always believed that link sometimes does exist. Unlike the researchers, I don’t think it’s a purposeful thing, though. I think it’s more likely an unconscious coping mechanism, which can be more difficult for people to surmount. I’m just an armchair psychologist, but I’ve seen it happen, with children that I have known. And I’m not going to say any more about that.
This blogger makes another interesting point:
You only have to watch The Biggest Loser to know that all those rolls of fat are hiding some pretty severe trauma and some very painful self esteem issues. The programme often does a lot to repair this kind of damage because they get the contestants into a different mind set. The effects may not last but there is hope once they have confronted their pain that they may find a way out. Psychological support is important. Some contestants don’t continue because they are dealing with awful past events and realise it’s not what they want to confront on TV. To have a study like this only serves to underline how critically important it is to discover why people seek solace in food, why they become food addicts and why they continue to punish themselves for things which are largely out of their control.
Of course, it would be be very dangerous to start seeing all overweight people as emotionally damaged victims. “All those rolls of fat are hiding some pretty severe trauma” is not necessarily always the case. But perhaps knowing that this link can sometimes exist might encourage people to be a little more compassionate, a little less judgmental.
After all, you have no idea what the average person on the street–fat or thin or in between–has been through. And maybe losing weight is, in fact, not as easy as all that, and maybe there’s more to it than you think. So maybe people should just step off sometimes. You know what I mean?
Posted by mo pie
Filed under: Advocacy, Biggest Loser, Eating Disorders, Feminism, Health, International, Kids, Science, TV
Email us
You know, my rolls of fat are hiding a helluva lot of trauma. And my husband keeps telling me that he’s not the perpetuator of said trauma, and he wants me to be healthy and attractive. And I get that. And I want to be healthy and attractive. But I still comfort eat. And I don’t know how to get over it. I wish I did. I get this news report. I truly do.
I have to agree that sometimes extra weight has a lot to do with abuse, and not just of the sexual kind. Emotional/mental abuse are also factors, that’s why I squirm every time I see an article about the war on “childhood obesity”. I think there’s a thin between “protecting” a child from fat and making fat a moral/aesthetic issue. Unfortunately that line is often crossed, feeding into a lot of the crap about appearance put out there by the media. I went through this when I started putting on weight at 16. In an attempt to “help me” my aunt sat me down to tell me how fat and worthless I was then proceeded to put me on a diet. I was “rewarded” when I lost 36 pounds by her telling me that I was pretty and that I “had a body”. She made my weight loss a condition of her attention and support. As a result I’m 37 and just now getting rid of my body image demons. Moe pie is right. We should be more compassionate. I’m going to add to her statement by saying we should be twice as sensitive to overweight kids.
Ok, I need more coffee because that was suppsed to say, “I think there’ a thine line”. Oy.
Tara, are we cousins?
Because your aunt sounds a lot like my mom.
I read these rants about how I don’t have the right to blame anyone but my self for my weight. And part of me is always going to agree with them. But my rational mind knows that the verbal and physical abuse my family inflicted on me out of their misguided attempts to “tough love” me into being thin did one hell of a lot of damage.
And I am also certain that there was lethal fallout. I’ve survived so far. My baby brother wasn’t so fortunate, or so tough.
He sat there and absorbed all that bullshit they aimed at me, and when it was his turn to fight our genetic metabolic fight, his body issues preyed on him and tumbled him into depression after depression. Ultimately, he killed himself at the age of 39.
Abuse and bigotry is never justified. No one’s lofty motives are sufficient reason to belittle another human being. You can’t know the damage your words can inflict.
I think the largest contributing cause to my childhood weight gain was in response to physical abuse from my mother, as well as her singling me and my weight out of our large family, most of whom were fat including her, and saying I should diet. Food not only was my way of self-medicating and coping, it was means of “Ha, I’ll show her!”
I don’t think emotional/physical/mental abuse is to blame for every fat person, but for some, it is. Binge eating is more prevalent than both anorexia and bulimia combined, yet while anorexia and bulimia are treated with kid gloves as the psychological diseases they are, binge eating is still seen as something shameful and chalked up to a lack of willpower by many.
Whyme 63,
I am SO sorry to hear about your brother! That’s terrible! Stories like yours and Rachel’s just reinforce my opinion that when it comes to weight kids should be left alone because their growing bodies will work out the weight on their own via growth spurts, puberty, and activity (not all kids stay in the house and play video games; many are involved in after school sports). Sure, teach them what’s good for them and what’s not, but I don’t believe in policing every little thing that goes in their mouths. That only teaches them to be neurotic.
“But perhaps knowing that this link can sometimes exist might encourage people to be a little more compassionate, a little less judgmental.”
Or it could make them even rabid and persistent. I won’t post what I was going to originally because it might be triggering for whyme, but some people don’t care what ‘excuse’ some people might have.
This discussion made me think about when my partner went for her gastric bypass consultation. The nurse practitioner was very smug and insistent that it was the practice’s experience that *everyone* had some sort of history that included childhood molestation or rape. She was very smirky and smarmy when my partner insisted this was not the case for her.
And its not the case for me either. Although, several times in my life, when I have unhealthily dieted myself down to a size 20- on the verge of size 18- I do get uncomfortable about attention paid to my physical shape. And then the weight comes back on, bringing me back to MY natural and healthy size 24- and where I can be sane.
It’s interesting that they don’t acknowledge that being bigger means that you’re stronger. It doesn’t necessarily make you unattractive, but it does make it more likely that you you can defend yourself physically against someone who’s unarmed. It seems to be that it’s an important – and glaringly obvious – point. I think that I’m fat almost entirely because of genes I inherited from my dad’s side of the family. I look like them. Every one of them is large. But, I have to admit that my size makes me feel safer than I would otherwise – not because I think that I won’t attract sexual attention, but because I’m not an easy target.
Dee, really good point. Especially as I get older, and younger women start to look more and more like babies to me, I keep finding myself really struck by how fragile some of the little ones look. And I mean, young women who are probably naturally thin, not necessarily ones who are starving themselves. (I don’t think there’s anything they can or should do about that — bodies are what they are — but since I used to look at women that size and think, “God, I wish I could be that thin,” the difference in how I see them now blows my mind.)
As for the article… I certainly wouldn’t dismiss a link between sexual abuse and obesity, but I also wouldn’t assume there is one from this study. Think about the actual numbers there: original group of 2500 men and women, and only 7.5% of those were abused. And some portion of those are men. Now, we’re looking at maybe less than 100 women, which means a very small number of those could represent a statistically significant difference. That difference might be erased completely if you added another 10 random women to the group.
I’m wary of studies like these because, although they might engender more compassion in some people, they’re probably more likely to further the myth that fat people always get fat by overeating, and there’s always an emotional reason behind it. (Which I know you acknowledge in the post, Mo, but I’m gonna hammer on it a little more.) If more than 60% of the population is “overweight” and only 7.5% (in this study anyway) suffered from childhood sexual abuse, that leaves a whole lot of people unaccounted for. So either we’ve ALL got our own serious childhood traumas or there are other, more common reasons why people end up fat — which may have squat to do with overeating. Naturally, I’m more inclined to believe the latter.
But you’re absolutely right that in any case, making presumptions about why people are as fat as they are is bad news, and people need to knock it off.
I’m not saying that my brother’s death was solely due to weight-related abuse. But since we both inherited the twin genetic legacies of depression and predisposition to weight gain, my family’s “never-good-enough” mindset exacerbated the hell out of things for us.
My parents, uncles and grandparents never could make the distinction between convincing a child he or she could do better and telling them they were not smart enough, not good enough, not tall (!) enough, not thin enough, not athletic enough, not strong enough, not industrious enough, not studious enough, not tidy enough, not pretty enough, not ladylike enough–I’ll stop now.
I need to rent a locker at the bus station for all this baggage.
Dee — me, too! I have this weird fear that I might be killed by a serial killer (I know it’s bizarre), and I comfort myself with the idea that I’m not likely to be abducted and killed because of my weight.
All of this “why are fat people fat?” feels a hell of a lot like the “why are gay people gay?” crap. Some people just can’t handle letting everyone be what & who they are, so they search for a “reason”, which they hope will lead them to a “cure.” Homogeneity for all, at any cost!
I have heard the obesity/trauma connection from both a friend of mine who is a therapist and a friend of mine who was fat (has since lost the weight) all her life and called it ‘armor’ against the horrific sexual abuse she experienced as a kid. I am not saying obesity is always linked to this issue, but extreme/morbid obesity almost always is.
I think there is truth to the idea that childhood trauma can be related to adult obesity, and I think that women’s views and fears about their own body and sexuality play into it as well. However, I agree with Kate Harding about being wary of epidemiological studies. The NY Times Magazine just had an article about this: (login required, I think)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiology-t.html?_r=1&ref=magazine&oref=slogin
The article deals with the history of hormone replacement therapy, but the principle applies here, too:
“The catch with observational studies like the Nurses’ Health Study, no matter how well designed and how many tens of thousands of subjects they might include, is that they have a fundamental limitation. They can distinguish associations between two events — that women who take H.R.T. have less heart disease, for instance, than women who don’t. But they cannot inherently determine causation — the conclusion that one event causes the other; that H.R.T. protects against heart disease. As a result, observational studies can only provide what researchers call hypothesis-generating evidence — what a defense attorney would call circumstantial evidence.”
Basically, the article deals with the same issues that Kate brings up above: sample size, potentially false assumptions about the study group, and other things that can make the results of observational studies suspect.
I’m not trying to go off-topic, I just though people might be interested in how these studies are conducted, since the same methods that produce the info from this study are used to produce headlines like “fat is contagious” from other, similarly-conducted studies.
Oh, and none of my links above are meant to discount anyone’s actual experiences here, or the experiences of friends and family. Like I said, in a gut-level, personal-experience way, I believe there is a lot of truth to what mo pie posted, and that people should be *a lot* more compassionate in general. Nobody knows what hell someone else has been through.
I think there is some truth to the correlation – at least for me. Although I was a pudgy kid and an early bloomer, I was a “normal” size in middle school and didn’t start significantly gaining weight until around the age of 14, shortly after I was raped by an older guy from my high school. Of course, there are a lot of other factors (i.e. my genes, etc.), but I think that experience did have something to do with it, and my therapist mentioned it years later as a possible factor in my weight gain. I also experienced a great deal of the “you’re not good enough” parenting from my mom and grandmother, so that may have been a factor as well.
I also think way more than 7.5% of the population experiences some form of sexual assault. I don’t know the numbers on children, but I do know that approximately one in four women will be raped during their lifetimes. At least some of that is going on during their early/formative years, and I know a lot of it happens in high school and/or college.
Ignore that last paragraph — I just re-read it and noticed that the 7.5% was people who had had intercourse against their will before the age of 16.
Oh, how I’ve dreaded seeing this theory come back into vogue.
In the ’70s and ’80s when I was growing up, the conventional pop-psych wisdom said that overeating (and after all, what other reason could there be for being fat?) was always a response to some deep-seated past emotional trauma. Anyone who claimed otherwise was obviously repressing the memory. Once you admitted to the traumatic event, presto – all your problems would disappear, you’d lose the urge to “stuff your emotions with food”, and you’d magically lose weight and be a normal (thin, sane, morally redeemed) person.
This led me, as an impressionable youth, to spend years trying to figure out what horrible thing had happened to make me this way. I clearly recalled a childhood that did not include abuse or rape. I ended up over-analyzing every little slight or setback (much to the boredom of everyone around me) looking for some momentous occasion to blame for my failing.
Finally after hearing enough of others’ childhood stories too horrible for me to imagine, I came to terms with the fact that my upbringing was pretty darn happy. My “compulsive overeating” was more likely a sensitivity to certain foods that made me crave more of what caused the reaction – or at least that’s today’s conventional wisdom which makes more sense in my case. Certainly that idea never occurred to anyone back then.
I won’t discount anyone else’s experience, but the horror stories I’ve heard were from at least as many thin people as fat ones. Maybe for some there’s a correlation between abuse and subsequent weight gain; I suspect more often they’re separate issues.
This theory sounds to me like more victimizing and then blaming the victim: “Someone else made you a glutton; it’s not your fault, but now that you know the cause, you’re responsible for controlling your gluttony – and if you don’t, your fatness will show the world that you are damaged goods.” That’s not a message anyone needs to hear.
hmm, a lot of people are talking about the relationship between their weight and their hyper-critical parents – which is my own experience as well. Is it mostly women who use food for dealing with that, just like this study suggests they do for sexual abuse? And is it mostly women who perpetrate this type of destructive criticism? It seems to me like an example of the precarious line women toe to maintain whatever validity or worth we are supposed to feel – its fucked up that we have to struggle just to keep sane and mentally sound amid all the factors that would have it otherwise.
Thank you B.S.A.G. for saying everything I would have said, had you not beat me to it!
My first response to these “studies” is to want to know what other sociological commonalities may exist. I resent this excuse to assume that every fat person is psychologically damaged.
I’ve had therapists test me and grill me with questions, all in an effort to discover the “key” to why I was always fat. Eventually even I came to believe there must be some hidden trauma I was suppressing and if only I could find it, I could be healed!
But alas, I was born to loving parents in a white, upper middle-class home and spent my childhood being constantly doted upon by my grandmother who called me her gift from God. I had everything. Even a pony. Really.
Well I DID eventually find the reason why I was fat. When I had WLS, my cravings and obsession with food went away quite abruptly. I believe my ghrelin and leptin production was probably altered by my surgical rearrangement. Gina Kolata discusses this phenomenon in her recent book, “Rethinking Thin.”
Dagny – i agree with the sentiment and obviously your experience was different, but i dont think these studies are trying to assert every fat person is also mentally ill and a victim. this study is stating that some people who are fat are also victims of sexual abuse. they are drawing a link between abuse and weight and that is not a completely illegitimate phenomena to study and understand.
It seems to me that weight gain is the least of the damage caused by sexual abuse of children. When I worked at a domestic violence crisis shelter it seemed like you could scratch every one of the women and there was an abused child under there. I know that’s probably not true across the board, but the proportion is much higher. There’s a correlation between child abusers (and grownup abusers) and people who were abused as children. Those abused as children are more likely to have drug problems, mental health problems, and a number of other issues. These are all documented. I feel like it trivializes child abuse to blame it for our fat. My fatness is such a tiny problem compared with those listed above. I’d rather be fat than be a child abuser. And child abuse is bad for way more reasons than that it makes us fat. If it even does.
In the interests of full disclosure, I personally have no memories of being sexually abused as a child, and though I did have some childhood trauma it was nothing to what some folks go through and still manage to stay sane.
I don’t think this study purports to show that behind every fat woman is some sort of underlying trauma. Like Ho-Co said, these researchers are simply studying what appears to be a linked relationship.
For anyone interested, Becky W. Thompson has a book out which explores non-stereotypical women with eating disorders – that is, women of color and older women. Many of the women featured in the book say their dysfunctional relationships with food stem from some form of abuse. The book is called A Hunger So Wide and Deep – it’s a good read.
I’m not a scientist, and I’m not all that good at analyzing studies.
But I am a fat girl, and I had a fairly happy childhood. There was consistent criticism and concern about my weight as I entered adolescence – from my parents and my grandmother. (God, my grandmother depsises heavy people.) I do know that, when I’m furious, I’d rather eat about it than deal with it. But sexual abuse? None.
Here’s hoping that this study doesn’t contribute to the cultural belief that fat=unhappy and damaged.
I don’t doubt that a link can exist for some people, but I would also wonder how many of the women were fat before the abuse. Because oftentimes kids who are different, are loners, or are seeking approval, become targets for rapists/pedophiles so perhaps a lot of women ‘comfort eat’ as part of a response to abuse, but maybe they were always fat and society’s hatred of fat is one of the thing that people who prey on kids can use to their advantage.
Honestly, as a fat lesbian who is also a survivor of sexual abuse, I sometimes feel like tearing my hair out with all the assumptions that I would be “normal” if only the abuse hadn’t happened. I was a fat kid who dreamed of my naked barbies coming to life and kissing *before* I was abused, tyvm.
People who have been sexually assaulted, like fat people, are not necessarily unhappy and damaged.
if there is a causal relationship between weight gain and sexual abuse it seems like acknowledging that would only benefit the abuse survivor. if that is how they are coping then they probably still need help dealing with it. There is no way that pointing out a potential ramification of abuse trivializes it, even if the researchers motives are colored by society’s obsession with weight.
i am also concerned that all of a sudden people are comparing whether its better to be fat or a child abuser. that is a straw man argument and not an issue that should be evaluated based on the topic at hand.
ho_cho, you are right; I was getting a little worked up about that one. Of course abused children grow up into healthy adults, but it can be a factor for other dangerous behaviors or patterns that might not have otherwise emerged in the person.
I feel like everything I’ve tried to write to support my position doesn’t sound good, so I’ll just say yeah, child abuse may or may not cause overeating/obesity and that may or may not be a really bad thing for some folks.
Sorry if I’ve caused offense.
I was abused as a child and was told that my pounds would melt away if I could just deal with my feelings about the trauma. Despite lots of therapy and progress, I didn’t lose weight.
Then I met my birth mother and she and I were about the same size. So I don’t really know what I think of this study. I’m not sure I understand what the link is that makes them know that one affects the other. But I’m no statistician.
I comfort eat sometimes, but so do many of my friends who are thin.
whyme63: Thanks for sharing that story about your brother. I had a close cousin, like a sister to me, commit suicide and I still think about it a lot and wonder if it could have been different.
My first response to this was: right, get another scare in, like it’s not bad enough for a girl/woman to be afraid of being raped in itself, but *if* that happens, OMG, she might even become fat!
As the article states:
“While the men had no significant weight difference to other men, female victims were much more likely to have a body mass index (BMI) over 25, making them officially overweight.”
I’d say this research needs to take a very close look at the standard they’re using. Remember as women are more likely to have a BMI over 25 (because they are usually shorter than men), they’re also “overweight” quicklier. So, how reliable is a study that uses an unreliable measuring tool? Not very, I think.
Although I was never abused I did work hard to lose the baby fat and succeeded in 9th grade… The only things that didn’t shrink were my boobs and my ass…
I remember that in a crowded hallway I would be constantly fondled by anonymous hands. It was like my body didn’t belong to myself. I would get pinched and slapped. Men would shout from their cars at me and though I was physically very developed I wasn’t really emotionally ready to deal with sexual attention. Not only that, but my girlfriends started being nasty about me…critical about every aspect of my appearance and some really hideous rumors went around.
I started doing this whole binge and purge thing and then it was just binging…When I gained the weight my friends came back…I stopped getting harassed…the rumors died down and boys stopped being as interested in me.
Recently I lost about forty pounds.
I started getting more attention from strange men…guys brushing up against me on the bus. Whistles and comments as I walked downtown and I started feeling more vunerable. I didn’t want to be out after dark anymore or walk without an escort.
I’ve gained all the weight back since..and am back to being mostly invisible…
Reading this makes me wonder about this survey.
Oddly enough…I feel more powerful when I’m fatter. Like I’m in control of my sexuality…If a man or woman is attracted to me it”s because I make him take notice and be attracted to me…it’s because I want his attention.
I don’t get that luxury when I’m thinner…
rei,
I think you’re in my head running around or something. Since I have upped the ante on eating better and exercising, I have noticed that my body is slowly getting firmer and leaner. I’ve also noticed that I don’t feel as safe as I used to. I think (once again) this goes back to my childhood. My father was a very loving parent but at the same time having a slender twelve year old daughter with a pretty face and long hair freaked him out. I wasn’t allowed to wear my hair in anything but a ponytail and braids, no make up (not even lip gloss) or nail polish, when contact lenses came into vogue, those were forbidden as well. The message I got from all that is being attractive, in any way, was dangerous for a female. My dad also kept me from dating and told me that men only wanted one thing from a pretty girl. Even as a woman in my twenties, he would get nervous when I went out. When I was bigger, I had almost forgotten all about that. Now that I’m losing weight it’s all rushing back to me, and it’s freaking ME out.
“I have this weird fear that I might be killed by a serial killer (I know it’s bizarre), and I comfort myself with the idea that I’m not likely to be abducted and killed because of my weight.”
Miss Laura, I have totally thought that before! I’m glad I’m not the only one.
This is a very interesting discussion. Personally, I think there is a link between my weight and being raped 12 years ago. After that I’ve gained weight steadily almost every year. I was never fat before that, just average – although I FELT fat starting in elementary school (thanks to some sadistic classmates.) Whatever the connection, I think it’s mostly subconscious although a few years ago when I got down to a size 16 w/Weight Watchers I couldn’t deal with the male attention and gained all the weight back and more. Not deliberately, but I kind of freaked out and counting points just didn’t seem that important. I’m still working through all these issues, but getting healthier and more self-accepting as I go…
So I have to throw my two cents in here. To those of you who are discrediting this and saying that people become gluttons and blame it on that how would you even know? Since I am being anonymous right now I was raped about a year ago, I was a very attractive girl about a size 8 and my reaction was that I ate in order to become heavier because I thought if I was heavier that I would be less likely to be a victim of that again. I felt like meat and yes I, in my messed up mind, thought that if I put on some pounds that I wouldnt always be looked at as a sexual object. Now I realized I did this after I gained about 20 pounds and I have never once blamed it on the person who did that to me, I am not giving him that kind of power. He does not control what goes in my mouth. It was MY reaction, I did it and let myself do it and do not blame anyone else.
Not everyone blames others, some of us take the blame and responsibilty for our own actions so please dont lump everyone in one category because you dont know.
Well, I had a perfectly normal childhood with lots of happy memories. Still fat. In fact, I have an excellent life.
I think the researchers are so blinded by the ‘fat people get fat by eating more’ myth that they’ve overlooked something very important. Girls who are fat (or who will become fat adults) virtually always develop sexual features (breasts, hips) at a younger age, certainly well before age 16 (when some thinner girls are just starting to look ‘adult’). These girls will obviously be likely targets of unwanted male attention, and thus sometimes of rape.
I’m sure there are many, many links to obesity they can find, just as for anything else. Sometimes I think trying to analyze to find out why someone is the way they are is more damaging than anything that could have happened to cause it. It implies that there is something wrong with them, and that there HAD to be something cause them to be this way. I suppose it’s better than just assuming everyone who is overweight eats like a cow. More to point, though, no one has an easy life and not everyone is fat. Like Mr. Rogers said, there isn’t anyone you couldn’t like if you knew their story. Yes, everyone is damaged goods. Even people who think they had the perfect childhood, for they are delusional. :)
Possessed a strength of understanding.
A good-humored, well-disposed girl.
Drugs should only be approved for five-year.
Replied her husband.
Possessed a strength of understanding.
Interesting reading, all. It is something that I have been struggling with all my life. I had an uncle that was constantly at me about food and eating. He was movie star gorgeous and never had to diet a day in his life. When I was in high school and daydreamed about moving to the city and getting an apartment, his comment to me was, “Who would hire you? Do you really think fat people get the good jobs?”
My grandmother who was a very vain person kept telling me that my face was so pretty, if only I could lose the weight…you all know that one.
All these things come back to haunt me constantly and I know that when I overeat, I am showing them over and over again. It is the only control I have had over them and their insensitive remarks. Their constant reminders that I am less than desirable has interfered with my success and accomplishment. I keep sabotaging myself to live “up to” their predictions of my failure.
One thing I have discovered very recently, however, is that their behavior was not my fault. I was a normal child, and if I hadn’t had the ideas put in my head that there was something about me that wasn’t right, I probably would have been a normal adult. So now I say, it wasn’t my fault. That has relieved me of so much guilt and self loathing. I did nothing to deserve those comments from them and so I will no longer keep trying to fix myself for them, even though my grandmother is dead and I haven’t seen this uncle in over 5 years.
So now the battle for me is, I want to lose the weight, but how do I release my needing “power” over them by overeating? How do I keep from feeling that I am giving in to them and what they wanted from me? How do I get thinner without them grinning smugly, if only in my mind, and feeling that they won?
I guess I am just venting and rambling, but I really appreciate this blog. It has helped me put my thoughts in order.