Tag: celebrity

Universally appalling topics should be unifying

I remember years ago asking, “what happened to Ashton Kutcher? Like, he was in SO MUCH stuff, and then just kind of disappeared. And someone told me, “well, he started working against child sex trafficking. So who in Hollywood is going to hire him?”

He and Demi started Thorn in 2012. I remember watching, and crying, to the video of him testifying to the Senate years later, and thinking “yeah right. Those politicians aren’t going to do anything. I bet they’re part of all that shit”.

I remember thinking Cory Feldman was crazy and it was his years of drug abuse that made him a nut ball. And then I read an interview about the Hollywood child sex ring. This poor man has been screaming and begging for help for decades. And no one listened.

I see posts about it all up and down my newsfeed about child trafficking. Which, I’m glad to see people wanting the truth exposed and an end to it. Amazing. Exactly what needs to happen. Shedding light on this topic is how we end it. But something about some of the posts I’ve seen has been not been sitting right with me. I’ve been trying to figure out what it is.

It’s because, while I was asking if people thought Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell’s deaths were because of exposing child abuse, people laughed at me and called me a conspiracy theorist. It’s because when I stood with #metoo, people rolled their eyes and said the movement was just people feeling “triggered”. Because when I brought up the rape allegations of Trump in 2016, people laughed and told me told me they were just lies. It because I asked why there were kids in cages, and how our government could LOSE thousands of children, people ignored, downplayed, or redirected the subject. And now? There are a bunch of people that keep bringing up this horrid thing as A COMPARISON OF horrific things, to dismiss BLM and Covid19.

I want every single pedophile found out. All of them. Every politician. Every star. Every single person who has hurt a child. ALL OF THEM. I am thankful for every victim that has come forward. For every star willing to sacrifice their careers to fight against it. So what about these memes is sitting with me wrong? It is sitting with me wrong because people are attaching a political agenda to their memes and posts.

I am glad you all are appalled about child trafficking. Because we need people to be appalled. We need people to fight for justice for every child that has been hurt. But if you are using all of this as a way to downplay another issue, then you’re USING it, not HELPING it.

If your meme says anything like, “people are talking about *insert topic* while there’s a child sex ring going on. But that’s none of my business” or whatever, you stop that shit. Yes it’s great you are now learning about stuff. But quit using false equivalence to push whatever agenda you’re pushing. You can be appalled about many topics at once.

Pedophiles are evil. We all agree on that. So quit attaching something we ALL AGREE needs to be exposed and fixed, to something unrelated. If your post is about downplaying a topic, and not about promoting the stop of trafficking, then it’s divisive and it’s distracting from the the problem we all want solved.

Stop that shit. I have spent the better part of a decade standing against this. And I’m sick of people using it to create division. This should be the most unifying thing we ever stand against.

How a Celebrity Can Make a Lady Cry

A year ago, I sat crying, absolutely stunned to hear that Robin Williams had taken his life. It was surreal. I had never cried over a celebrity before. I mean, there were others I had felt heartbroken about passing, and even ones that stopped me in my tracks with the shock of the news. But tears of grief, to me, we’re saved for losing my loved ones. Robin Williams. Dead. It shook me. I felt like he WAS one of my loved ones. I sat with my (then) fiancé, and talked about him for hours. I kept saying, “He wouldn’t have done this if he knew how much he was loved! How could he not know? How could someone that amazing not see all he did for people??”

Here’s the thing. I saw so much of myself in him, I KNEW I was going to meet him. I knew he would get me. I’m not delusional, I know I’m a single mom of 3 kids. But there was a part of me that thought, the universe will definitely throw us together at some point. It had to! People like us are magnets. We find eachother.

I was surprised with myself. All the stages of grief so prevalent. I have never met this man, and I am by no means a superfan. I haven’t seen half the movies he was in. I wanted to write about him. I wanted to write about all the inspiration he gave me, all the wisdom, all the life changing things he did for me. But I had nothing to say. So many others could articulate who he was, what he did, and what he left behind, so much better than I ever could. He was just a guy I heard about, liked, admired, and was excited for the day I would be able to meet him.

“Wow Bethy. This is a great post about someone you didn’t know dying, and how you were sad.” Of course, there is more. (C’mon, there is always more.)

Robin Williams dying was months before my dad and brother died. I was in a wonderfully awesome point in life. Work was great. Summer was spectacular. Life was good. His death stopped me in my tracks. I knew depression. I had felt hopelessness. My stomach turned at the thought of how he felt in his last moments. I thought about when I was that low. When I planned my own suicide. I knew how I was going to do it. I knew when I wanted to do it. I even had written a few notes. Do you want to know why I didn’t do it? It wasn’t for me. It wasn’t that I woke up one day and got motivated to “improve my life”. It was because I knew I was needed. I knew I was all my daughters had. I couldn’t give them that grief on top of everything else. So, I made an agreement with myself. I would raise them, and then have an accident. I would just wait it out.

Who thinks like that? My mind was made up. I was a shell of a person. People would tell me what a great mother I was. How strong I was. What an inspiration I was. I would smile and say thanks. They were empty words. My life was a waste. I had no purpose. My vision of myself had turned from passion and excitement, to despair and regret.  There were no words that could snap me out of it. I was a joke to most, and a burden to the rest. Then, my mom looked at me and said, “You need to get your shit together. You have 3 little girls looking to you. You cannot abandon them.”

That’s when I realized, I can’t just survive long enough. They are watching me. While I sit on the couch, staring at the wall. While I cry and just let them run around the house making messes. When I say no to going to the park because I’m too tired to even move. They are watching, and waiting to know what to do. So, I went to my doctor.

So back to Robin Williams. He took his life. Something in him said, “All those people that are telling you that you are great are lying. No one needs you. You are wasting space. You’re just surviving life, and you are a shell of a person.” Because that’s what depression tells you. You see the life you live. You think about how you got there. You wonder how different it could be “if…” And then you realize this isn’t the life you’d thought you would have and give up.

I went to my doctor. I was open to antidepressants, and asked my doctor to just fix me. My doctor decided to check my vitamin levels and found I was completely deficient on D3. Within a week of taking her recommend dose, I was feeling like me again. I almost killed myself because Michigan doesn’t get enough sunlight. My kids almost lost their mother, because I didn’t want to bother a doctor with my problems. My parents almost had to bury their daughter, because I was missing a vitamin….a VITAMIN. I owe my life to that woman.

If you know anyone that is depressed, your “positive words” won’t help. Your avoiding them, will make it worse. You need to tell them, “You are needed. You need to get your shit together. Let’s get you help.” I am thankful for my mom, my daughters, and for the doctor who helped me. We all hear that suicide is the most selfish thing you can do. But that’s the thing, when you’re faced with it, it seems like the most generous thing you can do.