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Lately I’ve been feeling overwhelmed. Outnumbered.

There’s fluoride and prescription medicine in the water.

Glyphosate is in everything.

Even “organic” food isn’t organic.

Milk is contaminated with hormones that make children reach puberty too fast.

The fillings in our teeth are poisoning us, root canals will kill you, and those wisdom teeth extractions, tonsillectomies, and appendectomies? Unnecessary and harmful. Antibiotics are paving the way for cancer.

Toothpaste, sunscreen, deodorant, lotion, etc.? Will kill you.

Those BPA-free plastics you’ve been buying? Worse than BPAs.

Don’t get me started on GMOs.

And it’s 5:45 a.m. and the rooster I’m not supposed to have (hatchery mistake) just started crowing.

The problem with saying, just calm yourself down and do your best, is that it’s never enough when you’re a parent. It’s one thing to look out for oneself, but when defenseless kids are in your care, and you’re responsible for establishing a healthy future for those kids, you can’t stop looking out, trying to make things better.

And all that concern about carcinogens is one thing in theory, but once you’ve watched someone die of cancer right in front of you it takes on a whole new urgency.

One of the problems is looking like a kook. Paying more for organic, using non-toxic methods, advocating against the status quo, I run up against those who smile patronizingly and say I’m being duped or I’m overreacting or the FDA is okay with it so what’s the problem? Or, I’ve done it/used it for years and I’m not dead yet so it must be okay.

The schools and municipalities spray Roundup on every errant weed, big ag uses it to “mature” their GMO crops for harvest, the bees are dying and our biggest food producing state is in its fourth year of drought.

And it’s 6 a.m. and the rooster is crowing again.

I am going to calm myself down, and I am going to do my best, and I know there are other people out there working a lot harder than I am to help make things better for all of us. There need to be more of us, though.

And that rooster is going to the farm. Today.