Sobrang kupal. Two weeks ago sa birthday ko nagchat sya ng sorry, nagbago na siya, he read my letters again, miss nako ng mga pamangkin niya, miss niya na mga aso ko, etc. Sobrang mabubulaklak na pananalita. Pinaka-outstanding doon ay gusto nya ko ifollow ulit sa instagram. Sabi ko baka weird sa bago niya. Sabi niya WALA SIYANG BAGO.
Nung isang gabi emotionally fragile ako due to the death of my dog. Nagreach out ako sakanya. Guess sinong sumagot sakin? Girlfriend niya daw. Akala ko nga prank lang e kaso nagsend pa ng pic nila sa photobooth. Tapos ngayong mother’s day nagpost din kasama na family niya.
Sabi ng girlfriend, using his account, bakit daw kailangan boyfriend nya kausapin ko. E hindi ko naman alam, sabi ko lang “kakasabi lang ng boyfriend mo na wala siyang bago.” Tinanong niya kung kailan, di ko sinagot - sabi ko lang “oops deleted ba convo namin?” Tapos ayun blinock na ako ng ex ko.
I feel pathetic na ginago nanaman ako ng lalaking to for the nth time. Since then hindi pa ako nakakain, oo tangina tatlong araw nako walang kain at tulog sa sobrang depressed ko. Nag self harm ako lalo na binugbog din ako ng tatay ko dahil OA OA ko nanaman daw.
Isa pang nakakatawa ay andaming sinet na standard ng ex ko noon sa babae. Ayaw niya sa pa-famous, pa-sexy sa socmed, pinagppyestahan ng lalaki sa comment section, pang subtle clown traits ang feed, dalawa facebook account na naka in a relationship pa sa sarili, nagppost ng naka panty lang sa kwarto, naka eyelash at nail extensions - pero look. Yan pinatulan niya, tumpak lahat. Sabi nya proud sya sakin dahil taga UP ako, pero pinatulan niya taga- no name school na tinawag pa nyang tapunan ng isang elite private school dito samin. Kahit yung kaibigan kong taga school na yon inamin na tapunan lang nga sila ng mga bagsak sa elite school na yun. Samantalang dati proud na proud siya sakin taga-UP ako, pinagmamalaki niya sa lahat.
Sana naman pumatol siya sa ka-level ko man lang. Kahit yung demure man lang o ako. Kaso tangina. Sorry talaga. Oo personal bias to. Pasensya na.
Di ko kung ano ang gagawin o iisipin man lang to feel better or makaka move past dito with a smile. Bitter na bitter ako.
third post ko na to about this person. you can read without context but it’s in my post history.

As anyone who has a skater knows, we cut songs for programs and showcase, and then to share them with others sometimes use social media to share the large videos.
This is just becoming more and more problematic! I've given up trying to use YouTube to share videos because of copywrite claims that are automatically made... then even Facebook, when sharing to your private group of friends - copywrite claims come in as well.
How is anyone able to post things without the copywrite algorithms immediately doing a claim against them?
At this point, I think we just need to share a link to our own internal cloud storage to share video of our skaters. But, it makes me wonder how some events at say National Showcase and/or other competitions are able to keep things posted. Are they paying copywrite ransoms all the time?
It's just becoming more and more frustrating to share live to video performances for skaters. Anyone else running into this?

As many of you may have read, there is a case of two missing adopted kids in North Carolina, where remains have been found. The news has reported that their adoptive “mother” is Avantae Deven.
I’m a curious person and started digging up information on Avantae Deven when I first read the story in my news feed and could not believe what I was reading. It seemed like whomever this woman is must have be using an alias; Avantae Deven is not a name like Kim Jones or Mackenzie Smith.
The more I dug, the weirder it seemed to get. I found a property deed to a place in Sedona, Arizona, and figured out that whomever this Avantae person is, she at one point in time had owned a home together with someone named Nicole Adams. So I dug into who Nicole Adams was, and learned that she was the widow of a spiritual leader named Robert Adams. It appeared to me that there would be no way to identify who Avantae really was, unless I could also identify the true identity of Robert Adams.
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I've done investigative work for many years, including skip tracing. I can conclusively state that there was absolutely no person actually named Robert Adams born in New York State on January 21, 1928. This is demonstrated by the New York Birth Index. I have combed the census records for 1930, 1940, and 1950, and cross-checked them against multiple databases, and am confident that nobody with the birth name of Robert Adams was born anywhere in the United States on January 21, 1928.
Moreover, there was absolutely no person with the true name of Robert Adams who died anywhere at all in the United States, let alone Sedona, Arizona, on March 2, 1997. This is demonstrated by the Social Security Death Index.
I began this research largely by performing exhaustive searches on the known addresses that are associated with Robert, his wife Leonie (who used to use the alias Nicole), and Avantae Deven (who turns out to be their daughter Michelle who began using the alias Avantae in the mid-1990’s or so). Most of the addresses are PO boxes. Those that are PO boxes are all *private* PO boxes, not PO boxes that one can rent from the United States Postal Service. To me, that spoke volumes. The family were clearly using aliases.
As I explain further below, I eventually determined that “Robert Adams” was Robert Spiegel, born 21 January 1932 in New York. “Nicole Adams” was actually Aileen Beverly Leonie Maxwell, born February 2, 1929, in Jamaica. “Avantae Deven” is actually their daughter, Michelle K. Spiegel, born on October 1, 1960, in California.
One of Robert’s many false stories about Robert’s life that my research has refuted is Robert’s claim that his mother was Jewish and his father was Catholic. That was a lie. Both of his parents were Jewish. It’s also interesting that he claimed that he was “raised Catholic.” There is absolutely nothing to suggest that. His mother always, in New York, lived in Jewish neighborhoods. Moreover, as will be discussed below, his parents had a Jewish wedding. It’s also downright absurd that he would tell people that he was “half Jewish.” If your mother’s Jewish, you are Jewish, pure and simple. Even if Robert’s father had truly been Catholic (which he wasn’t; his name was Samuel Spiegel and he immigrated to America in 1907, lived with his Jewish, Yiddish-speaking cousins, and spoke Yiddish himself), Robert would have been Jewish because the status of being a Jew comes from the mother. Robert’s mother’s name was Fannie (nee Fleisfeder) Spiegel. Fannie’s parents were Itzik Fleisfeder and Esther Libke (nee Rifkin) Fleisfeder. Esther’s parents were Mendel Rifkin and Sarah whose maiden name is lost to time and the disappearance of the shtetls. Robert’s claim to having had a Catholic father was utterly false, but is part and parcel of his ongoing compulsive daily lying about anything and everything.
Here is the story.
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Kolomyia, formerly known as Kolomea, is a city currently located in the Western Ukraine.
On January 21, 1892 (the same year that Kolomea tallis¹ workers went on strike for better pay and working conditions), Kolomea resident Rachel Katz, wife of Abraham Spiegel, gave birth to a son, who was given the name Schmuel.
On the date that Schmuel Spiegel entered the world, Kolomea was ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and almost half of the city’s residents were Jewish.
In June of 1907, fifteen-year-old Schmuel² boarded the Zeeland, which sailed from Antwerp, Belgium, arriving at New York Harbor on June 18, 1907. The ship’s manifest states that Schmuel’s father had paid for his transport, and that Schmuel intended to reside with his father, Abe, in Brooklyn. Schmuel was granted entrance, and took up residence with his cousin Charles Fetner, who resided at 353 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, in Apartment A with his wife Jennie and their baby daughter Ettie. The sparse record that exists suggests that although Schmuel’s father was, indeed, named Abraham, Abraham lived and died in Europe, without immigrating to America.
The 1910 census describes Samuel’s cousin Charles as a carpenter, who had been married to housewife Jennie for six years, and a father of three children-- Ettie age four, Nathan age two, and baby Jacob, who was not even a year old. Eighteen-year-old Samuel was identified by profession as a “Foreman Sailmaker” in an industry described as “pocket-books.”
Three and a half years after being granted admission, on a bitterly cold winter day, January 4, 1911, Schmuel (now employed as a pocket-book maker, and having Anglicized his name to Samuel) signed and submitted his declaration to become a United States citizen. He stated, in that declaration, that he was born on January 21, 1892.
By 1915, Samuel had left his cousin’s abode and was residing as a lodger in the home of a widow named Rose Hammer, who lived with her two adolescent sons, Meyer and Louis, at 531 E. 5^th Avenue; Samuel was now working as a “driver.”
Two years after the 1915 state census was taken, Samuel had moved back to Myrtle Avenue, but this time at building no. 849. On June 15, 2017, Samuel registered for the draft, and described himself as being a pocketbook maker, working for “A. Shoenfeld,” at 101 Crosby Street, New York. He was single. He stated, in his draft registration, that he was born on January 21, 1892.
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A woman named Fruma Fleisfeder was born in Beltz, Bessarabia, sometime between July 1, 1893, and 1901, to Itzik Fleisfeder and Esther Lieba Rifkin. Fruma (not living up to her pious given name) provided different dates and years of birth to different authorities on different occasions, making it impossible at this point in time to know her true position in the birth order of her family. Regardless, Fruma, who began using the name Fanny upon her entrance to the United States, did have three brothers and a sister who also came to America-- Louis Fleisfeder who was born April 10, 1890, Max Irving Fleisfeder who used October 10, 1892 as his birthdate, Hersch (later known as Harry), whose official birthdate was December 15, 1901, and Sylvia who was born in approximately 1906.
On December 1, 1919, Fruma arrived in New York Harbor on the ship La Touraine, declaring her intention, at entry, to become a United States Citizen. The ship’s manifest describes her as five feet five inches tall, with fair hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion. The ship’s manifest states that she was, at that time, age 24. If that were correct, she would have been born in 1895.
Fruma (then going by Fanny) took up residence with her cousin Ethel (nee Ruchlin) and Ethel’s husband Samuel Steinberg, on 15^th Street, Brooklyn. Soon thereafter, Ethel gave birth to her first child, a daughter named Theresa. The 1920 census states that Fanny was Russian, didn’t speak English but, rather, spoke Hebrew, and worked as a milliner in a millinery store. The 1920 census also states that Fanny was age 25, which lines up with her being age 24 in the prior year’s ship manifest.
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Sam and Fanny married in Manhattan on January 24, 1925. Their marriage certificate (signed by each of them) identifies Sam as being age 32 (contradicting, by one year, his immigration records which would have placed him at age 33), and identifies Fanny as age 24, the same age that she had claimed to be six years prior, and also contradicting an immigration petition that she would file two decades in the future, which generally placed her birth year at the mid-point of 1893.
If Fanny’s immigration records (which included a petition with her signature on it) were correct, Fanny would also have been age 32 as of her marriage to Samuel, not age 24.
So did Fanny lie in her marriage certificate? Or did she lie in her immigration petition?
The marriage certificate identifies Sam as having been born in Kolomea, Austria, and his father being Abraham, and his mother being Rachel Katz. It identifies Fanny as having been born in Beltz, Russia, to a father named Isaac, and to a mother named Esther Rifkin.
The marriage certificate does not identify Fanny as having any profession, but identifies Sam as being a pocketbook maker.
Sam and Fannie were married at 125 E. 4^th Street, Manhattan, a six-story apartment building with retail units on the ground floor that is now an expensive co-op, with three-bedroom units selling for over $900,000. Present-day real estate advertisements alternatively state that the building was built in 1894, 1903, and 1905.
The first name of the rabbi who officiated was Harry. His surname starts with Reid, but the remaining letters of his signature are illegible. Rabbi Harry identified his residence as 232 Broome Street, which, at the time, was a four-story mixed use building that, among other things, housed Chevrah Ahavath Zedek Anshei Jaskinover.
Witnesses to the marriage were Mayer Budmon and Samuel Steinberg.
*******
Sam and Fanny’s existence was documented next in the 1925 New York State census by census. They were living at 205 S. 2^nd Street. Samuel was still working as a “pocketbook maker.” Fanny was identified as a “housewife.”
Fanny was identified as age 25. This was in accordance with her age as stated on her marriage certificate, but not in accordance with her immigration documents or the 1920 census.
Sam was identified as being age 28, which conflicted with all prior records.
*******
In 1930, the couple were again enumerated, this time in the Federal census. The enumerator, whose signature appears to be “Max Krahn” (or something like that) stated that he obtained the information on April 16, 1930.
Sam was identified as a “framer” of pocketbooks. He was identified as being 36 years of age, which conflicts by two years with the age that he provided to immigration authorities. Perhaps the enumerator was simply sloppy; Samuel was also incorrectly identified in the 1930 census as having been born in “Poland,” with parents who were both also born in “Poland,” notwithstanding other governmental records having identified him as being Austrian. The language he spoke? “Jewish,” according to the enumerator. Was that to mean Hebrew? Yiddish? Both?
Fannie was identified as age 30 (directly in conflict with the information she supplied in her immigration petition, which bears her signature) and as being “Russian,” with parents born in “Russia.” The 1930 census enumerator incorrectly wrote that her year of immigration was 1921. Fannie, too, was identified by the enumerator as speaking the “Jewish” language.
Although later records reflected that Sam and Fannie had a son named Irving who was born in 1926, Irving was not recorded in the 1930 census. Was he missed by the enumerator? Or was he a later-adopted son?
The couple also had a boarder, identified by the 1930 enumerator as one Esther “Larson,” age 40, born in Russia, and similarly a speaker of the “Jewish” language.
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The New York Birth Index identifies a baby boy, Robert Spiegel, as one of many babies having been born in the city on January 21, 1932.
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On May 21, 1936, Samuel committed suicide by hanging in the family residence, a tenement apartment located at 1168 Union Avenue, in the Bronx. Although, based upon the date of birth that Samuel used for official governmental purposes he was age 44, the death certificate stated that he was age 43.
Fannie engaged the Gordon Funeral Home to prepare him for burial.
Strangely, although Samuel’s headstone accurately identified him in Hebrew as Schmuel Spiegel, son of Avraham, it inexplicably incorrectly stated that he died at age 40.
Fannie of course knew her husband’s real age; both of them signed the marriage certificate that had Samuel’s correct age listed. Furthermore, Samuel had petitioned for citizenship in 1911, and stated that his date of birth was January 18, 1892.
Why would Fannie commission a headstone with a false age? Perhaps she, like her son, was a compulsive liar. Maybe that’s where Robert got it from.
*******
The 1940 census has Fannie (identified as age 38), Robert (identified as age 8), and Fannie’s son/Robert’s brother, Irving Spiegel, age 13, as living with Fannie’s 72-year-old mother, Esther Fleisfeder, at 1537 Fulton Avenue, in the Bronx. Fannie and Esther were identified as widows. Esther was identified as “U” (unable to work), while Fannie was identified as engaged in housework. No source of income for the family was identified.
No explanation is obvious regarding where Irving was living in the census taken a decade previously. Was he adopted?
There is no “Irving Spiegel” listed in the New York Birth Index for either 1926 or 1927. There is an “Irving Spiegal” listed, who was born April 29, 1926. But he is not Irving Spiegel.
I initially thought that perhaps Irving might be one of the unnamed Baby Boy Spiegels born in New York in 1926 or 1927, and that he left the hospital unnamed because his parents were waiting for his bris before naming him. However, Robert left the hospital with the name Robert. Why wait until the bris to name one child, but not the other?
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Slightly less than two years after she was enumerated in the 1940 census, Fannie’s mother Esther died, at home, at 1537 Fulton Avenue. The causes of death were “Coronary Thrombosis, Pulmonary Oedema Nephritis, Hypertension, Arteriosclerosis.” Esther left this world on February 6, 1942, the same day that the W. L. Steed was torpedoed, shelled and sunk less than a hundred nautical miles east of the mouth of Delaware River by a German submarine.
She was buried at Mount Moriah Cemetery in Fairview, New Jersey, the same cemetery where her son-in-law Samuel was interred.
*******
On November 12, 1943, Fannie, now residing at 1985 Bathgate Avenue, in the Bronx, petitioned for citizenship. She claimed, in that document bearing her signature, to be fifty years of age, meaning that if she was telling the truth, she would have been born in approximately 1893.
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On January 19, 1948, Robert (having assumed a false date of birth, that being January 18, 1931), enlisted in the New York National Guard. On paper, he had turned age 17 the day before his enlistment. In reality, he would be turning age 16 two days after his enlistment.
On December 9, 1949, Robert was discharged from the national guard, apparently for having been AWOL.
The discharge document identifies his address as being 1985 Bathgate Avenue, New York City.
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The 1950 census places Robert again at 1985 Bathgate Avenue, New York City. It correctly identifies him as age 18, and states that he worked as a shipping clerk for a newspaper company.
According to the 1950 census, Robert resided at the Bathgate Avenue address with his mother Fannie, who was purportedly still age 50 (seven years after she had previously claimed to immigration authorities to be age 50), and Robert’s brother Irving, age 24.
Irving was listed as unemployed and moreover, according to the census record, had not worked for the prior year. Fannie was employed full-time as a milliner in a hat factory.
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Military records reflect that Irving J. Spiegel, born in 1926 and a resident of 1985 Bathgate Avenue, who had completed two years of high school education, had flown bomber planes over Germany during the war. In his military documents, Irving described himself as single, with two dependents.
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On February 2, 1929, a baby girl given the name Aileen Beverly Leone Maxwell was born in Lucea, Hanover, Jamaica, to William Maxwell and Daisy (nee Tibbits) Maxwell. Her birth was registered by her parents.
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In 1954, Robert Spiegel and Aileen Maxwell were married in New York City. Their marriage license was given License No. 10284.
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The following year, the Kingston, Jamaica, Gleaner reported on June 6, 1955:
Miss Leonie Maxwell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Maxwell, was married recently in New York City to Mr. Robert Spiegel of the U.S.A. Both the bride and groom are students at the New York Institute of Dietetics. The bride left the island nearly two years ago for New York. Her wedding gown was chantilly lace and nylon tulle. The bodice was fashioned with a wide, scalloped neckline and elbow-length sleeves. Her three tier skirt of chantilly lace was over pleated nylon tulle. Her fingertip-length veil was adorned with pearls.
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If the claim regarding the couple studying at the New York Institute of Dietetics was even true, their studies at this institution didn’t last long. In May of 1956, a number of advertisements bearing Robert’s photograph appeared in the Kingston, Jamaica Gleaner. The advertisements described Robert as a psychologist, author, lecturer, and “practitioner in auto suggestion,” and identified him as “Dr. J. Robert Spiegel.” Readers were invited to come meet Robert on May 21, 1956, at Record Plaza, where he would be autographing his “latest” “world-wide” 33 and 1/3 RPM record, “How to Stop Smoking in 7 days by Auto-Suggestion.”
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On May 1, 1959, three residents of 1985 Bathgate Avenue, Bronx, New York, came through customs, having returned from a trip to Jamaica. They identified themselves as “Robert D. Spiegel” born in New York (in addition to giving himself a false middle initial, Robert neglected to complete the I-94-A fully, specifically by leaving his birthdate blank), “Leonie A. Spiegel” born in Jamaica on February 2, 1929, and their minor daughter, and “Sharon S. Spiegel,” born in New York. Someone also neglected to fully complete Sharon’s I-94-A, specifically by leaving her birthdate blank.
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Leonie had taken Sharon to Jamaica two years earlier. There are no publicly available records pertaining to their outbound transport from the United States to Jamaica. There is, however, a record pertaining to their return to the United States. That publicly available record does not provide their address, but Sharon is identified as weighing 1 stone 5 pounds (a total of 19 pounds), and Leonie is identified as weighing six stone 5 pounds (89 pounds). Interestingly, Leonie used the name “Aileen Spiegel,” and the records assert that Aileen has no middle initial. Aileen was / is her true legal first name, but it is a lie to say that she has no middle initial.
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Almost two years later, on January 5, 1958, the Kingston, Jamaica Gleaner reported:
Staying at the Tamarind Hotel are Mr. and Mrs. Bob Spiegel and daughter Sharon of Miami, Florida. Mrs. Spiegel is the former Leonie Maxwell, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. W. J. Maxwell of Lucea and has been in the United States for several years. A welcome party in their honour was given last Saturday night by Messers. Horrace, Ray, and Dennis Maxwell, brothers of Mrs. Spiegel. It was a very enjoyable affair.
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In 1963, roughly five years after their 1958 visit to Jamaica, Leonie petitioned for naturalization, in Louisiana. Although I am in possession of the index showing that she petitioned in 1963, I do not possess the petition itself. However, the fact that she petitioned for naturalization in Louisiana demonstrates that that at least she was residing in Louisiana at the time. Since she stated that she didn’t leave Robert’s side for over 40 years, presumably Robert, young Sharon, and also baby Michelle were living in Louisiana at that time.
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People who knew Robert personally relate that he stated that Leonie was a Cayman Island heiress. She wasn’t. Not only was she not born in the Cayman Islands, Leonie’s father’s estate was litigated (with the judge ruling against her) long before Robert started telling people that his wife was a Cayman Islands heiress.
Leonie’s father did leave an estate, but not to her. On November 9, 1967, the Gleaner reported that the Supreme Court had upheld the will of the late William Josiah Maxwell, the father of Horrace, Ray, Dennis, and Leonie, and the husband of Daisy Maxwell, who had contended that William’s signature was a forgery and that the person to whom his estate had been bequeathed had exercised undue influence. The court disagreed. The article reported:
The estate, which one of the executors described as “a sizeable one,” included 112 acres of land at Paradise and three houses at Lucea, Hanover.
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Robert apparently wasn’t banking on Leonie’s inheritance in any event. In May of 1966, advertisements appeared in the Houston Chronicle with Robert’s photo on them, selling a record that would purportedly assist people in stopping smoking in seven days. He identified himself as “Dr. J. Robert Spiegel.”
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On page 55 of the November 15, 1969, San Antonio, Texas Express and News, was an advertisement stating:
SCIENCE OF THE MIND
Dr. J. Robert Spiegel of Houston, director and founder of the Science of the Mind Foundation there, is conducting Sunday evening meetings at 7:30 p.m. in the Sheraton Inn, 1400 Austin Hwy.
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On page 4 of the July 10, 1970 edition of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram was a photograph of Robert, with a brief local news blurb:
GUEST – Dr. J Robert Spiegel of Houston, Science of Mind Foundation director, will speak at the 10:45 a.m. service tomorrow in First Church of Religious Science, 2001 6^th Ave. His subject is “What Religious Science Teaches.”
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On page 8 of the June 18, 1970 edition of the Houston Daily Cougar was this advertisement:
HOME OF UNIVERSAL LIFE
“Teaching Aquarian Meditation For The New Age
Meets Every Sunday, 11:00 A.M. At The World Trade Center Auditorium
Houston, Texas
DR. J. ROBERT SPIEGEL (BRAHMADANDA) DIRECTOR - FOUNDER
Aquarian Meditation Initiation for the first time offered through correspondence. For those sincere students wishing to bypass evolution and enter the 5th Kingdom. Initiation includes meditation technique, Mantra, how to "live” 24 hours a day, and much more. Write for application today:
P.O. Box 53328 Houston, Texas 052
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From the Galveston Daily News, May 02, 1971, Pg. 31:
AQUARIAN MEDITATION SOCIETY PRESENTS DR. J. ROBERT SPIEGEL AN AUTHOR, LECTURER, TEACHER OF YOGA & SELF DEVELOPMENT WILL SPEAK ON MAN, MIND & THE UNIVERSE WEDNESDAY, MAY 5th AT 7:30 P.M. IN THE RECREATION CENTER HARRIS COUNTY PARK, NASA RD. # 1 ALL WELCOME — DONATION $1.50
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The 1972 Spiritual Community Guide lists Robert twice, in the San Diego area. First, on page 117, using his alias “J. Robert Spiegel”:
THE TEMPLE OF METAPHYSICAL ABUNDANCE. J. Robert Spiegel, 1118 Torrey Pines Rd., 92037. Teaches yoga, nutrition, ESP, metaphysics, psychology, mind control
Second, on page 124, in which he, as one might have predicted, was masquerading as some sort of medical man or scholar:
"AQUARIAN MEDITATION SOCIETY, U. S. Grant Hotel, Attn: Dr. Robert Spiegel, 453-7588"
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Also in 1972, Volume 25 of San Diego Magazine published in November advertised gift certificates for the “Astrology Research Center.” “Give your loved one the gift of love. Only $50” said the advertisement. Where was this entity located? At 1118 Torrey Pines Road, the same address as Robert’s Temple of Metaphysical Abundance. The advertisement purported that person identified as “Lil Canaan” was the director. The telephone number was 459-6400.
In 2013, the San Diego Union Tribune published the obituary for Lillian Mulonas, who founded the La Jolla “Astrology Research Center.” At this point in time, unless Robert Adams’ only surviving daughter, Michelle/ Prentiss/ Avantae knows the answer and talks, we will not know what relationship, if any, existed between Robert’s Temple of Metaphysical Abundance and Lilian’s Astrology Research Center, both of which were located at 1118 Torrey Pines Road in 1972.
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From the July 12, 1973, San Diego Reader:
BRAHMADANDA FOUNDATION
“Teachings of the Cosmic Way” meets Sundays, 11:00 a.m., U.S. Grant Hotel, Crystal Room. Free admission, refreshments served. Call 453-7588 for more information.
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On page 51 of the June 29, 1974 edition of Phoenix’s Arizona Republic was the following advertisement:
Speaker from San Diego
Dr. J. Robert Spiegel from San Diego, a traveler and lecturer, will speak at 8 p.m., Friday in Universal Series Center, 4340 N. Seventh Ave., on the topic “Science of Being.”
He is the founder of the “Aquarian Meditation Society” in Jamaica and is founder and publisher of “Equinox,” a philosophical newspaper.
*******
The family (Adams or Spiegel, however one might want to refer to them) have resided in (that I know of) New York, Miami, Jamaica, Louisiana, La Jolla, Los Angeles, Houston, New Mexico, Hawaii, Las Vegas, Scottsdale, Sedona, and a number of cities in North Carolina.
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In at least the 1990’s, before he left for Sedona, Robert Adams used the address PO Box 7210, Jordan Avenue, D-30, Canoga Park, CA. He used that address on correspondence he wrote, and on at least one published document. Who else used that address? The data aggregators show that this address was also used by a Michelle K. Spiegel, and a person going by the name Leonie Maxwell. Michelle and Leonie also used other addresses associated with Robert, those being 1815 Willis Avenue Panorama City, and 21551 Burbank Boulevard, Woodland Hills.
*******
The California Birth Index shows that Michelle K. Spiegel was born on October 1, 1960, in Los Angeles County, to a mother with the maiden name Maxwell.
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In later life, Michelle used the addresses above that are associated with Robert and Leonie, as well as an address of 12004 Vanowen Street #14, North Hollywood. This is the same address at which Denniston Keith Maxwell, one of Leonie’s younger brothers, resided at, after his immigration to the United States. Denniston was one of Michelle’s uncles.
In a recent Facebook posting, Michelle/Avantae stated: “Never knew anything personal about said uncles, etc. Never asked, never cared.” Really? She shared an address with an uncle? Her uncle lived within a few minutes’ drive from her parents, and Michelle/Avantae never knew anything about him?
As an aside, Michelle/Avantae alleged (or admitted) that she “never cared” about anything personal regarding her uncles. If that is true, what does that tell us about Michelle/Avantae’s fundamental character? Antisocial? Psychopathic? Narcissistic in the extreme?
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On August 2, 1996, Michelle, going by the name Avantae E. Deven, married Tyson Ruben Alvarez in Las Vegas. The two had addresses in common in Arizona, Nevada, and Montana.
*******
Robert “Adams” died on or about March 2, 1997, in Sedona, Arizona.
Shortly after that, in the spring of 1997, “Nicole Adams” and “Avantae Deven” (both aliases; the correct legal names are Aileen Beverly Leonie Spiegel and Michelle K. Spiegel) purchased a home together in Sedona, on Navahopi Road. Shortly after the purchase, “Nicole” quit-claimed her portion to “Avantae.”
On July 17, 2001, Tyson, still married to “Avantae,” quit-claimed any interest in the Navahopi property to “Avantae,” and had the county recorder send the deed to “Avantae” in care of the Infinity Institute, at that time located at 9101 W. Sahara Ave. Suite 105 C29 (in other words, a private post box), in Las Vegas.
Avantae divorced Tyson in 2006. She had, by then, moved to North Carolina. She “served” Tyson via publication summons, claiming that she was unable to find him, despite his information being on multiple data aggregators.
You can go to various Facebook groups, and other sources, to pull up the documents that people have uncovered showing who is associated with the "Infinity Institute," and in what fashion, and also the addresses that they have used over the years.
In any event, this is the information regarding Robert that I think that people need to be aware of.
Why turn to a known liar and con man for spiritual guidance?
1A tallis is a prayer shawl.
2The ship’s manifest states that he was age 14, which conflicts by one year with what Samuel identified as his date of birth. These errors are not uncommon; his fare could have been purchased when he was age 14 and the records not updated.

My mother in law is a classic boomer narc emotional abuser. If my husband asks her to respect a boundary or lets her know she hurt him in anyway she absolutely plays the victim in such a huge dramatic psychotic way. A few months ago she went full spiral from hell complete with suicide threats. She harassed me and stressed me out while I was pregnant. She created a flying monkey with one son who jumps to her defense in a second and talks so much crap about me. Smear campaigns the whole 9. She’s just a miserable vile human unless she’s being kept happy.
I 10000% stand by if any normal human heard story of what happened in December that no one would side with her. And def no one would blame me but then there’s my husband.
The day it started I tried letting him know what she did upset me. I felt violated in my own house. His first response was she wouldn’t do that and I’m known to be dramatic. And keep in mind I was pregnant for months he fought me on this. There was a point it was so bad I seriously thought about divorce being the only viable option. I refuse to let another human being abuse me and def not my children so if he couldn’t see his mother was a whack job I couldn’t stay and it sucked because I love him more than anyone I’ve ever known. We genuinely have no other real issues. Normal couple stuff here and there but overall we are insanely compatible except with his mom and it broke my heart he would let his own abuser break us up.
Months of fighting and I still he started to understand. We def seem to be more on the same page. Even if we see things different we can agree on some core issues. In that time she’s continued to cross his boundaries because she can’t help herself lol literally she makes it worse for herself by the second she’s so psychotic. But in her head she’s a victim always 1000000000% of the time. She’s also absolutely delusional.
Anyway. I don’t care what she does as long as I can stay no contact and our kids are protected from her. If he wants a relationship for god knows what reason I support it. I do realize he’s an abuse victim. So many things seems normal to him because she’s been abusing him since birth. His entire existence was created to make her happy. I personally have u fortunately Ron the gauntlet of abuse by my own parents and I really do believe emotional is up there with one of the hardest to overcome because that’s literally how you’re raised and taught to act. So I give him grace and I’m trying to work on myself and now i react to things.
Mother’s Day though. Pretty sure it broke me. I’m trying to get over it but idk if I can or how long it’ll take. The morning was a stupid grumpy morning because we are both exhausted adults with babies so I get it. But I saw a notification on Facebook that he tagged me in something. In the past he’s written really sweet stuff about me on occasion and I really thought that’s what it was. I was excited to read it but when I opened the page it’s a one line basic happy Mother’s Day but to me and his mom. She’s blocked because seeing her name on anything literally gives me anxiety and I want to vomit and he thought this was a good idea.
Of course I lost it. I was so hurt. And he says “I shouldn’t have to choose between my wife and mother” that’s what broke me. You know what he’s right he shouldn’t but it’s not my fault. He said he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings etc. so he chose to hurt mine who literally hasn’t done anything but hold his mom accountable to protect our kids. He could’ve written something nice and still posted something separate for his mom on her wall if he really felt like it. Or honestly just dont Post anything which wouldnt hurt as bad.
So the mother of his children who works her as off taking care of two under two, keeping the house as clean as possible, dinner every night, pack his lunch for work, work on myself and apologize if I do hurt his feelings, the woman he’s supposedly loves gets nothing because for forbid we hurt the mother who’s done nothing but act like a lunatic for 6 months.
I know he truly believes it’s both of us and it’s not. It’s her fault. She’s unwell. She’s miserable. She’s manipulative and actually emotionally abusive. So go cry we can never have a normal relationship with her. I don’t care. I’ll be the villian to protect my kids and hopefully now that I feel absolutely nothing but emptiness it won’t hurt anymore. I’m literally broken.

My mother in law is a classic boomer narc emotional abuser. If my husband asks her to respect a boundary or lets her know she hurt him in anyway she absolutely plays the victim in such a huge dramatic psychotic way. A few months ago she went full spiral from hell complete with suicide threats. She harassed me and stressed me out while I was pregnant. She created a flying monkey with one son who jumps to her defense in a second and talks so much crap about me. Smear campaigns the whole 9. She’s just a miserable vile human unless she’s being kept happy.
I 10000% stand by if any normal human heard story of what happened in December that no one would side with her. And def no one would blame me but then there’s my husband.
The day it started I tried letting him know what she did upset me. I felt violated in my own house. His first response was she wouldn’t do that and I’m known to be dramatic. And keep in mind I was pregnant for months he fought me on this. There was a point it was so bad I seriously thought about divorce being the only viable option. I refuse to let another human being abuse me and def not my children so if he couldn’t see his mother was a whack job I couldn’t stay and it sucked because I love him more than anyone I’ve ever known. We genuinely have no other real issues. Normal couple stuff here and there but overall we are insanely compatible except with his mom and it broke my heart he would let his own abuser break us up.
Months of fighting and I still he started to understand. We def seem to be more on the same page. Even if we see things different we can agree on some core issues. In that time she’s continued to cross his boundaries because she can’t help herself lol literally she makes it worse for herself by the second she’s so psychotic. But in her head she’s a victim always 1000000000% of the time. She’s also absolutely delusional.
Anyway. I don’t care what she does as long as I can stay no contact and our kids are protected from her. If he wants a relationship for god knows what reason I support it. I do realize he’s an abuse victim. So many things seems normal to him because she’s been abusing him since birth. His entire existence was created to make her happy. I personally have u fortunately Ron the gauntlet of abuse by my own parents and I really do believe emotional is up there with one of the hardest to overcome because that’s literally how you’re raised and taught to act. So I give him grace and I’m trying to work on myself and now i react to things.
Mother’s Day though. Pretty sure it broke me. I’m trying to get over it but idk if I can or how long it’ll take. The morning was a stupid grumpy morning because we are both exhausted adults with babies so I get it. But I saw a notification on Facebook that he tagged me in something. In the past he’s written really sweet stuff about me on occasion and I really thought that’s what it was. I was excited to read it but when I opened the page it’s a one line basic happy Mother’s Day but to me and his mom. She’s blocked because seeing her name on anything literally gives me anxiety and I want to vomit and he thought this was a good idea.
Of course I lost it. I was so hurt. And he says “I shouldn’t have to choose between my wife and mother” that’s what broke me. You know what he’s right he shouldn’t but it’s not my fault. He said he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings etc. so he chose to hurt mine who literally hasn’t done anything but hold his mom accountable to protect our kids. He could’ve written something nice and still posted something separate for his mom on her wall if he really felt like it. Or honestly just dont Post anything which wouldnt hurt as bad.
So the mother of his children who works her as off taking care of two under two, keeping the house as clean as possible, dinner every night, pack his lunch for work, work on myself and apologize if I do hurt his feelings, the woman he’s supposedly loves gets nothing because for forbid we hurt the mother who’s done nothing but act like a lunatic for 6 months.
I know he truly believes it’s both of us and it’s not. It’s her fault. She’s unwell. She’s miserable. She’s manipulative and actually emotionally abusive. So go cry we can never have a normal relationship with her. I don’t care. I’ll be the villian to protect my kids and hopefully now that I feel absolutely nothing but emptiness it won’t hurt anymore. I’m literally broken.

My mother in law is a classic boomer narc emotional abuser. If my husband asks her to respect a boundary or lets her know she hurt him in anyway she absolutely plays the victim in such a huge dramatic psychotic way. A few months ago she went full spiral from hell complete with suicide threats. She harassed me and stressed me out while I was pregnant. She created a flying monkey with one son who jumps to her defense in a second and talks so much crap about me. Smear campaigns the whole 9. She’s just a miserable vile human unless she’s being kept happy.
I 10000% stand by if any normal human heard story of what happened in December that no one would side with her. And def no one would blame me but then there’s my husband.
The day it started I tried letting him know what she did upset me. I felt violated in my own house. His first response was she wouldn’t do that and I’m known to be dramatic. And keep in mind I was pregnant for months he fought me on this. There was a point it was so bad I seriously thought about divorce being the only viable option. I refuse to let another human being abuse me and def not my children so if he couldn’t see his mother was a whack job I couldn’t stay and it sucked because I love him more than anyone I’ve ever known. We genuinely have no other real issues. Normal couple stuff here and there but overall we are insanely compatible except with his mom and it broke my heart he would let his own abuser break us up.
Months of fighting and I still he started to understand. We def seem to be more on the same page. Even if we see things different we can agree on some core issues. In that time she’s continued to cross his boundaries because she can’t help herself lol literally she makes it worse for herself by the second she’s so psychotic. But in her head she’s a victim always 1000000000% of the time. She’s also absolutely delusional.
Anyway. I don’t care what she does as long as I can stay no contact and our kids are protected from her. If he wants a relationship for god knows what reason I support it. I do realize he’s an abuse victim. So many things seems normal to him because she’s been abusing him since birth. His entire existence was created to make her happy. I personally have u fortunately Ron the gauntlet of abuse by my own parents and I really do believe emotional is up there with one of the hardest to overcome because that’s literally how you’re raised and taught to act. So I give him grace and I’m trying to work on myself and now i react to things.
Mother’s Day though. Pretty sure it broke me. I’m trying to get over it but idk if I can or how long it’ll take. The morning was a stupid grumpy morning because we are both exhausted adults with babies so I get it. But I saw a notification on Facebook that he tagged me in something. In the past he’s written really sweet stuff about me on occasion and I really thought that’s what it was. I was excited to read it but when I opened the page it’s a one line basic happy Mother’s Day but to me and his mom. She’s blocked because seeing her name on anything literally gives me anxiety and I want to vomit and he thought this was a good idea.
Of course I lost it. I was so hurt. And he says “I shouldn’t have to choose between my wife and mother” that’s what broke me. You know what he’s right he shouldn’t but it’s not my fault. He said he didn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings etc. so he chose to hurt mine who literally hasn’t done anything but hold his mom accountable to protect our kids. He could’ve written something nice and still posted something separate for his mom on her wall if he really felt like it. Or honestly just dont Post anything which wouldnt hurt as bad.
So the mother of his children who works her as off taking care of two under two, keeping the house as clean as possible, dinner every night, pack his lunch for work, work on myself and apologize if I do hurt his feelings, the woman he’s supposedly loves gets nothing because for forbid we hurt the mother who’s done nothing but act like a lunatic for 6 months.
I know he truly believes it’s both of us and it’s not. It’s her fault. She’s unwell. She’s miserable. She’s manipulative and actually emotionally abusive. So go cry we can never have a normal relationship with her. I don’t care. I’ll be the villian to protect my kids and hopefully now that I feel absolutely nothing but emptiness it won’t hurt anymore. I’m literally broken.

Blackstone owns over 300,000 rental units. It also hates rent control laws. So after spending tens of millions of dollars to defeat a rent control law, they then proceeded to do exactly what you would suspect, and stuck it to renters with rent hikes and increased evictions. Blackstone is actually doubling-down on buying single-family homes to rent, jacking up those rents, and kicking families to the curb. All in the name of increasing cash flow. You might be thinking that causing pain and suffering in order to increase profits is a winning strategy for a Wall Street private equity firm, and normally you would be right. But like Enron's infamous Death Star) and Ricochet strategies, there are economic limits to capitalist greed that no amount of pain and suffering can satisfy. People are starting to notice.

Since its inception, the fund says it has delivered an annualized net return of 10.5% — almost double an index of publicly traded REITs. Even as commercial real estate has been battered in the wake of the pandemic, BREIT has somehow managed to defy gravity, outperforming comparable funds by seemingly fantastic margins. In the fall of 2022, after the Fed's interest-rate increases began to shake the commercial real-estate market, investors began asking for their money back — more than $15 billion to date. Faced with a run on the fund, Blackstone cited a provision that allowed it to take its time refunding antsy investors — a decision that only served to further alarm the market. Shares in Blackstone tumbled by nearly 20%. Last year, BREIT failed to generate enough cash to cover its annual dividend... the returns the fund claims it has delivered depend almost entirely on BREIT's own estimates, which skeptics believe are wildly inflated. What's more, when BREIT faced a flood of redemption requests from investors, it only fulfilled all those requests after raising cash from new investors — including one that received a sweetheart deal from Blackstone to invest in BREIT. "It is the absolute definition of a Ponzi scheme," said Nate Koppikar, who runs a hedge fund called Orso Partners that has shorted Blackstone's stock because of concerns over BREIT. 

Hmmm. Fantastic returns that defy the overall market. Mark-to-make believe accounting. Using new accounts to pay for redemption requests. Where have I heard this before? Oh yeh. Enron. And it gets worse.

In its own fine print, in fact, BREIT does provide several other measures that are more analogous to how most REITS define cash flow; by those measures, the fund has never been able to cover its dividend from its cash flow... not being able to pay the dividend you've promised can be seen as a Ponzi-ish warning, because it means the money has to come from selling off assets, borrowing money, or attracting new investors — a reality that BREIT acknowledges on the third page of its financial documents (and one that the SEC has noted as a risk factor for all private REITS). And if you subtract Blackstone's fees, BREIT has covered less than 50% of its dividend distribution since its inception. 

When things began to get shaky in 2022, Blackstone went to the University of California retirement fund and gave them a very sweet deal in exchange for $4 billion in pension money. But even that might not save Blackstone this time.

Blackstone owes the University of California twice as much as it did last quarter as part of a complex transaction to shore up its flagship real estate fund. 

Barron, Laird. “Jaws of Saturn.” The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All. Night Shade Books, 2013.

Summary

Carol is Franco’s girl, and when he learns a two-bit stage magician is practicing hypnotism on her, Franco goes to pay the old man a visit. But Phil Wary is no mere purveyor of parlor tricks. The line between dreams and waking, between our reality and one of monstrous dimensions, erodes, as Franco and Carol find themselves ground to bits between the “Jaws of Saturn.”

Characters

• Franco - a private security attache and enforcer. Well groomed, well read, well armed.
• Carol - Franco’s lover and resident of The Broadsword Hotel.
• Phil Wary - an elderly resident of The Broadsword and career stage magician; also a powerful practitioner of the Black Arts.

Story

In the lounge of the Broadsword Hotel, Carol tells Franco of a dream she had of her former lover Marvin Cortez. Franco tries to explain it away as mere messages from her subconscious, but he’s also jealous. In her room, they engage in vigorous sex and Franco observes that, for a moment, one of her irises is inhumanly oblong. He doesn’t know what to make of this and presses Carol on her current state of mind, especially her recent weird dreams. She admits she’s been visiting old Phil Wary in his apartment upstairs, paying him for hypnosis sessions to help kick her smoking habit. That’s all Franco needs to know. This old sheister is trying to get into Carol’s pants and he’s screwing with her head. He’ll pay Phil Wary a visit. But first, he falls asleep and dreams of lovely, voluptuous Carol standing frozen in the Broadsword lobby as a shadow of “colossal dimensions” looms over her.
Franco is a bodyguard/enforcer for millionaire Jacob Wilson and is no stranger to intimidation, violence, and murder. He ferrets out Wary’s number and rings him up. Wary dismisses Franco contemptuously over the phone (“You sound like an oaf, a knuckle dragger.”) so Franco breaks into his apartment where he confronts the old man about making moves on Carol under the guise of therapeutic mesmerism. Phil Wary is both sardonically condescending and oddly patient with Franco, giving him more than one opportunity to walk away. But Franco is consumed with (perhaps nurses) his jealousy and strikes Wary across the face with a belt, ordering him to stay away from his girlfriend. Franco’s action does not have the intended effect. Wary shakes off the blows and effortlessly subdues Franco.
Wary stows the bound Franco in a closet, on tiptoes with a belt tightened around his neck, and leaves the door ajar so he can watch as Carol enters for her hypnosis session. Something’s wrong about the closet: he can’t see its ceiling. The dimension of height goes up and up into darkness. Franco struggles to maintain consciousness and can only watch as Wary entrances Carol then guides her to his apartment wall where he pulls back a flap of old wallpaper and has her look through a hole at… Franco doesn’t know what she could possibly be seeing other than the back lot of the Broadsword. Wary releases Carol from the trance and sends her on her way. Now Wary leads Franco to the wall, telling him, “All this flesh is but a projection. We are the dream of something greater and more dreadful than you could imagine. To gaze into the abyss is to recognize the dreamer and in recognition, to wake.” He forces Franco’s eye against the hole in the wall. Franco passes out. When he comes to, he receives a call on Wary’s phone from his boss Jacob Wilson, who fires him on the spot. Wary offers tepid consolation before ejecting Franco into the hall. Franco suddenly wakes in Carol’s bed, screaming.
Franco and Carol’s nightmares intensify as the boundary between dreaming and waking life erodes. Their nightmares increasingly feature familiar locations distended into cyclopean dimensions, and threats from above - at first tendrils descending from the sky, then the hand of a giant. In desperation, Franco returns to the Broadsword, packing his pistol, but the opportunity to kill Phil Wary has passed if it truly ever existed. He has a vision of Carol in the vaulted hotel lobby and, above them, Wary - now a colossus like the titan Saturn in de Goya’s famous painting - towers above them. The giant picks up Franco and raises him to its face - but Franco “had a long, agonizing moment to recognize his own face mirrored by the primordial aspect of the giant.” Franco is devoured.
There’s a brief coda where Franco (?) wakes, a giant in an ancient or future world, and is joined by his titanic lover. Together they loom over “all the tiny houses and all the tiny works of men.”

Analysis

As I write this, I have just woken from a dream. In the dream, I am asleep and dreaming of looking at a reproduction toy catalog and, sure enough, there are three pages of the old Micronauts toy line with which I am still obsessed. I wonder if these toys will ever be reissued. Then I wake up. There’s a book at the far end of the bed. It’s out of reach and I’m still sleepy and don’t want to stretch to grab it. I wonder, as I so often have: if I focus on that book and believe that waking reality is mine to shape as I do in dreams, can I make that book really leap into my hand? I do, and it does! I double-check to be sure I’m really awake. Yes - yes, I’m awake! This is finally, really happening! I try it again, pulling a rock from the ground through telekinesis. It’s easy. I have come into my own, a demigod among men. Then I wake up, for real this time.
My subconsciousness giggles. Pwned again.
All this to say: it’s disconcerting when the line between dreaming and waking consciousness breaks down, which is what’s happening for Franco and Carol, and at a scale that defies Euclidian geometry.
In fact, Franco’s experience is like stumbling onto the Devil’s Narnia. The closet in Phil Wary’s apartment - like C.S. Lewis’ coat-filled wardrobe - opens onto an impossibly large dimension, one lighted not by a snow-strewn lamppost but a hideous red light. For both Franco and Carol, the gulf between dreams and waking reality is melting away. The dreaminess/nightmarishness doesn’t make their experiences of this other (truer?) world any less real. Again, the occultist tells Franco, “We are the dream of something greater and more dreadful than you could imagine. To gaze into the abyss is to recognize the dreamer and in recognition, to wake.”
In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, the Pevensie children’s true identity is revealed as the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve. Franco and Carol’s journey in “Jaws of Saturn” makes them a kind of Adam and Eve, but of a titanic cast. Their early sex scene shows Franco on the verge of an atavistic state, nearly unbridled from the abstraction that is modern human consciousness. The knowledge he seeks - what is Wary doing to Carol? - opens the door on a transformation that grounds him, bringing him closer to the true, perilous state of being alive, an atavistic state that finds its ultimate form as a titan in the post-civilization world of the coda. And herein we see a common journey for the Barronic hero: the search for Cursed Knowledge begins the Unraveling/Unveiling of Reality culminating in a Hideous Fate which leads to one’s Ultimate Form. (Note: Laird has a story titled "Don't Make Me Assume My Ultimate Form.”)
As I write this, my daughter has just called me from DC, upset by terrible dreams of a book that looks like the Bible, but it’s not the Bible, and our cat Izzy who died a few weeks ago has returned, but she keeps fading in and out of view. In her dream, my daughter is scared to get on an elevator because she’s on roller skates and the people in the building say the elevator is really slow, but the doors open, she gets in and the elevator moves so fast she’s floating. When it stops, the doors open onto a garden filled with people who want her to read a passage from the book that’s not the Bible: it’s Zanderthonis, book 2, chapter 3. And she keeps trying to wake up from the dream so she can tell someone about it but she can’t escape the building.
All this to say: Watch out, friends. The dreams, they’re catching.
Connections to other stories:

• The setting of “Jaws of Saturn” is the Broadsword Hotel, seen previously in “The Broadsword.”
• Carol’s former lover is Marvin Cortez, protagonist of “The Imago Sequence.” She mentions him to Franco, and Franco knows who he is. Franco works for Jacob Wilson, nephew of Teddy Wilson whose disappearance is mentioned in “The Imago Sequence.”
• “Hand of Glory” - Phil Wary - under his pseudonym Helios Augustus - sets Johnny Cope on the trail of Conrad Paxton.
• It’s not insignificant that “Jaws of Saturn” clearly ties together the transhumanism stories of The Imago Sequence to the Old Leech stories of Occultation by placing Franco’s and Carol’s conversation about Marvin Cortez in the Broadsword Hotel where Pershing Dennard ran afoul of the Children of Old Leech.

In part VI, the doctor examining Franco checks his eyes and says “something about coloboma.” ClevelandClinic.org notes: “The most recognizable and common colobomas affect your iris (the colored part of your eye) and cause your pupil (the dark center of your eye) to have a keyhole shape.” In other words, what was happening to Carol is now happening to Franco, and the change is the key to unlocking the underlying reality of the world.

Discussion

1. What did Franco see through the hole in the wall in Phil Wary’s apartment?
2. What’s the significance of Saturn, and specifically the de Goya painting of Saturn eating his children?
3. Did I miss connections to any other Laird Barron story?
4. Which Broadsword resident has the worse fate? Pershing Dennard (“The Broadsword”) or Franco (“Jaws of Saturn”)?
5. Which other Barronic heroes undergo the ordeal of Cursed Knowledge > Unveiling Reality > Hideous Fate > Ultimate Form?

I'm a new FBA seller (private label), currently in my second month of operation. I launched with a single product to test the waters. During the first month, I consistently received 1-2 orders per day. However, as I entered the second month, my sales plummeted to zero, and it's been nearly a week without any activity.
To date, I've garnered one seller feedback and a product rating (although no review content), both are 5 stars. My account health and product listing (no suppression, buy box is always available) are all in good standing.
I've been always running Amazon PPC and Facebook ads. Comparatively, my page traffic and click-through rate have remained stable, yet there has been no conversion whatsoever. While my product's price may be positioned at the higher end among competitors, I do offer a couple of unique selling points.
Considering the lack of sales traction, I'm uncertain about what further actions to take. Should I consider discontinuing this product?

Missouri.
I dated a girl in 2010 and 2011. In 2010 she broke into my apartment by climbing thru my bedroom window and destroyed my room. My roommates were home and witnessed it. We called the police. Officer A and other officers arrived. Officer A didn't file a police report. No follow up contact from the police department happened. No charges were filed.
The same girl stalked me to the domestic violence shelter I worked at. Her sorority sister lived in an apartment across the street. She blew up the emergency hotline all day trying to speak to me while I was working. Repeated phone calls that prevented anyone else from calling in. The executive director told me I would have to file a police report, obtain an order of protection or resign. I called dispatch who sent Officer A to the shelter. He called her and asked her to stop. No charges were filed. No police report was done.
The next year I broke up with her again, in 2011. She followed me home from the bars. I went to sleep in my bed. I woke up and she was on top of me with me inside of her. When she realized I was awake she pinned me down and told me to change my Facebook status to "in a relationship." I threw her off of me into a wall. I called the police. They sent Officer A and maybe 5 other officers. They got her out of the apartment. No charges were filed. No police report was done.
I've since contacted the police department to find out why no reports were done. They told me Officer A no longer works for the department and if I want to file charges I need to contact an attorney. They wouldn't give me a reason why.
I called again and told then I was recording the phone call. This time they transferred me to a supervisor who told me I need to call dispatch and report the crimes. So I did. Dispatch told me they were aware of me and would need to contact the police department before assisting me. They ended up transferring me to an officer who took my report. They sent it to detectives. I called but the police department wouldn't let me speak to any detectives.
I called yesterday and explained to the front desk Officer what happened. She told me she doubts that I was instructed to call an attorney. I got her to transfer me to a detective. I left a voicemail.
The detective called me back this morning and apologized. He said they contacted the prosecutors office to see what they could do. Prosecutors office said it's out of the 3 year statute of limitations. He said they did a report for me if I want to pursue civil litigation. He said that Officer A no longer works for the department. He retired so there are no actions the police department can take against him. The detective apologized for it not being handled properly.
What civil actions can I take? My mental health is not great. Relationships are difficult for me to sustain most of the time if they are intimate. I've gone to counseling and the counselors believe this was a catalyst for my mental health decline. That's lead to relationships with women who weren't positive impacts on my life. That's resulted in another sexual assault. Holding down a professional job is difficult for me. I spend a lot of time not in the present. I've been told by a professional that this is CPTSD. My unstable career paths have resulted in medical insurance not being a guarantee so mental health treatment is kind of, "where I can get it when I can get it."
I used to be normal and confident. I want that back. I don't think I am going to get that back. I need to know what civil actions I can take and against who.
Thank you.

I (27f) was brought up in a house with my brother (24m), my mum (47f) and dad (45m). When I was younger my parents decided to have 2 more children, 2 girls - now 12 and 10. I now also have my own children, 7f, 4m, and 2f, and am in a beautiful happy marriage.
A little back story, I was pretty much a scapegoat my whole life, my brother the golden child, let's just say none of us are on speaking terms with him anymore due to him always getting what he wanted when he was younger. As he grew and after the 2 younger of us were born, he started hearing more "no's", he didnt like that and after a lot of threats, holes in walls, drugs etc, I decided to cut all contact with him. He then decided to cut contact with our parents 🤷🏽‍♀️
Anyway, we recently found out that our 7yo has adhd, and our 4yo has adhd and asd. I also found symptoms in myself that made me question my brain, and got diagnosed with asd, adhd and cptsd (i dont remember my childhood from 5yo-13yo, but remember all the crap traumatic parts). Whilst we were getting our array of diagnoses my parents decided to go through their own processes with my sisters, still in the process, no diagnoses have been made. This is where it starts, the 12yo, I'll call her Stacy, she is me, I was her, she is the scapegoat, she gets the blame for everything, nothing she does is right, she doesn't get help, doesn't get hugs and kisses or love. I see the ptsd symptoms coming out in her and it hurts my heart, I want to take her, adopt her and run away with her. I give her the love she needs because i can see she doesnt get it from our parents, not gonna lie, she has her faults, we all do, we're only human, but compared to our sister and brother, she's amazing.
The 10yo, I'll call her Anna, she is horrible, she makes mean comments, she manipulates to get her own way, she falsely accuses people - and not of small things, she craves attention and loves to be in the centre, she hates when my 7yo has any sort of attention and will try her best to steal it, especially from our mum, it's like she knows how to hurt your feelings and will do it if you don't do what she wants, she's showed my 7yo inappropriate videos, one day I was looking after her because she was "sick" I was in the bathroom, heard my 4yo (who was also sick with whooping cough at the time), crying begging her to stop she didn't realise I had opened the door and caught her hitting him on the head with a pillow, I told her to stop and she did. Anyway she is always looking for approval especially from female adults, she is just mean, she doesnt do anything wrong, she gets coddled while Stacy gets the blame for everything, and gets punished for everything even if she didnt do anything. My parents do nothing, they don't explain to her what she's done is wrong or why it's wrong, they sit on their phones all day, everyday and just say "oh she just has autism", but it's not an excuse... we're really not dumb, you can teach us that it's not okay to do things. I know this is how they handle it because we live on the same property, in separate dwellings, and it's the same everyday pretty much, I try my best to keep separated from them, especially Anna because she is having a negative mental effect on our 7yo, but they come over uninvited and say "mum and dad are being boring, they're just on their phones like always". Everytime I go over they've either locked themselves in the room or are sitting on the couch looking at Facebook, and expect the kids to just watch TV all day, not doing anything. I just see the same cycle happening again, Anna turning out like our druggo brother, and Stacy ending up with CPTSD and wanting to run away.
Anna falsely accused myself of scratching her with a stick today, when I was nowhere near her, she put on a whole act, crying and everything. This isn't the first time this has happened, the first time was falsely accusing my husband of something similar, when I was with them and told the truth whilst my mum was on her side and was never there. Tonight, I got deathstared by my mum, usually its the silent treatment, but also got told "Anna feels like you treat Your son like he has autism but you don't treat her like she has autism", she hasn't been diagnosed either so we don't know if it really is autism, and I treat my son with respect because he treats me with respect, I treat him the way he treats me, with love and kindness (i told mum this in different words). There is no love, kindness or respect in Anna, and if there is you can't see it, it's like she demands respect but won't give it, to anyone at all. If she doesnt get her way, then all hell breaks loose.
So anyway I told my mum "i have autism too mum. you can't use autism as an excuse for the rest of her life. Females, especially where we live, will not tolerate these accusations and comments and she will get knocked out, instead of saying 'she has autistim' teach her what shes doing is wrong" all she said to that was "well, if that happens, that's a life lesson she has to learn" but I don't think it should get to that point? Just teach her while you can before you regret it?
Now i know no one is the same, i know no autistic brain is the same, i know we say inapproriate things and we dont know the meanings sometimes etc. But i dont think using it as an excuse is okay? Its as if they've got the idea of autism in their head and now they dont have to discipline or teach her whats right from wrong? Anyway, I'm always the bad guy according to my parents, or am I? You tell me, I dunno. I'm used to always getting the blame so I sometimes I wonder if I actually am the AH? 🤔
I love my siblings, all 3 of them. Regardless of what has happened between my brother and I, or my sisters and I, I will always love them. I miss my brother, when we wasn't intoxicated he was the best person ever, intoxication is his life now and he's not the person I used to know. I love my sisters dearly and I would do anything to save both from this cycle.

So me and my friend are starting to get into backpacking and are looking at options for overnight trips, we live in England so there is a lot of private property so being stealthy is definetly top priority, aside from that we are mainly looking for more budget equipment, weight and packability is definetly a bonus but I can live with bulkier gear.
So far I have narrowed it down to: A tarp set up which I would think to combine with a ground sheet since it gets really wet over here, combined with a smaller tent like the snugpak stratosphere bivy tent inside the tarp, now I don't know if this is a good or bad idea but it makes sense to me since it would add another layer of protection from the water as well as keep bugs out (which especially now in summer are a pain). Now is there a better way of going about this or does this sound like a viable set up? Another thing is if we used this tarp set up we could both fit inside instead of having 2 separate tents for example.
A hammock set up, to be honest I haven't really researched this but it definetly seems to check all the boxes except being stealthy, having to set up a tarp over the hammock and all would stand out I'd imagine with it being off the ground and all.
Or just a regular double wall tent set up I guess but even 1 person tents seem to be as big as the tarp idea for example, and id trust the tarp a lot more to be waterproof but maybe I'm wrong.
I was also looking at military style camo netting to throw over whatever shelter we choose, has anyone tried this and does it hold up in windy/rainy weather?

One year ago my husband(34m) and I(27f) were at marriage counseling and it came out that my husband was finding random girls on Facebook and instagram and sending them compliments and leaving comments on their posts regarding their looks. And had been doing this over our entire relationship, even while I was depressed and contemplating suicide he was messaging other girls (with no answers)
With the suggestion of the marriage counselor and my own personal counselor it was recommended that social media be deactivated while we try to better the marriage, his counselor also co-signed on this. After a while and a lot of arguing he did it.
A couple of months later, while at a store together my husband stopped a girl to compliment and ask her about her jacket, she looked uncomfortable but answered and walked away. I was annoyed but went about my day. A few days later he does something similar while complimenting a girls glasses.
I took that to my therapist and she encouraged me to talk to him about why I didn’t like it, specifically because he does not talk to me or compliment me in that manner and it was bringing back social media vibes.
A month later my sisters baby father accused my husband and sister of sleeping together, called me and told me they were actively fucking as we were on the phone. This was false as my husband was in bed sleeping with me in that moment, baby daddy later apologized for the accusation.
April. He asks for Facebook back, says it’s for networking for his business and to connect with people to find a better job. I told him I wasn’t comfortable. Over the course of the same conversation multiple times I eventually got fed up and told him he’s clearly going to do what he wants despite my discomfort so do whatever. A week later his now active account pops up and we argue because he didn’t inform me that he had reactivated it.
Mind you in all of this, no actual progress has been made in rebuilding trust, I say all of this^ because I’m explaining that every time I tried to bring my guard down something else happened.
Now flash forward to three days ago. I wake up and open instagram. First thing that pops is people you may know with a user name similar to my husbands. I open it. It’s got 8 followers and is only following one person a female with a private account. But the private account is following my husbands main account which is alive and well.
Idk if you know but instagrams deletes deactivated accounts after 30 days… it’s been like eight months since he got off of social media. But here is the account alive and well. I confronted him with this. He claims that he told me he was reactivating it because there’s a Japanese distributor that prefers contact via instagram and he swears he told me about this.
I told him I want him off social media because I feel disrespected. He says no. He says go ahead and file then when I say I’m done. He proceeds to bring divorce up again after this conversation after I kicked him out of the room to go sleep in the guest room.
Since divorce was brought up I told him he has a choice to make deactivated social media and we can find a new therapist to aggressively work on our marriage or he can file for divorce.
He refuses to deactivate.
Am I wrong to then go ahead and file?

I haven't browsed this subreddit in a while, but I thought I'd pop in and share my experience to hopefully maybe encourage some people here.
I experienced psychosis for the entirety of 2023, and the first couple months of 2024. Due to how long it was, having only dealt with psychotic episodes lasting a few days before (always due to drugs, that would wear off when the drugs were removed), I truly thought I was stuck dealing with it for life, but to my immense relief it finally gave way and ended in March of this year.
The full story:
My psychosis was initially triggered by drugs, specifically heavy stimulant abuse. I was staying up for 3-4 days at a time, repeatedly over the course of months, taking absolutely insane amounts of stimulants during that time, and basically in constant stimulant psychosis. I was hearing voices, paranoid my family were going to kill me or send me to rehab. I even thought that people from rehab were in my ceiling or walls planning to break in and grab me any moment.
I finally ended up landing myself in hospital after it reached its worst point and I called the police and fire brigade thinking my family had set my room on fire to kill me (spoiler alert: there was no fire). They carted me off in an ambulance, but the psych ward was full so I was just put in a regular bed with all the other patients and being still fully psychotic I ripped out my IV and walked out of there about half an hour later, not fully treated, with a $150 bill to deal with (I'm in the EU but on private healthcare). Regardless of the fact I wasn't treated, that event scared the life out of me so much that it was finally what made me decide to get clean.
I stopped the drugs in April 2023, but unfortunately, the psychosis did not go away. It certainly lessened over the few days after I quit drugs, but I was still hearing voices, convinced my family were going to kill me and that I could hear them plotting about it, thought I was constantly being monitored by cameras and spyware on my PC, and thought the neighbours were helping with my family's plot. Months passed with no improvement, I was terrified every day, and it was absolute torture.
Improvement for my symptoms all started with me seeing a psychiatrist in August of last year. I only reluctantly did that, because I wanted to tell the psychiatrist about my fears that my family would hurt me, so that if anything happened some authority figure would know and could contact the police. Once I saw her, and talked to her about my symptoms, I was put on Risperidone. It didn't completely cover my symptoms, my paranoia in particular seemed to be hard to treat and I was still constantly feeling like I was being watched and monitored - but while it was active in my system I almost never heard voices anymore, those mostly only cropped up if I took one of my doses a couple hours late or forgot a dose. After some dose adjustments I mostly stopped believing that my family intended to kill me (occasionally something would trigger those thoughts resurfacing but it was always temporary and would pass).
After a while I tried Haloperidol to see if it would rid me of the paranoia and be less sedating/numbing than Risperidone, it seemed to work better in that regard but gave me horrible akathisia, which was unbearable, so after a few days I returned to Risperidone, just at a slightly lower dose. The sedation and numbness was gone at that dose and it ended up still being enough to provide symptom relief (FWIW: that was, 0.5mg in the morning, 1mg in the afternoon, 1mg before bed).
Then in October I started seeing a therapist. I really can't recommend therapy enough. I truly didn't initially believe therapy could help at all, I figured since psychosis has a neuropharmacological basis, the only thing that could offer any relief was meds, and if the meds weren't ridding me of it entirely, then I was just stuck dealing with those remaining symptoms and my only option would be to try other meds and hope I eventually found something that gave me complete relief.
To my surprise though, therapy actually helped a LOT. My first therapy session I went to, I didn't connect with the therapist and they were very dismissing and patronising, so I booked a session with another therapist instead, and I'm so glad I booked that second therapist and didn't give up. My therapist helped me understand how a lot of my psychotic symptoms seemed to be a protective mechanism that my brain had, trying to protect me from certain things I was afraid of and underexposed to. I started exposure therapy, and started talking about my delusions and figuring out the reasons behind them. This eventually led to me starting to experience days when I no longer felt paranoid or like I was being watched.
Eventually, somewhere around December last year, this became the new norm. I was almost entirely symptom free. I did however still need to depend on my meds to keep it that way. If I was late to take or missed a dose, paranoia and even hallucinations would come back with a vengeance.
Fast forward to March this year though, and I ran out of Risperidone. It was a Sunday so my local pharmacy was closed and I had to wait an additional day to get meds. The longest I had ever missed a dose for before was a few hours, and that would always send me back into full blown intense auditory hallucinations, and sometimes mild visual ones, as well as deep paranoia like thinking my family were going to kill me.
But the day passed and.. Nothing. No voices, no thinking my family wanted to hurt me, no feeling like I was being watched. I just felt normal the entire time. From that point forward, when I forgot to take my doses on time, or forgot them entirely, nothing bad happened. I eventually spoke to my psychiatrist about this and she said I could start taking whatever dose I felt was right on a given day, anywhere from 0mg to 2.5mg total. Now I take far less, and often don't take it at all. In fact in the last week I think I've taken 0.5mg total over the entire week.
And no symptoms have returned. I'm not going to get myself too excited and say it's gone forever, I know there's a possibility I have schizophrenia and that this was one of potentially many episodes I may go through during my life. I'm also not going to stop my meds entirely for the time being, as I know that being on APs for at least a year substantially reduces the risk of a recurrent episode. That said, I at least discovered that a long episode CAN come to an end, something I truly didn't believe during the midst of it. I thought I would be suffering forever, but now I'm finally feeling better.
I thought I would share this story in case anyone else is in the thick of it right now and scared that they'll feel the way they do forever. It can get better.
If you aren't medicated already, I highly suggest it, and making sure to adjust dose or meds as necessary until you get relief from at least most of your symptoms. If a med or dose doesn't work for you, please tell your doctor right away and get it changed, don't suffer in silence!
& Just as importantly, if you aren't in therapy yet, please consider it and don't underestimate just how much therapy can make a difference. Also if therapy doesn't help or you don't gel with your therapist, switch therapist! There are so many different therapists out there with different approaches to therapy, you CAN find one that's right for you. Meds are what kept the majority of my symptoms at bay, but I think therapy is actually what allowed me to improve until the symptoms were gone entirely. Without it I don't think I'd be symptom free today.
Wishing you all the best in your situations, stay strong and hold out hope 💗

One of the lesser known and discussed components to David Kibbe’s approach to developing an authentic personal style is his color system.
What I think is quite unique about his approach is that it is rooted in color theory. I know that sounds kind of obvious… aren’t all personal color systems rooted in color theory? Not quite in the same way, no.
To go back to the absolute basics of color theory we start with the foundational concept of Primary Colors; Red, Yellow and Blue. Where In color theory; Yellow is Warm, Blue is Cool and Red is Neutral.
Disclaimer: Yes! There’s such thing as a Warm Blue or a Cool Yellow. David gives every season their own version of Yellow and Blue. However, we’re referencing a *pure** version of these colors - not a blend.*
So when we say “cool toned” this means the colors have a blue base since blue is cool. The same can be said for the concept of “warm toned” which means the colors have a yellow base since yellow is warm.
Now, nobody’s skin tone is literally yellow (we’re not lemons) or literally blue (we are not lizards). We are a complex blend of pigments that create a unique mix of tones within our skin, hair and eyes. What we’re looking to determine with our personal coloring here is wether we have a blue (cool) or golden (warm) undertone. With our hair and eyes providing extra clues but our undertone being the most important factor to consider.
Before we launch into the **Metamorphosis excerpt on David’s approach to personal color, I would like to pause and remind us all, that, as with all things Kibbe, it bares reminding that it is essential we leave all prior ideas on colouring aside and approach this process with a sense of playful exploration and curiosity. Our personal coloring just as our Kibbe ID is part of what makes us uniquely beautiful. So it’s not about there being a “correct” or “incorrect” answer. It’s about celebrating what is innate to us.*

Discovering the magic of your coloring

So much has been written in recent years about your coloring and "having your colors done" that I simply can't take you through this journey without a brief detour in this often confusing area.
As a firm believer in the beauty of our natural coloring, I've always felt that it should be enhanced and prized as one of our greatest gifts from Nature. Since I could be described as one of the pioneers of the modern color movement, I've worked long and hard to educate the public about the possibilities and systems that exist to make working with your coloring easy, clear, exciting, and most of all, fun!
In the past few years, I've watched many variations spring up on the basic theme of personal color analysis. As in all extremely popular fields, some of the "new" variations are simply gimmicks de- signed to cash in on the latest fad, while others bear at least some validity.
For my money, however, the basic system of the seasonal color theory originally developed by Johannes Itten of the Bauhaus School is still far and away the most effective.
This theory divides your coloring into four basic categories named after the seasons, based on two parts of your genetic makeup: (1) the undertone of your skin, which is blue or golden and functions as the "base" of your coloring; and (2) the in- tensity of your coloring, which has to do with the type of "contrast" between your hair. skin, and eyes.
Simply put, your "season" is a general description of the type of coloring you inherited and the palette of colors that will enhance it. Each "season" represents a family of colors that consists of over two million shades within the palette. Here's a brief description of each:

Winter

Blue undertone to the skin. High-contrast coloring (distinct difference between the hair, skin, eyes).
Palette: Cool, clear colors. Blue-based shades with sharp intensity. A jewel-toned palette ranging from vivid colors to very pale, icy shades.
Person: The hair is usually dark (a solid color as opposed to visibly highlighted) with an ash base, and the skin and eyes are quite clear.
Celebrities: Elizabeth Taylor, Cher, Diahann Carroll, Connie Chung.

Summer

Blue undertone to the skin. Blended contrast (the hair, skin, eyes tend to blend together).
Palette: Cool, muted colors. Blue- based shades with a saturated intensity. A dusty palette ranging from pastels to very deep shades.
Person: The hair is usually medium dark to medium light (a dense color with a very subtle highlight) with an ash base, and the skin tone is saturated while the eyes are softly muted.
Celebrities: Grace Kelly, Queen Elizabeth, Jane Fonda.

Autumn

Golden undertone to the skin. Contrast is medium to high, but characterized by richness.
Palette: Warm, intense colors. Yellow based shades with a heavy saturation of richness. A fiery palette ranging from very vivid, hot shades to a few softly muted neutrals.
Person: The hair is usually a richly highlighted shade with a red base, ranging from very deep chestnut to fiery auburn to a very deep honey. The skin tone is rich and saturated (ranging from very pale to very deep) and the eyes are a mixture of marbelized color.
Celebrities: Natalie Wood, Ann-Margret, Diane Keaton, Katharine Hepburn, Shari Bela- fonte-Harper.

Spring

Golden undertone to the skin. Contrast is delicate, but sharp.
Palette: Warm and clear colors. Yellow based shades with a light, bright intensity. A vibrant pal ette ranging from very fresh, vivid shades to a few clear pales.
Person: The hair is usually a medium dense shade (with a subtle natural highlight) and a golden or red base, ranging from medium golden brown to strawberry to golden blond. The skin tone is clear and delicate, and the eyes are crisp.
Celebrities; Shirley MacLaine, Sissy Spacek, Vanessa Williams, Arlene Dahl, Eva Gabor.

Draping the Seasons

Question: How can I determine my "season"? Can I tell by just looking at myself in the mir ror? Can I tell by looking at the underside of my wrists?
Not really. The best way to objectively determine your season is with the help of three or four friends. To correctly determine your season, you've got to first determine both the undertone of your skin (blue or golden), and then the type of contrast between your hair, skin, and eyes. The only way to accurately do this is by a process called "draping," whereby you drape selected shades of fabric under your chin and compare the color of the fabric to the colors in your face. You cannot determine your undertone by simply looking at your wrist because you are merely viewing the "shade" of your skin tone, as opposed to the undertone or base coloration.
In the draping process, you discover your skin's undertone by an indirect method. The aim is to enhance the undertone of your skin by using a complementary base color from the selected fabric.
Here's how to do this: With a group of three or four friends, assemble the following large swaths of fabric:

Four shades of green:

a) a blue-based emerald green (clear and vivid)
b) a blue-based sen green (soft and dusty)
c) a yellow-based mossy green (rich and in- tense)
d) a yellow-based bright chartreuse (light and clear)

Four shades of red:

a) a blue-based scarlet (clear and vivid)
b) a blue-based dusty raspberry (soft and muted)
c) a yellow-based tomato (rich and intense)
d) a yellow-based bright poppy (light and clear)

Four shades of blue:

a) a blue-based royal (clear and vivid)
b) a blue-based cornflower (soft and dusty)
c) a yellow-based teal (rich and intense)
d) a yellow-based bright aqua (light and clear)

Four shades of pink:

a) a blue-based fuchsia (vivid and clear)
b) a blue-based dusty rose (soft and muted)
c) a yellow-based salmon (rich and intense)
d) a yellow-based bright coral (light and bright)
Now drape each other in these colors, following the order in which they're listed. As you're watching this process, be sure to focus on the person's face, not the color. (Remember, you're seeking to discover which color brings the person out, not sim- ply the color you like best.)
In the right shade, you'll watch the person's skin tone become smooth and clear; shadows will seem to miraculously disappear!
In the wrong shades, the color will reflect onto the person's face; you'll notice the color, not the person.
Have your friends vote on what they're seeing. You'll nearly always find the consensus of others to be correct. (Your own opinion may be somewhat prejudiced by color preferences and the thought of having to change your wardrobe!)
If the consensus is that the colors of group a tested best on you consistently, you are a "Winter." If the consensus is toward group b, you are a "Summer." If the consensus is toward group c, you are an "Autumn"; and if the consensus is toward group d, then you are a "Spring."
NOTE: It's very important to perform this draping ceremony in natural light, so be sure you work near a large window with good sun exposure. Also, if your hair has been artificially colored, or has any chemical processing on it such as perms or waves, be sure to cover it with a white turban or bandanna. This will prevent your altered haircolor from throwing any shadows on your face, which could result in a misanalysis. This is crucial in determining your season, so don't forgo it in the name of vanity! Since the skin tone is a much subtler color than your hair, it's very easy to simply match the shades of fabric to the hair, rather than to the complexion. Also, be sure you remove all traces of makeup before you begin!

Questions & Answers

Q. Can I be a mixture of seasons!
A. No, you cannot. It's genetically impossible! Each "season" refers to a specific type of coloring, of which there are only four. For example, you cannot have a mixture of a golden and a blue undertone. Since the undertone functions as the base of your skin tone, it determines whether the shade of skin you have is either warm or cool. A color can only have one base, whether it's skin color, haircolor, fabric, a cosmetic shade, or even the paint on your wall!
The basic law of abstract color theory states that the base of a color determines its shade. For example, a burgundy red has a blue base. It is this blue base that actually causes the shade to be burgundy instead of some other shade of red, say tomato red or rust. Likewise, a mossy green is caused by a yellow base, while an emerald green is emerald because its base is blue! Your skin tone is exactly the same. An olive skin is always caused by a blue undertone. That's why it's olive and not a tawny beige (which is caused by a golden undertone). On the other hand, an ivory skin tone has a golden base, which is what makes it ivory instead of porcelain (which is caused by a blue undertone). There isn't a single individual-dead, alive. or yet to be born who possesses a mixture of undertones. It simply can not happen!
Q. What about "intensity"? Can I be a mixture of the "cools" (WinteSummer) or the "warms" (Autumn/Spring)!
A. No, you cannot. As with the undertone, you have one type of intensity to your coloring. High contrast coloring needs clear shades to enhance and bring it out effectively. Blended coloring needs a saturation of color to allow the subtlety of your coloring to show through gracefully. Mixing the clear colors with the dusty tones only negates your particular type of coloring.
Moreover, the palettes themselves simply don't mix effectively when you translate them into clothing and cosmetics. If you were to try to create color combinations of the cool Winter and Summer palettes, for example, you would never be able to effectively combine the jewel tones of Winter with the elegantly dusty shades of Summer. Since the palettes are of opposing intensities, the shades themselves are not at all complementary. Any resulting outfits of clothing would simply be a hodgepodge of mismatched colors!
Even more disasterous would be an attempt to mix the tones in cosmetics. For a makeup to be successful, you absolutely must keep all the colors on your face in one family of color, both in terms of the base and the intensity. Mixing them is akin to wearing a shocking pink blouse with a bright orange lipstick! While the result might not always be this glaring, opposite color families do not blend together!
Q. But I've had my colors done "professionally," and I was told I'm a mixture. Why would that have happened?
A. Basically, that means one of two things. Either you were analyzed incorrectly, which is, unfortunately, becoming quite common because of improper training and a lack of experience among color consultants, or it's simply a question of semantics.
Frequently, in an effort to delineate among the specific shades that you can actually wear effectively (be cause of the variations in individual skin tone, hair, and eye colors that exist within a season), color consult ants have attempted to make your palette as specific to you as possible. This sometimes manifests in your being labeled a mixture of seasons or having a "subseason." While this is technically incorrect, since the colors within the seasonal palettes do not actually blend with the other palettes, the result is usually a way of defining the range of shades within your season that appear most exciting on you.
From my experience, based on analyzing thousands of clients over a number of years, I simply find it too inaccurate and confusing to try to suggest to my clients that they "mix" the palettes. It's not helpful in a practical sense, for it doesn't actually add any colors that they can effectively work with in clothing, cosmetics, or haircolor. And, since it's technically incorrect, as I previously stated, I find that the clients who come to our salon with a "mixture" of colors nearly always have either a diluted appearance, in terms of focus, or they have a lot of mistakes hanging in their closets! Can my "contrast" change with age?
Q. What about as my hair turns gray? Does this change my season?
A. No, your season never changes with age, or anything else! As your hair begins to gray, Nature is not only changing your haircolor, but is also changing your skin tone and eyes at the same time. The balance among these three elements always remains the same. For example, if you're a mature Vivid Winter, like actress Bea Arthur, the balance among your haiskin/eyes is best described as high contrast. You have a vivid haircolor, a fair skin, and an intense eye color. True, your haircolor is not the same as when you were twenty years old, when it was probably a deep brunette, but you've maintained the high contrast coloring you were born with. As your hair began to gray, it didn't turn a dull or mousy shade of gray, but rather went a brilliant silver, didn't it? Your skin and eyes have actually gotten lighter at the same time, even though this difference is probably imperceptible to you. Do yone that your high contrast has not changed at all! You still have a vivid haircolor, a fair skin, and an in- ten eye color. Your balance has remained the same! You are still a Vivid Winter, and the colors that focus your specific coloring are still cool and clear!
Whatever your season, Nature created your haiskin/eyes as a unit. They always change together, and the balance among them never changes That's why your season never changes!
Q. Does my season have anything to do with style? For example, I read somewhere that Winters should stick to solids and geometrics, while Autumns are very good in tweeds and textures.
A. Not in the least! Having your colors done has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than determining what your skin tone is and which palette of colors to work with to enhance it. It tells you nothing more specific than the range of colors to use. Your specific clothing choices (including fabrics and textures, as well as shapes and lines), makeup shades, and haircolor range all come from developing your personal style through discovering your Image Identity.
For example, Autumns are frequently told to concentrate on use of textures in their wardrobe. Yet Ann-Margret is a Fiery Autumn, but as a Theatrical Romantic, I'd much rather see her in silks, satins, angora, and se quins than rough textures or tweeds any day of the year!
Having your colors done can be a wonderful and exciting addition to your life, and I highly recommend it when it's properly executed. Just be careful not to give it more importance than it's worth. Your coloring is only one part of you - it's worthy of being carefully looked at, but only within the contest of your total look.

Now I’m sure for those of us who are more visual the written descriptions of these colors can be ultra confusing! Unfortunately we can not share the seasonal palettes David has created. However, the palettes as well as a wealth of additional information on the sub seasons, additional celebrities as well as the three make up palettes for each season etc. can be accessed within the Four Season Freedom Facebook Group.
My personal tip is to get a good grasp on basic color theory by understanding what blue based vs yellow based colors look like. A really creative and explorative way to approach this is by getting some paints out and mixing the tones to see how blue (cool) with added yellow (warm) transforms into a warm blue. (Please ensure you use a true Yellow, a true Blue, a true Red, a true Black and a true White).
The goal of the system isn’t to just wear the colors David has in his seasonal palettes - it’s to use these as a jumping off point. So, that you can then take the concept of your coloring and have the ability to intuitively identify colors that harmonise with you rather than pull out a palette on your phone every time you go clothes or make up shopping!
Each season can be quickly understood by what it’s characteristics evoke:

Winter (Cool) is Jewel

Spring (Warm) is Vibrant

Summer (Cool) is Lush

Autumn (Warm) is Fiery

A quick disclaimer!! No season gets boring muted colors. Everyone gets beautifully saturated colors! You won’t see the sad, drab and dull tones often seen in other seasonal color systems here! For example Summer is Lush in tone not muted and Autumn is fiery in tone, again not muted In any sense if the word.

Let’s talk about the defining characteristics tied to certain seasons

I want to preface this part, by reminding us all that much like our Kibbe ID, we are born with the innate characteristics we have ; we are who we are meant to be! And so it’s never a case of being relegated to certain IDs or color seasons based on certain characteristics. But, instead we are embarking on the journey to discover what has always been there with the objective of achieving harmony with ourselves and in doing so bringing out our unique beauty.
Brown eyes Brown eyes are a feature of high contrast coloring and therefore will always be a high contrast season; Autumn or Winter.
Naturally Ginger / Red hair Ginger / Red hair is a warm color (a mix of a golden base with added red) and therefore will always be a warm season; Spring or Autumn.
An Olive undertone Olive is always caused by a blue undertone, therefore it will always be Winter.
Naturally Blonde hair Blonde hair can be any season except for Winter which requires a high level of contrast between the features; Skin/HaiEyes.
The Color Black Black is considered a cool tone that casts a shade on its surrounds, due to its depth of contrast is only given to Winters as with Winters it enhances the clarity of coloring whether-as with all other seasons it muddies their coloring.
The Color White White, on the other hand is universally given to all seasons as it is considered a neutral.

Hi everyone! I'm currently looking for any feedback on the first chapter of my short novel, which has just reached the second draft stage. It's about the main character being forced into eliminating the heads of an island conquered by vampires. The title is referencing a blood moon which remains present only on the island, always draping it in darkness and making it perfect for its inhabitants. I see it as a gothic Suicide Squad with less characters.
Thanks!
The chateau remarked itself as the jewel of the street.
The building rose above its accompanying homes, two stories larger than its nearest neighbours. A grand display of the original owner’s wealth, it now belonged to the vampires, like the rest of Prache. Looking down the street, Hitchforth recognised it from afar, his target for tonight’s mission. He watched stylish vampires enter through the front gate, greeted by ushers at the entrance, checking their invitations. Checking the inner pocket of his greatcoat, he searched for the invitation given to him, satisfied it was there. Hitchforth looked to his left and saw the rookie’s for tonight’s mission checking for his invitation. The rookie searched throughout his body, appearing to have lost the card, but found it before Hitchforth could scold him, offering it to his Educator.
The rookies they gave him rarely survived his missions. Sometimes he thought they were sent as a punishment, a test to see if they could survive. In his old age he had seen countless rookies, forgetting countless names and faces. This one beside him seemed nervous, adjusting his collar, wiping the sweat from his brow, avoiding eye contact with Hitchforth. This one might as well have been sentenced to an execution. What was his name? Anton? Arthur? It wouldn’t matter in the end, but the rookie’s nervousness could jeopardise the mission entirely.
“Tell me,” he said, seriousness in his tone. “Are you afraid of me or the vampires?”
The rookie fidgeted with his fingers before responding, wiping his brow from the new sweat that dripped. “B-b-both, sir.”
“Breathe. Fill your lungs and empty them. Like this.” Hitchforth demonstrated for the rookie, taking extra care to show the slow speed of the action.
The rookie did as instructed, inhaling and exhaling deeply.
“It helps?” Hitchforth asked.
“Yes sir,” the words spoken with more clarity and calmness.
“Good, let’s go into the lion’s den then.”

They approached the front entrance, lining up to be ushered in. Carmilla’s festivity had attracted the richest of Prache’s vampires, adorned in foreign jewels and extravagant clothing. The rookie almost slipped on an exceptionally long dress, caught by the cuff by Hitchforth. Looking behind him, he saw the fury in their red eyes, that Humanity’s Hope had been invited. Reaching the usher, Hitchforth handed his and the rookie’s invitations, inspecting the vampire’s face. The slightest twinge of shock showed on his face, but was quickly concealed with a stern, professional demeanour. He waved them both in, shooting a questioning glance as they passed by.
The building appeared larger inside than it was outside, if possible. The minimal red torches fitted on sconces and the amount of vampires fitted into the building helped accentuate its size. A sea of suits and dresses spread throughout its floor, different colours and materials shining in the ambient light. Imported marble made up the floor, dark and white tiles patterned intricately. Large windows draped by exotic curtains furnished the walls throughout the building, paintings spread in between the spaces. Hitchforth could just make out the paintings as portraits, the closest to him being a group of five vampires.
What surprised Hitchforth the most was the sounds that filled his ears. Music played by a orchestra filled the building with the sounds of strings, woodwinds, percussion and brass sections. Pushing past the crowd that had congregated near the front entrance, Hitchforth saw dancing. Vampires dancing in line with their partners to the music, alternating between partners, spinning with arms outstretched.
Behind the dance floor a grand staircase rose from the floor, providing access to the two other stories of the building. It was there that Hitchforth saw the target for tonight’s mission come down the stairs, stopping high enough to be seen, but low enough to be heard. Immediately the orchestra ceased its playing, the dancers also ceasing their dancing. The congregation around the entrance strode to the dance floor, taking Hitchforth and the rookie with them, waiting for her words.
She was tall and deathly beautiful, more civilised and confident than the others. She wore a dark crimson dress, accenting her red eyes and slender face. Her moonlight coloured hair draped straight down past her shoulders, shining despite the lack of light. Her red lips parted into a savage smile, displaying the pointed canines she shared with every member of her race. Hitchforth noticed she looked directly at him, her eyes sizing him as a lion would to its prey. Carmilla Sanguine had arrived.
She spoke to the guests, keeping her eyes on Hitchforth. “Welcome all, to the festivities of tonight. I hold today’s ball as a celebration of our independence as a species, our freedom from humanity.” The guests cheered at the words, delighted at the words. “And please give our warm Prache hospitality to our sanctioned guests of Humanity’s Hope, who have joined us.”
The vampires did not cheer at those words, hushing and hissing silently as they turned to see Hitchforth and the rookie. It was easy to find them, both wearing their issued dark green greatcoats. Hitchforth had refused formal attire for the event for himself and his rookie, knowing they would stand out regardless.
“Enjoy your time tonight and as always, long live our king.”
“Long live our king,” the crowd shouted out in unison, mirroring Carmilla’s words.
Carmilla stepped down the stairs, her guests returning to conversation and dancing. She mingled with her guests, leaving Hitchforth and the rookie alone.
“Sir, what now?” the rookie asked.
“She will come to us, she can’t help herself,” Hitchforth said whilst looking over her watching her conversations. From a distance he could still see the power she held, the fear in the faces of the vampires she held conversations with. From what he had been told, the heads of Prache kept to themselves mostly, only communicating when necessary. The mission would not be hindered by reinforcements, or so he had been told.
Carmilla made her way over to where Hitchforth and the rookie stood, flanked by two bodyguards in suits. She looked over the rookie, smiling and looking into his eyes. Hitchforth saw the rookie smile back, his nervousness gone. Already her mind games had begun.
“Hello, Carmilla,” he said, breaking her eye contact with the rookie.
“Greetings, Educator Hitchforth. And who might this be here?”
“My rookie. You know my name?” Carmilla had come closer to the rookie, stroking his cheek with her hand as Hitchforth spoke. Hitchforth saw the sharp nails on her hand, softly grazing the rookie’s skin.
“Isn’t fresh blood the best? We don’t get a lot of humans here, I’m sure you know.” Carmilla moved her hand away, turning and answering the Educator. “Of course, who doesn’t know the only Lycan Educator in Humanity’s Hope? I’m sure everyone here has smelt it already.”
“Fair enough. Can we talk in a more…,” Hitchforth looked around, noticing most of the guests were paying attention to their conversation. “Private place?”
“Of course, Educator. Allow me to lead the way,” she said, taking hold of the rookie’s hand and walking ahead. Hitchforth stared at him from behind to let go yet he continued, unable to escape her trance. Playing along, he followed Carmilla up the stairs, leaving behind the vampires to dance and socialise below.

Carmilla lead Hitchforth and the rookie up the stairs to the second floor, passing through multiple hallways and doors to reach their destination. The building’s halls and rooms seemed to continue endlessly, doors leading to more doors and longer hallways. They walked down a long staircase, perhaps made for the servants of the building. They walked through a large hallway containing Carmilla’s thralls, lined up against the wall, saluting as she passed. Eventually they reached a cold room with a large table in the centre with a fireplace emitting red flames. Red ash was a new invention created since the vampires had conquered Prache, a harmless light source for their needs. They had invested heavily into the island as their home and Hitchforth knew they would not give it up easily. Looking above the mantle place, Hitchforth noticed the familiar painting from the ballroom.
All the five vampires matched the descriptions he was told, to the point he could recognise them all. At the forefront sat Harrow Sanguine, the self-appointed king of Prache. He looked younger than the rest of his family, his ashen skin painted flawlessly. His fierce eyes stared back into Hitchforth, instilling fear from even his heart. To his right stood his wife, Rose Sanguine, who bore a strong resemblance to Carmilla, matching hair and all. To the king’s left stood Varney Sanguine, wearing his familiar grey suit and matching brown flat cap. Standing next to Varney was Father Nostra, the religious leader of Prache, wearing his black cassock. Finally, standing next to her mother was Carmilla Sanguine, identical to her real life presence.
“Where are we?” Hitchforth asked.
“A meeting room under the chateau. We won’t be disturbed here.”
“And your guests? They won’t be afraid you’ve gone missing?”
Carmilla laughed. “Those fools will be too blood drunk in the morning to remember their past few days. Our meeting will be fine.” She ordered her guards out of the room, instructing them to stay outside, just in case. “The guards will be waiting outside,” she said, warning in her tone.
“What do you want?”
“When my father sanctioned a member of Humanity’s Hope to visit the island, I was surprised they chose you.”
Hitchforth shrugged. “I’m expendable.”
“Yes, they do see you in that way, and that may be so. But I see more.”
Hitchforth furrowed his eyebrows. “Like what?”
“I see opportunity. I see power. I see a new path.”
“Care to explain?”
“You are the only Educator that is not human. On Prache we can give you freedom, like we have achieved.”
Hitchforth thought over what Carmilla said, processing her words. She had to have been desperate to separate him from any prying eyes, eager to keep her plans secret. The only choice was to continue.
“I see. They say a hand that lends help is matched by a hand that waits repayment. What is the repayment you seek from me?”
Carmilla smiled more than she had before, looking more unnatural than she ever had before. Her smile outstretched to the corners of her face and Hitchforth thought he saw her eyes darken lustfully. Not lust for blood, but lust for power. “The crown. With my connections and Humanity’s Hope, we can topple my father’s regime. He is outdated, out of touch with the population’s desires and needs. I can give it to them.”
Hitchforth scoffed at the words. “And you believe Humanity’s Hope is willing to partner with a vampire?”
“They partnered with you didn’t they? I see no difference.”
“I have no partnership. Something much worse.”
“It doesn’t matter. My father is eager to enact revenge for the prosecution vampires have felt for millennia. I am willing to move on.”
Hitchforth looked to the rookie, who had remained silent throughout the conversation. He sweated through his coat, leaving visible stains. The trance Carmilla had put him through had broken, putting her attention to Hitchforth. He could feel the slight strings pulling him in the direction she wanted, appealing to his emotions and desires. He considered over her terms, it made sense to accept the deal. Why would he protect his captors? His mind travelled elsewhere, to a farmhouse and her tending to her flower garden. He thought of her smile, and the little one that accompanied her.
“Do we have a deal? You have no choice either way, Educator,” Carmilla said, snapping Hitchforth back to reality.
He looked to his rookie, signalling under the table to warn him. Hitchforth saw him nod subtly, trying not to give away the motion.
“No,” Hitchforth said, raising the table above his head, smashing it into Carmilla’s body, sending her flying.

I can't tell you how often I hear people who I consider very intelligent spout the thoroughly disproven myth that the Earth's population is exploding, that we are all going to starve, run out of resources, etc... Before the internet, it was easy to buy into this narrative. Then as now, the idea of overpopulation has a racist tinge to it. "Those" people are having too many children (meaning the global poor, mostly non-caucasian). The message is clear, if the poor keep having so many babies they'll outcompete and replace us (this is a common theme for bigoted assholes).
Even a cursory examination of the statistics would show that birth rates around the world were already falling even in the early 2000's: https://youtu.be/fTznEIZRkLg?si=l0Uxa62wNxov1jgM
It was hypothesized that as people grew more wealthy (and I don't mean rich, just as they accumulated enough capital to be somewhat free from the cycle of poverty), they began to have less children, because fewer would die during childhood and labor had shifted from heavy agricultural work to less physically demanding jobs. A more modern twist, posited that skyrocketing costs for childcare, housing and education have contributed to this trend.
However, more recent data seems to upend this hypothesis, as a global contraction of birthrate is becoming apparent, even in countries that have not reached the level of financial security where one would predict that people would start to have less children: https://www.healthdata.org/news-events/newsroom/news-releases/lancet-dramatic-declines-global-fertility-rates-set-transform
Now, when births per woman are below 2.2 (replacement), the population will begin to decline. For a country with below replacement births, this means that the tax base shrinks as the average age of a citizen of that country increases. This will necessitate increased spending on elder care even as the number of people available to tax decreases. If monetary insecurity is truly a root cause of population decline, then this will only exacerbate the problem.
It's also a problem for capitalism, which is couched in ever increasing consumption. If the number of people available to consume decreases, the economy contracts as well. This is going to wreak havoc on the retirement system of the US especially, since we were sold to financiers by our government, replacing pensions with retirement investments in the stock market. Even if we still had a pension system, the number of people paying into it would decrease, limiting payouts. This is why I have always assumed the following:

1. Social Security will not be available when I retire.
2. The government is going to renege on the promises made to us regarding our personal retirement accounts (e.g. the tax free status is likely to go away).
3. The government may even take retirement funds from younger generations to pay for the boomers to retire thus continuing a recent trend of fucking over the young.

Seems like doom and gloom? Hardly. The fact that the linked article was reported on in the Wall Street Journal implies to me that the people who are most worried about this change are our would be corporate overlords. After all, if working age people are scarce, it will be harder to treat them like commodities and pay them subsistence wages (hence the recent obsession with AI and robotics). This will directly impact the bonuses executives receive, decimating the private jet, yacht, gated community and vacation house markets.
I think population decline will be the best thing that ever happened to us for one main reason: It is the only thing that can break us out of this current, hollow, exploitative, fiercely individualistic culture that is cheapening our lives and destroying the planet. We are going to have to think long and hard about what it is that we actually want, what makes a life a good life and how we can live responsibly.
I always noticed that in Star Trek: TNG, when the crew would visit other worlds, that the settlements were always quite spartan (for production cost reasons of course), and I thought this made total sense in world. These people had access to unlimited technology but used it to live simply and unobtrusively. This is what we need to do.
It's time to start planning how we are going to withdraw from the world and consolidate in smaller, better planned communities. This is going to mean allowing some towns and even cities to die, letting many simply return to nature, demolishing structures that could become unsafe and clearing out any waste that could contaminate the water or soil if left unattended.
It's also going to mean the end of infinite growth (at least until we get a foothold in space). Before the modern age, the rate of growth per year was something like 0.1%, often times there was no growth. THIS IS FINE! The captains of industry will bemoan the end of the world, but it will be the end of their world, not our World.
Of course, this contraction will also help in our fight with climate change (in the sense that less people consume fewer resources) but it might also make the more expensive options (large scale geoengineering) more difficult to fund. I'm also concerned that a contracting population will lose interest in space exploration and colonization which is, frankly, vital to our survival as a species in the long term.
So, I have mixed feeling about population decline, but for the most part, the future under decreasing consumption, contracting financial markets and fundamental societal reorganization sounds a hell of a lot better to me than a world of ever increasing consumption, corporate oligarchs with ever increasing control and resource wars on a scorching planet.
I'm hopeful we can arrive at the high tech low consumption society of my dreams, and judging by the failure of pro-natal programs to boost birth rates, regardless of generosity, this transition now seems inevitable.

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When I was 23, I was at my cousins wedding and my aunt got pretty drunk and mentioned how it was so nice that I was able to procreate or something weird like that. FYI I just became a father at the time. Anyways I questioned what she meant and she said “oh well atleast you didn’t have to adopt. I know it was hard on your parents” and I’m like “what do you mean” and she’s like “wait you know you’re adopted right?” And at that moment I was pretty shocked but also had to hold it together because I didn’t want her to feel terrible for being the one that spillled the beans to me, so I responded “oh yeah of course I knew that” and then I walked away to the bathroom and had a weird moment. Anyways I called my parents out into the lobby of the banquet and confronted them about it. My mom was hysterical and denying it at the same time (which I clearly knew she was lying) and my dad was kinda being a dick. Eventually I got annoyed and left the wedding.
A week later I went to my parents house and confronted them about it again and they had this whole story that it was a surrogate mother and she means nothing and don’t go trying to find her and blah blah blah. I kinda believed it and let it go for a few years, plus honestly I didn’t have time to really even care considering I was going through a separation with my sons mother and I had to focus on my son and not my own bullshit.
A few years later when I was 26, I talked to someone about surrogacy and they said that really wasn’t a big thing in the mid 80s because it was experimental and you had to have a lot of money to get that done. So the next time I saw my parents, I stayed overnight and after my mom went to bed, I confronted my dad about it. He still confirmed I came from a surrogate and they used my parents dna. So I let it go again.
Many years passed after this until the topic came up again. I was now 35 and the pandemic hit and I started thinking about all the weird shit involving this topic. Like why would my aunt use the word adopted, and my parents never had a lot of money to do surrogacy in the 80s. So I decided to do some research on how I can find original documents of my birth. I called a bunch of adoption agencies but they couldn’t give that info, but one lady told me I can file for a petition to receive my original birth certificate, and I did that. It took a few weeks but it finally came and it showed the biological mother’s name and no dad and my name was just a last name so I started to think maybe it was a surrogate.
I decided to dig deeper and look on white pages and then Facebook to find this person. I did find her and found out she was still local and I reached out to her. We eventually met up and she was there with her husband and another woman. The husband was not my father but a man from a later marriage and the other woman was my sister that’s a year older than me.
She told me that after she had my sister, her parents told her to stay away from boys but she obviously didn’t and got pregnant by her friend. At the time her friend was about to leave for college and she didn’t want to ruin his life with a baby so she told him to not worry about it and she was going to give it up anyways. Eventually her parents found out she was pregnant and kicked her out of the house. She was homeless living under a bridge with her 1 year old daughter and me inside the womb. She worked at Arby’s and had a friend watch the 1 year old the entire time. One day she got hit by a car while riding her bike to Arby’s and the driver took off but the next car pulled over and it was her brothers friend and he helped her. Once he found out she was homeless he offered to let her live with him. That man eventually became her husband.
During the next few months she was trying to figure out adoption for me and her friend worked at a diner with a woman who knew a woman that was looking to adopt (my mom). Eventually they set up a private adoption. Shortly after I was born and due to the c section my biological mother had to stay in the hospital so she got to spend 10 days with me. After that was done, I went home to my parents who adopted me.
Upon learning of all of this I was pretty shocked but also found it kinda funny cause crazy things are always happening in my life. Never a dull moment! I also discovered that my biological mother has stage 4 lung cancer so I thought I might as well try to get to know her while she’s around. From there i built a strong relationship with my sister and we are very tight. I tried getting to know my biological mother more but she eventually got weirded out and cut me off. She was kind of a bitch about it and my sister told me she can’t stand her mother and she’s been a bitch her whole life, so that kinda made me feel better and feel grateful for my upbringing.
I also did research on the person who is my father and I found out college didn’t do him well and he eventually became a big con man that fucked over his family and wife and then later on became a heroin addict that developed a lot of mental health issues and he is currently homeless in Seattle.
So here I am today at 38. I still have not told my parents that I know because I don’t want them to get hurt. My mom had a big fear of me leaving. She always gets so weird anytime I have a good time with my friends parents or my girlfriends parents. It’s a strange jealously.
So now I’m at this point where I need to tell them because I am getting married in a few months and my sister is coming to the wedding.
Part of me wants to leave out that I met my biological mother because she isn’t in my life and doesn’t want to be so what’s the point? I just want to skip that part and mention only that I met my sister and have no intention of knowing the mother and the sister doesn’t really have a relationship with her either (which is partially true). Regardless I know my adoptee mom is going to get upset. My dad might be an asshole but that’s usual behavior of him. I just know mentioning that I know the biological mother would hurt my mom even more. I’m not even mad at my parents to lying to me honestly. I understand they were trying to be protective, but I seeked this info because of wanting to know medical history and what not. Plus it’s just interesting.
Anyways I’m planning to talk to my parents tonight.. Let me know your thoughts.