Bobby Kennedy. What his confirmation feels like, from a MAHA mom's perspective.

Thirty-one years ago, I was pregnant.

When my doctor said I had to have two RhoGAM injections, I didn't question.
When my daughter was born and my doctor said she had to have the vitamin K shot and Hepatitis B vaccine within 12 hours of birth, I didn't question.
When my doctor said my daughter had to have multiple vaccines (which have never been studied as they are administered) at 2 months, 4 months, 6 months, and 12-15 months... I didn't question.
For someone who has ALWAYS questioned everything else, I was really stupid when it came to my daughter's health.
I handed over control when it came to my daughter's health. I would have never handed over control in ANY OTHER ASPECT OF MY LIFE.
Why did I do it then?
Because I was socialized to believe it was the right thing to do.

My daughter was born in 1994. I did not have a home computer. I did not have a "smart phone." There was no such thing as Facebook or other social media.

Those could be excuses, but I was a researcher. I should have researched. I didn't. I never questioned. That is the biggest regret of my life. As I think about it now, I know that my education had something to do with it. I respected those big governmental machines where (I thought) "all the best scientists in the country work to ensure the health and well-being of our citizens."

I believed that because that's what I had been socialized to believe from childhood.

That's why it was my goal to be one of those scientists.

I bought into the lie. Hook, line, and sinker.

My willingness to believe the myth that "vaccines are safe and necessary for our children" nearly killed my daughter.

Since waking up to what was going on in my own family more than twenty years ago, I have been trying to help other parents and parents-to-be not become like me. Living with regret every day of your life is not what I wanted for myself, and it’s not what I want for any other mother. So, I work. I research and I write. I advocate. I travel. I speak. I listen.

In the 20+ years I have spent in this vaccine-injury/anti-vaccine/ex-vaxxer space, I have learned that the most important thing I can do is listen. Every time I have spoken at an event… every stop when I was traveling with the VaxXed Team on The Bus… every time I stayed overnight with a family whose children have been vaccine-injured… every time I sat in my office with clients/patients seeking biomedical help for their child, EVERY TIME - I came away with the deep understanding that the most important thing I did during whatever time frame was involved, was listen.

I have spent so much time researching. Writing. Trying to get the information into the hands, brains, and hearts of parents. And as I sit here thinking about it, with tears rolling down my cheeks, it occurs to me that I certainly have a need to be heard. As we all do.

As humans, one of our most basic rights is to be heard. Our individual and collective voices matter. If you are a mother of young children, and if your children have not been seriously injured by vaccines and can still speak, you will understand immediately their need to be heard. Their voices greet you in the morning and throughout the day as they share their thoughts and ask their questions. When they are hurt, they share their pain and their sorrow. When they are wronged, they come to you with their stories of what happened. You listen. You validate. You do what is within your power to help heal the hurt.

When a young child needs to be heard and validated and instead is ignored or told (in words or actions) that their feelings don’t matter, what happened is no big deal, or that their emotions are wrong or displaced (e.g., “you’re just looking for someone to blame”), what happens to that child? Do they stop trying to be heard? Maybe some do, but the majority of children will continue to seek the attention they need. The quiet ones may become writers. The not-so-quiet ones may become activists.

Our need to be listened to and to really be heard is something that does not end in childhood. When something really bad happens to us as adults, and particularly when something happens because we were obeying the rules, doing what is expected, following orders from those we believe have our best interests and the best interests of our children as their priority, and then we are told that our experiences didn’t really happen, and even if they did, it’s because there’s something inherently wrong with us (our genes), we don’t stop trying to be heard. Our voices get louder. Our anger and our pain grow stronger. And as our voices increase in volume and number, we start to find each other. We band together and we work together to stop the devastation that has happened to our families from happening to other families.

We are parents of vaccine-injured and vaccine-killed children. There are a lot of us. We love each other, even when we’ve never met, and even though many of us would never have been friends if not for the one thing that unites us: our children’s voices (and sometimes their lives) were stolen from them. They cannot be heard, so we become their voices and in doing so, our own voices become louder and more unified.

We become the resistance, fighting together against the tyrannical forces that harmed our children, and that are continuing to harm other babies and children around the world. We recognize each other. We value each other. We support each other.

I have been an ex-vaxxer/anti-vaxxer since the day I figured out exactly what had happened to my daughter. I have friends and mentors who were in this fight for many years before I entered the arena. I am so grateful for them and for the work they did, which resulted in me having access to the information I needed. It really is the best representation of the “pay-it-forward” approach to life. What could possibly be more important in life than saving an innocent life?

In the shit-show that was the process of getting Bobby Kennedy confirmed as the new head of HHS, politicians who are taking money from the pharmaceutical industry wrongly accused Mr. Kennedy of basically being a Pied Piper who convinced grieving mothers that what he was selling was the truth. The politicians have it completely wrong. Mr. Kennedy has never had to convince a single one of us of anything. We know the truth. WE HAD TO CONVINCE HIM. And to his very great credit, he listened.

This photo was taken in October of 2015 in a restaurant outside the Atlanta airport. I drove Mr. Kennedy to the airport after a rally in Grant Park, where we both spoke on the same stage. At that time, Mr. Kennedy was still of the opinion that the only problem with vaccines was mercury, and if we just got the mercury out, all would be fine. To his great credit, he has a remarkable ability to incorporate new information when presented to him, and over the last several years he has learned a lot about vaccine ingredients, including aluminum, polysorbate 80, Triton X-100, formaldehyde, fetal DNA from aborted human babies and DNA from animals and insects… He has a brilliant, scientific mind. He knows how to read scientific studies. He understands the scientific method and he knows the importance of using true placebos in safety studies - something that has never been done for any of the vaccines currently on the childhood schedule.

All of that is good stuff. Really good stuff now that he is in a position to actually do something about it. But here’s what’s really important to me, and to my friends. And here’s why we support him.

He listened. He heard us. He believed us. In the photo above, you will notice a blue band on Mr. Kennedy’s left wrist. It’s the same one I have on my left wrist in the photo. Those bands were given to me by Sandy Kanervisto, mother of Christopher Kanervisto, a 19-year-old college student who was killed by the H1N1 vaccine. Just before the photo was taken, I told Bobby about Christopher. He listened. He believed. Prior to that day, Christopher’s mother believed her son had been forgotten. Bobby Kennedy gave my friend Sandy the validation she needed. She needed to know that her son’s life mattered. That his story was heard.

And that is what Bobby Kennedy’s appointment means to all of us. We are being heard. Our children’s lives and what happened to them is being validated. For what feels to many of us like the first time, and in a way in which many of us did not expect to see in our lifetimes. The tears are flowing. The gratitude is immense. And the work is truly just beginning. And guess what?

We are not going away.