Tag Archives: #history

The Day I Stopped Demanding My Body to Surrender

Leave a reply

(A story about weight, worry, and the quiet power of standing down)

There was a time—somewhere in my forties—when my body and I stopped speaking the same language.

I kept issuing commands.
It kept issuing warnings.

I called it stubbornness.
It called it survival.

I watched the numbers climb as if they were indictments. I measured myself in failures: pounds gained, clothes retired, photographs avoided. I searched for discipline the way one searches a dark house at night—tense, braced, convinced danger was hiding in every corner.

What I did not understand then—what no one explains when they tell you to try harder—is that my body had already been trying harder than I ever could.

It had learned a new job description somewhere between responsibility and burnout, between holding families together and swallowing stress whole.

Protect.
Conserve.
Brace.
Store.
Stay alert.

This wasn’t weakness.
It was intelligence shaped by pressure.

Cortisol, once a short-term messenger, had moved in permanently. Thyroid signals softened like voices speaking through walls. Insulin lost its rhythm. Hormones rewrote their agreements quietly, without ceremony. And my body learned a rule that would govern everything that came after:

Thin is unsafe.
Stored energy is survival.

So when I issued commands, my nervous system heard something else entirely.

Threat detected.

And it responded the only way it knew how—by holding on tighter.

The truth I wish I had known sooner is this: you cannot scare a body into letting go of armor it believes saved your life.

That understanding arrived not as a revelation, but as a sentence—simple, unremarkable, and devastatingly true:

I’m teaching my body it doesn’t have to protect me anymore.

The moment I said it, something shifted. Not dramatically. Not visibly. But internally, like a guard lowering a weapon—not because danger vanished, but because the watch had ended.

This was not surrender.
It was a truce.

I stopped yelling at symptoms like they were moral failings. I stopped interrogating every sensation, every fluctuation, every morning reading as if my body owed me proof of safety on demand. I realized I had been monitoring myself into anxiety—checking not for information, but for reassurance that never lasted.

The scale—that merciless witness—lost its authority. Not because it changed, but because I did.

Instead of asking Why isn’t this working yet?
I asked What if nothing is wrong?

Instead of I need to fix this,
I offered You’ve been carrying us for a long time.

Instead of demanding results,
I built predictability.

Morning came with warmth and routine. A simple bowl of beans—unimpressive, unmarketable, quietly powerful. Food that said: we are fed. We are steady. We are not in danger.

That small act did more than any punishment ever had. Blood sugar steadied before cortisol could spike. The gut spoke calmly to the brain. Bile flowed, inflammation softened, insulin listened again. Nothing flashy. Nothing extreme. Just a body being reminded—day after day—that emergency mode was no longer required.

And the changes, when they came, arrived like whispers.

Bloating eased.
Waists softened.
Clothes told truths the mirror never could.
Cravings lost their urgency.

The scale lagged behind, as it always does when healing comes first. Cortisol needed to come down. Inflammation needed to quiet. The system needed time to believe the threat was over.

But when that switch began to flip, something miraculous happened.

Weight loss became boring.

No drama. No heroics. No white-knuckled restraint. Just a body finally releasing what it no longer needed to carry.

This is the part no one tells you: the goal was never getting back to 140.

The goal was getting back to safety.

And when the nervous system feels safe, metabolism follows—every single time.

If you are standing where I once stood—exhausted, vigilant, convinced you failed because your body did not obey—hear this clearly:

You did not lose control in your forties.
You held everything together.

Your body paid the price so you could keep functioning.

Now it is your turn to let the system stand down. Not with force. Not with fear. But with steadiness. With boring routines. With fewer alarms. With trust.

Say it once, if you need an anchor. Say it quietly, without expectation:

I’m teaching my body it doesn’t have to protect me anymore.

This isn’t a diet.
It’s a ceasefire.

And ceasefires are where rebuilding begins.

The Quiet Practice That Changed Everything

(Five simple recipes, why they work, and what they teach the body)

This wasn’t about food rules.
It was about sending a signal.

Every morning, before the day asked anything of me, I gave my body the same message:

We are fed.
We are steady.
We are not in danger.

That message matters more than calories ever could.

Why Beans (And Why in the Morning)

Beans are not magic.
They are predictable.

They:

  • stabilize blood sugar early
  • reduce cortisol-driven glucose spikes
  • bind bile (which carries inflammatory waste out of the body)
  • support insulin sensitivity
  • calm the gut–brain axis

Morning matters because cortisol is naturally highest then.
This is not about suppressing it — it’s about not amplifying it.

Why We Soak Beans (And Why It’s Not About “Clean Eating”)

Soaking beans:

  • reduces compounds that cause bloating
  • improves mineral absorption
  • makes them gentler on digestion
  • lowers stress on an already taxed system

This isn’t about perfection.
It’s about making nourishment easier to receive.

Counter vs Fridge Soaking (Simple Truth)

  • Navy, cannellini, great northern, black-eyed peas:
    ✔️ safe to soak on the counter 12–24 hours (cool kitchen)
  • Lima (butter) beans:
    ✔️ best soaked in the fridge
    ✔️ counter soak is fine short-term (8–10 hours) if needed

If they smell sour or look foamy — discard.
Otherwise, you’re fine.

When to Eat These

  • Morning only
  • Ideally within 30–60 minutes of waking
  • Before supplements
  • Before stress
  • Before decision-making

This is not fuel for output.
This is permission to stand down.

Five Simple Recipes (Nothing Fancy, Nothing Loud)

1. Butter Bean Morning Bowl

(The most calming option)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup cooked butter (lima) beans
  • Pinch of sea salt
  • Warm water or bean broth

How
Warm gently. Lightly mash. Eat slowly.

Why it helps

  • Excellent bile binding
  • Very low inflammatory response
  • Signals safety to the nervous system
  • Especially supportive during hormonal shifts

Best time
Early morning, on quiet days or high-stress days.

2. Navy Bean Mash

(The steady baseline)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup cooked navy beans
  • Sea salt
  • Optional splash of warm water

How
Mash until smooth and warm.

Why it helps

  • Strong soluble fiber
  • Stabilizes blood sugar
  • Reduces cortisol spikes
  • Easy to digest even when stressed

Best time
Daily staple. This is your “default.”

3. Cannellini Bean & Rice Bowl

(For mornings when stress is already high)

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup cannellini beans
  • ¼ cup plain white rice
  • Sea salt

How
Warm together. Eat calmly.

Why it helps

  • Prevents blood sugar drops
  • Supports adrenal balance
  • Reduces urgency-driven cravings later

Best time
After poor sleep or emotionally heavy days.

4. Great Northern Bean Soup

(For digestion and bile flow)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup great northern beans
  • Warm water or light broth
  • Pinch of salt

How
Heat into a thin soup. Sip and eat.

Why it helps

  • Supports liver and gallbladder flow
  • Reduces inflammatory load
  • Gentle when digestion feels “stuck”

Best time
When bloated, sluggish, or inflamed.

5. Black-Eyed Peas (Plain & Soft)

(Hormone-friendly and grounding)

Ingredients

  • 1 cup fully cooked black-eyed peas
  • Sea salt

How
Warm thoroughly. Chew well.

Why it helps

  • Supports estrogen clearance
  • Gentle endocrine support
  • Traditionally grounding and stabilizing

Best time
During perimenopause or hormonal fluctuation weeks.

What This Is Doing (Even If You Don’t Feel It Yet)

At first, the changes whisper.

  • bloating eases
  • waist softens
  • cravings lose urgency
  • digestion becomes more predictable

The scale lags behind because:

  • cortisol must come down first
  • inflammation must quiet
  • insulin signaling must normalize

But once safety is established?

The body lets go without being forced.

The End Result (The Part That Actually Matters)

This isn’t about beans.

It’s about what they represent.

  • consistency without punishment
  • nourishment without surveillance
  • food without fear

You’re not “trying to lose weight.”

You’re teaching your body:

You don’t have to protect me anymore.

And when the nervous system believes that?

Armor becomes unnecessary.
Holding on becomes optional.
And change becomes boring — in the best possible way.

Disclaimer

This article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended to diagnose, treat, or replace medical care. Always consult a qualified healthcare professional before making dietary or lifestyle changes.

About the Author

A.L. Childers is a writer and researcher exploring thyroid health, stress physiology, metabolism, and the unseen ways women’s bodies adapt to survive prolonged responsibility. Her work dismantles blame-based wellness culture and replaces it with compassion, context, and truth.

Born Into the Ledger—Where It Was Best — and Worst — to Be Born Black or White in the 1800s

Leave a reply

Where It Was Best — and Worst — to Be Born Black or White in the 1800s (And Why It Was Never About Color)

This was never a race war.
It was always a class war.
And the elites wrote the story to keep us from noticing.

Born Into the Ledger

There is a certain lie that settles into a society the way dust settles into floorboards — quietly, patiently, until no one remembers what the room looked like before it arrived. It is the lie that suffering has a color, that freedom is inherited through skin, and that history can be cleanly divided into villains and victims based on appearance alone. The 1800s tell a different story, if one is willing to read it slowly, by candlelight rather than headline.

In that century, the most dangerous thing a human being could be was not Black or white — it was poor.

To be born Black in the American Deep South was to be born already counted, already priced, already owned. From the moment breath entered the lungs, it belonged to someone else. Families were dismantled as easily as furniture rearranged. Education was forbidden not because it was useless, but because it was powerful. Bodies were worked until they failed, and when they did, they were replaced without ceremony. This was racialized chattel slavery — brutal, unmistakable, and engineered to strip a person not only of freedom, but of identity itself.

And yet, while this form of slavery was among the most visible and violently enforced, it was not the only system of human ownership operating in the 1800s.

Across the ocean, in the vast cold stretches of the Russian Empire, millions of white peasants were born into serfdom — a word softened by distance, but sharpened by reality. They could be bought and sold with the land they worked, traded between nobles, beaten legally, separated from their families, conscripted into military service, and barred from leaving the estate of their birth. Over a third of Russia lived this way until emancipation arrived in 1861, long after the damage had already been written into bone and blood. They were white. They were Christian. They were owned.

In Ireland, also white and Christian, the chains were quieter but no less lethal. Land was taken, rented back at impossible prices, and governed by absentee landlords who lived comfortably elsewhere. When the potato failed, food continued to be exported while people starved. One million died. Another million fled. It was not slavery by name, but it was domination by design — engineered scarcity enforced by empire.

In England’s industrial cities, white children disappeared into coal mines before they learned their letters. Women stood at looms until their fingers failed. Men breathed in poison until their lungs surrendered. This was called progress. This was called employment. The people living it called it survival. “Wage slavery” entered the language not as metaphor, but as recognition — because freedom that leads only to starvation is not freedom at all.

And still, above all of this, sat the elites.

They wore different coats depending on the country — powdered wigs, military uniforms, tailored suits — but their interests aligned perfectly. British aristocrats, plantation owners, Russian nobles, industrial magnates, colonial governors, banking families, merchant elites. They owned land. They owned factories. They owned ships. They owned laws. They owned people — whether those people were called slaves, serfs, tenants, apprentices, or laborers.

When chattel slavery became inconvenient, they rebranded it. Sharecropping replaced chains. Debt replaced whips. Company towns replaced plantations. The ledger remained.

There were, of course, places where the burden of birth was lighter. To be born Black in Canada in the 1800s was to step into a world without legal chains. Slavery had been abolished. Fugitive slave laws did not reach across the border. Black communities governed themselves, owned land, educated their children, and lived with a degree of safety unimaginable just a few miles south. Racism did not vanish — but ownership did.

In Haiti, newly freed from French rule, Black people governed themselves entirely. It was imperfect, punished economically by the same European powers who claimed enlightenment, but it stood as a living contradiction to the lie that Black freedom required white oversight.

For white people, the safest births occurred not in empires, but in places that had dismantled inherited domination. Switzerland, neutral and decentralized, offered legal personhood even to the poor. Canada and the northern United States offered land, mobility, and political participation unavailable to Europe’s peasantry. Not equality — but protection.

The pattern is impossible to ignore once seen: where elites held unchecked power, everyone beneath them suffered — regardless of color. Race shaped the method. Class decided the fate.

This is why the oldest trick in the book has always been division. When poor Black laborers and poor white laborers began to notice they were trapped in the same machinery, the elites rewrote the narrative. They taught people to argue over skin instead of systems, identity instead of income, ancestry instead of access. Because a divided working class never looks up. It never storms the manor. It never questions who owns the ledger.

The 1800s were not a morality play of color alone. They were a warning — one we are still ignoring.

Different skin. Same chains. Different century. Same elites.

Disclaimer

This article is intended for historical education and social analysis. It does not minimize or deny the unique brutality of racialized chattel slavery, nor does it seek to compare suffering competitively. Its purpose is to examine systems of power and exploitation across race and class to reveal how elites historically maintained control by dividing the poor — a strategy that continues today.

References & Resources

  • Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death
  • Eric Foner, Give Me Liberty
  • Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
  • Sheila Fitzpatrick, Russian Serfdom
  • Adam Hochschild, Bury the Chains
  • C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins
  • British National Archives (Industrial labor records)
  • Library and Archives Canada (Black settlements and abolition records)

About the Author

A.L. Childers is a writer and historical researcher focused on power systems, suppressed histories, and the narratives elites rely on to maintain control. Her work challenges simplified versions of the past and asks readers to look beyond identity-driven divisions to the structures that shape human lives across centuries.

What Winter Once Asked of the Human Mind

Leave a reply

A Fireside Chapter

Before winter became decorative, it was demanding.

It did not arrive with twinkling lights or the promise of cheer. It came with weight. With a darkness that lingered at the edges of daylight and pressed itself into the corners of the mind. It came with cold that did not merely chill the skin but seeped inward, settling into joints, lungs, and thought alike. Food stores thinned. Candles burned shorter. Silence, once comforting, grew louder — and in that silence, the mind, if left untended, could wander into fear just as easily as the body could wander into danger.

Winter did not ask whether one felt ready.

It asked whether one was.

And so, winter asked something of people.

Not politely — but persistently.

It asked for preparation.
It asked for memory.
It asked for ritual.
It asked for community.

And when those answers were not given, winter took its payment anyway.

Long before psychology named the nervous system or mapped the pathways of fear and reassurance, people understood something elemental: the human mind could fracture under prolonged cold, darkness, and isolation. Spirits dimmed as quickly as hearth fires. Children, sensing uncertainty, required structure. Adults, facing scarcity and mortality, required meaning. Communities, pressed inward by snow and storm, required reminders of who they were to one another when survival ceased to be effortless.

So stories became tools.

Not entertainment — instruction wrapped in wonder.

They were spoken aloud when the wind rattled shutters and the scent of smoke clung to woolen clothes drying near the fire. They were told by elders whose voices carried the grain of winters survived, whose hands bore the quiet testimony of work finished before the cold arrived. These stories were passed not to frighten, but to focus — to anchor the mind when the world grew hostile.

A cat that punished the unprepared, its eyes glowing beyond the threshold, reminding families that warmth was earned long before it was worn.
A wanderer who tested hospitality, arriving hungry and cold to see whether kindness remained when abundance did not.
A bell that rang when people forgot one another, its sound cutting through snow and complacency alike.
A candle lit for the dead, so grief would not turn feral in the dark.

These were not fantasies.
They were psychological anchors.

Fear, when shaped into story, became manageable. Consequence, when personified, became memorable. Hope, when ritualized, became repeatable. Folklore taught the mind how to endure when the environment turned against it — how to regulate emotion, reinforce behavior, and preserve cohesion without written rules or formal theory.

Children learned without lectures.
Adults remembered without being confronted.

And the stories worked — because they survived.

This story comes from an old winter folk belief once shared around fires and candlelight. Families told these stories long ago to teach kindness, care, and preparation during the darkest months of the year.

These are traditional winter folk beliefs retold for modern readers.
The core legends predate 1900 and were passed down through oral tradition.

The stories in this collection are not modern inventions. They are retellings of traditional winter folk beliefs — passed down through oral tradition long before the 1900s, when survival depended on memory, ritual, and shared wisdom.

To dismiss these tales as superstition is to misunderstand their purpose. They were never meant to explain the world; they were meant to steady the mind within it. They functioned as early psychology — regulating fear, reinforcing social bonds, and offering the nervous system something solid to hold when uncertainty pressed in from all sides.

Even now, when homes are warm and shelves are full, winter still asks its questions.

We feel them when the days shorten and the year closes in on itself. We inventory what we finished and what we avoided. We seek light instinctively — candles, trees, fires, songs — repeating rituals we barely remember choosing. We gather when we can, and ache when we cannot, because the mind still fears abandonment in the dark.

The modern mind is not as different as we pretend.

It still needs rhythm.
It still responds to story.
It still requires meaning when control slips away.

Folklore did not disappear because it was childish. It faded because comfort made us forget why it existed. But the instinct remains — resurfacing every December, disguised as tradition, nostalgia, or an unexplainable pull toward old stories told slowly, by firelight.

Winter once asked the human mind to stay awake, stay connected, and stay prepared.

The stories were the answers.

About the Author

A.L. Childers is a writer and cultural preservationist whose work explores folklore, memory, and the psychological wisdom embedded in pre-industrial traditions. With a voice rooted in old-world storytelling and modern reflection, she writes to honor the stories that once kept communities steady through darkness, scarcity, and silence.

Disclaimer

This chapter is a literary retelling and interpretive exploration of traditional winter folk beliefs. While grounded in documented oral traditions and historical practices predating the 1900s, it is presented for educational, cultural, and artistic purposes. Variations of folklore exist across regions and eras.

References & Resources

• Simpson, Jacqueline & Roud, Steve – A Dictionary of English Folklore
• Hutton, Ronald – The Stations of the Sun
• Eliade, Mircea – Myth and Reality
• Dundes, Alan – Interpreting Folklore
• Frazer, James George – The Golden Bough
• Scandinavian Yule and Solstice oral traditions (pre-industrial Europe)

The Making of the “Broken Child”: A System Built Before the Diagnosis- PART II — The Blueprint for Obedience

Leave a reply

PART II — The Blueprint for Obedience

The Making of the “Broken Child”: A System Built Before Diagnosis

The snow outside the old brick schoolhouse fell in thin, obedient lines, each flake descending exactly as gravity commanded, without resistance, without question. Inside, however, the air was heavy — not with winter cold, but with something quieter, older, and far more calculated. If Part I revealed the cage, Part II reveals the blueprint — the quiet architecture of obedience that shaped every hallway, every desk, every rule, every whispered reprimand echoing across generations.

Imagine, for a moment, standing in the very first American classroom engineered under the new industrial vision. The floors creak, the windows rattle, the smell of coal smoke leaks in from a nearby factory, staining the wooden walls with a faint gray film. And at the front of the room hangs a clock — enormous, round, authoritative — ticking not to mark time, but to measure compliance. You can almost feel the breath of the architect who placed it there, as if he were whispering: Control the hours, and you control the mind.

This was no accident.
This was blueprint.

Rockefeller and the industrialists of his circle did not merely fund education — they designed it. With intentionality. With precision. With a philosophy as cold as steel and as efficient as the assembly lines that powered their fortunes. The blueprint was simple: turn human beings into predictable units. Factory workers. Soldiers. Laborers. Citizens who would follow rules without questioning why the rules existed.

And so, the system was designed from the ground up not to cultivate brilliance, but to cultivate obedience.

Look around that early classroom. Everything is a command disguised as furniture. The desks are bolted down in military rows — children arranged like infantry, facing forward, hands folded, backs straight. The teacher stands at the helm like a foreman, issuing orders through lessons. The blackboard behind her carries not knowledge, but expectations — write this, recite that, repeat, repeat, repeat.

Even the soundscape is engineered. Bells slice the day into digestible pieces, teaching children to regulate their bodies to external prompts rather than internal rhythms. The scraping of chairs, the sharp snap of rulers, the hush of a teacher’s raised finger — these sounds create a texture of tension that children learn to internalize as “normal.”

And the strangest part?
Adults believed this was progress.

The blueprint for obedience hid itself in plain sight. It taught children not how to think — but when to think. Not how to ask questions — but which questions were permitted. Not how to explore — but how to sit still long enough to forget they ever wanted to.

And slowly, a new kind of psychological architecture emerged:
one in which the institution became the measure of the child,
and the child became the variable.

If the child fit the blueprint — quiet, compliant, still — the system declared them “good.”
If they resisted — moved too much, questioned too much, learned through touch, motion, sound, mess, experimentation — the system declared them “bad.”
Not because of morality — but because of manageability.

Obedience became virtue.
Energy became vice.

But the blueprint is more than physical design — it is cultural engineering. A silent script delivered to every child from the moment they walk into kindergarten:

Sit down.
Be quiet.
Follow instructions.
Raise your hand.
Don’t speak out of turn.
Wait for permission.
Memorize this.
Forget yourself.

In a fog of modern life, these commands drifted across generations, passed down like heirlooms no one wanted but everyone carried. Parents who had been shaped by the system — often unknowingly — reinforced it through their expectations of their own children. Teachers, themselves conditioned by the blueprint, believed compliance was the foundation of learning. Administrators enforced policies not because they believed in them, but because the system rewarded obedience at every level.

And so the blueprint for obedience hardened, decade after decade, into the spine of American childhood.

It is no coincidence that industrial schools and industrial factories share the same assumptions about human nature. Both assume people must be controlled. Both assume stillness equals productivity. Both assume conformity equals success. Both rely on top-down management, external rewards, and punitive discipline. Both suppress the instincts that make humans innovators — curiosity, exploration, risk-taking, autonomy, messy trial and error.

The blueprint for obedience was never designed for learning. It was designed for predictability.

And when predictable behavior became the goal, unpredictable traits became the enemy.

The restless child became the problem.
The curious child became a disruption.
The energetic child became a behavior case.
The imaginative child became unfocused.
The emotional child became overreactive.
The impulsive child became noncompliant.

Until finally — decades later — these traits were gathered, sorted, labeled, and pathologized.

Not because the traits were unnatural.

But because they threatened a system built on unnatural expectations.

And here is where the story darkens further: the blueprint for obedience set the stage for medicalization before anyone even realized a script was being written. The school system whispered, “This child does not fit,” long before any doctor whispered, “This child has a disorder.”

The system identified the misfits —
medicine created the label —
pharmaceuticals created the compliance —
and society created the shame.

The blueprint for obedience is the skeleton key to understanding the origins of ADHD as a category. Without the blueprint, the disorder would not exist. Schools created the conditions in which normal childhood behavior became intolerable. And intolerable behaviors demanded explanation — not reform.

It is easier to medicate a child than redesign an institution.

Easier to silence a symptom than fix its cause.

And so, the blueprint for obedience became self-fulfilling:
Force children into environments that require unnatural stillness, then diagnose those who cannot endure it.

But let us step back into that early classroom one last time.

The fire in the corner stove crackles. The teacher’s heels click across the floorboards. A child at the back twirls a pencil, his leg bouncing, his mind alive with thoughts no one will ever hear. Another stares out the frost-lined window, imagining worlds where streams replace hallways, where curiosity replaces compliance, where movement replaces monotony. A third fidgets with a scrap of string, heart pounding because she has been scolded three times already for “restlessness.”

They were not broken.
They were not disordered.
They were not faulty prototypes.

They simply did not fit the blueprint.

And instead of questioning the blueprint, society questioned the child.

This — this architectural betrayal — is how obedience became the highest virtue, curiosity became an inconvenience, and a generation of brilliant, energetic, natural learners were slowly molded into versions of themselves small enough to fit inside a desk.

The blueprint for obedience was never an accident.
It was a design.
A strategy.
A quiet engineering of human behavior that continues today.

And until we confront it, the story of the “broken child” will continue to be written by those who profit from the fracture.

 DISCLAIMER

This series is written for educational, historical, and personal reflection purposes. It is not medical advice, nor does it diagnose, treat, or replace consultation with a licensed medical professional. All historical references are based on documented sources, public records, and widely published research.

A.L. Childers is a multi-genre author known for blending investigative research with storytelling that cuts straight to the bone. Raised in the American South and forged by lived experience, Childers exposes uncomfortable truths about systems, institutions, and the hidden machinery shaping modern life. Her work spans history, health, psychology, spirituality, and cultural critique — always with a warm, human voice that refuses to look away.

A powerful, historically documented Childers-meets-modern exposé revealing how the American school system was engineered for obedience, not learning — and how ADHD was later invented to pathologize normal childhood behavior. This multi-part series examines who built the system, who profits from it, and how millions of children were mislabeled as “disordered” while the real disorder lived inside the institution itself.

A Closed Door at the End of the Hall: A Lesson in Rejection, Protection, and Providence

Leave a reply

By A.L. Childers — who has learned that fate often saves us by disappointing us first.

There are moments in every life — whether lived under gas lamps and cobblestone streets or beneath the whir of modern fluorescent lights — when the heart reaches for something with all its might… and yet the very thing it desires slips quietly from its grasp.

It is a universal experience, as old as humanity itself.
The job we longed for.
The chance we thought would change everything.
The door that seemed meant for us — only to shut with such finality we feel its echo in our bones.

So it was with me.

After offering my time, my enthusiasm, and my honest effort, I found myself waiting for a response that never came. They had promised a further interview — the kind that sits at the edge of hope like a candle trembling at the mercy of a cold draft — and yet no message arrived. No explanation. Only silence.

At first, the sting was sharp, as all disappointments are.
But as the dust settled, clarity emerged like a gentle hand upon the shoulder.

For this was not rejection.
No — this was protection.
A divine redirection.
A quiet form of correction.
A whisper of introspection.
A moment of holy intervention.

Life has its own rhyme —
“What you lose today is guarding your tomorrow.”

Sometimes a “no” is simply fate saying,
“Not here. Not that door. Not that sorrow.”

🌫️ The Door That Closed Was Never Mine

Had I entered it, I would have discovered:

  • A long and weary road
  • Endless hours of toil
  • Traffic that devours both time and spirit
  • A sameness of pay with a heaviness of burden
  • A workplace where communication faltered before employment even began

It was as if life whispered through the keyhole:

“Child, this door does not lead to your peace.”

And though Dickens wrote often of fate’s twists, this lesson is my own.
An A.L. Childers lesson — carved from hope, disappointment, and revelation.

Providence — though mysterious — is never unkind.
It simply sees what we cannot.

🌧️ Why We Want What We Want (And Why It Doesn’t Always Want Us Back)

Sometimes we pursue opportunities not out of passion, but out of pressure.

Bills gather like winter fog.
Responsibilities tap insistently at our conscience.
Fear of not-enough tightens around our hopes like a cold December wind.

We chase any door with a handle simply because it promises temporary warmth.

But not every warm door leads to a warm life.

Some doors hide storm clouds.
Some hide burnout.
Some hide futures we were never meant to carry.

And so fate — in its quiet, old-fashioned wisdom — closes it.

Not out of cruelty.
But out of care.

A closed door doesn’t punish you —
it protects you from what you can’t yet see.

🚪 The Hallway of Waiting Is Where Transformation Happens

When one door shuts, we stand in the hallway.
Alone.
Unsure.
Listening for any sign of what comes next.

But the hallway is where we grow.
It is where:

✨ Resilience is shaped
✨ Patience is stretched
✨ confidence is rebuilt
✨ purpose becomes clearer

It is the space where the soul learns what it truly wants.

“Between the ending and the beginning,
the becoming takes place.”

The bills still need paying.
The days still march on.
But even in the tightest seasons, one truth remains:

A closed door is not the conclusion —
it’s the transition.

📚 Part-Time Ghostwriting + Writing My Books: The Unexpected Blessing

In the quiet left by unanswered messages, something unexpected rose in its place.

A rhythm that did not drain.
A routine that did not suffocate.
A life that allowed breathing room.

Part-time ghostwriting offered simplicity, structure, and steadiness.
Writing my own books offered freedom, fire, and purpose.

Together, they formed a sanctuary —
a life aligned with my spirit, not against it.

It was a surprise blessing wearing the disguise of disappointment.

🔔 For You, Dear Reader

If you are standing before a door that did not open, hear me:

You have not failed.
You have not been overlooked.
You have not been cast aside.

You have been redirected.

Toward peace.
Toward purpose.
Toward a future that honors your heart.

Life removes you from places that are unworthy of your calling.

And when the right door opens — as surely it will —
You will see why the others had to close.

📝 Disclaimer

This blog reflects personal experiences and interpretations. It is intended for inspiration and reflection, not as professional employment advice.

👩‍💼 About the Author

A.L. Childers is a bestselling author, truth-seeker, and storyteller based in Charlotte, NC. She writes about resilience, reinvention, hidden history, and the quiet wisdom inside life’s turning points.

A powerful, Dickens-style reflection by author A.L. Childers on why closed doors are often divine protection—not rejection. Discover how life reroutes us toward purpose, peace, and unexpected blessings through ghostwriting, creativity, and trusting the process.

How Propaganda Became America’s Love Language–A Story of Soft Lies, Sweet Nothings, and a Nation Addicted to Illusion

Leave a reply

A Story of Soft Lies, Sweet Nothings, and a Nation Addicted to Illusion
By A.L. Childers, author of
The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America

If you wander the quiet streets of America long after midnight—
past the glowing billboards, past the silent schools, past the living rooms where blue TV light flickers upon dreaming faces—
you might hear it.

A whisper.

A lullaby.

A promise.

It is not sung by mothers or lovers.
It is hummed by the nation itself.

A soft, sugary voice saying,
“You are the greatest country in the world.”
“You are free.”
“Your history is noble.”
“Your suffering is individual, not systemic.”
“Your enemies are chosen for you.”

It is a love song we were raised on—
the only one we were ever taught to hear.

But like all love songs shaped by power,
this one was not written from the heart.

It was manufactured.

⭐ ACT I: The Courtship — When America Fell in Love With Propaganda

The United States did not stumble into propaganda accidentally.

We hired the man who invented it.

Enter Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and the father of modern public relations.

Bernays taught corporations—and later, the U.S. government—how to manipulate human desire, shape public belief, and engineer consent.

His books Propaganda (1928) and Crystallizing Public Opinion became the blueprint for every emotional manipulation that followed.

He famously wrote:

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”

America didn’t just adopt propaganda.
America fell in love with it.
Put a ring on it.
Built a house with it.
Raised children in it.

⭐ ACT II: How Propaganda Became a Household Romance

Propaganda is effective because it uses the language of intimacy:

✔ Trust me.
✔ I’m protecting you.
✔ I would never lie to you.
✔ Look how much better you are with me.

Propaganda doesn’t shout.
It whispers.
It flatters.
It reassures.

It tells you what you want to believe.

This is why corporations and government agencies use the same emotional techniques as toxic lovers:

  • love-bombing (patriotism campaigns)
  • gaslighting (“That didn’t happen; this did.”)
  • future faking (“We’re fighting this war for a better tomorrow.”)
  • jealousy (“Other countries want to take what you have.”)
  • dependency (“Only we can protect you.”)

Propaganda’s ultimate goal is not obedience.
Not fear.
Not submission.

Its goal is affection.
Because affection is far more binding.

People obey dictators out of fear.
People obey democracies out of love.

⭐ ACT III: Receipts — When Propaganda Was Caught in the Act

🧾 1. Operation Mockingbird (CIA, 1950s–1970s)

Declassified documents reveal the CIA infiltrated major U.S. newsrooms, controlling journalists and dictating narratives.
(Source: Church Committee Report, 1976)

🧾 2. The Committee on Public Information (WWI)

The U.S. government created a propaganda office to convince Americans to support the war.
They used posters, films, celebrities, schools, and churches.
(Source: National Archives)

🧾 3. The Gulf of Tonkin Lie (1964)

The Johnson administration fabricated an attack to justify entering the Vietnam War.
(Source: NSA Declassified Documents, 2005)

🧾 4. Tobacco Industry Propaganda (1930s–1990s)

Corporations used doctors, ads, and “research councils” to hide cancer links.
(Source: Master Settlement Agreement Documents)

🧾 5. The Pentagon Papers (1971)

Revealed decades of government deception in military decisions.
(Source: U.S. National Archives)

🧾 6. The American Textbook Industry

Texas & Florida control curriculum content nationwide, shaping patriotic, corporate-friendly “truth.”
(Source: New York Times Textbook Investigation, 2019)

These aren’t theories.
These are receipts.

⭐ ACT IV: Why Propaganda Works in America Better Than Anywhere Else

Because America turned it into an art form.

We wrapped it in:

  • Hollywood stories
  • patriotic holidays
  • corporate slogans
  • school textbooks
  • trauma bonding (war + fear)
  • the myth of individualism
  • the illusion of freedom

To question propaganda is to question America.
And that is the greatest taboo.

You see, propaganda works best when people believe:

“We are the good ones.”

It is the warm hand guiding your shoulder,
the voice calling itself your protector,
the lover who promises safety in exchange for loyalty.

⭐ ACT V: How Advertising Sealed the Marriage

By the 1950s, propaganda and advertising merged into one monstrous, profitable organism.

Corporations learned to manipulate:

✔ desire
✔ insecurity
✔ patriotism
✔ gender roles
✔ racial stereotypes
✔ political identity

Advertising didn’t just sell products.
It sold ideology.

This is why I wrote:

📘 The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America

Because our entire national identity—
from flawless Founding Fathers
to sanitized wars
to corporate-made heroes—
was crafted with the same formula used to sell cigarettes and dish soap.

Advertising didn’t just influence America.
It invented it.

⭐ ACT VI: The Breakup Letter America Is Afraid to Write

Propaganda thrives because we don’t want to admit we were seduced.

Nobody wants to say:

“I believed the lie.”
“I trusted the mask.”
“I loved the illusion.”

But breaking free from propaganda is not betrayal.
It is birth.

It is awakening.
It is reclaiming your voice.
It is finally seeing the world without the filters someone else installed.

Propaganda may be America’s love language—
but truth is yours.

And truth is the only way out.

Discover how propaganda became America’s love language through advertising, government messaging, education, and emotional manipulation. A Dickens-style deep dive by A.L. Childers, author of The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America, complete with references and hard historical receipts.

#TheLiesWeLoved
#AmericanPropaganda
#HistoryExposed
#WakeUpAmerica
#MediaManipulation
#BreakTheNarrative
#ALChilders
#TruthInPlainSight
#OperationMockingbird
#EdwardBernays

⭐ ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A.L. Childers is a journalist, historian, and investigator of America’s hidden narratives. Her work exposes the machinery behind national identity, corporate propaganda, medical misinformation, and the quiet psychological conditioning shaping modern life. She is the author of The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America, a groundbreaking exploration of how corporations and government agencies manufacture belief at a national scale.

⭐ DISCLAIMER

This blog is for educational and investigative purposes. All historical examples are sourced from declassified government records, academic research, peer-reviewed publications, and verified journalistic investigations. Readers are encouraged to explore all referenced materials directly.

✨ Why Advertising and History Are the Same Industry—–A Story in Smoke, Mirrors, and Manufactured Memory

Leave a reply

A Story in Smoke, Mirrors, and Manufactured Memory
By A.L. Childers, author of
The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America

If you rise early enough—before the city yawns awake—and walk the quiet streets of any American town, you’ll hear it:
the soft hum of stories being sold.

Some come from billboards.
Some glow in storefronts.
And some rise from the vaulted halls of our schools, wrapped in the respectable perfume of “education,” though they are no different in purpose or design.

In truth, dear reader, advertising and history are not distant cousins.
They are twins.

Both industries create illusions.
Both manufacture consent.
Both decide what the masses should remember and what they should forget.
Both sell a narrative—
one to make you a customer,
the other to make you a citizen.

And neither has ever promised to tell you the truth.

This is not cynicism.
It is architecture.

Let me show you the scaffolding.

⭐ ACT I: Where Storytelling Beats Truth into Shape

Picture a dim-lit room, London-wet with fog… except this is not Dickens’ England.
This is a modern textbook committee meeting in Texas or Florida.
Behind closed doors, men in suits—politicians, lobbyists, corporate representatives—hold a red pen over American memory.

They are not historians.
They are not scholars.
They are marketers.

They ask:

  • Does this version sell?
  • Does it protect patriotic sentiment?
  • Does it make people complacent?
  • Does it maintain the illusion of innocence?

These are the same questions asked inside an advertising boardroom.

In fact—
they are the same boardrooms.

Pearson, McGraw Hill, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt—
the three corporations that control 80% of American textbooks—
also operate massive advertising, consulting, and digital marketing divisions.

When they craft a history lesson, they craft it with the same hand that sells cereal, pharmaceuticals, and political candidates.

History is not written.
History is branded.

⭐ ACT II: A Product Called America

Advertising teaches you to want things.
History teaches you to believe things.

Both industries depend on repetition.
Both rely on emotional triggers.
Both shape identity.

And both have mastered the art of omission.

Take the Boston Tea Party—
Always taught as bold patriotism…
never as economic vandalism committed by wealthy merchants protecting their smuggling profits.

Take Thanksgiving—
Always gratitude and harmony…
never genocide and starvation.

Take the Civil War—
Always “a disagreement over states’ rights”…
never an economic fight to preserve slavery.

Advertising uses glossy slogans.
History uses glossy heroes.

Both are campaigns.
Both are propaganda.
Both are narratives designed for mass consumption.

This is precisely the topic of my book:
📘 The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America,
a documented autopsy of how corporations and political leaders crafted the stories we call “truth.”

Not to educate us.
To control us.

⭐ ACT III: The Machinery Behind the Curtain

Let’s pull back further.

✔ Advertising is funded by corporations.

✔ History textbooks are funded by the same corporations.

Advertising creates desire.
History creates devotion.

Advertising freezes you into a consumer.
History freezes you into a compliant citizen.

Both industries depend on people not questioning the narrative.

This is why real history—
the kind that bleeds, snarls, contradicts, exposes—
It is rarely allowed in classrooms.

The truths that would awaken a generation are the ones most aggressively cut:

  • corporate crimes
  • CIA coups
  • Indigenous genocide
  • labor union massacres
  • pharmaceutical corruption
  • political propaganda
  • the myth of American innocence

These truths are bad for business.
Bad for loyalty.
Bad for branding.

And America is a brand.

⭐ ACT IV: The Evidence (The Receipts They Hope You Never Read)

📘 Lies My Teacher Told Me — James Loewen

Documents textbook falsification and political tailoring.

📘 The Revisionaries — PBS Documentary

Exposes Texas rewriting national history.

📘 A People’s History of the United States — Howard Zinn

Shows the narratives omitted from classrooms.

📘 New York Times (2019)

Found two versions of the same textbook—
one for California, one for Texas—
each telling a different America.

📘 Texas Board of Education Records

Show mandated changes on slavery, civil rights, climate, capitalism, and religion.

📘 Pearson & McGraw Hill Financial Statements

Prove billions in profits tied to curriculum influence.

📘 Corporate Advertising Archives

Reveals identical messaging strategies used in textbooks and brand marketing.

The machinery is real.
The pipeline is documented.
The manipulation is measurable.

This is not conspiracy.
This is capitalism.

⭐ ACT V: Why They Keep the Public Misinformed

Because critical thinkers do not make good consumers.
And educated citizens do not make obedient workers.

A miseducated nation is easier to:

✔ manipulate
✔ pacify
✔ distract
✔ divide
✔ exploit

When you control a child’s history book,
you control their worldview.
When you control their worldview,
you control their future.

It is the oldest trick in civilization:

Give the masses a story they can cling to,
And they will never realize the chains they wear.

⭐ ACT VI: Why My Books Exist (And Why They Hit a Nerve)

Everything I write—
from The Lies We Loved
to Silent Chains
to The Witch’s Almanac Cookbook (which teaches ancestral truth through food)
to Enchanted Realms and My Grandmother’s Witchy Medicine Cabinet—

—all of it exists for one reason:

🔥 To return power to the individual.
🔥 To expose the illusions sold to us.
🔥 To bring forgotten knowledge back to the people.

Because the truth is not hidden.
It’s advertised.

Discover how advertising and history operate as twin industries—shaping public belief, manufacturing national identity, and controlling collective memory. Explore the corporations, political influences, and propaganda strategies behind America’s textbooks in this Dickens-inspired deep dive by A.L. Childers.

⭐ ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A.L. Childers is a journalist, researcher, and author known for exposing the machinery behind American narratives. Her books—including The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America, Silent Chains, and her witchcraft & ancestral healing series—pull back the curtain on propaganda, power, and the forgotten wisdom of ordinary people. She believes truth belongs to the people—not the institutions that profit from distorting it.

⭐ DISCLAIMER

This article is based on verifiable historical documents, textbook committee archives, academic studies, media investigations, and corporate financial statements. It is intended for educational analysis, not as legal or professional advice. Readers are encouraged to explore all referenced sources directly.

📚🕰️ “Who Really Writes America’s Textbooks? The Hidden Machine Controlling What We Learn”

Leave a reply

The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America

If you’ve ever opened a history book and felt like something was missing — it’s because something was.

Entire chapters were removed.
Whole truths were softened.
Entire people erased.
Motives rewritten.
Crimes rebranded as “progress.”

And the most important question isn’t what they left out…
It’s who got to decide.

Because the truth is this:

Only a handful of corporations and politicians decide what 50 million American students learn every year.

Not teachers.
Not historians.
Not scholars.

Corporations.
Lobbyists.
State committees.
Political ideologues.

And they make billions doing it.

Let’s pull back the curtain.

⭐ ACT I: The Textbook Cartel — The Companies That Write America’s Memory

Three companies control over 80% of all K–12 textbooks in the United States:

1. Pearson Education

  • A global education conglomerate
  • Makes over $4.5 billion annually
  • Has been repeatedly sued for unethical testing & publishing practices
  • Writes standards and then sells the tests that align with them

2. McGraw Hill

  • Revenue ~$1.7 billion yearly
  • Deep ties to banking and corporate sponsors
  • Influences STEM and history narratives heavily

3. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH)

  • Revenue $1.0+ billion
  • Historically known for altering historical narratives to satisfy state demands

Together, these companies form what researchers call:

“The Education Industrial Complex.”

They produce:

  • the textbooks
  • the teacher guides
  • the standardized tests
  • the digital software
  • the homework systems

And they market themselves not as educators…
but as shareholder-driven corporations.

If the truth threatens sales?
It gets edited out.

⭐ ACT II: The REAL Deciders — Texas & Florida

(Yes, two states shape the entire nation’s books.)

Most people don’t know this, but:

Texas and Florida buy so many textbooks that publishers rewrite content to satisfy their political boards.

Whatever Texas approves…
The rest of the nation gets by default.

Why?

Because corporations do not want to print 50 different versions of a history book.
They want one.

So what Texas demands…
America learns.

Examples (documented):

✔ Slavery renamed to “the Atlantic triangular trade.”
✔ Capitalism called “the free enterprise system.”
✔ Textbooks required to list the “positives” of slavery.
✔ The Civil War reframed as a “states’ rights disagreement.”
✔ Climate change minimized or omitted.
✔ Creationism inserted as “alternative theory.”
✔ American imperialism softened or erased.
✔ Native genocide rebranded as “westward expansion.”

Sources:

  • Texas State Board of Education records, 2010–2022
  • New York Times textbook investigations (2019)
  • Washington Post analysis of FL/TX curriculum influence
  • National Education Policy Center (NEPC) textbook studies

Politicians — not historians — determine “truth.”

And publishers obey, because the profits are enormous.

⭐ ACT III: Why They Want Americans Uninformed

(This is where it gets uncomfortable.)

A miseducated public is:

✔ Easier to control
✔ Easier to manipulate
✔ Less likely to revolt
✔ Less likely to question government decisions
✔ More likely to be patriotic consumers
✔ More likely to accept corporate power
✔ More likely to vote based on emotion, not knowledge

An educated public is dangerous, because:

  • They ask questions
  • They think critically
  • They recognize propaganda
  • They demand accountability
  • They see through political marketing
  • They cannot be easily divided

This is why the American school system was designed — from the industrial era — to produce obedient workers, not thinkers.

John D. Rockefeller said it himself:

“I don’t want a nation of thinkers. I want a nation of workers.”

His foundation funded modern schooling.
His values became policy.

This was not an accident.

It was infrastructure.

⭐ ACT IV: The Money Trail — How Much They Make From Every Child

Every child in America represents:

✔ textbook purchases
✔ digital access fees
✔ testing fees
✔ “test prep” add-ons
✔ online curriculum subscriptions

Pearson alone earns hundreds of millions annually from state contracts.

When you multiply:

50 million students ×
$100–$300 per student ×
annual district purchases…

You get a multi-billion-dollar propaganda pipeline.

It is the most profitable misinformation system in the country — because nobody questions schoolbooks.

You’re told:

“This is history.”
“This is fact.”
“This is truth.”

But truth has never been the point.
Compliance has.

⭐ ACT V: Receipts — Historical Documentation & Academic Sources

1. “Lies My Teacher Told Me” — James W. Loewen

A Pulitzer-nominated work exposing textbook distortion.

2. NEPC (National Education Policy Center) Textbook Studies

Documents political interference in content.

3. “The Revisionaries” — PBS Documentary

Exposes Texas politicians rewriting history standards.

4. New York Times Investigation (2019):

Showed differences in CA vs TX textbooks — SAME publisher, TWO different truths.

5. “The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America’s Public Schools” — Berliner & Biddle

Documents corporate influence over curriculum.

6. Texas SBOE Public Hearing Records

Show politicians demanding religious, ideological, and corporate edits.

7. Pearson Annual Reports

Show billions in profit structured around state contracts and testing.

8. Howard Zinn — A People’s History of the United States

Exposes omitted narratives and marginalized voices.

9. Academic paper: “Curriculum Politics: Who Should Decide What Children Learn?”

Published in The Social Studies Review.

These are not conspiracy theories.
These are receipts.
Documented, archived, and verifiable.

Just hidden from the public.

📘 The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America

This book connects directly to this topic — because textbook creation is just another form of national advertising.

A brand story.
A curated identity.
A product called “America.”

Who really writes American textbooks? Discover the corporations, political boards, and financial motives shaping what 50 million students learn—and why the truth is edited, softened, or erased. Includes real references, receipts, and analysis from A.L. Childers.

⭐ ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A.L. Childers is a journalist, researcher, and author specializing in hidden history, propaganda analysis, and the unseen machinery shaping American life. Her book The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America exposes how corporations and government institutions manufacture national narratives, rewrite collective memory, and sell patriotism like a product.

She believes truth belongs to the people — not the publishers.

⭐ DISCLAIMER

This blog is for educational and investigative purposes. All claims are supported by publicly available academic studies, corporate financial documents, textbook committee records, and journalistic investigations. This article does not allege illegal activity but analyzes structural and political influences on curriculum creation.

The Curriculum of Illusion: Why Our Schools Teach Narratives—Not History

Leave a reply

By A.L. Childers, author of The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America

If you listen closely, you’ll notice something strange about American history textbooks—they all seem to sound the same.

Smooth.
Sanitized.
Predictable.
Comfortably patriotic.

It’s almost as if they’ve all been… written for the same purpose.

Not to teach.

But to sell.

Sell a worldview.
Sell a myth.
Sell an identity packaged so neatly that students stop questioning where it came from.

And that’s where organizations like the National Council for History Education (NCHE) step in—well-meaning on the surface, but functioning inside a system that has been grooming narratives for over 150 years.

So let’s break it open.

⭐ ACT I: The History We’re Given vs. The History That Happened

The NCHE recently released a collection of “History’s Habits of Mind,” promoted as tools to help students “think historically.”

Sounds noble.
Sounds academic.
Sounds empowering.

But who decides which habits matter?
And which history gets elevated?

Even the language gives it away:

  • “Sharpen historical thinking.”
  • “Primary sources selected for discussion.”
  • “Aligned materials.”

Aligned with what?
Aligned with whom?
Aligned to preserve what narrative?

Because here’s the truth:

✔ Students aren’t learning history.

✔ They’re learning a curated version chosen for them.

✔ And uncomfortable truths rarely get included.

We are taught:

George Washington never told lies…
The Boston Tea Party was noble…
Thanksgiving was a peaceful dinner…
Christopher Columbus “discovered” a continent full of people…

Stories designed not to educate, but to reinforce patriotism and obedience.

Why?

Because real history destabilizes power.
Mythology reinforces it.

⭐ ACT II: The Business of History (Where the NCHE Fits In)

Let’s follow the money.

📌 Textbook companies (Pearson, McGraw Hill, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

Control 80%+ of all K-12 textbooks in the United States.

📌 State textbook committees

—particularly Texas and Florida—
have outsized control over what the entire nation reads.

A single objection from these committees can remove:

  • slavery’s brutality
  • labor union violence
  • government conspiracies
  • CIA interference
  • corporate propaganda
  • Indigenous genocide
  • economic oppression
  • political manipulation

And organizations like NCHE—though not inherently malicious—operate inside this system, curating lesson plans and materials that fit within the already-approved narratives.

✔ They cannot contradict state standards.

✔ They cannot contradict textbook publishers.

✔ They cannot contradict politically crafted curriculum frameworks.

The result?

A polished history.
A patriotic history.
A profitable history.

Not a truthful one.

⭐ ACT III: Why Real History Is Not Taught (The Part They Avoid)

Because truth is messy.
Truth is angry.
Truth threatens the social order.

If we taught:

  • that enslaved people resisted violently
  • that banks created the Great Depression
  • that corporations funded both sides of wars
  • that the CIA overthrew democracies globally
  • that America’s “freedoms” were often propaganda
  • that labor movements won rights—not politicians
  • that segregationists rewrote southern textbooks
  • that advertising created modern identity
  • that government agencies manipulated information

…then we would raise a generation that questions everything.

And institutions don’t want thinkers.

They want believers.

This is exactly why your book,
The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America,
hits so hard: it exposes how narratives are manufactured the same way brands are.

History is marketed.
Identity is branded.
Truth is edited.

⭐ ACT IV: Real References (This is where the receipts come in)

📝 1. Teaching American History: The Struggle to Define the Past

— Gary Nash
Documents how political groups have shaped curriculums to fit ideology.

📝 2. Lies My Teacher Told Me

— James W. Loewen
One of the clearest breakdowns of textbook distortion and mythmaking.

📝 3. The Miseducation of America (NPR interviews with educators)

Confirms teachers are pressured to follow strict, sanitized frameworks.

📝 4. Reports from the Texas Board of Education (2002–2022)

Show documented political removal of content relating to racism, colonialism, and labor movements.

📝 5. The American Pageant (13th edition analysis)

Demonstrates pro-corporate, pro-war, nationalist framing in widely used textbooks.

📝 6. NCHE Program Materials

While valuable in method, they rely on pre-selected primary sources, already filtered through publisher-approved history.

In other words—
the “primary source” is only offered after someone decided it was safe.

⭐ ACT V: So What Do We Do About It?

We tell the truth.
We question the narrative.
We read outside the curriculum.
We stop worshiping textbooks as if they’re sacred.

And we write books like:

🔥 The Lies We Loved: How Advertising Invented America



Because the next generation does not need another myth.

They need honesty.

They need voices willing to question the sanitized version of America that has been sold to us like a brand slogan.

Why the history taught in American schools isn’t the real story. Explore how organizations like the NCHE fit into a larger system of curated narratives, political control, and sanitized textbooks. Includes references, resources, and analysis by A.L. Childers, author of The Lies We Loved.

⭐ DISCLAIMER

This blog is an educational analysis based on publicly available reports, historical scholarship, and documented curriculum policies. It does not claim NCHE acts with malicious intent, but examines the structural forces shaping historical education in the United States.

🌙 A Mother’s Lantern: 33 Life Lessons I Pray My Children Never Forget — A Story Told in Warm Light, Shadow, and Hard-Earned Wisdom —

Leave a reply

33 Life Lessons I Pray My Children Never Forget
— A Story Told in Warm Light, Shadow, and Hard-Earned Wisdom —
By A.L. Childers

There are evenings — quiet, gold-edged, and still — when the world finally unclenches its jaw, and a mother can hear herself think. It is in these hours, between the settling of the house and the rising of the moon, when I often find myself holding an old lantern.

Not a real one.
But the kind you feel in your chest — the kind passed down from mothers who survived harder winters, deeper heartaches, and homes with thinner walls than mine. It’s a lantern made of memory: warm glass, iron frame, a flicker of the Divine inside.

I imagine myself walking ahead of my children on the winding road of life, lantern held high so they might see where the world grows crooked… and where it grows holy.

Tonight, I write to place that lantern in their hands.

And yours.

Because one day they will walk without me — and the world, with all its thunder and sweetness, will demand that they remember who they are.

So here are the lessons I pray they carry, like warm light in cold fog.

✨ The 33 Lessons Lit by a Mother’s Lantern

1. Never shrink to fit inside someone else’s comfort.

The world grows small when you do.

2. Character is your true name.

Reputation is only the echo.

3. Think for yourself.

The crowd is usually loud… and usually wrong.

4. Question everything, even the things you want to believe.

5. Hold a clean conscience.

Integrity is a lantern that never lies to you.

6. You are valuable—act like it.

Walk away when staying becomes self-betrayal.

7. Respect the body that carries your soul.

8. You are enough.

There has never been another you, nor will there ever be.

9. If you can’t pay cash, you can’t afford it.

Debt is modern slavery.

10. Don’t chase joy in bottles, beds, or borrowed identities.

11. Life is short.

Make something of it that echoes.

12. Believe in impossible things — they’re the only ones that matter.

13. Dream boldly, then work quietly.

14. Kindness is never wasted.

15. You will fall.

Get up with your soul intact.

16. Forward is the only direction worth fighting for.

17. The world owes you nothing.

But you owe yourself everything.

18. Life is an adventure — step into it with courage.

19. Gratitude unlocks doors you didn’t know were locked.

20. Do not follow the herd — they wander off cliffs.

21. Guard your joy like a homeland.

22. Time is your most precious currency.

Don’t spend it like loose change.

23. Don’t “go with the flow.”

Be the river.

24. Listen more than you speak.

Wisdom hides in silence.

25. Tend gently to others.

Everyone carries private wars.

26. Speak to yourself like you would to someone you love.

27. When you marry, you marry the family too.

28. Treat every day as the fragile gift that it is.

29. Not everyone will like you.

Be grateful. It’s a filter.

30. Be humble. Be kind. Be steady.

31. Take no nonsense from anyone — especially bullies in grown-up bodies.

32. Guard your private life.

Mystery is a form of power.

33. Family troubles are to be mended at home, not displayed to wolves.

🌙 Closing the Lantern

And so, in my final whisper of the night, here is the truth I want them — and you — to remember:

Do good anyway.
Give anyway.
Rise anyway.
Because it was never between you and them.
It was always between you and God.

If my children remember even one of these lessons, then this mother’s lantern will have done its work.

And if you needed this too, then perhaps — in some small, tender way — the lantern has been passed to you.

🌿 About the Author — A.L. Childers

A.L. Childers is a bestselling author, blogger, and creator of TheHypothyroidismChick.com. A Southern-born storyteller with a lantern’s worth of lived wisdom, she writes about women’s health, neurodivergent motherhood, ancient remedies, magic, survival, and the quiet courage it takes to rebuild yourself.

Her works span genres — from health and wellness guides to ancestral magic cookbooks, to powerful memoir-style essays that help women reclaim their voice.

She is the author of:

✨ Witchy & Ancestral Magic Books

  • The Witch’s Almanac Cookbook (2026 Edition)
  • Healing Stews & Enchanted Brews (Crockpot Edition)
  • Healing Stews & Enchanted Brews: Holiday Magic
  • My Grandmother’s Witchy Medicine Cabinet
  • Colors of the Coven
  • Whispers of the Familiar
  • Enchanting Reflections
  • The Beginner Witch’s Guide to Practical Witchcraft
  • The Heart of the Shamanic Witch Journal

✨ Health, Hormones & Healing Books

  • Reset Your Thyroid
  • A Survivor’s Cookbook Guide to Kicking Hypothyroidism’s Booty
  • Hypothyroidism Beginner’s Guide
  • The Ultimate Guide to Healing Hypothyroidism

Her mission:
To help women heal — body, spirit, and lineage.

Find her at:
📌 TheHypothyroidismChick.com
📌 TikTok: @breakthematrixaudrey
📌 Instagram: @ThyroidismChick

⚠️ Disclaimer

This blog is for entertainment, inspiration, and educational purposes only.
It is not medical, financial, legal, or professional advice.

Always consult a licensed professional before making changes to your health, supplements, lifestyle, or medical treatment. The author assumes no responsibility for actions taken based on the information herein.

Knowledge is power — but wisdom is what you do with it.

💌 If this touched you, share it.

And if you’d like wisdom like this delivered straight to your inbox,
subscribe at TheHypothyroidismChick.com.