I'm Tracee Sioux and So Sioux Me is a blog to inspire mothers to empower their daughters.

We focus on deconstructing the media and the culture and how it impacts girls. We discuss new gender research and bounce around ideas about parenting daughters.

My ultimate dream is to get one million people to care about empowering girl issues.

So Sioux Me is also an official A New Earth small community running simultaneous with the Oprah online class so feel free to come by and expound on the book and it's impact on your personal life.

Please browse around the contents, subscribe, bookmark me, and put me in your RSS Feed. I've been waiting for you my whole life.

Thanks to 5 Minutes for Mom to sponsoring this party.

Oh, and I'd love to give something away . . . how bout a copy of A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)by Eckhart Tolle? There is nothing more empowering than discovering your own life's purpose and passing that on to your daughters (and sons).

Sign up for an email subscription to So Sioux Me (left sidebar) during the week of the 5 Minutes for Mom party and you're entered to win.

I'm thrilled to award a copy of Eckhart Tolle's book A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61) to ldrnc2000. Please email me at traceesioux{at}yahoo.com to give me your address within the next 48 hours. If prize is unclaimed I will give to the next name drawn.

But, don't go anywhere if you didn't win this copy. I'm excited to announce that I've been invited by Oprah's staff to lead a community discussion of the book simultaneously with the online course. I invite you to hang out and participate in the discussion here on So Sioux Me.

A landmark interactive spiritual event is on the horizon. Starting Monday, March 3rd, Oprah Winfrey and best selling author and spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle will team up to teach a live weekly webcast centered around Mr. Tolle’s book "A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)," Oprah’s latest book club selection. This revolutionary webcast is being hailed "the biggest classroom ever", and is free.

The course lasts 10 weeks, and will be live each Monday at 8pm CST. Each week will cover one of the 10 chapters in the book, with the discussion on our site following the same topic.

I am thrilled to say we will be participating in this breakthrough interactive event. Join us as we discuss the book, the Web Event, and spiritual journey itself. Sign up is free at oprah.com/anewearth. Following the Monday March 3 launch webcast, we’ll start to discuss Eckhart Tolle’s ‘A New Earth’ right here.

Be sure to add me to your RSS feed and to the right you'll see a place to subscribe via email.

I've finished A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61)and it really will change your life - if you want it to.

by Tracee Sioux

About a year ago I took a stance that all girls should have access to the HPV (human papillomavirus virus) in my article HPV Vaccine, Right of All Girls To Health.

While I stand by my original logic, I've come across two bits of information that have me reconsidering the benefits of such a vaccine.

Did you see Christiane Northrup, the OB/GYN author of Women's Bodies, Women's Wisdom: Creating Physical and Emotional Health and Healing on Oprah?

Northrup expressed that no one has conclusively proven that cervical cancer is caused by HPV, the virus that causes venereal warts.

From the interview, which can be found on Oprah.com.

"That vaccine is of great interest to me because there are over 100 different HPV types and this vaccine only targets four of them, and although they are associated with cervical cancer, nobody has ever proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that HPV is the cause of cervical cancer, Northrup said.

Dr. Northrup says only 3,500 women a year die of cervical cancer. "And the number decreases every year, so we're doing very well with Pap smears and other screening tests. So you should keep having those," she said.

But Dr. Northrup has some apprehension about the vaccine itself. "I'm very concerned about vaccinating girls 9 and over, every single one of them, with two vaccines," she says. "And I'm a little against my own profession. My own profession feels that everyone should be vaccinated."

Dr. Northrup would rather see the attention HPV is receiving directed elsewhere. "You see HPV associated with abnormal Pap smears in women who are on immunosuppressant drugs who have had kidney transplants or who have HIV disease. So it seems that that virus is associated with cancer in those whose immune system is already depressed, you see. So it's like a marker for a depressed immune system. Where I'd put my money is getting everybody on a dietary program that would enhance their immunity, and then they would be able to resist that sort of thing."

The other issue that got me thinking is the research I recently did on Precocious Puberty.

Something is amiss when an entire generation of girls are maturing earlier than all the generations of women before them. We don't know if early maturation is going to effect our girls post-puberty, into pregnancy, lactation and menopause.

Perhaps until we discover what factor, whether hormonal, social, environmental or chemical, is causing girls to develop early, we should add as few unknown substances to their little bodies as possible.

by Tracee Sioux

Have you seen that show Honey We're Killing the Kids? The show you a family with terrible eating habits, fast forward what they'll look like when they're 40 and predict their life expectancy?

Of course they pick families with such terrible habits you can walk away feeling like you're doing a super parenting job just because you introduced fruit.

For a better indication of how you're doing you can take the RealAge Healthy Kids Test. Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen you know, from Oprah and YOU: The Owner's Manual: An Insider's Guide to the Body that Will Make You Healthier and Younger have put together a Healthy Kid quiz. You can enter your kids' nutritional information, exercise habits, computer and television screen time, academic and social exposure and it will give you a score between 1 and 10.

It will also tell you how old your child will feel when they are 30 if they keep up the habits you're teaching them. For instance, When Ainsley is 34 she'll feel only 30 if she keeps her current habits through her lifetime.

It will then give you advice on where you need to make improvements. Ainsley got an 8 which put us above average in the kids' health department. (Zack got a perfect 10, I wonder why when most of my answers were the same?)

We need to work on flossing and visiting the dentist, having more dinners together, swim lessons and stress management to improve our score.

I never did hear back from Tamara for the Discovery Girls Books. So, I had Ainsley draw a new winner out of a hat. Please AGordon10 - email me at traceesioux at yahoo.com to give me your address so I can have the books sent to you. Congradulations and I do hope you and your family can make peace with your postfeminist, non-traditional familial roles.

For a chance to win Eat, Pray, Love - this season's best selling book by Elizabeth Gilbert please visit Blog Fabulous and leave a compliment about yourself in the comments section.

By Tracee Sioux

Fill in the blank with whatever you want to believe I thought. I didn't say it because my kids were present and I didn't want them to freak out. Inside, I was totally freaking out though. It was a parenting moment for which I found myself with no other response than What the $^#%! my head.

Sometimes my daughter sees me bite my son's nails. If you've ever clipped a baby's nails and cut him, you understand that it makes your gut lurch like you want to perform some kind of flagellation on your self as penance. I read that I should bite his nails to trim them in a baby magazine. My daughter is a little mommy. She takes quite good care of her little brother. Always making sure I am aware of his needs and taking care of him herself if I am blatantly ignoring them while writing these columns.

Today she was climbing over him to get out of the van and noticed his toenail needed trimming and bent over and pulled the entire toenail out of his big toe. He barely flinched. She wanted to know if we should save it for his baby box.

There were so many things wrong with this picture all I could think was What the F$%&!

What I said was, Ainsley, how hard did you bite his toenail? You pulled his whole toenail out. You are not his mother. You need to let ME do things like that. I am his mother. You must be gentle with your brother.
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By Tracee Sioux

Two big things have happened to protect children from sexual abuse perpetrators, especially repeat offenders.

The State of Texas has passed The Jessica Lunsford Act. Each state has its own version of “Jessica’s Law” before legislatures. The law requirements are a little different in each state depending on how strict or lenient the current laws are. The goal, as a nation, is to get state laws to be uniformly strict in dealing with sexual predators so they can not continue to victimize children from state to state without penalty.

Jessica’s Law includes:

• 25 year minimum sentence for sexually violent offenses against children under 14 years of age.
• Eliminates eligibility for parole for certain sex offenders.
• Makes a second conviction for a sexually violent crime against a child a capitol felony (as in the death penalty).
• Allows children to report the crime for 20 years past his or her 18th birthday.

This is good news for our kids. They deserve to not be sitting ducks waiting for some pervert to victimize them.

To send the message to your own state legislatures telling them they must pass a version of the Jessica Law. These letters make all the difference in the world. Though they might not read every letter word for word, they do make a tally of how many letters they receive about this issue and vote accordingly.

Oprah has a letter for each state’s representatives that you can quickly use in a couple of minutes. You can write each of your representatives in very little time, but with big results for our kids. Click Here.

Last year the Adam Walsh Child Protection & Safety Act passed, which notably required the first Dru Sjodin National Sex Offender Registry. It is up and running here.

This is important to you and your children because now by clicking on a single link you can see who, in your neighborhood or school, has been convicted of at least one sex crime. Also, this is the first time ever law enforcement has had this type of tool to track sex offenders from state to state.

It is disturbing to put your zip code or address in and see that only two houses or streets down lives someone who has molested a 6-year-old. But, it has become the reality for America. You can input names of people, like the soccer coach, teachers, Sunday school teacher or anyone else with authority in your child’s life, in the system to see if they have ever been convicted. It's also handy to check whether a sex offender lives next door to a house you are considering buying.

I sat with my 5-year-old and looked at the sex offenders' pictures in our neighborhood and gave her instructions to never speak to these men and to always tell me if she sees them.

I was no more explicit than these are very bad men, which I felt was age-appropriate. As your children get older you may want to provide more information. Obviously, we’ve spent time on good touching and bad touching in regards to family members, baby sitters, friends, coaches and teachers.

By Tracee Sioux

I think generosity and gratefulness are two attributes kids should learn early. It is very hard to teach empathy to a 33 year old, but much easier to teach it to 3, 4, and 5 year olds.

In our family we donate 10% of everything we bring in. It's a sound principle.

Giving away money away instills blessings of faith. Faith that there will be enough money to meet my needs, even if I give a substantial amount of money away.

Giving instills generosity in your spirit - God is so generous with me that I can afford to be generous with others.

Giving instills gratefulness - I have food and clothes and shelter and cars, I am so blessed that I can afford to help those who may not be as blessed as I am.

We have a tradition twice a year at Ainsley's birthday and at Christmas of going through her things and choosing which ones we will give to "the poor kids."

Throughout the year I look for real teaching moments. Recently, a family's home burned down and I took all the baby and kid clothes and dishes I had been saving for a garage sale. I asked Ainsley if she had anything to give a kid who lost all of her things in a fire, and she went to her precious book collection and selected six or seven to give away.

Recently, I've begun putting aside a portion of our income to give away to people that God puts in our path. With my kids in tow, I have twice given the cashier at the grocery store money to pay for another person's groceries. I don't know why God wants them to have my $22 or $44, I just have faith that God chose them to be behind me in line knowing that they will receive my offering.

Every single time I feel butterflies in my stomach, I get a little nervous and my heart starts to beat a little faster. Mostly because people react suspiciously and want to know my motive. They always ask, Are you sure? As if I may have gone a little crazy and perhaps I might need some help myself. Especially if I've just put something from my own grocery cart back because I went a little over budget, then the cashier starts to look for help to deal with the crazy lady who wants to pay for a strangers groceries while she can't afford her own.

Last week I called about purchasing a used television because mine is on the blink. I hadn't planned on buying a new TV that day, but I had some time to kill and the want ads in my hands and a cell phone. There was only one listing.

The woman said she had hurt her leg and been out of work and they were going to turn the electricity off so she had to sell the TV quick, she wanted $80 for the TV and said she'd throw in her nearly-new VCR. I told her I'd come look at it.

I'm going to give you this $120 for your light bill. Then you can afford to keep your TV, I told her.

Oh No! You've got to at least take the TV, why would you do that? You can't afford to do that, you've got 2 kids to take care of! Why? Why? she screamed, waking the baby.

If I do something kind for you. Then one day, when someone is in need, you will do something kind for them. Then the world is a better place, right? So, I can afford this and we aren't going to take your only TV.

The sweet woman showed me her light bill as proof that she really needed the money. Said she had a job at a boy's home starting on Monday but they were going to disconnect her lights before she got paid. Said she had had a house burn down and none of the churches would help her because she didn't attend and the Red Cross hadn't helped either.

She started to weep and said, no one has ever done anything this kind for me before. You must be an angel sent by God.

How sad. That this woman, old enough to have grown kids, had never had anyone show her any kindness. It's about time someone did a random act of kindness for her - don't you think? I have been blessed many times by strangers, friends and family. In fact, I continue to be so blessed that I very rarely buy my kids' clothes and they always have way more clothes than they need.

In the car I asked Ainsley what she thought of that whole scene.

Mommy, you should have taken that TV! Now we still don't have a TV!

We have a small TV that we can watch until we get a big TV. But, don't you think God will take care of us because we helped that poor woman?

Oh Mommy, God is going to be so happy about you giving her that money and leaving her TV! You are so nice!

Only after this exchange had taken place did it occur to me that perhaps it was not my TV, but my Dish receiver that was malfunctioning. Yesterday, I spent an hour on the phone renegotiating my contract. A technician is coming on Thursday and bringing a free DVR with him and I betcha my TV will work just fine.

Try a random act of kindness this week. Pay your blessings forward. Give a stranger a helping hand: buy someone a tank of gas or some groceries or help them fill a prescription and see how right it feels.

Let your kids see you do it, let them participate, and you will raise generous and grateful children who grow into generous and grateful adults. Then the planet really is a better place to live.

By Tracee Sioux

Seriously, all evidence suggests that hell must have frozen over.

I have seen Bill O'Reilly, Fox newsman, on a few talk shows recently and I actually agreed with part of his mission. I'm a little concerned I'm becoming a . . . Right Wing Conservative?!?!?!?

Whew - not quite. Still me. But there are some issues that he and I agree on. Many of these issues are ones where I can kinda see his point, but I think he's too extreme.

On the issue of laws governing sexual abuse crimes in this country I am not sure he is extreme enough.

On Oprah last week he made the following statement, "You've got to understand. This thing, this molestation, rape, never goes away," O'Reilly said. "We have an obligation to get rid of them (sexual predators). To put them away so they can't possibly hurt anybody again."

A statement with which I 100% agree.

Here's some sickening statistics that, if you are a parent of girls or boys, should make your stomach want to reject breakfast and make your head pound with fury and indignation and make your heart race with fear and loathing and anxiety. (If you don't have this kind of emotional reaction after reading these statistics then there is undeniably something wrong with your internal sense of right and wrong.)

National Center for Mission and Exploited Children and Parents for Megan's Law reports:

• 797,500 children (younger than 18) were reported missing in a one-year period of time studied resulting in an average of 2,185 children being reported missing each day.
• Approximately one in seven youth online (10 to 17-years-old) received a sexual solicitation or approach over the Internet.
• Four percent (4%) received an aggressive sexual solicitation - a solicitor who asked to meet them somewhere; called them on the telephone; or sent them offline mail, money, or gifts.
• Research indicates that 1 in 5 girls and 1 in 10 boys will be sexually victimized before adulthood. [D. Finkelhor. “Current Information on the Scope and Nature of Child Sexual Abuse.” The Future of Children: Sexual Abuse of Children, 1994, volume 4, page 37.]
• An estimated 1 in 20 men are child molesters.
• According to Parents for Megan's Law (the law which requires convicted sex offender to register where they live on a public notice) 24% of convicted child molesters do not report their address to databases.
• In the U.S. there were 540,846 registered convicted sex offenders in 2006, according to Parents for Megan's Law.
• In my state, Texas, there are around $50,000 convicted sex offenders in the registry. Follow this link to see how many live in your neighborhood or in the house next door to your family. http://www.parentsformeganslaw.com/html/links.lasso.

One of the most frightening things I've ever heard is that there exists an organized group of perverts who meet to discuss how best to victimize, seduce, rape and molest our children. NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association, is a legal organization that hides behind freedom of speech to actively participate in destroying our kids.

They meet in chat room on the Internet, they meet in person and plan vacations countries that participate in childhood slavery so they will have a chance to easily act out their most perverse fetishes without consequence or hassle. They share the best tactics with which to lure our children with each other. They even have jewelry, rather pretty symbols of triangles and hearts (to broadcast whether they enjoy having sex with male or female children) to express their sexual desires for children so they can easily identify each other in a crowd.

They are sick and evil men who follow the motto: a child's right to have sex with adults should not be infringed upon.

The ACLU, American Civil Liberties Union, defended NAMBLA in a Massachusetts court case, they issued this statement, "In representing NAMBLA today, our Massachusetts affiliate does not advocate sexual relationships between adults and children," they go on to say, "The principle is as simple as it is central to true freedom of speech: those who do wrong are responsible for what they do; those who speak about it are not."

I'm an advocate for freedom of speech, especially as a writer. However, I believe defending NAMBLA or any other sexual predator illustrates a complete disregard for every social good and I will no longer ever support the ACLU. They are now advocates for EVIL in my book, another point on which Bill O'Reilly and I agree.

TAKE ACTION

I am not one for apathy. I am encouraging every single reader of this column to DO something about this. Currently there is a piece of legislation called the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (Adam Walsh's father is the host of America's Most Wanted and responsible for Code Adam in retail establishments such as Walmart). The law requires a National Registry for sex offenders and harshly punishes those who are non-compliant and requires judges to be more consistent in their sentencing. Currently sexual predators can move from state to state freely.

I'm joining Oprah and (gasp) Bill O'Reilly in suggesting that you and everyone you know send a letter to our nation's representatives to let them know just how incensed we are that this is going on in our country. Oprah wrote the letter for you. Just email it or download it and mail it from this link. There is also a letter for your governor to insist on uniform and strict sentencing for sexual crimes.

As far as I'm concerned this law is just a baby step. I believe, much like Bill O'Reilly, we need to really get serious about punishing offenses against our children or we will wake up to a world of sexually damaged grown-ups who will ask us why we didn't make it a priority to severely punish those who made it a hobby to prey on them.

This is the link to write your representatives: http://www.oprah.com/tows/pastshows/200702/tows_past_20070221_letsen.jhtml

Check your local sex offender registry to examine just how safe your kids aren't: http://www.parentsformeganslaw.com/html/links.lasso

To be able to identify the symbols of NAMBA follow this link: http://www.oprah.com/tows/slide/200609/20060928/slide_20060928_284_101.jhtml

by Tracee Sioux

Last Thursday I saw an Oprah on The Secret, a new DVD, and I had it overnighted for a party I was throwing. It changed everything for me.

The Secret is the law of attraction.

If I focus my thoughts on good things, then good things will happen in my life. If I focus on negative things, well, then negative things will happen in my life. The people on the video, people who live by The Secret, guarantee that if you live your life accepting this law of the universe then you can have anything you want.

I have heard the principles included in The Secret all my life.

Ask and ye shall receive, seek and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened.

Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. Ephesians 3:20

The key for me is two-fold:

I am allowed to WANT things for my self and my family. At first glance the video seemed very focused on things: cars, houses, bikes, etc. But, I think that's because it is tangible and easily documented. And I've always been told and had this guilt about wanting nice things for myself or my family.

Does it make me selfish to want a big beautiful home where my family feels cozy and happy to spend time there? Does it make me selfish to want a really nice beautiful car that gets me from point A to B with class and style?

For many years we've been asking, "God, just give us just enough to make it and pay our bills." And that is exactly what he's been giving us. Just enough and no more. Well, now I'm asking for abundance in everything!

According to The Secret, it does not make me selfish to want these things, nor does it make me selfish to actively pursue them because these things are available to everyone. All they have to do is have the faith that God will bless them with them.

This is key for me. If there Is enough to go around and there is no principle of lack or limitation in the world then I do not have to be ashamed of myself for taking these things from anyone else. If they want these things, they too can have them. How freeing is that? For me, quite freeing!

What's most amazing to me is that what I want was right there. It didn't take me two days to know the truth about what I've always wanted deep in my heart. It was beyond simple to write several pages in my journal about what I REALLY want my life to look like. I've always wanted primarily the same things, I just believed it was selfish to want it, believed if I got it someone else would have to go without, believed that I would face disappointment if I allowed myself to want it. I didn't really feel that I was worthier than anyone else, now I realize that EVERYONE is worthy, including myself.

My new year's resolution was to control my thoughts and emotions better. This was before I knew The Secret. I was reading The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People and realized I was constantly focusing on what was outside my own circle of concern - things that I can't change. And worse, I was focusing on what I didn't want for others. For instance, I spent quite a bit of time focusing on my mother-in-law's pain. According to The Secret focusing on her pain created more pain for her. What I should have done and will now start doing is focusing on comfort and peace and feelings of physical pleasure for her, thus helping her to create more of that.

I've been a negative thinker for most of my life - thinking about what I don't want instead of what I do want.

This is a bizarro example: I left all my journals and letters and memorabilia and souvenirs and photographs and negatives in my cousin's basement in Connecticut three years ago when we left New York. I often thought about my stuff, wanting to send for it and never having the money to ship it back to me. But, I was also kind of afraid of it, like it might bring back some of the terribleness of some of my past experiences, so I never made sure there was enough money to get it back. When I thought about this stuff I would always think of a flood in her basement, like I was warding off a flood. Like, oh I hope there is never a flood that will destroy my stuff in her basement. So, today I pop on my email and there are all these forwarded emails from my cousin. So I email her and ask about my stuff.

FLOOD!

For real, there was a flood that destroyed all the papers from my past, all of it.

According to The Secret what I should have done is visualize all my stuff safe and sound and cozy in her basement. But, then I wouldn't be completely and totally freed from my past would I?

What I truly want is to be a hugely successful writer, helping women empower themselves and their daughters. I truly want a family that is so stinking happy and affectionate all the time that we make people crave it. I want a marriage that's passionate and affectionate. I want a big beautiful home and a fantastic car and I want money that comes frequently and easily so I am empowered to give lots of it away to others who need it.

It feels so good to me to just be allowed to want this stuff.

And just watch, I know I'm going to get it. For God has given me this word personally,

Neglect not the gift that is in thee, which was given thee by prophecy, with the laying on of hands by the presbytery.

Meditate upon these things, give thyself wholly to them; that they profiting may appear to all.

Take heed unto thyself, and unto the doctrine; continue in them: for in doing this thou shalt both save thyself, and them that hear thee. I Timothy 4:14-16

Buy The Secret - you'll be glad you did.
http://shop.thesecret.tv/Shops/DVD_Offer.php

Read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey.
www.franklincovey.com