Perfect Moment Monday is about noticing a perfect moment rather than creating one. Perfect moments can be momentous or ordinary or somewhere in between.
Once a week we engage in mindfulness about something that is right with our world. Everyone is welcome to join. Details on how to participate are at the bottom of this post, complete with bloggy bling.
Please visit the links of the participants at the bottom.
Here's a perfect moment from my week. I hope you'll share yours, too.
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I accomplished something big (to me) and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
There's a book title that's been bandied around in Adoption World, a book with a mystique and a message that not everyone in Adoption World wants to hear or is ready to hear.
I asked Adoption World to read the book with me and have a dialog about it. It was risky, I knew. Flames could erupt, bloggy b0mbs could go off, feelings could get hurt, flying monkeys could be sicced (no offense to Flying Monkeys) if people assembled troops and defended their territories.
But with the help of somerespectedvoices, as well as from the 40 participants who have been very generous with their thoughts, so far the tone has been respectful, the discussion illuminating. The book is The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child, and if you have any interest in adoption at all -- if there's someone in your life involved in adoption -- you may wish to read what adoptees, firstparents, adoptive parents and pre-adoptive parents have to say about the impression the book made on them. See participants from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3.
And read what author Nancy Verrier herself has to say next week, as she answers some of the questions we posed to her. Subscribe if you want to be notified when her responses are posted.
This book tour was a LOT of work to put this together. My hat is newly off to Melissa, who has run 2 dozen book tours over the years, and whose idea I shamelessly stole borrowed. I will not take her role in them for granted again.
Sigh of satisfaction. I'm in need of a short bloggy break.
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I am very excited to be hosting my very first bloggy book tour. Well, my alter-ego, the Open Adoption Examiner is.
Our first selection is The Primal Wound: Understanding the Adopted Child by Nancy Verrier. I and my fellow Book Tourists -- adoptees, first parents, adoptive/adopting parents -- spent November (Adoption Awareness Month) reading this controversial book that was originally published in 1993 -- the early days of the open adoption era.
My take on it? Between the nodding of head and the shaking of head, my neck got quite the workout.
The premise is that a primal wound exists for every baby/child/teen separated from his/her biological mother. This includes not only adoptees, but also babies placed in incubators, children born via surrogacy and children placed in day care. The thesis continues that such a primal wound leads to issues that "center around separation and loss, trust, rejection, guilt and shame, identity, intimacy, loyalty, and mastery or power and control..."
There is a LOT of insight in this book, which was written by an adoptive mom and therapist whose daughter was in deep pain. I think it's well worth a read, especially at this stage of my children's lives (they are 8 and 6).
When my children were babies, I would not have been as open and receptive to Verrier's thesis as I am now. During the baby years, I felt there was no question that my children had bonded with me. With my first, I was in a state of euphoria -- after years of drought, I was finally a mom! We had reached the happily-ever-after and because of what we'd been through to get there, the rest was to be a piece of cake. With my second, the attachment took a bit longer, seemingly on my end. I was certain, after we morphed into a tightly knit family, that happily-ever-after had resumed.
But babies don't stay babies. They grow and individualize and wonder and work things out. Issues arise. Some are overt and I can help with them. Yet other deeper issues may exist beyond my ability to reach. Reading this book extends my abilities by giving me insight into what might be going on as my children grow -- what to watch for what emotions lie beneath the behaviors, and what I might be called on to do or to allow to play out.
Children with a primal wound, according to Verrier, tend to be either highly controlling or highly compliant, as a result of a pre-verbal assault on the rightness of their world, of the utter lack of control during this defining episode of their lives. "Having been manipulated at the beginning of their lives makes some adoptees manipulating and controlling."
Children who become compliant, according to Verrier, may become highly responsible -- not because they are healthy and well-integrated, but as a response to that initial rejection. "As Rick said, 'I knew I had to be a better person than the one who was given away.'"
Children with a primal wound, according to Verrier, tend to have difficulty in relationships, with intimacy, due to this early break. They often pre-emptively push away people (and jobs) to avoid being hurt again. "Being wanted by my adoptive parents doesn't compare to being unwanted by my birthmother. -- an adoptee."
Ouch. What a powerful statement. We parents are wise to listen.
There are more indications of the primal wound, all worth knowing about, if only so that I can recognize what may (or may not) be happening for my kids as they become tweens and teens and adults. In my opinion, knowing is almost always better than not knowing -- hence my advocacy of open adoption and open records.
The head shaking came from the anecdotal nature of the evidence. When dealing with human subjects, it is impossible to isolate variables. Some adoptees are controlling. Some adoptees are not controlling. Some non-adoptees are controlling. Some non-adoptees are not controlling. A causal link has not been established because of the inability to isolate adoption as THE factor in a personality.
Many of the noted issues -- "separation and loss, trust, rejection, guilt and shame, identity, intimacy, loyalty, and mastery or power and control" -- perfectly describe ME. My own parents say that *I* am controlling. I became overly responsible and strived to be perfect. I have had trouble with abandonment. I have felt unworthy. I have felt I don't fit in with my own family.
I was separated from my mom at age 5 by an oxygen tent, so maybe I *do* suffer the primal wound.
But is it possible that perhaps these issues are maybe somewhat universal?
I addressed this conundrum on this post (about a comment from Melissa's post on Adoption Chiasm), excerpted here:
Me: Anonymous, I gather, suffers from a Primal Wound.
"I was adopted as an infant, I have a great adoptive family that I love very much. I was not abused. I got everything I ever wanted, went to college and have had a good life. I would give it all up to have been raised by my 17 year old emotionally immature birth mother. I would give it all up to experience what it would be like to grow up feeling normal, like I belonged and happy."
In essence, Anon asserts that the road not taken (the abstract) is superior to the good life s/he has had (the concrete).
The appeal of that road is that it is a fairy-tale road. There are never any potholes, and the sun always shines, but not too hot. It's a smooth, gently sloping road with bounteous apple trees adorning the sides. In short, it's the angel you don't know compared to the devil you do.
No one can ever prove or disprove Anon's notion that a life with a not-ready-to-parent biological mom would have been better than a life with those who parented her. Because we each get just one road.
This is the crux.
The comment started a new train of thought about roads not taken, which, as Melissa pointed out to me, is not just part of the adoption experience. It is part of the human experience.
On to my three chosen questions, asked by others touring with me.
Verrier presumes that most adoptive parents are ill equipped to handle the emotional complexities experienced by adoptees. Did/do you feel well prepared to address the sense of loss that your child might experience? How did you prepare yourself? How do you help/plan to help your child resolve his/her feelings about his/her adoption? I went into parenting realizing that I was unprepared for both the parenting part and the adoptive parenting part, and also knowing that I would do my best to figure it all out.
To prepare myself, I have read lots and lots of first-person accounts of adoptees, running the gamut from happy to angry, which are very simplistic labels for very complex people.
I listen to what they say. I try to grasp what I can do to help (for example, keep communication open), what I should refrain from doing (for example, put the children in a position to divide their loyalties), and to also know when I cannot help -- when I must simply abide with my children while they work things out.
And I ask for the wisdom to know the difference.
How do you think open adoption changes the feel of this book? If you don't feel it changes it in any way, why? If you feel that it changes everything, in what ways? If you fall somewhere in the middle, how do you explain what does get changed and why other things are left unchanged? I think open adoption does change the situation. I don't think it ameliorates it, but it does go a ways in relieving the tension of all that not-knowing.
I have two main concerns about our open situations:
Our daughter, in a fully open adoption with both first parents, has enough information on how her life would otherwise have been to build an idyllic picture in her head about it. She can see the grass on the other side of the fence, but it will never be her yard. Yet her older bio-brother gets to play there all the time (source).
Our son's is an open door adoption, meaning his first parents are welcome in our lives if they want to knock on the door. In meeting the needs of our daughter, are we making it more difficult for our son? One of our parenting challenges is to deal with the differing levels of openness our two children have. I am hoping that Ms Verrier will address this situation when she answers tour questions on the Examiner page (subscribe if you want to make sure you see it.)
As far as openness being an improvement over closed adoption, the proof is in the pudding. My children will be the final arbiters on this question as it pertains to them, in about a decade or two.
What signs did you see in your child that support the concept of a primal wound derived from separation of mother and child in the process of adoption? I have what you might classify as a controlling child (I prefer to say assertive and spirited) and a compliant child (I prefer to say resilient and cuddly).
When we were going through reunion with my daughter's first father, I did also notice a push/pull as she was simultaneously drawn to Joe and also needed to know she was firmly rooted with us:
One afternoon we had an out-of-proportion argument over chores. She went from zero to steam-coming-out-the-ears in a flash. Her eyes a-blazing, she hissed, "And if I don't, are you going to send me to Joe?"
Whaaaaa?
Sudden flash of insight: she wasn't JUST worried that we would keep her from meeting Joe. She was ALSO worried that we might abdicate our place as her parents. This thought, I believe, filled her with terror. Like an earthquake was about to hit.
While I don't take it as gospel, I do recommend The Primal Wound for adoptive parents and pre-adoptive parents. Further, I recommend that the book be read periodically as the child grows and experiences different stages of cognitive development. It is also helpful to listen to the voices of adult adoptees -- for me, anyway.
To continue to the next leg of this book tour, please visit the main list at The Open Adoption Examiner.
I've learned that the phrase "summer camp" means something different, depending on where you live.
Where I grew up (and live now), it is synonymous with "day camp." Kids go in the morning and come home in the afternoon.
On the east coast, it seems to mean that kids go in June and come home in August.
Which makes me want to move closer to the Atlantic Ocean. Hehe.
I was intrigued to read about a summer at a fat camp -- for the summer part as much as for the fat part. Moose, by blogger Stephanie Klein, is the latest book discussed by the Barren Bi+ches Book Brigade.
Each of us in this bloggy book club choose from a list of questions. You don't have to be in the club to read along, nor is it a prerequisite to have read the book -- the themes here are universal.
Stephanie Klein writes "Years later I'd feel slightly superior because I'd once been fat. ...when asked if I'd change my past if I could, I think for a moment and always answer no. There's something...that just makes it mildly worth it. Because a sensitivity is tattooed on a part of you no one else can see but can somehow guess is there. It's always with you."How do you relate to this with regards to infertility?
I, also, would not change my past. I am too content where I am to ever want a different outcome. Infertility has brought me so many blessings: my children, new friends (you know who you are), a richness and depth to my life, mindfulness, strength.
So I would take it a step further from what Stephanie says and change "mildly" to "completely." Without going through the IF fire, my life would have been mundane, boring, run-of-the-mill, sheltered. I would not appreciate what I have to the degree that I do.
I did more than survive it. I thrived. IF gave so much more than it took from me.
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How did it make you feel when Stephanie's dad laughed at her being called a 'Moose'? Were you parents/guardians supportive of you during hard times/bullying/weight issues or did they just laugh at you like Stephanie’s father?
I got teased about the stupidest things. My ears were too big -- I was called Bat. That wasn't so bad, really, because the alternative was being a Nobody (which I was except for the Bat episode).
My dad's advice when the Bat talk started? First he consoled me, and then he told me to meet the teasing head-on, to disempower the Meanies. So when Mrs Knepper told us 5th graders to choose any animal we wanted to do an oral report on, guess what I chose. I still remember looking out at the Meanies with a tiny feeling of triumph as I spoke about the nocturnal lives of bats.
Dad was a loving force at helping me reclaim my power. I cringed when Stephanie's father not only didn't console/advise her, but also joined the pile-on!
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In the first chapter, Klein talks about her reluctance to gain weight during her twin pregnancy as a result of her childhood obesity. How have body image issues affected you during infertility? Pregnancy? Post-pregnancy?
The issues I've struggled with are not weight or pregnancy, but functionality. For so much of my life, my body hasn't worked the way it was "supposed to." It has been a challenge for me to love this body, because for so many years, I felt it let me down time and time again.
Infertility was the final straw. It confirmed that I'd gotten a lemon. WHERE'S THE WARRANTY? I WANT A REPLACEMENT! Too many parts are faulty. The manufacturer sucks.
The path to loving my body has been a long one. What has helped me love my body and its manufacturer anew include: blogging -- specifically the mindfulness and gratitude required by Perfect Moment Mondays, yoga, Ethel, being a mom, and the passage of time.
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Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens . You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: It Sucked, And Then I Criedby Heather Armstrong (aka Dooce).
Why? Two reasons. One: the author is my friend Melissa Ford; and Two: it's a damn good book. My exile on the island of Infertility and my odyssey back to the mainland would have been much more bearable had I had this straight-talking, informative, humorous and compassionate travel guide.
I endured infertility in solitude and in shame. Little did I know that there were so many others in the same boat. I thought I was the only unlucky one at the time.
People today don't have to go it alone. There is someone to show them the way, a fabulous guidebook to answer questions, help prepare mentally, physically, emotionally and financially, and to ease anxiety.
Here are my selected questions and answers. For more depth, see my interview with Melissa here.
What is something you wish were covered in the book or what knocked your socks off on how it was explained? I was amazed at how much WAS covered in such a compact guide.
The topic I most wish had been available to me during my time on the island was the advice about the hysterosalpingogram. I definitely should have insisted on getting some Vali.um beforehand.
Did you read the book from front to back, or did you turn immediately to a certain chapter? If so, which chapter? Are there any chapters that you purposely avoided? I opened up to "my" chapter, Chapter 9, right away because it's about the neighborhood I am most familiar with, The Adoption Option.
I considered just skimming the rest of the book. After all, I was not going to go through any of the other neighborhoods (treatments, donor gametes, living childfree) in this lifetime, so why bother?
But in the skimming, I was drawn in by Mel's wit and compassion. She's magnetic. I read every word.
If you are a reader of Melissa's blog, did you find the book to be a same or different style and why? Same style, which is why I couldn't put it down.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Moose, by Stephanie Klein.
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Another day, another chance to vote for Weebles Wobblog. Please click on the blue button, scroll down to the Most Inspiring category, and vote for this blog, currently in 4th place. (You can also vote for Luna in the same category, and for Eden in the Most Provocative Blog, and for Melissa in the Blogs I've Learned the most from category.) Rock the ALI vote!
Here's a button if you'd like to help me make a good showing against some fabulous blogs. Not that I'm competitive or anything. OK, maybe inspiringly competitive.
(To those of you with the button: I really won't hurt the cute puppy.) .
In MY day, when people found out they couldn't have children, they gave up their power to the men in the white coats. We allowed the men in white coats to poke and prod us without completely understanding the whys. We suffered alone, isolated. And we liked it! We loved it!
Today, wussy modern people confronted with infertility will have a much easier time of it, thanks to the recently released book, Navigating the Land of IF: Understanding Infertility and Exploring Your Options.The Land of IF is a guidebook for a place just off the mainland, a place where one in six people find themselves marooned. Author Melissa Ford, has explored every nook and cranny of this formerly insular jungle-of-a-place, and she indulged me in a few questions about her journey to parenthood and to authorhood.
*** You decided to become a tour guide for an island where no one wants to go. Huh? Well, someone had to do it! Actually, there are a lot of really good books out there for infertility, but they were all missing items here and there. I wanted to cover the basics, but also make sure that all of the questions I still had after I put those books down were answered. Such as what happens if you hit a blood vessel during an injection? Or what are the various IVF protocols?
I also wanted one book for everyone: primary, secondary, situational, biological, young, old, single, or married. This doesn't mean that everyone will love the book because they may hate my writing style, or how inclusive it is, or any other reason. But I wanted the door to be open to everyone who wanted to walk through by using inclusive language, considering a plethora of situations, and including information for everyone in the community.
You call this island the Land of IF. What does IF mean? IF is the online abbreviation (on bulletin boards and blogs) for infertility, but "if" is also a huge part of infertility. "If" also conveys the uncertainty and leaps of faith one needs to take daily with infertility.
You've done a lot of actual travel. What did you look for in a good guide book? And how did you incorporate this into the Land of If? I looked for consistency between chapters/cities and information I could use. I love Lonely Planet and Let's Go because they both skip the pictures and essays about the place (well, they contain that in a small amount) and instead use the space to list the important information you need while you're there, keeping in mind all people and not just a small subsection of the traveling population. They don't make assumptions about your financial situation or your interests. They just throw it all in there along with a few helpful tips that will help you bypass difficulties while on the road.
Everyone gets off the island eventually, one way or another. What neighborhoods did you hang out in and what was your path off the island? It's an interesting question because I had the neighbourhood I lived in (and most of us only own one home), but many neighbourhoods that I visited due to friends or family members living in other spaces. Many of my childhood friends ended up going through infertility with me, and, of course, I met people along the way through Resolve and now blogs.
In addition, I think the way off the island is really an emotional journey. You can have children and still not resolve your infertility or you can stop the family building process and still not resolve your infertility. There is a saying with Resolve that children resolve childlessness, not infertility. And I find that to be very true.
So my path off the island was a lot of self-searching and finding peace with the journey. But my neighbourhoods while on the island (and I'm still living over here because we're not finished with our family building) were primary infertility and early loss, with our apartment building being the Injectable IUI Cycle Towers.
When did it first strike you to write the Land of If? What was that a-ha moment where you thought, "This must be written?" -- was it a sudden or gradual realization? It actually started out as a very different book -- a book for non-infertile men and women to read to understand the infertility experience. I came downstairs one morning and my husband, Josh, was angrily writing a response to an advice columnist. He had followed an intriguing sentence from the "front page" of the online newspaper to read a question about adoption. And her advice was crap. We were talking about it with my parents that night and they said, "well, you can do something about this. You could write something. You're both writers."
I started writing that book, but realized after a chapter or two that it wasn't a good fit. It wasn't flowing and it didn't feel comfortable. I switched it to being a book for me, for my community. And that's when it clicked.
Would this book have come about if not for your blog, Stirrup Queens? I don't know. I don't think so. I guess one thing that makes this book very different from all other infertility books is that it has this living, breathing counterpart -- the blog -- and the author is completely accessible. I tell you to join a community and vent your frustrations, but then I also participate in said community and make sure you're welcomed inside by maintaining the blogroll and Lost and Found. I hope people who read the book then step through the fourth wall that sometimes exists between the author and the reader and communicate with me, either through the blog or by emailing or meeting me at a reading.
Why would someone who is NOT experiencing infertility want to pick up this book? To better understand someone they know who is experiencing infertility. I don't know how many people who are not experiencing infertility will pick up this book, but that's okay. The words are there for everyone to use who is experiencing infertility and they can pass them along in conversation with people outside the experience.
How different would your own IF journey have been if you'd had this book? I probably would have felt less lonely. The exercises in the book I used to make decision and I included one of the real decision webs we made before we started treatments. And I took my sister's advice to heart a lot and still do in living my life. But I wish I had known about the online community back then. It was small, but still existed. I wish I had known about blogs and read them.
There is a lot of humor in your book. Can you talk about the importance of levity while putzing around on the Isle of If? If you don't laugh, you'll cry. And even as you laugh, you'll still cry. I think it's important to note that having a sense of humour doesn't mean that you'll laugh your way through every insemination or egg retrieval or meeting with the adoption facilitator. It means that you'll bring whatever levity you can to every situation while also honouring the enormity of the situation.
One time, when we were at the beginning of a very early loss, we stopped at a rest stop while driving and when I saw the blood in my panties, I instinctively took off my glasses and threw them. In this very dirty gas station bathroom. And after I had cried and cried and cried, I realized that I couldn't see anything without the glasses--especially in the dim bathroom light -- and didn't know where they were outside the stall and feared that I would step on them in my attempt to find them. So I could cry but still see the amusement in having thrown my glasses -- the ridiculousness of it all.
What is your marker of success with this book. I mean, how will you know when you've accomplished your goal(s) in writing it? If someone writes me and says that it helped them breathe. That it made anything easier or shed light on something that had been muddled in their brain prior to reading it. If people feel that it is inclusive and respects everyone in the adoption/loss/infertility (ALI) community. I wish it could also speak to those outside the community and hopefully the book is respectful to other members of the adoption triad, doctors, nurses, surrogates. It is hard to write balancing everyone, but if I did so overall, I will think the book is a success.
What other projects are you working on, books or otherwise? Right now, I'm finishing up a work of fiction. I needed something lighter and less research driven this winter/spring. As I complete that project and release that, I have three more non-fiction ideas that I'm tossing around. It is interesting because at the same time, I thought up four non-fiction projects that sat well with me and four fiction projects. So I would love to weave back and forth between the two -- with the heavier topics being balanced by the lighter ones.
You've tweeted that you've been writing sm.ut. Is writing sm.ut as much fun as writing about timed intercourse and hormone levels? Oh, timed intercourse wins out every time. There is nothing more joyous than writing about timed intercourse EXCEPT writing about home inseminations.
Give us the sales pitch. Where can we get your book? Navigating the Land of If has its own website where I post information such as readings and where to purchase the book. You can get it at any bookstore in the US as well as online from sites such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Borders.
This interview originally appeared on BlogCritics.org. Comments here are always welcome (I'm kind of a comment wh.ore); Melissa and I would both appreciate any comments left on BlogCritics, as well.
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Another day, another chance to vote for Weebles Wobblog. Please click on the blue button, scroll down to the Most Inspiring category, look for and and vote for this blog, currently in 4th place. (You can also vote for Luna in the same category, and for Eden in the Most Provocative Blog category and now Melissa in the Blog I've Learned The Most From category.) Rock the ALI vote!
Here's a button if you'd like to help me make a good showing against some fabulous blogs. Not that I'm competitive or anything. OK, maybe inspiringly competitive.
(To those of you with the button: I really won't hurt the cute puppy.) .
I was living in the land in which Part One was set (today's northern Syria).
I was undergoing IVF in isolation, away from family and friends. No internet (gasp!).
I was in the midst of producing the K-12 school play, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (that year, it was my most prized creation -- I so loved working with those kids on that story).
Anita Diamant's novel spoke to my soul at that time. I wailed with Rachel about the unfairness of our barrenness, even as I secretly feared being pregnant and giving birth.
Years later, my life looks very different. I have two children, though I have never once been on the bricks. I am back in my homeland, surrounded by family and friends, my village who supports me in parenting. I still do listen to Joseph on occasion.
This time around, I STILL love the book, even though it speaks to me in different ways. While the first reading related to my individual circumstances, this second reading brought out some of the universality of the experience of being female, from a time when the Divine Feminine was receding, even as today She is re-emerging. (One could look at Abraham's time as the beginning of a long-enduring round of patriarchy. Only now, several millennia later, are we approaching balance in masculine and feminine energies again.)
I specifically loved one line in the book (p. 40), when Leah was on the bricks, assisted by her sisters and the midwife. "Look at the royal throne of sisters you have," said Inna. I see this sentiment as a metaphor for the ALI community, a royal throne of sisters supporting each other as we bear children, bear loads of varying weights, and bear witness to our stories.
Now for the book group questions.
Women's relationships to higher power(s) are complicated. Jacob brings with him the one God, but that is not any of the gods of their childhoods. And it is to the gods of her family that Rachel calls with her simple and desperate ultimatum: "Give me children or I will die." In the context of your own relationship (or lack thereof) to a higher power, do you feel entitled to the same kind of an ultimatum? There is a scene in The Last Temptation of Christ where a pre-mission Jesus goes into the desert and draws a circle around himself, saying he will not move from the circle until God gives him what he wants -- revealment.
Yes, I felt like drawing a circle around myself and giving an ultimatum to God. There was a time when I did think I would die from barrenness. And at the time, that would have been all right with me.
Dinah is awaited and welcomed by all of Jacob's wives. The one daughter, the one to carry all their stories, all their voices. In the context of the book it is a literary device that allows the author to tell us stories of Jacob's wives from their own perspectives. But what does it speak of to you? In your own life, have you felt, as Dinah does, a carrier of living memory? Do you feel your own voice to be better protected in the age of the blog, or do you see an enduring need for connection across generations? I am one of four carriers of living memory in my clan -- I am blessed with a mom and sisters who also preserve our family stories. They have better memories than I -- I have to write everything down in order to capture. I am the Documentarian of my own stories, but we carry equally our family's legends and lore.
I had never really thought of connecting across the generations through blogging. But now that I do (think about it), I would hope that my own journey to parenthood, as well as my larger spiritual journey, would speak to someone who may not even be born yet.
For a time uber-fertile Leah and barren Rachel did not speak to each other. "She could not smile at her sister while her own body remained fruitless." Was there a time in your experience with infertility when you ceased communicating with your fertile friends/relatives. Did something finally bring you together or did you drift apart? Elektra and I became friends when we were both single. We laughed with and counseled each other as we dated, through heartbreaks and losers.
Finally, I met Roger and Elektra met Rob. Both were the kind of men we'd only dreamed of -- upstanding, funny, stable, loyal, lovable and loving. Our weddings took place within a year of each other's. Rogr and I went overseas to teach, Elektra and Rob went to Africa to do the same. We reunited in Denver, eager to begin raising our children together.
Elektra knew of our fertility troubles and was completely sensitive and compassionate. One day, Rob, who worked downtown in an office building near mine -- who could not have known the devastating news I'd just received from my RE -- burst into my office, erupting with news that was uncontainable. Elektra was pregnant! Isn't that great!?
Elektra was furious at him for handling the news this way -- she had been trying to find the "right" way (is there one?) to help me deal with her feast during my famine. It was impossible to be mad at Rob for doing what any newly expectant father would do -- burst at the seams with happy tidings.
I did have to put space between us for awhile. But as it turned out, Tessa was born just a few months later. By the time Elektra gave birth, I was already an old hand at mothering an infant. We re-bonded and remain close friends to this day. Her son and daughter are just a few months younger than my daughter and son. We are certain the four of them will someday marry in a double ceremony and make us happy Grandmothers.
*** Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens . You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Navigating the Land of Ifby Melissa Ford. (Hint: It's really, really good.) .
A few weeks ago I took the children to Denver Laura's house for a fabulous Tres de Mayo party, at which Tessa and Reed saw their first lava lamps and were mesmerized (well, to be honest, Tessa was enraptured by Laura's dogs and Reed went absolutely gaga over the Mr's collection of swords, but the lava lamps came in a strong third).
So when I received my book shower complimentary copy of The Double-Daring Book for Girls, I immediately knew which activity we'd be trying first: making our own lava lamp (there are no instructions for how to make your own scythe, much to Reed's chagrin.)
Here's Tessa figuring out our first steps.
Here is everything you need.
You fill the jar about 2/3 full with baby oil, and the rest of the way with water. Put in (sparingly, we learned) a few drops of food coloring. The drop in pieces of the tablet, and watch the solids, liquids and gases do their chemical-thing when there are different densities involved.
Here, as much as a still photo can show, is our end result.
We were going for purple, but both Miss Blue and Mr Red got a little exuberant.
Andrea Buchanan and Miriam Peskowitz have compiled a ton of fun activities in this (their 2nd daring) book, and many of them will be featured soon at DaringBookforGirls.com as this bloggy shower unfolds. So I dare you to make your own lava lamp and post the results. And I also encourage all you daring girls revisit some memories from your past and learn some cool new tricks with the Double-Daring Book for Girls. Post the fruits of your dare, and let me know that your entry is up (comment here and I'll get the email).
* Do you know the difference between magma and lava? Hot molten rock is called magma while it's IN the earth, and lava after it erupts. You probably already knew that.
Melissa has organized a book shower (which officially starts tomorrow) for Tertia's new arrival, and everyone is invited to fete her. This post is my contribution to Tertia's newest addition and triumph, and I throw out this question and answer, inviting you to comment on the same.
Q: The title for the book as well as the title of Tertia's blog comes up on page 97 when she explains that she can't give up because she's So Close. One of the most difficult things about infertility can be figuring out which path out is best for you and how long to stay on it. No matter how many cycles you've done, no matter how many failures you've had, how do you know that the next one won't be THE one? How do you know when to stick with the plan and when to try something else?
For Tertia, staying the course paid off -- once with twins and now with a third baby, due soon. This is out of 13 assisted cycles.
Has Tertia's experience been true for you? That you didn't or will not give up because you were/are so close?
Or did you switch tracks, as I did, when you assessed that you really weren't so close, and that you'd better cut your losses on one path and find another?
Please comment with your answer:
How do you know when to hold 'em and when to fold 'em?
And one other shower question:
Have you ever considered turning your blog into a book?
Share your thoughts around that.
Please send Tertia your congratulations. Click over to her blog and/or buy her book!
Congratulations, Tertia. You do our community proud.
The book shower formally starts tomorrow over at Stirrup Queens. Check in there so see what the other guests bring to the table. .
(Originally appeared on All Thumbs Reviews. But you already know this because you subscribe to my other blog, right? RIGHT? All Thumbs is where Chicklet and I dish up sassy stuff weekly. Strongly, but weekly. Read to bottom of post for two giveaways currently running.)
I cried, my sobs not easily muffled. In the cramped airline seat I wept, hoping the woman next to me wouldn't notice. Damn Elizabeth Flock.
No, Elizabeth Flock wasn't my seat mate. Elizabeth Flock is the author of the novel I just finished. I'd read a review of the book in the Denver Post and I contacted the publisher for my own review copy.
Sleepwalking in Daylight is a suburban everymom story told by Samantha, a SAHM who endured infertility and adoption and who now parents a teenage girl (via adoption) and twin 8 year old boys (via IVF). She and her husband, Bob, have lost all connection with each other, and Samantha finds intimacy with another man she meets in a Starbucks. This new connection fills Samantha's void and consumes her.
Alternate chapters are told by Cammy, Samantha's 16 year-old daughter. Cammy was born addicted and placed for adoption by her birthmother at age 2. Bob was never on board with the adoption, and he later told Cammy of her adoptedness in a scarring fashion. Cammy's parents are self-absorbed and unhappy, her twin brothers have each other, and she spirals down into a morass of drugs and debasing activities.
What this book is not: great literature, complicated, deep, lengthy.
What this book is: hard to put down, heartbreaking, and, I would venture, controversial for those in the adoption triad.
Some adoptees will be incensed with the way Cammy is portrayed; some will point to the Primal Wound and say, "See?"
Some birthparents will claim the firstmom was portrayed as stereotypical and inconsequential.
Most adoptive parents will shudder at the parenting issues, inextricably entwined with adoption issues.
The literary technique called chiasm is present in Cammy's adoption story. In between, there are roads not taken. What would her life had been like had her firstmom not placed her? Surely better, she is certain.
Samantha faces her roads not taken, too. What if she hadn't pushed Bob so hard to adopt? What if she'd eased up on this particular (and shady) adoption? What if she had remained child-free? Would any of these routes have taken her to a happier place, where she was actually awake in her life?
I asked the author how she researched the Cammy character. How did she formulate the angst about her birthmother, the not fitting in, the lack of self-love? Were these things simply for storyline purposes, or was this character based on traits Elizabeth had observed in adopted people? Her answer:
"I did some research on at-risk teens, mostly by reading recent articles online. But I'd be lying if I said I did much more than that. I simply tried very hard to imagine what it would feel like to be Cammy. Feeling as if she didn't fit in her own family. It's hard enough for teens to try to fit in at school with their peers but at home Cammy was also desperate for a connection that was ever so slightly out of reach. I felt incredibly sad for her. I think we all have a little Cammy in us, even if it's just a tiny bit. I tried to tap in to that."
This is Elizabeth Flock's fourth novel. She tells a good story in a real and conversational way. Her pre-novelist life was as a journalist for People and Time magazines.
In spite of the tears, I am glad I read this book. Sleepwalking in Daylight is billed as a story about marriage, but it also spoke volumes to me about parenting. The book reminds me to try and see life through my children's eyes -- and serves as a warning to keep me from sleepwalking through these parenting years.
And if our sassy reviews are not enough to entice you, how about 2 great giveaways going on at All Thumbs this week? One is for a pair or retractable and chic earbuds and the other for a $250Visa gift card. Go on. Click over.)
Like Skeeter, a main character in The Help, author Kathryn Stockett has uncanny timing.
In 1963 in Mississippi, Miss Skeeter is a journalism graduate and social oddity -- the only member of the Junior League NOT to pursue an MRS degree. She is also the only one of her society sisters to notice there is something not quite right about the treatment of the "help" in their households, and about the unseen lines between races and classes that everybody assumes are real.
This dawns on Miss Skeeter on the eve of the Civil Rights movement.
Kathryn Stockett publishes her first novel, The Help, at the current point of the Civil Rights arc -- within a month of the inauguration of the nation's first racially integrated president.
Perhaps I should temper my gushing, but I really, really loved this book. There are three distinct voices from three well-developed characters:
Aibileen, a maid who has lost her own child and who has raised 17 white children. Her special gift, she knows, is to teach those little babies to receive and give love, and to help them feel important and worthwhile, even if their own mothers don't take the time to cherish them. And
Minny, whose cooking skills are matched only by her sass. Said sass gets her in trouble family after family after family. Until she begins to work for Miss Celia who, maddeningly and clumsily, doesn't adhere to the protocol of racial and class lines.
Skeeter, who returns from college to find that her beloved Constantine, the maid who raised her, has mysteriously up and left.
Despite the stifling social codes that separate them, these women join to tell their stories, risking all to make a subtle change in awareness of imaginary lines. Along the way, there are funny moments, heartbreaking instances, and a little terror. I actually cried on page 389 (my advance copy may be different from the one you read).
The change begins with mean girl Miss Hilly and her ideas about toilets. And there's a load of crap that shows up from time to time.
This is the kind of book that you think about through the day, that you read way past bedtime, that you neglect your other duties for.
The Help just came out this week. Through MotherTalk, I received a complimentary copy . Normally I would give away my proof copy, but this is a book I will want to read with Tessa (and Reed) some day.
So you'll have to get your own. The Help is most definitely nightstand-worthy.
When I say "light," I don't mean lightweight. I mean enlightening. I loved the way Gilbert struggled with and balanced her head and her heart, and the lengths she would go to in order to find alignment. I related well to her story, and I lived vicariously through this book a life I might have had.
Here are my three questions and answers. After them, you'll find out how to see what others on the tour are saying.
The author, because of personal traumas, decides to go on a spiritual/emotional journey. Have you ever gone through such a journey because of a personal trauma? And what did you learn about yourself?
Many years ago, I came back from living a year in Japan, and I had a spot on my lung. The treatment options were drastic: (1) a lifetime of steroids (which could affect fertility -- hah!); (2) an experimental drug that wasn't available in this country; or (3) a lobectomy, removal of that part of my lung.
Needless to say, I didn't like any of my options.
About that time, a modern-day mystic named Ethel entered my life. Thus began a spiritual journey I am still on today. As I clear away crap, I have made room in my life for the man who would become my husband (a better man than I'd ever dreamed of), my children (ohhhh, how I'm grateful for these two), and improved health. There are ever-deepening layers of knowing and loving myself.
I wrote in more detail about this here. And you can check out my posts labeled "Spirituality" if you'd like to know more.
The author learns Italian for the pure love of it (no real practical reason). Have you wanted to learn something just for the pure sake of the knowledge? Did you pursue it and how did it make you feel once you had done it?
I'm laughing because blogging is something I do for no practical reason. I do it for fun. I make virtually no money (unless you just happen to click on any of the Google or BlogHer ads you see here, or order from my Amazon or Yoga ads -- go on, be the first).
Blogging is a bit like a journey. I travel inward as I think, feel, and clarify. I travel outward as I read your posts and get to know you. And sometimes, I literally travel to meet you.
Blogging makes me feel great. If only laundry did, as well.
In Chapter 60, the plumber/poet from New Zealand gives Liz some Instructions for Freedom. #7: "Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then, let go." To what extent has any suffering you've experienced in response to your own struggles (such as infertility, loss, illness) been inevitable? Natural but unhelpful? Useless? Does the suffering serve any purpose for you? Is that purpose enough to justify ongoing suffering?
Here's what I believe is true. That doesn't mean I always live as though I believe it.
Suffering is a choice. Being uncomfortable has a purpose -- to get us to change something that isn't working. The signal to pursue pleasure is much more subtle than is the signal to end pain. When my higher self calls me to expand and grow, it often has to resort to the latter.
For example, I thought infertility would kill me. I thought my life was over, bleak, meaningless. But it was all just a story that was happening to the temporal me (let's call her Small Lori). But infertility was not the defining theme for the timeless me, my spirit, my higher self (let's call her Big Lori). Rather, it was what called Small Lori to grow, to rise above, to plow through, to toughen up, to open up. Clearing and opening like this enables the Small and the Big to unite for periods of time.*
So, to get back to the question: Is it inevitable? Yes (except for people who come into this life fully actualized). Natural? Yes. Like a caterpillar must become goo in a cocoon before it emerges as a butterfly. Unhelpful or useless? No. Not when prompted by Big Lori. Small Lori, however, does create unhelpful and useless suffering and drama on occasion. (OK. More frequently than that.)
So simple, yet not easy.
* Please note that I am speaking only about my own suffering. I would not presume to understand anyone else's or to simplify it in these terms.
Great book. Read it if you haven't.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens (http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/). You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Baby Trail by Sinead Moriarty (with author participation).
I actually thought Lemonade for the Elephant would be a better title, but maybe that's why Sara Gruen is a bestselling novelist and I am one of her readers.
This is my 7th book tour with the Barren Bi+ches, but my 1st for a non-IF-related book. I found it much harder to find a focus and more difficult to develop questions. With the other books, I had a sense for what my fellow readers would think in certain situations. But with Water for Elephants, there was no known common ground. No shared focal point. I felt like a chicken let out of the coop onto the big open range.
Or maybe like a camel let out of a train car after a long Joliet-to-Providence run.
What is your favorite circus related memory? I have only one circus-related memory and it's not a good one. My parents had taken us to the Greeley Stampede (cross between a circus and a carnival) with my parents one summer when I was about 11. Through the course of the day I ate a few pickles. And later on some cantaloupe.
It was stiflingly hot. After we saw the animals, my sisters and I rode the Tilt-a-Whirl, our favorite ride. Something happened, though, after we got off the ride. Gurgling and burbling, the contents of my stomach were churning about and causing me pain and nausea.
I found a trashcan, topped with rotting-in-the-heat cotton candy, just in time to hurl.
It was decades before I could eat pickles or cantaloupe or cotton candy again.
Are you still with me? The answers get better, I promise. (At least I've given you low-hanging fruit [ahem] on which to comment.)
Looking at himself in the mirror, the old Jacob tries "to see beyond the sagging flesh." But he claims, "It's no good....I can't find myself anymore. When did I stop being me?" How would you answer that question for yourself? I'm not even halfway to Jacob's age, but already I wonder, at times, where the 19 year-old Lori went. Or the 24 year-old Lori. Or the 37-year old Lori.
But I don't feel I have ever stopped being me. If anything, I continually become more Me.
It seems like you go through the first part of your life adding to yourself. Trying on. Acquiring.
And the last part of your life is spent shedding. Discerning. And finally, losing. This part of Elder Jacob's viewpoint brought a little panic to my innards. Like Jacob, I fear losing my stuff, my loves, my well- functioning body, control of my destiny.
Something that struck me about this book in particular was the rich, descriptive way the author handled Jacob as an elderly man. His frustration was so apparent, his physical manifestation so perfectly described, that of all of the elements of this book Jacob the Elderly is what stays with me. You had the sense that Jacob didn't foresee his latter years being the way they were, and his almost "ride off into the sunset" ending perhaps what he had envisaged for his end. Do you think about what's at the end of the road someday? When you think about it, what do you see for yourself? Did you read A Prayer for Owen Meany? (spoiler alert: don't read this paragraph if you plan to read the book). The premise of being able to see, in a premonition, your own tombstone both fascinates and frightens me. Would YOU want to know the date of your death?
Or the manner?
I once volunteered for Hospice. As part of the training, we had to write about our own death.
It was impossible for me. Try as I might, I could not come up with anything except the super-predictable and bland ending where I die in my sleep.
Let it be so. Let me be the picture of health until then. And let me have helped my children raise their children to adulthood.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list here. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Empty Picture Frameby Jenna Nadeau(with author participation because she's a blogger!) _________________
Chicklet reveals this season's must-have shoes for both style and comfort. They are SO must-have that she bought TWO pairs. Make sure to visit the current entry on All Thumbs Reviews.
I've been heavy into Adoptee Literature* lately, trying to preview feelings my children may (or may not) have. On one hand, I want to prepare for issues that may arise, but on the other, I don't want to plant any where they may be none.
A.M. Homes' writing is so stark. No frills. It's easy for me to put moving pictures to her narrative. Her words and emotion mirror what some adult adoptees have expressed on various bulletin boards I frequent.
On the book tour, participants are given a set of questions, from which we each pick three. Here are mine. Directions for following along, or for joining the next tour, are at the end of the post. Make sure you click on the link below and visit the other reader reviews.
A feeling of the "subtlety of biology," a lovely aphorism, is not something that Homes necessarily welcomes. I sometimes feel that biology raps me over the head when I look at biologically-related family members. How has infertility affected our feelings about the "subtlety of biology"?
I can't remember what it was like when I still thought we were fertile. Did I study people's faces? Look for signs of biological connection? Or perhaps I did not give it much thought.
Now I am a face-looker. When I see kids at school from the same family, I notice the facial shape, the arrangement of the features, the portion of teeth showing in a smile. I look for these connections when the parents come around, too.
I wonder which families share biology, and which families, like mine, share biography.
Most adoptions from the 1950s' and 60s' are closed, with birth records sealed except upon a courts' finding "good cause" to open them. In light of Homes's experiences, does this seem to be the appropriate method for handling adoption records?
I see open records as a civil rights issue. It is morally wrong to allow access to original birth certificates to everyone EXCEPT for one class of citizens who are in this group simply by circumstances of their birth.
Some argue that a birthparent's right to privacy trumps an adoptee's right to know. I disagree. But my bias is toward open adoption, which greatly eases this issue.
For our children, we were issued two birth certificates each: their original ones and their amended ones.
This summer, adoptee rights groups are going to address the National Conference of State Legislators in New Orleans in order to influence open records legislation in all 50 states. Click on over to offer your support.
The author talks about searching for information on her ancestors and realized that many of the people searching were not adopted. She realized from that the question of "who am I" is not unique to adoptees. At what point in your life, have you felt the same way?
Shortly after we got married, my husband and I began videotaping (back in the day; it was a HUGE, shoulder-crushing camera) stories told by our grandparents. My grandpa grew up in a sod house in Nebraska. Roger's great-grandmother arrived in this country after literally being tossed (as a baby) onto a ship leaving Ireland.
Eventually, we will transfer these videos to DVD and pass them to our children for when they begin to question, "who am I."
These stories, after all, are the roots of their family tree.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at Stirrup Queens. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen(with author participation!)
I first read The Handmaid's Tale in the mid-1990s, the summer I met the man who would become my husband. Roger was getting ready to teach it to his high school students, but he never got the opportunity. The book was challenged by a parent, and though Roger won the case, the chance to teach it passed.
On first reading, I thought my life path would be: court, marry, procreate, live happily ever after. On second reading -- more than a decade and a well-worn map-to-parenthood later -- the book struck very different chords.
In the beginning of the book, the Aunts discuss two facets of freedom: "freedom from" and "freedom to". While the old government's laws provided both types of freedom, the new government limited women's freedom to "freedom from". Do you think that "freedom from" is truly a freedom, or is it just the government's way of subtly taking away rights?
Definitely the latter. This sentiment is commonly credited to Benjamin Franklin: "Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." For more of my thoughts on the coming dystopia and the prescience of Margaret Atwood, see my post from a few days ago.
One thing that struck me was how easily the Gileadean government robbed women of their economic power and, ultimately, freedom. All it took was a few keystrokes and threats to employers to throw women back into chattel status. Where was the opposition? And what about the men? Even Offred's partner was unbothered by what was happening. How might the citizens in Offred's culture have fought against the Gileadians' plans? Or was the takeover inevitable once it began?
When people value more the "freedom from" than the "freedom to," taking away freedoms will be as easy as the proverbial taking candy from a baby (which, in reality, is a strange simile, if you've ever tried doing so).
Life carries risk. The more we want to shift our risk onto others, the more we are willing to let others control us. We trade freedom for security (or the illusion of security, since risk is still there in some form or another). We're like that doomed frog that is put in a pot of cool water with the heat turned on: because change happens gradually, we don't jump out of the pot or yell "stop!" Gradualism takes patience if you're the perpetrator, and vigilance and courage if you're the frog.
We in the US hail our Constitution as the protector and guarantor of our rights. But without our awareness and willingness to fight to protect our rights, the Constitution is just an old piece of paper.
The Declaration of Independence says, "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government."
Thomas Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress were so committed to self-governance that they even declared the right/duty to "throw off" a government that's become despotic! What citizenry in human history has ever been given by its founders permission -- even the imperative -- to overthrow a wayward government? (And whether Eyes are reading or not, I must point out I am not suggesting the overthrow of anything.)
When was the last time you read the Constitution? Do you think your elected officials have? How can you (and they) safeguard your freedoms if you don't know what they are?
**stepping down from soap box** It was at one time hard for me to put myself in the Wife's shoes, but having dealt with infertility on a more personal sense, I find that I can sympathize with her and her role in this society. If you had to be in this society, how could you cope with your role in it? Would you be a Wife or a Handmaid? Could you sympathize with your counterpart?
Absolutely. I sympathize with both. If I had my choice (which, of course, I wouldn't in Gilead), I think I'd be a Wife (as the lessor of two horrors). But I would also sympathize with the Handmaids. Both groups were stripped of the power of self-determination.
I know logically that one needs only food, shelter, air and water for survival. But to live without freedom seems so pathetically bleak, for both Blue and Red.
Hop along to another stop on this blog tour by visiting the main list at http://stirrup-queens.blogspot.com/. You can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Fowler(with author participation!)
