Coronation weekend odds & ends

• Well, my alarm clock is already set for (YAWN!) 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. CTV's coverage of King Charles III's coronation begins at 3 a.m., CBC's at 4 and CNN's at 5, my/Eastern time.  I figure 4 a.m. sounds about right -- time for me to have some breakfast while watching the dignitaries arrive and listening to the talking heads. I'll probably be flipping back & forth between CBC & BBC World.  And live-chatting (texting) with my longtime New Zealand penpal :)  which we've done for the last several big royal events -- something we could never have imagined doing when we first started writing to each other as teenagers in 1977!! (This is when I love technology, lol.)  
• According to the schedules I've seen, Charles & Camilla will leave for Westminster Abbey at precisely 5:20 a.m., the service will begin at 6 and Charles will be crowned around 7. The balcony appearance at Buckingham Palace (and Royal Air Force flypast) will happen around 9:30 a.m.
• BIL seems skeptical that I would want to get up at 4 a.m. for such an event (let alone that I'm capable of actually getting up at that early hour, lol). He obviously doesn't know that I've been doing this for every major royal wedding & funeral for the past 40-odd years, and watching royal events for well over 50!  The first one I can remember watching is then-Prince Charles's investiture as Prince of Wales in 1969, then Princess Anne's first wedding in 1973, which was especially notable because we'd only recently gotten our first colour TV set).   
• Who else is planning to watch??  
• In my last odds & ends post, I flagged an article about "wedding sprawl."  I'm seeing it in action this weekend... my cousin's daughter is getting married this summer, and her friends have spirited her away to Los Angeles for a bachelorette weekend (!).  Not only that, one of her friends tagged her on social media with an image of a Vennmo (U.S. mobile payment system, like PayPal, but not available in Canada) QR code, inviting people to scan it and "buy the bride a drink." !!!  Now I think I've seen everything... I mean, if I was there in LA, enjoying the sunshine and fun, sure, I'd buy her a drink, but...??!  (Has anyone else ever heard of this??)  I'm sure something else will come along to top that one soon, though...! 
• An oldie (which I may or may not have shared here before?) but a goodie (and a timely one too):  From John Pavlovitz:  "For Those Who Hurt on Mother’s Day." 
• This weekend is International Bereaved Mothers Day (always marked on the Sunday BEFORE that "other day"). ;)  It was created in 2010 by an Australian woman, Carly Marie Dudley, in memory of her stillborn son Christian and to honour all mothers who have lost a baby and feel overlooked on Mothers Day.  
• Many loss mom bloggers who were around back then will remember Carly Marie and the gorgeous photos she used to take and send to bereaved moms of their child's name written in the sand by the ocean at sunset. She has gone silent online in recent years, and most of her sites and social media accounts are no longer active, but every year at this time, I still see people in my social media feeds posting about the day she founded.  
• At the time she created it, Carly Marie said, "International Bereaved Mother’s Day is intended to be a temporary movement. It is a heart-centered attempt at healing the official Mother’s Day for all mothers. I believe that we can do this and that sometime in the near future there will be no need for this day at all because all true mothers will be recognized, loved, supported, and celebrated.” 
• (It's a nice idea, but I don't think we're anywhere close to that point yet...!) 
• Here's an article that Carly Marie wrote in 2016 for Still Standing Magazine about International Bereaved Mothers Day:  
• From Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep (a charity which provides beautiful professional photos for parents experiencing the loss of a baby), an article reminding us that not only was Anna Jarvis, the founder of Mother's Day, childless herself, she created it to honour her own mother -- who lost most of her many children. 
• In a recent Substack newsletter, Jill Filipovic had a very long and wide-ranging interview with Ruby Warrington, author of the recently released book "Women Without Kids." Both Ruby & Jill are childfree by choice, so the interview is mostly from that perspective -- but there is a LOT there that I think we all can relate to -- AND! (bonus!) Ruby gives a shoutout to Jody Day and Gateway Women and Jody's childless elderwomen project!!  (Unfortunately, there may be a subscriber paywall.)  
• The Washington Post recently reviewed two (other) thoughtful new books related to birth and motherhood and... childlessness, in an article titled "In Defense of the Childless." (I read one of the books! -- reviewed here.) 
• Also a great read from Jill Filipovic (and NOT behind a paywall): "What Do Women Need?" Answer in the subhead:  "Better men. Until then, we'll freeze our eggs."  Sample passage: 

Women don’t freeze their eggs because they’re selfish careerists who want to climb the corporate ladder; women freeze their eggs because they want to have a child with a great partner, and one hasn’t yet come around... 




It’s easy to look at this issue and say that men just need to get their shit together. And men do need to get their shit together. But some of this isn’t about individual men being bad; it’s about larger cultural and economic forces that have left men untethered, often ill, and often directionless.

 

• The Globe & Mail has a personal finance podcast aimed at millennials and Gen Z-ers called "Stress Test" -- and a recent episode dealt with the realities and costs of fertility treatments in Canada. You can listen to the podcast and/or read a transcript (which -- warning! -- does not seem to be well edited...!), here. 
• From The Toronto Star, written by a fertility doctor:  "The inequity of infertility: Why we need to talk about reproductive health as a shared responsibility." Sample passage: 

Infertility should be considered a public health issue that has the potential to impact everyone through dwindling populations, rising health care costs, emotional stress and lower workplace productivity.

We can share the responsibility for our society’s fertility rate by promoting policies that consider reproductive health and talking openly about infertility to reduce the stigma. 

• Well worth a read:  in her Culture Study newsletter on Substack, Anne Helen Petersen interviews transracial adoptee Angela Tucker about her experiences and about her new book, "You Should be Grateful."  
• I loved Carolyn Hax's response to the second letter in her advice column in the Washington Post, written by a woman whose sister-in-law keeps bringing up how much money she (the writer) makes. (It's actually less than the SIL's salary.)  I was reminded of some of the "bingos" we hear as childless-not-by-choice people (and of course, some of them are related to how much money WE must have, since we don't have kids...), and I LOVE some of the answers Carolyn proposes!
• On social media, Jody Day of Gateway Women flagged a newly released study in the Irish Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy:  "Childlessness as a springboard for post-traumatic growth." 
• The study was the subject of an article in the Irish Times. "There’s more to being a woman than being a mother."  "The longing to have a child didn’t go away for many women in our study," the subheading reads. "But they found other ways to flourish."  Our pain is real -- but it does not have to define us. 
• Said Jody on social media: "I really, really hope this starts to turn the tide on the very ill-informed opinion, amplified by the #pronatalist media, that #childless women 'never' recover from the trauma of childlessness... we can, we do and we find other ways to 'flourish' in our lives and share our mothering hearts with the world around us, and with ourselves. It takes time, love, and support, but we rise again..."

Have a good one!  :)