#MicroblogMondays: Information overload vs creativity

Back in February, I pondered the ongoing tensions between feeding my lifelong habit as a voracious reader and consumer of media (including, for the past 15+ years, blogs), my pride in staying well informed on current events and a number of other interesting topics -- and the difficulty of trying to keep up with the constant barrage of content that arrives in my inbox every day in this multi-platform, digital age.  

I recently read something that gave me a huge shock of recognition -- an "a-ha" moment, if you will. In her wonderful Substack "Changing the Channel," Kirsten Powers wrote about attempting to follow Julia Cameron's book "The Artist's Way," which provides a 12-week guide to greater creativity.  Powers abandoned the book the first time she tried to go through it, but picked it up again after seeing how a friend was transformed by it. 

This time around, she realized she was what Cameron refers to as a "blocked artist." (The piece is titled "Blocked Artists and the Lies We Believe.") She also realized that "Reading too much can be a block."(Wait, what??!)  

This section in particular really hit home for me (especially paragraph 2):  

When I journaled about it I realized almost immediately how I used my constant reading of nonfiction as a way to numb out. I also realized that instead of filling my well at the end of the day by spending time drawing, knitting, playing with my dog, or talking to another human, for example, I usually went straight to reading a nonfiction book where I could learn something.

My poor brain was never getting a break. I was addicted to information—I always needed to know more and be more informed, which I came to see as the block of perfectionism. I also was spending too much time reading other people's ideas and not making enough room for my own ideas to germinate. 

(OUCH.) 

Not long afterward, something else landed in my inbox to complement and reinforce Powers' message. I get a regular newsletter (not a Substack) from Ruby Warrington, who wrote the excellent book "Women Without Kids" (reviewed here). Her most recent missive contains much food for thought. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a link I can direct you to -- and it was SO hard to pick just a few excerpts to share -- but her message really made me think. The header reads "Choosing creativity over visibility." (Boldfaced emphasis is Warrington's.)  

Warrington wrote about how she recently declined an invitation to appear on an Instagram Live, explaining that she just didn't have the capacity to be "on" in that way right now.  

It is SO MUCH. To the point that I am questioning if my desires for my creative life are in fact incompatible with what I have started to think of as a culture of “peak content.”

...It all began a few of months back, when I put myself on something of a “content diet.” When I was working as a journalist, I had always made it my business to know what was happening in the culture. This meant religiously scanning my go-to list of publications; staying up to date with the edgiest podcasts; subscribing to the requisite newsletters; and sensing into the social trends that swirled between the lines. A practice that that followed me as I transitioned to writing books.

But over the past year or so, this practice had begun to feel nauseating. As if I was becoming content intolerant... some days, I literally felt like I was gagging on the sheer volume of headlines, hot-takes, and opinions that my consciousness was attempting to digest. Like I was stuffed so full of “content,” there was no more space inside me for my own, original thoughts to form...

And yet, the current wisdom being that in order to have a career as an author, I must also  be producing a constant stream of content, in order to build an audience, grow my name recognition, and “test out my ideas."

...Not only do I just not have the words, the focus to spare. But also because I am increasingly questioning whether a culture of “peak content” is in fact in direct conflict with the business of selling books. 

...I find myself increasingly compelled to resist a culture where the precious substance of human creative expression is reduced to content—literal FILLER—for Meta et al to sandwich between the ads that form the basis of their trillion-dollar business models... Filler that usually has its own sneaky sales hook embedded in it somewhere, because we all need to pay the bills.

And yes. There is money to be made from subscriber-only newsletters and podcasts, and from exploiting the algorithms what another friend describes as the “IG mall.” But “success” in this realm (if success = earning enough from your efforts for it to be worth it) requires creating a constant churn of … content. 

And the thing is … with so much free content in the world, who even has the time to read books?!

...I cannot help but ask myself if all the content I've created to promote my books might actually have had the inverse effect. If my potential readers can check off the key takeaways by listening to me on a podcast, and get the juiciest tidbits from an IG Live, then why fork out upwards of $10 to buy a copy?

...Against all wisdom to the contrary about what it takes to make it as an author, I am choosing to go with my gut on this. For now, and for as long as it feels like the healthiest option for me, I will be choosing my creativity over my visibility. I'll just have to trust that at least a few of you will still be here the next time I have something to say. 

Do I get the feeling the universe is sending me a message?  

Granted, unlike Powers or Warrington, I am not a public figure or "content creator."  I made a decision years ago that I wasn't going to try to promote this blog on social media, or myself as a spokesperson for the childless not by choice community.  I admire others who have the time, energy and promotional savvy to do so (not to mention the courage to speak out on such sensitive issues). It's just not me.  And I'm (still) happy with that decision. 

Also, unlike Powers or Warrington, I'm not particularly thinking of my "creativity" (although I suppose that's part of it) -- but there are certainly parts of my life that I sometimes feel like I'm neglecting, because it's so hard to tear myself away from the damn laptop/phone...!  :p 

Nevertheless. I feel like some paring down of the content I consume and a reordering of priorities may be in order. 

(Easier said than done, of course...!)     

Does any of this strike a chord with you too?

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

The invisible load

Gemma Hartley (who wrote the excellent book "Fed Up:  Emotional Labour, Women and the Way Forward" -- reviewed here) recently posted on her Substack ("No One Loves An Angry Woman") about a new book by Erica Djossa, "Releasing the Mother Load." 

Djossa posts on Instagram as "Momwell," where (among other things) she shares graphics outlining "The Invisible Load" that mothers carry -- e.g., "Bedtime Routine," "Handling Transitions." 

Looking at some of these graphics -- "Researcher of the Home," "Mealtime Routine," "Being the Creator of Fun, Magic and Memories," "The Keeper of Knowledge" -- all I could think was, hey, we non-moms do a lot of these same things too!  Yes, without the additional pressure of knowing small lives are depending on us and absorbing our example -- but some of these things (such as "deciding what to make," "preparing the grocery list," "shopping for food") need to be done whether or not we have kids. Others (e.g., "dealing with guilt and comparison," "worrying about finances and budget," "remembering all the things," "remembering where everything is," "implementing systems like calendars and reminders") are things we may still want or need to do because they make life easier and more pleasant for us and the people we love.  They're things that seem to fall to women to do, regardless of whether we're moms (and especially if we have a partner, and/or have other people depending on us, such as aging parents).  

The graphic Hartley used to illustrate her post was about "Back to School" -- "adjusting to a new routine," "buying and packing supplies," "remembering special days," "haircuts and first day of school photos," "drop off and pick up," and (this one really kills me) "grieving moments you will miss." (!) (Here's another one: "practicing separating" (!).  Like, how do you "practice separating" -- permanently??  :(  )  

I don't want to minimize the very real additional load that mothers carry -- but all I could think of was that every point on this list (and all the other similar lists on the Momwell IG account) is something that I never got to do/will never be able to do/will never be able to do with my child.  ALL of these are "moments I will miss/have missed."  

Yes, it's work, it's an additional load of stuff that mothers have to do, or feel obligated to do -- BUT, it's stuff you get to do with and FOR YOUR CHILD. 

And it's stuff that I will never get to do with and for mine.  

This, too, is an "invisible load" -- the "invisible load" of the bereaved mother and childless woman -- that parents never have to think about. 

Well, this is new...

Almost 25 years to the day since I learned my pregnancy had ended... there's a baby seat in the back of our car. 

(Don't think THAT doesn't give me pause...!)  

It's actually a toddler seat. Guess whose?  

SIL is taking BIL to a medical appointment early on Tuesday afternoon, and they have to leave around noon -- which is when Little Great-Nephew gets out of day camp. (He's going two mornings a week for the month of August.  He calls it "school." Okay, buddy, if you say so...!)  So guess who has been designated to pick him up? 

Of course, we do not have the mandatory kiddie car seat -- but BIL had just bought him a new one, since he's pretty much outgrown the one they have right now. So when we were over there earlier today, we installed the new seat in our car for this specific purpose. (Dh & BIL took him on a quick trip to Home Depot after it was installed -- and then to Dairy Queen, lol -- so he's already tried it out, lol.)  We'll be picking him up at the community centre where the day camp is (picking up a child -- another first for us!), picking up some lunch, taking him back to his grandparents' house and then staying with him until they return, later in the afternoon. 

It's very strange. 

Odds & ends & updates

• Hey, it wasn't just my imagination!!  Ontario (and the Toronto area, where I live) experienced its darkest winter in more than 80 years.  :p  
• Bloglovin' update: More of the same crap, as described in previous posts (with a few more posts showing up in Chinese, Arabic and Cyrillic characters -- when they showed up at all...!). It's been more than a year since I started having regular issues with the site, and it's been more or less defunct since last fall. Incredibly frustrating.
• As a result -- I finally got fed up enough to pay for an upgraded account on Feedly (paid annually), which gives me access to up to 1,000 feeds (vs 100 for free). (I followed almost 600 blogs on Bloglovin -- gulp!  Not all of them active, mind you, but...!)  
• Thankfully, I had backed up my Bloglovin feed about a year ago (and haven't added too many blogs since then), and I still had the file saved -- I just uploaded it to Feedly and voila!  It even imported the categories I had created on Bloglovin, so I don't have too much (re)organizing to do. There were a couple of blogs that "failed to add" (mostly older ones that haven't posted anything in years) but that's OK.  
• The Feedly setup will take a little getting used to -- but I'm hoping for more reliable service than I've been getting from Bloglovin for the past year or so...! and I'm looking forward to staying better updated from now on...! 
• I've kept my Bloglovin' bookmark for now, but deleted it from my startup tabs on my laptop (and added Feedly instead). On my cellphone, I deleted the app entirely. 
• A couple of Little Great-Nephew stories I want to remember, from a visit to BIL & SIL's house on Monday (before we spent the day with him on Wednesday):  
• SIL: "[LGN], if you use the potty, I'll get you some ice cream."  LGN (after thinking for a moment): "What KIND of ice cream?" 🤣
• Dh, as we were leaving: "Now [LGN], you're going to be good for Daddy when he comes to get you tonight, aren't you?  You're not going to cry or kick..."  LGN, nodding:  "Or hide under the table..."  🤣
• After spending the day with LGN on Wednesday (see post link above), this article (via The NotMom on social media) was very timely and struck a chord:  "I Will Never Be a Grandparent."  
• Three cheers for Carolyn Hax of the Washington Post, whose advice is generally pretty sound and sympathetic towards the childless/free, infertile and grieving, and whose answer to a recent impatient would-be grandfather (essentially:  MYOB)  warmed my heart.  :)  Here's a gift link: "Would-be grandpa scoffs at couple’s reason not to have kids." 
• Also for Yael Wolfe on Medium: "Stop Giving Unsolicited Reproductive Advice to Childless Women." Just read it;  it's fabulous.  :)  
• In an "odds & ends" post last weekend, I mentioned a Times of London article/book excerpt by Elizabeth Day, "My fertility sadness — and what not to say to a childless woman." 
• Blogger Jennie Agg from The Uterus Monologues, who now writes a Substack at "Life, Almost" (and has a new book by the same name) has referenced it in a thoughtful post about "fertility privilege" -- "A child is not a kitchen extension." Sample passage (but please, go read the whole thing!):  

It’s a brilliant coinage, I think. Those of us who have walked a similar path to Day, whether through loss, infertility - or both - know instantly what she means here. Most people are wildly unaware of their own fertility privilege.

It’s there in Mother’s Day cards that say things like: ‘Well done mum for keeping me alive!’. Or first birthday posts on social media that are captioned to the effect: ‘Kept them alive for a whole year!’

It’s there in the way people will casually say: ‘We’re going to keep going until we get a girl/boy’. Or: ‘We want one of each’. (In a chapter of Life, Almost I write about the way we’ve normalised discussions about family size ‘as though it were always a straightforward choice – like ordering from a menu: two girls and a boy, with a side of twins, please’.)

When I asked on social media for other examples, the response was overwhelming, from ‘being able to joke about a partner needing a vasectomy’ to ‘taking family members along to scans for fun’. Other commonly given examples were conversations about ‘ideal’ age gaps or timing pregnancies around seasons, the start of the school year, or work contracts. (Or worse, joking to someone who is pregnant and due over a holiday or other significant date: ‘Well that wasn’t very well-timed, was it?’ or ‘I wouldn’t want a Christmas baby, personally’.)  

It’s not that saying these things makes you a bad person. Or that you’re not allowed to think or feel them (or even say them, if you’re confident you’ve got the right audience). It’s simply that they’re brimming with unacknowledged privilege.

• From The Globe & Mail:  "My struggle with infertility is teaching me to move through life with intention." Sample passage: 

I want to have hope that I will be able to grow a child. But I also want to be prepared for a life that may mean I am unable to. I actually don’t want to only be prepared, I want to imagine myself able to find joy on many life paths.

One path leads to the experience of growing someone inside me, birthing them, guiding them through park music classes, temper tantrums, scuffed walls, stained carpets, graduations, rowdy teenage years with clinking bottles in knapsacks rushing out of the house thinking I’m oblivious to the mischief – all of that.

Then there are the infinite other paths – including alternate ways of becoming a parent – available to me in this life. All unique and all equally fulfilling and deserving of celebration of a life well lived.

• On a somewhat related note:  this New York Times opinion piece (gift-linked) muses on the Oscar-winning "Everything Everywhere All at Once" (which I have not yet seen) and the idea of multiple possible lives and alternate universes:  "I Fantasized About Multiple Timelines, and It Nearly Ruined My Life." It wasn't hard for me to think about how it related to grief, loss and infertility -- particularly this passage:  

For years, I couldn’t stop thinking about other, better timelines where it didn’t happen, where my stepfather was still alive and my family intact. It helped me understand what was missing, but it did not allow me to mourn what I’d lost.

And that’s the peril of the multiverse; I was becoming unreal to myself, nostalgic not for a time before the death happened but for a timeline in which it never happened at all. 

...We can joke or wonder whether we’re in the wrong timeline. But we can’t lose sight of the fact that this timeline is the only one we’ve got.

A moment with LGN

Dh & I are both beat tonight.  We stayed with LGN at his grandparents' house for most of the day, while SIL accompanied BIL to a lengthy medical appointment that took up most of the day.  We've stayed with him plenty of times before, but never for that long.  

He was good as gold (as always!). He is currently trying to master the potty ;)  and he did have one "accident," but also used the potty successfully another time too. He was somewhat distressed by the accident (poor little guy...), but we gave him hugs & kisses and told him it was okay, just try to get to the potty in time the next time. And lavished him with praise when he did.  

He survived -- and so did we!  (lol)  His dad (Older Nephew) called dh later to thank us for staying with him today. Dh assured him that LGN is SO EASY to be with. (As I've often said -- where was this kid when I was a 15-year-old babysitter, trying to wrangle hellions??  lol)    

We'll be doing it all over again two weeks from now, when BIL has another lengthy appointment. And probably every two weeks or so for the foreseeable future, at least until LGN heads off to school (junior kindergarten/nursery school/pre-school) this fall. (Eeeek.) 

I know not every childless person who would like to be more involved in the lives of their niblings & great-niblings gets to do this. We are SO lucky.  

Today also just happened to be 25 years (I repeat: TWENTY. FIVE. YEARS) since the fateful day in March 1998 when I peed on a stick and watched, slack-jawed, as two bright blue lines immediately sprang into view.  I was too busy today to dwell on the significance of the date too much -- which is probably just as well... 

But for a few minutes late this morning, when dh had gone to McDonalds to pick up some lunch for all of us (including a Happy Meal for LGN), LGN snuggled up with me on the loveseat, watching TV. He normally gravitates more to dh than to me -- but for a few sweet minutes, it was just him and me. "What if?" I thought -- and just for a brief, fleeting moment, I allowed myself to pretend that the past 25 years were entirely different, and that this sweet, beautiful little boy was the grandson I know I will never have.  

It was lovely. 

It broke my heart.  

#MoreHarriets (please!)

Please (please!) read (and share, if you're into doing that) this wonderful piece ("Your Own Harriet")  by Anne Helen Petersen about the importance of childless/free role models, and the importance of representation in life choices generally. The "Harriet" of the title was a childless/free friend of Petersen's parents, who fascinated her as a child. Petersen is childfree by choice herself, but those of us who didn't actively choose this life will also recognize ourselves here. 

Sample passage (which really resonated with me): 

...there were lots of women — on Twitter and on Facebook — who also told me how much they wished they would’ve had that sort of representation in their own lives. For them, women who didn’t have kids (or, even worse, didn’t have partners) were always objects of scorn — framed by their own mothers and others in their life as failures whose lives were in continual collapse... 

When you equate a lack of kids with “failure,” it helps solidify the societal understanding that the only way for a woman to “succeed,” or at the very least find happiness, is to have children. That conception is slightly less rigid today, but it endures — and if you think otherwise, you haven’t had a frank conversation with a woman who doesn’t have kids.

That conception endures in part because the patriarchy endures, but it also endures because there’s a general lack of exposure to people like Harriet or the Root Beer Lady. So many people said that women they knew without kids were Aunts or Great-Aunts — people who were part of their life through familial relation. When it comes to friends, people with kids have just generally gravitated towards other people with kids. I get it: the schedules, the frameworks, the rhythms of the day, all of it’s easier when everyone has kids. But there’s something missing there, too.

(Petersen posted this article on Twitter, saying "MORE HARRIETS FOR EVERYONE! HARRIETS ALL AROUND!" and someone commented with the hashtag #moreharriets... hence my choice of title, lol.)   

Yes, we can!

The first year we were married (1985 -- 35 years ago now...!), I told dh I wanted to go to the Santa Claus Parade. 

"You want to go to the Santa Claus Parade??" was not only his reaction but his brother's & cousins' too. "Damn right," I said. I spent my entire childhood watching the Eatons Santa Claus Parade from faraway Toronto -- and now that I was living IN Toronto, I wanted to see it in person. Nevermind that I was now 24 years old and we didn't have any kids to haul along as an excuse. ;) 

We went. We (well, I, lol) had a blast. We went again several years later, along with BIL, SIL, the nephews, and a couple of dh's cousins & their kids. We were the only couple in the group without kids (and still thought we'd have our own someday at that point), but we had a blast then too. In the years after we lost our daughter, just thinking about the parade could sometimes reduce me to tears -- but gradually, the joy returned. There was no parade this year, because of COVID-19, but I keep thinking that I'd love to go again someday. :) (Preferably during a year when the weather is balmy versus subzero, lol.)  

This memory popped into mind after the usual Christmas season debate about photo cards erupted in one of the childless-not-by-choice communities where I hang out. People outside of North America apparently find the whole idea of photo cards generally bewildering, and (understandably) the annual onslaught of photos of happy families and adorable children is like rubbing salt in the wound of childlessness, particularly for people who are newly grieving the realization that the dream is over and this is permanent. A few made the comments along the lines of "nobody wants to see a photo of ME" and "people would think I'm crazy if I sent out a card with a photo of just myself/us, or of me/us & the dog." (You might be surprised... I've been getting more & more photo cards in recent years from my childless friends, both coupled & single. I love them!)

Anyway, that got me thinking about all the things we hesitate to do, or deny ourselves, or resent families doing, just because we're childless. When we're still planning our families or ttc, we think "oh, we'll do that when we have kids" (never imagining, in our innocence, that day might never come). And then, when we realize that we're not going to have those much-wanted kids, we find ourselves thinking, "I can't do that, I don't have kids," or "They'd think I'm nuts if I did that."  

I had another flashback to when I was first married. Everyone around us was getting video cameras & taking videos -- mostly of their kids, yes, but other things too. (This was 20 years before video & photo cameras started being combined, and then being included in your cellphones!)  I itched to get one for myself. There were so many times I wished I had one... but I kept putting it off. "We'll get one when we have kids," I'd tell myself.  

I mentioned this to a girlfriend once. "GET THE CAMERA," she told me (like, "Why are you waiting, if you want it that much?"). I still didn't, until I finally got a digital camera, about 15 years ago, that took video as well as photos. 

I think about the kiddie movies dh & I have gone to see -- "The Incredibles," the Minions movies. Yes, we were often the only adults there without at least one kid in tow, and the first few times we did it, we felt extremely self-conscious. But you know what? When the lights went down and the movie started, nobody could see that... and I daresay we enjoyed the movie just as much (if not more) than the parents who had to worry about taking kids to the bathroom and for popcorn refills. (Most of the best jokes in those movies go right over the kids' heads anyway!)  

I think about the poor neglected spare bedroom at our house in the suburbs... the one that was intended as the nursery. The entire time we lived there, it was a repository for dh's cheap, castoff student apartment furniture, piles of Christmas presents waiting to be wrapped, a storage spot for the vacuum cleaner & caddy full of cleaning supplies, etc. Even after I realized it was never going to be a nursery, I kept thinking we should buy some nice(r) furniture and linens/curtains and fix it up properly as a spare bedroom. I did buy a new bedspread/comforter for the bed, but that was about it  We haven't lived there for almost five years now, but I still regret that we didn't do something better/nicer with that room while we lived there. It was almost like I was kind of subconsciously punishing myself -- I didn't deserve to have nice things, because I had failed in my original mission of filling that room with babies and baby things. 

I think about the wedding china that sits in the cupboard waiting for a "special occasion" and never gets used. Or the bath salts that a friend gives you that remain unopened because they're just too nice to use for everyday. 

Life is short -- if this past year has taught us anything, I think that would be it. The years go by way too quickly. 

So go to the Santa Claus parade. (Go get your photo taken with him! -- when that's allowed again...!) Send photo cards. Go to the kiddie movie you're secretly dying to see. Go to Disney World, or your local amusement park, and ride the roller coaster. Do something nice with that "nursery."  Use that china, use those bath salts.

Don't think that you have to wait "until we have kids" -- or that you can't or shouldn't do something, just because you're childless. Don't let parents & families monopolize all the fun. (I firmly believe that Christmas is for everyone -- not just for kids, or for people with kids.)  "What will people think?"  Who cares?

We are worth it. 

*** *** *** 

I've written about Christmas photo cards here and here, and Pamela had a great post about them some years back too (with a lively discussion in the comments section!). 

A tribute to Mrs. Patmore :)

Hail to Mrs. Patmore,   
ruler of the Downton Abbey kitchen. 

Dh & I have been (re)watching (and hugely enjoying) reruns of "Downton Abbey" on weekday afternoons this fall on CBC TV (which should be wrapping up next week). 

One of my favourite characters is Mrs. Patmore, the cook. "Mrs." was a courtesy title traditionally given to the cook & housekeeper of great houses like Downton, whether they had ever been married or not. All indications are that neither Mrs. Patmore nor Mrs. Hughes (the housekeeper) were ever married or had children -- that is, until Mrs. Hughes married Mr. Carson, the butler -- after which Mrs. Patmore observes, a bit wistfully, "I suppose (Mrs. Hughes) knows the mystery of life by now, which is more than I can say for myself.” (lol) 

Nevertheless, it recently struck me that Mrs. Patmore is probably the most "motherly" figure on the show. 

She tutors Lady Sybil in some basic cooking skills before she heads off for nurse's training during the war. She also encourages footman Alfred's culinary ambitions, and he eventually lands a spot in a prestigious chef's training program at the Ritz in London. 

She lobbies both Carson and Lord Grantham to have her nephew Archie's name included on the local war memorial, and is crushed when it's excluded because he was executed for desertion. (Today, Archie would probably be diagnosed with PTSD and sent home for mental health treatment.) Lord Grantham comforts her by commissioning a special plaque dedicated to Archie, mounted on a wall near the town memorial and unveiled at the same time.

But it's Mrs. Patmore's relationship with Daisy the kitchen maid (who, under her tutelage, becomes the assistant cook) that best demonstrates her nurturing qualities. While she barks at Daisy and prods her to do better -- as any mother probably would -- her bark is far worse than her bite, and she is clearly Daisy's biggest champion.  She encourages Daisy to accept footman William's proposal as he heads off to war (to give him something to look forward to while he's "over there") -- and then to marry him as he lays on his deathbed, even though she never truly loved him. She also encourages Daisy to befriend William's lonely father, Mr. Mason -- and there are hints of a romance between herself & Mr. Mason by the end of the series! 

When Valentine's Day comes along, she sends Daisy an anonymous card, to ensure that Daisy doesn't feel left out. When Daisy gently turns down Alfred, Mrs. Patmore tells her, "I couldn't be prouder of you if you were my own daughter." Perhaps most importantly, she encourages Daisy to pursue her education, and pays for schoolteacher Sarah Bunting to serve as Daisy's tutor. And she's devastated when Daisy briefly considers leaving Downton to seek her fortune in London. 

Mrs. Patmore may be a fictional character, but she's beautifully written, and beautifully acted by Lesley Nicol. Couldn't all of us benefit from a Mrs. Patmore in our lives??

My blog is a teenager :)

(Taking my cue from Lori's "Not So Unlucky 13" post, back in May!)  :)  

October 31, 2007: 

• I was 46 years old, married for 22 years. 
• I was in my 21st year of working in the corporate communications department of one of Canada's major banks. (Dh worked for the same bank too.)  
• We spent 2+ hours (round trip) commuting (by car & commuter train, door to door to door) to and from work ever day. 
• October 31st was year-end for my company, with results reported in late November/early December. My department was in charge of all non-financial aspects of the annual report, and October through late January was generally the busiest and most stressful time of the year for us. 
• We had been living in a smallish three-bedroom house with a big back yard in a pleasant suburb near Toronto for 17 years. We thought we would be there for a few years & then move up to something larger as our family expanded...  
• Our two nephews were 19 & 15 years old. 
• It was 9 years after the stillbirth of our daughter, Katie, and 6 years since our last fertility treatment. The 10-year "anniversary" of her loss was looming large in my mind, and I found myself thinking a lot about her and what had happened. 
• We'd been facilitating the local chapter of a pregnancy loss support group for 7 years, after spending more than a year there as clients ourselves. 
• I'd been posting & lurking on several online forums for pregnancy loss, infertility and even a (very) few that I'd found for childless-not-by-choice women. And I'd recently discovered blogs -- including Stirrup Queens and Coming2Terms. I was intrigued, and posted a few tentative comments.
• On Halloween night, I held my breath & hit "publish" on my own very first blog post. 

October 31, 2020:   

• I will be 60 on my next birthday (!) and we celebrated our 35th wedding anniversary this past summer. 
• I was "reorganized" out of my job in July 2014 (at age 53) and took early retirement when my severance ran out. Dh lost his job in April 2013 and did the same. An earlier-than-expected retirement for both of us, but we have not regretted it!  
• Four years ago, we sold our house of unfulfilled dreams, downsized our belongings and moved into a condo in another suburb on the other side of the city, closer to dh's brother and his family. 
• Our two nephews are grown up (ages 31 & 28) and married to two lovely young women. One has a son of his own, who will turn one year old, a few weeks from now. :) We love being an aunt & uncle (and now a great-aunt & great-uncle!)!  (It's NOT a substitute for parenting -- but still pretty cool on its own terms...!) 
• Katie would be 22 years old (!). I still think of her every day. (And we still visit her at the cemetery every time we are back in our old neighbourhood.)
• We stopped facilitating the pregnancy loss support group in late 2009, but remain in touch with many of the friends we made there. I am still active in several online forums for childless-not-by-choice women. 
• We're currently living in the middle of a global pandemic that has restricted our ability to travel and limited the time we've been able to spend with family & friends (including my aging parents). :(  It's a good thing we love our condo because we've spent a lot of time here over the past 8 months...! 
• And... I'm still here, still blogging! And still very grateful for all that blogging has brought to my life these past 13 years. :) 

I don't want to think too much about what might happen over the next 13 years... (for one thing, I will be... HOW OLD??!!). If the past 13 to 22 years has taught me anything, it's that life is unpredictable and we can never know what the future has in store for us, both for better and not-so-good. 

But I will never regret hitting "post" that October night, 13 years ago!  :)  

"A sainthood not extended... virtue (not) bestowed"

Further to my recent post about Portland's "Wall of Moms" (and the "Auntifa," lol),  Lyz Lenz, an Iowa-based writer whose work I like (really! -- my comments below notwithstanding, lol...), authored a piece in today's Washington Post, about "How America weaponizes motherhood." 

I agree with what much of what she has to say. It is worth a read. It's very true that we afford white middle-class mothers a status that is denied to black mothers, and other kinds of mothers. 

But!! Oh, how I wish she (&/or the others who have written about the "Wall of Moms" and what it says about motherhood in America) would have taken the rhetoric one step further!   

But since they haven't, I will do it here. Some quotes from the article -- and my responses:  

• "The experience of motherhood in America is a political question just as much as it is a question of flesh. We allow white mothers a sainthood not extended to other types of mothers."  (And a sainthood that, with few exceptions, is not extended to non-mothers at all.) 
• "Historically, white motherhood has been used as a cover for inciting racist policies, white flight and school segregation...  And it’s not just women who use motherhood as a shield. Powerful men, when called out for their sexism, often resort to using their wives and daughters as evidence of their virtue."  (And those of us who do not have children have no such cover or shield to protect us, no such easy way to show evidence of our virtue and social worth.) 
• "In America, the sanctifying role of mother is not given to everyone." (Tell us about it...)
• "The dog whistle is always the purity and sanctity of white women, who get to be pure, who get to be holy and who get to be virtuous as mothers." (True. But when you're not a mother at all, whether by chance or by choice, you don't get to be virtuous either.) 
• "In America, we do not allow women to attain motherhood equally...  America scorns a fat mother... America also scorns single mothers..." (This may be true... but America (and other countries) also scorns non-mothers -- regardless of size, colour, marital status, etc. -- simply because they are not mothers.) 
• "It’s not that you are a mother, it’s how you mother that bestows virtue... in America, virtue is bestowed only upon mothers who are white, heterosexual and married." (There may be a scale of mothering virtue -- but my childless/free peers & I would beg to differ that "it's not that you are a mother." We know only too well that being a mother bestows virtue/social approval on a woman that we will never have or be able to earn. It is a virtue that will never be bestowed on us.)  
• "So, when we talk about motherhood and the “Wall of Moms,” we need to talk about who is being included and excluded from that privilege. Because for better or worse, in America, motherhood is a weapon, a tool that has long been used to perpetuate systemic racism and exclusion — not alleviate it."  (Motherhood is indeed a weapon, but I would add that it has also been used by some to perpetuate patriarchy, pronatalism and exclusion of non-mothers. When we talk about motherhood and the "Wall of Moms," we need to talk about who is being included and excluded from that privilege -- and that includes women who are not moms at all, but who also care deeply about children, and about democracy, and about the future of our planet.) 

Thoughts? 

#MicroblogMondays: Never mind...

The move is off.  :(  Without going into all the details, part of the funding that Older Nephew & his wife were counting on to purchase their townhouse fell through. Fortunately, they were able to recoup their initial deposit (there was a cooling-off period built into the contract).  I guess that's real estate for you...!

They are upset, of course, and while we don't like seeing them disappointed, dh & I think maybe it's for the best. We understand their desire to spread their wings and get out on their own. At the same time, we felt they might have been rushing into things. A little patience can go a long way...! 

I found myself thinking that, if buying a house and being independent is such a priority, then why did they go ahead & get pregnant?  (Not that I would give Great-Nephew back!!) It's not always possible to have everything you want, all at the same time...

But then I think, well, dh & I were so very conscious about being fiscally responsible and buying a house before starting a family -- and where did that get us?  By the time we left our adults-only apartment in the city (thanks to some help with the down payment from my generous FIL -- or we'd probably still be there...!), five years had passed; by the time we got a handle on mortgage payments and home ownership, another few years had gone by. I was in my mid-30s by the time we finally did start trying for a baby -- and then, when I told my family dr that we'd been trying for a while without results, he just patted me on the head and told me it would happen. (And this happened more than once.)

And I believed him.

By the time I did get pregnant, I was 37 -- and we all know how that ended. :(   After that, with the clock ticking in the background, we tried infertility testing and treatments -- until they left me a total physical, emotional, mental and financial wreck, shortly after my 40th birthday.

So here we are, almost (gulp) 20 years later -- doing pretty well financially, retired in our 50s and living in a nice, mortgage-free condo (after selling the house we bought 30 years ago) -- but, of course, no family. It's a good life, but it's certainly not the life we wanted, or planned, or expected.

Who's to say we did the right thing?

Who's to say they didn't?

There's always a price to pay. There are always tradeoffs -- and not always ones we can control. And not always the ones we're expecting.

Time will tell.

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.

#MicroblogMondays: This is what it's like

We've been having a lot of fun spending time with our adorable little Great-Nephew, and we got to do a lot of it this weekend. Sunday was his dad (Older Nephew)'s 31st birthday, so all of us were together to celebrate -- BIL & SIL, Older & Younger Nephew & their wives, the dog :) & of course the baby.

I went back & forth between immersing myself in the joy of  being around him, holding him, watching his every movement -- and a curious feeling of detachment. I watched Older Nephew & his wife, the proud parents, cuddling him, feeding him, burping him, putting him in his swing while the rest of us ate... and thought, "This is parenthood. I never got to do this. Any of this."

I watched SIL, the proud grandmother, cuddling her grandson as he slept & giving him little kisses on top of his head, and thought to myself, "This is what it's like to be a grandmother. I'll never get to do this."

I watched Younger Nephew's wife take her turn holding the baby, smiling at her nephew, and knowing she's hoping that someday soon, it will be her turn. I thought, "That was me, 30 years ago. I was young and full of hope once too."

My hope now is that she never has reason to lose hers.

SIL's dad -- the baby's great-grandfather -- was there, and we took a photo of him with SIL Older Nephew & the baby. (It was actually dh who suggested taking the photo.) Four generations. I wanted that shot so badly for my own photo album -- to introduce our daughter to her great-grandparents (my maternal grandparents), even if she didn't get to grow up with them in her life. But I lost her in utero in August 1998;  then my grandfather died in October 1998 (and then my grandmother the October after that, in 1999). I was due in November. Grandpa was 86, had some heart issues and was increasingly frail;  there's a good chance he might not have lived long enough to see my daughter born, even I had brought her to term. I was 37 years old -- how many 37-year-olds do you know who are lucky enough to still have an intact set of grandparents? But I couldn't help but feel (& still feel, sometimes) that after I lost her, and he didn't have that to look forward to any more, some of the spirit to keep living went out of him. :(

Being a great-aunt is a wonderful thing, and I am loving it.  :)

But it's also a reminder of everything that never was, everything we lost, everything we've missed out on.

I try not to dwell on it. I have a good life. I am ever so grateful that this little guy is part of it.

But still. It's still hard sometimes.

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

The universe is screwing with me, big time

If you're a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that our Older Nephew & his wife are expecting their first child -- our first great-niece/nephew (gender soon to be revealed here! ;)  ).  And that her due date is exactly ONE DAY apart from my own, 21 years ago (November 15, 2019 vs November 14, 1998) -- meaning I am going through this pregnancy with her, reliving my own doomed pregnancy in the exact same time frame.

It's been hard at times -- but the hardest part -- getting through that first week of August, and August 5th & 7th in particular (the day I learned Katie's heart had stopped beating, and the day I delivered her -- the "official" date that's on all the paperwork) -- is yet to come.

And it just got harder.

She's had some difficulty making the transition from her family doctor's care to an ob-gyn -- her original choice was booked solid and not taking any more patients at the moment -- but she was finally able to get a referral and an appointment to another ob-gyn.

JUST GUESS when her first appointment is.

Yep -- August 7th.

This obviously adds to the my levels of anxiety on their behalf around those dates.  It amps up the emotions & stress I'm generally feeling around then.  It also adds a certain level of guilt to anything I want to share about my/our own thoughts & activities to remember our daughter then.

I don't often mention Katie, our loss (or pg loss in general), or our involuntary childlessness on social media (let alone "in real life" conversations with non-ALI friends & family members) -- but there are a few times during the year that I feel compelled/entitled to do so:  Mother's & Father's Day. Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day/Month in October. Sometimes around what should have been her birthday in November.

And August 7th.

Now I'm feeling like I can't do anything, at least this year. If I post anything on THIS August 7th, it will only serve to remind our niece and nephew (not to mention BIL & SIL) that not all pregnancies have a happy outcome, and increase their anxiety around this initial ob-gyn visit/checkup. Of course, they already know what happened to us -- they know about pregnancy loss, in a theoretical way (just like we all did, until it actually happened to us...!) -- but would posting about our daughter then be like rubbing it in their faces at a critical time? BIL keeps saying he just wants them to "relax" and warns all of us not to do or say anything that will stress them out too much. I don't believe he was thinking of dh & me or talking about Katie specifically -- but I'm sure anything I say or post that day might well be taken the wrong way.

If it were anyone else but our nephew & his wife, I wouldn't be so anxiety-laden on this point -- but I adore those kids and would never want to do anything to hurt them or add to their stress levels right now.

(I suppose I could still post something, and fiddle with the privacy settings to prevent them & other family members from seeing it -- but I've never done that before, and it seems rather complicated.)

I kicked dh under the table when the date was mentioned. He didn't clue in WHY I did that until later, when I mentioned this to him (duh -- men!!).  He reminded me that, apart from some headaches, nausea and heartburn, and one fall, over a month ago, she's had a much better/far more normal pregnancy so far than I did. (By this point in my pregnancy, we knew things were not progressing normally... things were very much up in the air.) The baby has been healthy & growing at every ultrasound & checkup so far. The mom is already much bigger than I was at this point. That's all good. There's absolutely no logical reason to believe that the similarity in dates means the outcomes will be similar too. (In fact, there's a huge part of me that believes that OF COURSE, things will be fine -- everyone ELSE due on/around Nov. 15th gets to walk away with a live, healthy baby -- just not me.)

It's just hard. :(

No doubt there will be more anxiety-laden posts to come from me between now & August 7th.  (I'm grateful that we're going to be away for 2+ weeks between now & then -- out of sight, out of mind? -- although I'm sure it's going to hit me big time when we get back...!) Thanks in advance for your patience & any support you can lend between now & then (as well as prayers & positive vibes for the parents-to-be & their baby, of course).

Happy retirement, Dr. Ob-gyn

I made my last visit to Dr. Ob-gyn today -- almost exactly 21 years to the day since I first walked into his office in May 1998, when I was about 12 weeks pregnant. He's retiring at the end of June, after a long and stellar career at this hospital (along with his wonderful office manager and his nurse, both of whom have also been there the entire time I've been his patient).

After confirming I was pregnant in March 1998, my former, longtime family dr (who retired about five years ago himself, after being our dr for 29!! years) referred me to Dr. Ob-gyn. "He delivered my three boys -- I can't give you any better recommendation than that,"  he told me, smiling. Dr. Ob-gyn also came highly recommended by my university roommate, who went to him throughout her own pregnancy, a few years earlier. He has top ratings on all those "rate my doctor" websites (and -- I checked! -- is currently ranked #2 of more than 620 gynecologists in the city!).  Calm, patient and kind are just some of the adjectives patients use to describe him (myself included).

Dr. Ob-gyn and his staff were there for me though the ups & downs of my rollercoaster pregnancy (see my "1998 memories" posts). At my followup appointment after the stillbirth of my daughter, he invited me to continue to visit his office for my Pap smears & other gynecological issues (something I knew my family dr was happy to let him do, lol).  After a year had gone by without another pregnancy (and my 39th birthday fast approaching), we called him for help. He shepherded us through a basic infertility workup, and referred me to Dr. RE when he'd done all he felt he could. When one of my Paps showed some suspicious early changes, he reassured me and kept me coming back for checks and colposcopies every few months until the situation finally reversed itself, as he had thought it might.  In recent years, he's reassured me through my wonky perimenopausal symptoms and an obnoxious Aunt Flo who just keeps showing up, even though I am now 58-frickin'-years old.  :p

I suppose some women who have lost a pregnancy (& wound up childless) dread seeing their ob-gyn again. I'll admit that seeing all the happy pregnant couples (& sometimes newborns) in the waiting room isn't always easy, but I've appreciated the continuity of care - and great care, at that. There are so few people who remember my pregnancy, and beyond me & dh, there's probably no one else who was so intimately involved with the details (even if he doesn't remember all of them now -- and who can blame him, 21 years and hundreds or even thousands of patients later).

(The fact that he moved his office to a different building a couple of years after my daughter's stillbirth has helped, I think. His old office had the ubiquitous newborn photos papering the walls, but there are no photos in new digs, aside from a few framed photos in his private office of his kids & grandkids, as well as a set of quintuplets (!!) he delivered in the early 1980s. I think he earned that one...!)

Sometimes we don't know when "the last time" we see certain people is going to be. I'm glad I knew this would be my last visit, and got to say goodbye and to tell Dr. B. & his staff how much I've appreciated their help and how much I'm going to miss them. As I said to him today, I wasn't always there for happy reasons, but I always appreciated the care I received.  I brought a card for them in which I thanked them for their support over the past 21 years, and let them know I've made a donation in their honour to the hospital foundation's programs for women & children.  There were hugs all round. :)

Another chapter of my past, closed....

So why aren't there more of us? (part 2)

There was an interesting recent conversation on social media (mostly Twitter but also Instagram), between Katy at Chasing Creation, Erik & Melissa at the podcast LiveChildfree, and others, on the question of why so few people openly embrace a non-parent identity, especially those who initially wanted children.

It started when Erik & Melissa posted a new podcast episode pondering this topic, and asked the same question on Instagram (also on IG here).

Then Katy asked, on Twitter,

@LiveChildfree mentioned on a podcast I recently listened to that they were surprised at how many people reach out to them but are only sharing privately. Do you guys have thoughts on this?

This is a subject that those of us who have been around this community for a while have pondered in the past.  I knew I had written something on this topic here before ;)  so I dug through my blog archives & found it  :)  -- "So why aren't there more of us?"  (from January 2012)

The stats show that we are NOT an insignificant part of the population. In January 2014, Jody Day at Gateway Women reassured us: "You’re Not the Odd One Out." [emphasis mine]

Although when you look around you in the street, amongst your friends and family or in the media you may sometimes feel like the only woman who isn’t a mother, the surprising fact is that 1:5 UK and US women born in the 1960s reached 45 without having had children. And, as the first of those born in the 1970s turn 45 in 2015, we’ll begin to see if the statistic rises to 1:4 as it already is in Italy, Switzerland and Finland. My hunch is it will, but the data’s a few years off yet.

The last time the rate of childlessness was this high in the population was for women born around 1900. Research has shown that this was due to two factors: the large number of women who remained unmarried due to the loss of so many men in the First World War, and the effect of the Great Depression of the 1930s on both fertility and finances. Rather shockingly these were known as the ‘surplus women’. 

The fact that it took the most devastating war this world has seen in terms of loss of life, coupled with the Great Depression, to suppress birth rates to this same extent before shows that we are indeed living through a period of massive social change. It really isn’t ‘just us’.

Despite these large and growing numbers, however, the percentage of childless/free women (and men!) who are openly embracing a childless/free identity, online & elsewhere, is still, curiously, very small.

Why?

While I think most of the points I made in my original post are still valid (please read them over there!), there are a couple more thoughts that have come to me that I wanted to throw out.

We still live in a hugely pronatalist society that is only just beginning to become dimly aware of us as a large and growing group with legitimate concerns, needs and interests apart from those of parents. The glorification of pregnancy and parenthood, the assumption of parenthood as "the norm," is something many of us without children are only too aware of -- but when you're a parent, it's something you tend to take for granted and don't question. Creating awareness, changing the culture, changing firmly entrenched, long-held attitudes toward childless/free people (let alone policies and practices that affect them) is a lonnnnngggggg sllllllooooowwww and often painful process (as activists from visible minority groups, LGBTQ communities, and the feminist movement at large will tell us...!).

And it's not just parents who have a blind spot on these matters. Many people without children, even if they're struggling with painful feelings, are only dimly aware that they're part of a large and growing group, and that they have a right to be sad -- and, yes, even angry sometimes! -- about the way their lives and concerns are minimized and ignored by others around them. It's not surprising. After all, when you're going through infertility treatment, the focus is on getting a child. Nobody wants to talk about the possibility that this isn't going to work. You hear very little -- from the clinic, from other infertiles, from your family & friends, from the culture around you -- that suggests a life without children could be an acceptable (even positive) outcome. (There's no money in that for the clinic, of course...!)

Over time, there HAS definitely been progress in changing the culture and encouraging the childless/free to speak up -- and there will continue to be more. When I think about the resources that were available to me back in 2001, when we closed the door on infertility treatment, versus what's out there right now, there is just no question that things have improved.  Maybe not enough! ;)  -- but there HAS been SOME progress.

I believe our numbers will continue to grow, and attitudes will continue to change. One reason why I believe this:  On LiveChildfree's IG post, Sistergoldenhair924 made an interesting observation:

When we were growing up people like us were just kind of pitied and no one talked about it! Now, women and couples openly tell the world that they are infertile and use social media as a tool for support and advice, as well as education. So I think a result of that is that women have become more comfortable being open about ending their quest for a baby since we have been sharing everything else. 

I think she is absolutely right.  I do think we are STILL pitied and not talked about/ignored, lol.  But I think she's nailed it here, about how social media is making it easier (a) for CNBCers (and childfree-by-choice-ers, for that matter) to find & support each other & (b) to speak out more openly about these subjects to others outside of ALI circles, if they choose to do so.

For some of us (like me), this is (still) difficult to do.  I'm not as worried as I used to be about family members and friends stumbling onto this blog (as one did a few years ago)... but I'm not gonna hand out the address either, lol.  I think it's partly a generational thing. I am 58;  I've noticed that some of the younger emerging CNBC bloggers & social media activists are in their 30s & early 40s -- i.e., I AM OLD ENOUGH (or almost old enough) TO BE THEIR MOTHER (eeeekkkkkk).  I was 35 when I got my first personal computer & went online for the first time. I was 37 when my daughter was stillborn, 40 when we stopped treatment, 46 when I started blogging, 48 when I joined Facebook, and 55 when I got my first smartphone and joined Instagram & Twitter.

Younger people have grown up immersed in this stuff. They are used to sharing their lives openly on social media and have little/no hesitation about doing so when it comes to infertility too. (Certainly less of it than my peers & I did, and perhaps still do.)  And while I have difficulty sharing my story (outside of the adoption/loss/infertility community), I am glad others don't. :)  I think it's a good thing overall. :)

I also think that, even in this age of social media & greater sharing of our personal lives, some people are (still) simply unaware of what's available out there -- or even just that there IS support available online. In the comments on my original 2012 post, Jamie commented:

To be honest, it surprises me when I come across someone who ~isn't~ a blog reader. I have a co-worker friend who had been going through the IF journey and asked me if I had ever heard of a HCG "trigger" shot. I was like, "Seriously? Do you just not have internet access at home?" 

Shocking as it seems in this day and age but I wonder if there aren't women out there who don't know where to go for support. Because, you know, it's a topic that is still taboo to talk about. Along with IF, loss, etc.

I had a similar experience(s)/reaction during the 10 years we led our pregnancy loss support group.  Many (not all, but a good number) of our clients were also dealing with infertility issues, and I was shocked at how ill-informed some (not all, certainly, but definitely some) of them were on these matters. Granted, this was 10-20 years ago, and the online world has evolved significantly since then -- but there was still good information & support out there for those who chose to look for it and ask questions. My own approach, whenever I'm dealing with an issue that's affecting my life in a major way, is to research the hell out of it.  ;)  I sometimes forget that not everybody is like me and does this. :)

What are your thoughts? If you've written a post about this, now or in the past, I would love to read it -- please share a link here!   

Thinking about Christmas

I was comparing notes about Christmas (and how to survive it) with several other childless bloggers/activists recently. And that got me thinking.

I love Christmas. It's always been my favourite holiday.  But I'll admit Christmas has not always been very joyful, these past 20 years. Those first couple of years after we lost our baby -- and gradually came to the realization there would be no others -- were very hard.

But I've never had the desire to run away from it. I've spent every Christmas of my life with my family, and I'm not about to try to make drastic changes now (especially now that FIL is gone, and my parents are close to 80). I always reasoned that dh's family could (& can) easily see us any other time of the year;  I want to be with MY family at Christmas -- and I'm grateful that's how things have always worked out. (I did secretly think that, perhaps, once dh & I had kids of our own, my parents & sister might come to be with US for a change. We all know how THAT worked out...!)

But even so, our Christmas celebrations have evolved and changed over the years as our family changed. Change is difficult for me -- but I've come to realize that it's inevitable (and not always bad, or as bad as I had feared).

Twenty years ago, I thought my family of origin was expanding. What actually happened: it began to shrink. I lost the baby I was expecting that November, and then my grandparents, one after another, within a year of each other, and eventually I had to face the harsh reality that there would be no new babies joining us, ever.

But at the same time, our chosen family has grown, and enriched our Christmases immeasurably. We've been incredibly fortunate to have Parents' Neighbours' Daughter (PND) spend at least part of every Christmas of her life with our family.  When she was an adorable baby & toddler (and dh & I were newlyweds), she relieved some of the pressure on us to produce a grandchild ASAP. As a young teenager, her cheerful presence helped alleviate some of the sadness of that first Christmas in 1998, when not only was there no baby for Christmas (as my mother rapturously exclaimed when I told her I was pregnant) but also no Grandpa, for the first time in my 37 years (and then the next year, no Grandma either). These days, now in her mid-30s, she's mom to the two Little Princesses, who continue to distract & entertain us and partly fill that grandchild gap.

As my parents have aged, we've continued to gather at their house, but my sister & I have taken on more of the responsibilities for shopping, decorating, and food prep (my sister has learned to make gravy as well as my mom, and I'm told she made the pastry for the butter tarts this year too!) & cleanup. We tend to be sticklers for tradition -- and yet, over the years, some traditions have evolved or been set aside, and new ones adopted. For example, there's a huge mugo pine tree in my parents' front yard that my dad used to decorate with strings and strings of coloured lights. Over the years, he had to start asking his neighbour, my sister's partner and PND's husband to help (teetering precariously on a tall ladder & using a contraption -- a hook on the end of a broom handle -- to maneuver the lights into place). It just got to be too much of a chore, so these days, the lights just frame the doors of the house and cover the shrubs.

As another example, my mother decided she's not decorating two trees this year. Over the past 25-30 years, she's had one upstairs in the living room, with our family's treasured old, traditional ornaments, and one in the family room downstairs that's more of a "designer" tree with mostly silver ornaments, supplemented by others that she received from her students while working at the local school as an aide. She & Dad recently got a big screen TV that takes up a lot of room in the basement;  also, the basement tends to be where the two Little Princesses like to run around.  I told her that while it's nice to have two trees, I'm not sentimentally attached to the downstairs one in the same way that I am with the upstairs one.

Our own tree at home has evolved over the years, too. In the years after we lost our Katie, we bought one ornament for her -- and then another -- and another. We attended the memorial candlelighting service run by our pregnancy loss support group ever year for about 12 years straight, I think, and at each one, we took home a pair of baby booties, handknit by volunteers. Our tree was covered in teddy bear angels, Classic Pooh ornaments from Hallmark, and little white baby booties, lol.  Then, three Christmases ago, we moved to a condo, and bought a slightly smaller tree to fit our smaller space. Not all the ornaments I used to put up fit on the new tree -- so now there's just one representative pair of baby booties instead of the full dozen. I'm not sure I'd have handled that very well 20 years ago, but I'm (mostly) OK with it today.

Once my parents are gone, I don't know what's going to happen to our Christmas celebrations. Will we still head west to be with my sister (assuming she gets a bigger house, because right now, her 600-square-foot house does not accommodate guests very readily)?  Will she come here? Will we try to nose our way into dh's family's celebrations, with BIL & SIL & the nephews and their family?  Will we run away to spend Christmas at a nice ski chalet somewhere (minus the skiing, lol), or try something completely different like a beach? (I absolutely cannot imagine Christmas without snow, but there's always a first time for everything...!)

We'll cross those bridges when we get there (hopefully not for a while yet). Meanwhile, I try to just appreciate what we have right now and help out my parents & sister as much as I can.

I guess if I had one piece of advice to offer, it would be to do whatever you feel inclined to do -- no more, no less. Some years can be better/worse/easier to handle/more difficult than others, when you're grieving your children (whether or not they were ever conceived) -- so don't feel you have to do everything you think you're supposed to be doing, or that others are telling you to do.  And don't feel you have to do the same things you did last year -- whether you did anything last year, or not. Losing Katie (with a November due date) -- plus the fact that November/December was always our busiest time of year at work (fiscal year end reporting) -- meant I had neither the time, nor the energy, nor (quite often, especially those first few years) the inclination to take part in many of the Christmas activities I wanted to immerse myself in -- or felt I *should* be doing. I had to take a good hard look at what was most important to me, and plan my Christmas season accordingly.  I've always enjoyed putting up a Christmas tree, sending cards (staying in touch with far-flung friends & relatives) and going home to see my family -- so I focus on that. Anything else that I have time or energy or inclination or money to do -- more elaborate decorations, baking, Christmas-related outings, parties, etc. -- is gravy. I have more time to do more now that I'm retired -- and the grief is not as intense as it was, 20 years ago -- but that still tends to be my philosophy today, lol.

*** *** ***

If you're looking for further reading on the subject of holiday survival, here are a few posts by some other bloggers/activists to get you started:

• Mel at Stirrup Queens has posted "How to Get From Thanksgiving to New Years When You’re Not in the Mood" -- her annual compilation of advice gathered from bloggers in the ALI community.
• Lisa Manterfield & Kathleen Guthrie Woods of Life Without Baby have produced a LWB Holiday Companion e-book that's available from Amazon for a very reasonable price. 
• Jody Day at Gateway Women offers "4 Tips to Cope with (and even enjoy!) Your Childless Christmas." 
• Lesley Pyne, author of  "Finding Joy Beyond Childlessness," has compiled a Christmas survival guide on her blog (including a list of relevant posts from her blog, as well as posts from other childless/free bloggers). 
• Shannon Norberg at Mothering Your Heart is offering a free online holiday support workshop. Details here. 
• Mali at No Kidding in NZ has a couple of relevant posts, including "Reclaiming Christmas" and "Holiday season: If money were no object." 
• "The truth about being childless, but not by choice, at Christmas" by Sarah Roberts at The Empty Cradle. 
• "Tips on how to support an involuntary childless friend this season" by Berenice at Walk in Our Shoes. 
• "Yes, Virginia, There Are Lovely ‘Fertiles’ Out There" -- a classic post from Pamela Tsigdinos at her original Coming2Terms blog. 
• "My Childlessness is Not My Fault" by Civilla Morgan of Childless Not By Choice. 

*** *** ***

My own past Christmas-related posts are now tagged "Christmas" -- but here are some of the main ones you might want to explore (from the most recent working back):

• Christmas traditions -- an explanation of what Christmas looks like for me & my family (2017) 
• #MicroblogMondays: Tis the season (already??!) -- Christmas photo cards -- with no kids on them. (2017)
• "It came, just the same" -- despite our best efforts, Christmas doesn't go exactly as planned, and change is inevitable.  (2016)
• Oh Christmas tree -- our new Christmas tree reflects the changes in our lives. (2016) 
• #MicroblogMondays: Ghosts of Christmas past -- looking at the Christmas cards I received in 1998, post-stillbirth. (2015) 
• Elf yourself :p  -- The Elf on the Shelf:  one reason I'm glad I don't have kids...!!  (2013)
• TGNO* -- November melancholy is harshing my Christmas spirit. :(  (2013) 
• New Year's Eve -- moments of joy and pain over the holidays. (2012) 
• All hail The Princess!  -- a new baby in the extended family to spoil. (2011) 
• That's a loaded question... -- "worst holiday memory"??  You REALLY want to know??  (2011) 
• Better not pout, better not cry... -- the annual Santa Claus Parade comes with a flood of memories attached to it. (2010) 
• November blahs -- feeling cheated. (2009) 
• Show & Tell: Tis the season -- Christmas cards & other traditions. (2008) 
• Our Katie tree -- using our Christmas tree as a way to remember our little girl. (2007) 
• Santa stuff -- me & Santa over the years. (2007) 
• Worst. Christmas Party. Ever -- looking back to a disastrous Christmas 1998 party experience. (2007) 
• "Christmas is for kids" -- (not!) (2007) 

Words of wisdom

Another Pinterest find. :) 

#MicroblogMondays: Heinz 57

Last Friday was my (BIG GULP) 57th birthday.  And like the Heinz 57 of my post title ;)  my emotions are mixed about turning another year older. Perhaps because I'm rapidly approaching the 20-year mark since my one & only pregnancy (LMP date February 8, 1998), cut short by stillbirth 26 weeks later in August.

Twenty years is a frickin' long time. My daughter, had she been here, would be 19 going on 20, and no doubt in university or college.  Her peers -- the babies & toddlers of my friends and cousins and coworkers -- are now grown up, or at least teenagers, and many of them are having kids of their own now too.  There is so much that dh & I have missed out on -- although the reminders don't seem to come as thick and fast as they once did. (But when they do, they can still hurt...)

There's no getting around the fact that 57 years represents a big chunk of time that has passed since I made my debut on this earth. There are days when I feel every bit of my age. (In my knees, in particular...!)  My hair is getting greyer (although my YOUNGER sister still has more grey hair than I do -- a fact that gives me some comfort, lol) -- the fine lines around my eyes are getting more noticeable. I don't bounce back from colds, or from one too many glasses of wine ;) , or from late nights, as quickly as I did when I was in my 20s.

But as my wonderful grandma used to joke about birthdays, "Consider the alternative...!"  As the saying goes, old age is a privilege that is denied to many. I think about our hairdresser N., who died last fall at 55;  the mother-in-law I never met, who died at 53;  and so many others who, even if they had kids, never got to see them marry or hold their grandchildren.

Aging -- with or without children -- isn't always fun. But on balance, I'm glad to be here. :)

You can find more of this week's #MicroblogMondays posts here.  

Struggling

A childless-not-by-choice friend, in a similar line of work as me, recently messaged me for my opinion on a work-related matter. We talked about work and I mentioned that this was always our busiest & most stressful time of the year there -- and that I DO NOT MISS IT!!  ;)

And I don't.

But afterwards, I was thinking about how empty my life is sometimes, especially since I don't have work to fill my days anymore, and especially since we moved -- that whole "Is that all there is??" feeling. I don't miss the stress of work in the least -- but I miss the people (well, some of them... ;)  ) and the routines that filled my days. I miss being downtown, at least once in a while.  I don't miss our house (surprisingly), but I sometimes miss the old community.  It's not like I had lots of friends there  (because I didn't), but it was closer to my one good (retired) friend from work, and I was more likely to run into someone I knew casually there, KWIM? There was a comfort level there that I have yet to develop here. I could get dh to drive me 10 minutes to the GO station, or even just hop on a bus nearby & be downtown in the city in 40 minutes, if I wanted to go to the big mall there, or to an exhibit at the museum or art gallery or whatever. I was even steeling myself to try to start driving more again. I do love our condo, but I feel kind of trapped here sometimes, and a bit fish-out-of-water-ish. The traffic is NUTS, so driving is back on the backburner again, and while the transit is improving, it's not there yet.

I'm not often truly bored -- I do try to stay busy with writing on my blog & doing genealogy research & reading, etc., and dh gets restless if we go more than a day without getting out of the house, at least to Starbucks ;) -- but lately, I HAVE been bored & restless. I can go for days & days without having a meaningful conversation with another adult besides dh.

My own damned fault. I keep saying I'm going to find a yoga studio, find a book club to join. I've even considered returning to church -- for the social benefits, if not for the prospect of eternal salvation. ;)

But I haven't.

It's nice being closer to BIL & SIL & family here -- but they still have their own lives, they still work, and so they're busy. They have been really great about including us in stuff, especially re: our nephews' weddings (the one last year & the one coming up). I went out with SIL a few weeks ago to help her find a mother of the groom dress, and then we went shopping for one for me -- and it's so nice to feel included. But it's not my kid's wedding & never will be, and sometimes it's hard when I think about it that way.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that this melancholy feeling descended on me shortly after the recent time change, with the increasing darkness -- and coldness -- and the approach of the child-and-family-focused holidays. Or that Katie's due date came a few days later (the 14th). Or that my midlife/(peri)menopausal hormones seem to be acting up more than usual lately. (Damned hot flashes...)

Or maybe it's just because it's November. ;)

I'm sure this will pass. It usually does. The sun just broke through the clouds briefly, when I was typing that. :)  That really helps too. :)

Vent over. :)  (For now. ;)  )