Odds & ends

• It's World Childless Week!  And there's tons of great content posted already for today's topic, "Our Stories."  Head over, dive in, check out the upcoming webinars scheduled for the rest of the week, and show your support!  
• It's LGN's first day of school!  (junior kindergarten)  Dh & I were constantly refreshing our Instagram feeds this morning, looking for photos (lol) -- and Older Nephew and his wife did not disappoint, posting some shortly after dropoff. :)  
• Dh texted Older Nephew as soon as we knew school was out to ask him how it went. The teacher said he had a good day, and LGN reported he had a lot of fun!  Yay!  :)  
• On the other side of the coin:  An oldie but goodie from the archives of Life, Almost, about surviving back-to-school week when infertility and loss are part of your story. Sample passage: 

In the first week in September, the online chorus from mums of ‘please don’t get any bigger!’ and ‘where has my baby gone?’ seems to get louder. It’s unfair of me, perhaps, but I find these declamations hard to hear and even harder to sympathise with. They hurt, frankly, when your doorway is empty.




• While sitting in the waiting room of a bloodwork lab last week, I noticed a poster on the wall that said "Learn more about your baby's health..." Except that, at first glance, I took it to read "your baby's death."  Only a loss mom, right?? 
• Do you live in the Bay Area of California and suffer from endometriosis?  Right now, diagnosis takes close to a decade and requires surgery -- but a company called Endometrics is currently recruiting volunteers to beta test a new, faster, non-invasive diagnostic test. They are also planning a clinical pilot with several clinics in the Bay Area. More details at the link above, as well as here! 
• Lori Lavender Luz is co-hosting a discussion of "The Giver" by Lois Lowry, though the lens of adoption, on Thursday, Sept. 28th. Details here! 
• This piece on surrogacy in Canada by Alison Motluk is long but a worthwhile and eye-opening/sobering read.   
• I recently learned about a (relatively) new Christian organization/ministry based in Ottawa, offering support for infertile and childless couples. Here's their website (which I will add to the list of resources on this blog), and here's an article from this time last year about it. 
• This New York Times article has nothing to do with pregnancy loss -- it's about a group of people whose family members died in a plane crash, 50 years ago, and the long-term effects of their loss -- but I found it incredibly moving. (Gift link.) 
• I started laughing when I read this First Person essay in the Globe & Mail: "I became a Torontonian accidentally. It's not so bad after all." (Gift link.) Let's just say I can relate! (and you might have to be Canadian to truly appreciate this one!). I'd share it on Facebook -- if I could share it (no thank you, Meta...  :p ) -- partly as an explanation to all the people back "home" (out west) who raise their eyebrows and ask me skeptically, "So, how do you like it in TORONTO?" (knowing they'll never believe me anyway if I tell them I like it just fine), and also to explain to non-Canadians why TROC (the rest of Canada) disdains this city (and why I find myself defending it, despite its flaws).  Both viewpoints are represented in the comments. 
• As a subscriber to the New York Times's morning newsletter, I've been getting invitations to play the weekly Flashback quiz, where you're asked to place a series of historical events in the correct order. I haven't kept track of my scores from week to week, but so far, I've been doing pretty well! 
• I recently learned that Connie Schultz (an Ohio journalist I've followed on Facebook for a while now -- who also happens to be the wife of Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown) has a new Substack newsletter. I immediately subscribed (for free, although I love her writing so much that I'm considering shelling out for a paid subscription) and happily spent a couple of hours perusing the archives. One of her early posts -- "Single Mothering, Still" -- struck a chord.  Obviously, I've never been a single mother, but if you read this excerpt (or follow the link to read the whole thing), I think you'll understand:  

Recently, a reader chastised me for continuing to refer to my single mother days. “Your kids are grown, and you need to grow up, too. It’s all behind you now.”   

I responded with a question, but I already knew the answer. That reader has never been a single parent.

There is no erasing who I was for a decade of my life, just as my daughter can never stop being the girl who was raised by a single mother...  

My daughter and I had a different life from the one I had imagined before she was born. It was a good life, she has assured me, no matter how many times I stumbled.

Odds & ends

• Last Sunday (July 23rd -- always the last Sunday of July) was Aunties Day. I had it written in my calendar, or else I probably would have forgotten about it completely -- it's not like it's well known outside the childless/free auntie community, right? (and it's not even that well known there/here, sadly...)(unlike that "other" holiday...! -- as I wrote a few years back), and I haven't been on social media much lately to notice if anyone else was posting about it. Anyway, here's to all the unsung aunties & godmothers out there!  
• Yael Wolfe wrote about Aunties Day after the fact on Medium: "It’s Aunt’s Day…and It’s Time We Celebrated the Aunties of the World."  It's for members only (and there don't seem to be gift links), but here's an excerpt:

As a culture, we seem to understand the value (at least to some extent) of having grandparents actively involved in their grandchildren’s lives. We understand how enriching it is to all parties, helping generations bridge the gap across time and build strong family legacies.

Strangely, we do not seem to recognize the value of having aunts and uncles actively involved in their niblings’ lives.

I’m not surprised by this — again, I call out pronatalism that would attach the most value in families to relationships that are forged by parent-child bonds. We value grandparents more because they are parents. Aunts and uncles might not be, and even if they are, their contributions to their families are often seen as secondary in the absence of these parent-child bonds.

and 

We love them. We absolutely love them.

And what’s all the more notable about this is that we don’t have to. Parents are stuck with the kids they push out into the world. They have a legal and (ideally) emotional obligation to them.

Aunts and uncles are under no such obligation. And yet we keep showing up just because we love those little beings.

Makes you wonder about all those parents who say women without children could never know true love and true sacrifice, doesn’t it? They don’t have any choice but to practice “true love” (whatever that means) and sacrifice.

But aunts do, and many of us figured that out without having become mothers… 

 and 

If we’re so committed as a society to value our children and the family that raises them, why don’t we make more of an effort to show those who pitch in how much it means to us?

• I haven't had much time for podcasts lately, but I did manage to tune in live to hear Christine Erickson in conversation with Stephanie Joy Phillips about World Childless Week on New Legacy Radio. You can listen to the replay here, or on many other podcast platforms.  
• World Childless Week 2023 is coming up!  Sept. 11th to 17th.  Deadline for submissions is Sunday, August 27th!  The list of this year's topics is here.   
• I love, love, loved this recent New York Times story about intergenerational friendship between two women/neighbours. (It pays to get to know your neighbours!)  Bonus: children are not mentioned as part of either woman's story. I am assuming they are both childless/free. (Gift link.)
• The Guardian recently talked to an embryologist at a fertility clinic about how her own infertility journey and losses have affected her and how she now does her job.  Headline: "The IVF specialist who lost multiple pregnancies: ‘I had spent years making people’s dreams come true. It felt so unfair’." 
• From the Daily Mail:  "Why we childless women are sick of being exploited by mums in the office during the holidays."  
• Sample quote: " 'What upsets me most is that I had their backs during lockdown, manning the phones in the office so they could stay at home, as I understood how hard it was to work while home-schooling kids. I feel sad the same goodwill doesn't seem to be there for me.' " 
• (This was a frequent issue mentioned in the discussion about "Your Childless Experience" on Anne Helen Petersen's Substack newsletter, "Culture Study," which I wrote about here.) 
• Jody Day of Gateway Women appeared on two different radio programs to comment on this issue: 
• BBC Essex (link available through mid/late August) -- the relevant segment begins around the 3:09 mark, and Jody appears around 3:24.
• And on Newstalk Breakfast (Ireland)(link within story). 
• This Globe & Mail article doesn't mention pregnancy loss, infertility or childlessness, but I thought it was still highly relevant:  "Paying the ‘grief tax’ and the other hidden costs of caregiving." (Gift link.) 
• Mel recently posted that it's been 10 years (!) since the demise of Google Reader (and shared a great article about it). Says Mel: "Social media is often blamed for the decline in blogging, but I think closing Google Reader contributed to the mass exodus to Facebook updates. Make it hard to read blogs, and people will stop reading blogs. Alas."  
• I think she's right. I sometimes mention blog readers to women in some of the non-blogging childless communities I participate in -- and they have no idea what I'm talking about. 
• I still miss Google Reader. As you all know well (I've complained about it enough here, lol), I used Bloglovin quite happily for most of the past decade, but it rapidly went downhill in recent years and became increasingly unreliable. I finally bit the bullet, downloaded Feedly and paid for the premium service (because the free version limited me to 100 blogs -- hahahahaha....).  I haven't had a lot of time lately for blog reading, but so far, so good...  

Odds & ends for the weekend

• Mel at Stirrup Queens is marking Blogoversary #17 (!!!) this week.  Go congratulate her and give her some appreciation for all she's done for our community over the years. <3 
• I just found out my best friend from high school is becoming a grandmother this weekend -- her oldest daughter was married last summer, and is being induced on Saturday. She's in her early 30s, so I suppose it shouldn't be surprising... but somehow, it is! 
• There was an excellent documentary on PBS on Wednesday night about endometriosis, called "Below the Belt." I don't have endo (that I know of, anyway...), but I know many people who do. The program was both maddening and highly informative. Worth a watch. BUT... 
• Content warning:  The film does end with a "miracle baby" born to one of the women featured. (Of course...!) 
• I adore Dr. Jen Gunter and her common sense, myth-debunking approach to women's health. (She's a fellow Manitoban and U of Manitoba alumnus, who recently received an honorary doctorate there. She's also a fellow loss mom who lost one of her triplet sons. The other two were born prematurely -- and just finished high school!) The latest edition of her Substack newsletter, The Vajenda, debunks false claims being made on Instagram about egg regeneration (?!).   
• "‘Dramatic rise’ in number of women freezing eggs in UK," says an article in the Guardian. Some interesting stats cited here: the numbers of pregnancies and live birth rates resulting from IVF treatment have generally increased since the 1990s across all age groups (significantly in some cases) -- but what's not noted is that, overall (if you look at the numbers), most IVF patients are still leaving treatment without a baby.   
• Another good Guardian article: "How I found joy in life without children of my own." 
• You can't get much more "establishment" than Fortune magazine, right?  Which is why it was so absolutely awesome to see Katy of the Childless Collective (formerly Chasing Creation) quoted on the childless-not-by-choice perspective in a well-rounded article about "DINKS" (Dual Income, No Kids people) and personal finance in that publication. Headline: "Couples without kids say they have more career freedom and financial stability—the worst part is the ‘judgement’ from other people."  (Ain't that the truth, right?)  Worth a read! 
• World Childless Week is Sept. 11th-17th, and this year's topics are being announced this week.  There are some new ones this year -- go check out the lineup! and consider making a submission! (something I say I'm going to do every year... one of these times...!). 

Have a great weekend!