Pre-Voldemort Day thoughts, and some odds & ends

You will understand that, as a childless-not-by-choice woman (via stillbirth & infertility), That-Day-That-Shall-Not-Be-Named, coming up this weekend (which I've dubbed "Voldemort Day") is not exactly my favourite on the calendar. (Check out the tag "Voldemort Day (Mother's Day)" for past posts on the subject.)  And as someone who hasn't lived within 1000 miles of her parents in 40 years, whose mother-in-law died before I ever met her, I haven't had to worry too much about family considerations on this day either.  I'd send a card, give Mom a call, maybe chip in on a gift that my (childfree by choice) sister would buy and deliver, and do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day.  

This year, I'll be spending Mother's Day AT my parents' house, for the first time in about 35 years. (I had a business trip in the early 1990s that brought me to Winnipeg just before Mother's Day, as well as my grandmother's birthday. I arranged to spend the weekend with them. I am so glad I did.)   

Except (major plot twist) Mom won't be there -- she died in January. I am now motherless, as well as childless. I was lucky enough to have my mother for almost 65 years;  my daughter never took a breath outside my body, but I miss them both, and especially on days like this one.  

My dad and sister have not mentioned MDay at all. (Yet?)  

I am not going to remind them. 

And now for some links:  

• We were at the mall one morning earlier this week.  It's not uncommon to see young moms there, out with their babies in strollers -- sometimes by themselves, sometimes in pairs. I thought I'd seen everything the day I saw four moms with four strollers. 
• Reader -- I had not. On this particular day, I encountered a group of moms with babies in strollers coming my way. TWELVE of them!!!  (I counted.)  12!!! Walking in a group, two or three abreast.  
• (A while later, I saw another group of five!  Not sure if they had broken off from the earlier group I saw, or if this was an entirely different group??)
• All I could think was that it was a good thing that I'm in a relatively good place these days. I mostly just shook my head in disbelief, texted dh (who also saw them, and thought it was hilarious) and... carried on.  Also that if this had been 20-25 years ago, it would have finished me off, sent me home immediately, and kept me away from the mall for weeks.(Progress?) 
• (I also wondered whether this en masse outing had anything to do with the fact that it was just a few days before Voldemort Day/MDay??)  
• Y.L. Wolfe absolutely nails it with her latest Substack piece at On the Outside: "Why This Childless Woman Chooses to Celebrate Mother's Day...Alone."  (Content warning:  Photo of mother & baby at the top of the page.)  A couple of excerpts:  

Don’t misunderstand - I absolutely believe mothers deserve a day of celebration and pampering. They deserve more than a day, in fact.

But that doesn’t mean it has to come at the expense of other women or exist in a space that ignores any other woman’s life circumstances...

I believe women like me need the same thing that mothers ask for: space to take up, validation, and support. In the absence of getting that from a culture indifferent and sometimes hostile to women without children, then we must give it to ourselves.

• This article also absolutely nails the childless-not-by-choice experience and why it can be so painful.  The lengthy title says it all:  "The hardest part of being childless by circumstance, not choice, often may not be the grief people expect — it may be the invisibility of living a life other people have no template for."  Excerpt:  

When women in this position describe the hardest part, they rarely lead with the absence of children. The absence is familiar by the time they’re forty-five. They’ve been around it. They have, on most days, made some sort of working peace with it.

What they describe instead is something more like a slow, ambient erasure. The conversations at dinner parties drift to school catchments and they’re not in them. Their friends speak in shorthand about a life stage they don’t share. Their own parents go quiet about future grandchildren. They are, increasingly, in rooms that aren’t built for them, and the architecture of those rooms gets repeated until it begins to feel like the architecture of the world.

• Virginia Evans, author of "The Correspondent" (which is high on my "want to read" list), is a mother, but she wrote an article for People that I can heartily agree with:  "Mothering Takes a Village. This Mother's Day, Let's Celebrate the Other Mother Figures."  (h/t to Kathleen Guthrie Woods for flagging this one on social media!). (And content warning:  there's a photo at the top of Virginia with her children.)  
• I got tears in my eyes reading this interview in the New York Times with Tracy Clark-Flory:  "My Mom Had a Secret Daughter. I Finally Found Her."  I've put her book on my wish list. (Gift link.) 
• At Afterglow, Katie Dunn welcomes a guest post from fellow Substacker Lexi Weber: "The unexpected intimacy of infertility."   
• Lexi writes at "Not (What I Was) Expecting." I've added her to my blogrolls here and on Feedly. Recent (also excellent) post: “You never know what could happen.” (and why that's not something you should say to someone going through infertility or facing permanent childlessness).  

Odds & ends

• I've been tired and going to bed earlier for the past week or two. And after reading one of Mel's recent Friday Roundups, I realized why!  (Personally, I blamed all those late-night World Series games! lol) 
• "What Might It Look Like Not to Have Children?"  Glynnis MacNicol at Good Decisions (who is childfree by choice) provides links to a decade's worth of her writing on the subject. 
• Pamela Tsigdinos recently discussed "Surviving the Trauma of IVF" on the Beyond Pronatalism podcast. 
• Y.L. Wolfe explains "Why People Who Don’t Have Children Deserve a More Inclusive Label" on the Life Without Children Substack. 
• Subhead: "Childless, childfree, non-parent…we shouldn’t have to define ourselves as the inverse of those who have kids."  
• (Related: The THIRD post I wrote for this blog, back in November 2007, pondered this question of unsatisfactory terminology: "Am I childLESS or childFREE?")  
• Here's an excerpt from Wolfe's post: 

Why do childless and childfree women often do so much soul-searching trying to settle on just the right label when mothers just get to be mothers without any need for distinction or an understanding of how they got there?

I can’t help but think that the answer is simple. Motherhood is the approved lifestyle choice for women in patriarchal cultures. Therefore, no matter how you got there, you get your gold star and no expectations to explain your circumstances.

Being a woman without children, however, will earn you judgment, criticism, and even hate. You can’t just say you don’t have children. People want to know why — and even though it’s rude as hell to ask, they will.

Maybe it just feels easier to preempt the invasive questions by carefully choosing the word we want to use to describe our non-parent status.

• This story, from The New York Times Magazine, is just WILD:  "She Was Ready to Have Her 15th Child. Then Came the Felony Charges."  Subhead:  "MaryBeth Lewis’s desire to be a new mom again, at 65 years old, led to a custody battle like no other."  Among other things, it touches on IVF, donor gametes, surrogacy and adoption. (Gift link.) 
• Related to the NYT Magazine article and the Lewis case, Jill Filipovic wrote a thoughtful post for her Substack, asking "Is it a Reproductive Right to Have Your 15th Child at 65?"  (Subhead:  "When women's desires and children's rights collide.")  
• Unfortunately, I believe it's paywalled for subscribers only -- but I can give you a taste of what's in it. The opening reads: 

Reproductive freedom is a core feminist principle. So are the rights of children. What happens, though, when those principles conflict? And in an era of incredible technological progress in assisted reproduction, should there be any limits to what women can choose?

• And, near the end, there's this: 
  
  

  To be clear, I am a big supporter of reproductive medicine and technological progress, including IVF and various forms of assisted reproduction (I have more misgivings about surrogacy, but still think it should be legal, if tightly regulated). And most people, when handed these new technologies, use them in ways that I find totally reasonable and largely ethical.

  
  

  But there are always outliers...

  
  
• (I thought Jill Filipovic was childless/free, but a recent Instagram post showed her husband wearing a baby carrier and the top of an infant's head peeking out in some photos. I can find nothing she's written about having a baby -- and a few of the photos show her doing some pretty crazy yoga poses, with a body that looks anything but post-partum -- unless they've adopted...??) 

Odds & ends

• Annoying thing:  Someone's snide post on Threads, to the effect of "who's the genius without kids who scheduled Game 6 of the World Series on Halloween?" 
• I initially scrolled past it, then went, "Hey, wait a minute...!" -- but then I couldn't find it again. :p  Anyway, it pissed me off...!   
• Both Lyz Lenz at Men Yell at Me and Anne Helen Petersen of Culture Study have made the move from Substack over to Patreon in recent weeks (Lyz is now here and AHP here).   
• It's a major pain in the butt to have to learn the ins & outs of yet ANOITHER new platform/app 🙄 (I mean, seriously...??) -- and Patreon is new to the newsletter business, and still working out some kinks -- but these two were, I think, the first two Substacks I paid for, and I get a lot out their writing and the discussion threads with other subscribers, so...  
• Anne Helen Petersen is childfree by choice -- and one of her first posts in her new space is the first in a planned new series called "BIG NO KIDS ENERGY," about the joys of not having children. 
• The post is from a childfree by choice perspective, and so are some of the comments. Happily, those of us who did not necessarily choose this life are commenting too. (I added a comment myself). It may be difficult, especially if you're new to realizing children are not going to be in your future, to imagine that life can still be good, in a different way -- that there can be anything joyful about not having children. But there are positives, and I think that childfree people and their positive perspective can be helpful to us in realizing that. :)  
• The post itself is public, and I'm not sure about the comments, but I believe you have to be a paid subscriber to comment.  
• She's looking for ideas for future posts in the series too!  
• Rosalyn at The NoMo Book Club had a great Substack post recently about inclusive language, labels, and reproductive identity. 
• The New York Times's Well newsletter on anticipatory grief:  "Is It Healthy to Grieve Before a Loss?"  (Answer:  "Yes. Here’s how to cope.") (Gift link.) 
• Lisa Sibbett at The Auntie Bulletin makes a compelling argument that "The Nuclear Family is a Failed Experiment." 
• "Jennifer Aniston Said No To Adoption. Does That Mean She Is Selfish?"  writes Marcia Garcia at Life Without Children (originally posted on Medium). This is written from a childfree by choice perspective, but happily, it does reference the CNBC experience.
• Non-ALI related, but very personal to me: Canadian Returnee shares "The Ukrainian Story of the Prairies." 

#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

• 
  (Once again, odds & ends for #MM -- but hey, it's what I've got right now...!  In no particular order:) 
• It's our Thanksgiving long weekend here, and we enjoyed a nice dinner at BIL & SIL's on Saturday with the nephews & their families. 
• The Halloween goodie bags I assembled for the great-niblings were a hit!  LGNephew #1 exclaimed over the Robert Munsch book I'd chosen for him ("Boo!")  and gave me a big hug (awww...), and he and LGNiece donned their Halloween deelybobbers -- LGNephew #2 was less enchanted, lol. LGNephew #1 changed into his new glow-in-the-dark Halloween PJs to wear in the car before they left, and LGNephew #2 was sporting one of the new onesies I'd bought for him in photos posted by Older Nephew's wife the next day.  Success!!  (On to shopping for birthdays and Christmas...!  lol)  
• Still not a lot of autumn colours to be seen hereabouts! -- especially when I look at photos taken at this time of year in years past. I think it's because we had such a warm September -- no frosts to date (although we came close a couple of mornings last week!).   
• I was sad to hear the actress Diane Keaton had died at age 79 (what??!).  
• I know Woody Allen is considered completely politically incorrect/taboo these days -- but I came of age watching his movies, many of them co-starring Diane Keaton, and I still love many of them:  "Annie Hall," "Love and Death," "Play it Again Sam," :Manhattan" (yeah, it's creepy seeing him with a very young Mariel Hemingway -- but that Gershwin score! that gorgeous black-and-white cinematography!!). 
• "Annie Hall" came out just as I was heading into my last year of high school -- and the "Annie Hall" look was HUGE that year. With the money I'd earned that summer working part-time at the local drive-in movie theatre and an antique shop, I bought a new Annie-esque outfit (mostly at Fairweathers at the long-gone Unicity Mall) that I wore to my first day of school that fall:  a plaid knife-pleated skirt that fell below the knees; black thigh-high, high-heeled boots;  a white shirt, black men's tie, salmon-pink sweater vest, and grey flannel blazer. (I think I still have the tie!)
• I loved so many more of her movies too: "The Godfather" movies with Al Pacino (one of her (other) famous lovers);  "Reds," with Warren Beatty (ditto)(which I saw on my 21st birthday at a grand old movie palace in downtown Winnipeg -- en route out, I begged the theatre manager for one of the posters, which hung in my dorm room for the rest of my university career);  "Baby Boom" with the incredibly sexy Sam Shepard (although I imagine I would find the plot pretty wince-inducing these days...!);  "Something's Gotta Give" with Jack Nicholson and Keanu Reeves;  "The First Wives Club" with Goldie Hawn and Bette Midler....   
• Keaton never married, but she adopted two children, a daughter and a son, when she was in her early 50s. (!) They would be in their 20s now, I think. 
• About 20-25 years ago, she was making a movie that was partly filmed in the small Manitoba town where my parents live. My mother told me that Keaton went in to the local Co-op grocery store with curlers in her hair (!), and the young checkout girl, not knowing who she was, asked her for her Co-op number (lolol).  I hope Keaton was as tickled by that story as we were. Hollywood pretentious she was not.  :)  
• Jennifer Aniston, poster girl/heroine for those of us who tried and didn't succeed at having the children we wanted, talks about that time in her life (among other things) in Harpers Bazaar UK's November issue. 
• Aniston previously spoke out on these matters in Allure's December 2022 issue.  I wrote about it (and the reaction to it in the CNBC community), here and here. So grateful for her honesty! 
• Nicole Chung -- who was adopted -- writes in The Atlantic about "When Adoption Promises are Broken." What happens when open adoption arrangements are not honoured? 
• As someone who knows a major cleanout of her parents' home of 40+ years (after 65+ years of marriage) is coming sooner vs later, I appreciated this Substack post from Catriona Innes of "Crocuses in the snow":  "When possessions hold memories, how do we choose what to throw away?"
• Simon Haisell at Footnotes & Tangents has announced 5 new slow readalongs for 2026, plus the return of both "War and Peace" and "Wolf Crawl "(Hilary Mantel's Cromwell Trilogy). (I took part in both W&P and Wolf Crawl in 2024, and highly recommend the experience!) I'll likely be reading along with at least some if not all of these! 
• Back in late August, drowning in back-to-school/off to college/empty nest social media posts from my mom friends, I read an article from The Atlantic about "How Parents Hijacked the College Dorm" -- and, in response, wrote a lengthy post reminiscing about my own college dorm rooms (vintage 1979 photo included!).   
• This past week, Anne Helen Petersen at "Culture Study" did a deep dive into the subject with Meagan Francis (who wrote The Atlantic article):  "What's Really Going on With Those Elaborate (Parent-Decorated) College Dorm Rooms?" The conversation was fascinating (photos included!), and so are the comments!  I believe it's not (currently?) paywalled. 
• As an avid genealogist, I absolutely loved this story when I first stumbled onto it in the New York Times three years ago (already?!):  "‘Downton Shabby': A Commoner Takes on an English Castle."  (Gift linked article.  And there's a book by the same name!)   Here's the lede: 

People who search genealogy websites often find birth and marriage records, newspaper clippings, faded photographs or maybe a long-lost relative.

Hopwood DePree found a 60-room English manor.

• It's not QUITE a "castle" -- but it's a 50,000 square-foot mansion (!), with some sections dating back to the 1400s (!). Hopwood Hall had been abandoned and derelict for decades -- but when he flew from his home in California to England to see it, Hopwood DePree recognized its value and its potential -- and he's rallied the community to save and restore the property.  
• This past week, I found a series of related video shorts from Ancestry.com on YouTube, featuring Hopwood DePree and Hopwood Hall.  Here's a link to the first episode.  They're also reposted on his Facebook & Instagram accounts, which I'm now following! 
• (I haven't looked at everything yet, but apparently, the estate is currently embroiled in some sort of dispute over the land surrounding the house that's delayed further progress on the restoration. Hopefully it will be resolved soon!) 

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

More odds & ends

• In a recent Substack post, Jill Filipovic discussed adoption and the still-prevalent (and increasing) existence of maternity homes in the U.S. -- many of them affiliated with the evangelical Christian right -- with journalist T.J. Raphael. Raphael spent two years investigating this subject and has a new podcast called "Liberty Lost," about one such maternity home on the campus of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University.
• Many of Filipovic's posts are paywalled for subscribers, but this one seems to be public (so far!). 
• Also on Substack, Ali Hall muses on "Why We Need To Abolish the Phrase ‘As a Mother…’" (and absolutely NAILS it!).  (Hear, hear!!) 
• I'm ALREADY seeing back-to-school posts (from the U.S.) in my social media feeds!!  And here in the Toronto area, the CNE/Canadian National Exhibition -- think state fair -- started today and runs through Labout Day -- a sure sign that summer is almost over!  
• On a related note: Dr. Loree Johnson offers some advice on "Coping with Back-to-school When Facing Infertility or Loss."  (Or childlessness!) 
• Sue Fagalde Lick is winding down her Childless by Marriage blog. (It will still be around;  she's just not going to write anything new for it -- but you can still find her writing on Substack as well as her other blogs.)  You don't have to be "childless by marriage" to appreciate her penultimate post, "Your Childless by Marriage Survival Guide," in which she offers tips on navigating some of the most common scenarios facing childless women. 
• At "The Auntie Bulletin," Lisa Sibbett chats with Ragon and Kelly of the Kindred Spirits Book Club podcast about the the role of aunties and alloparents and "found family" in Lucy Maud Montgomery's classic novel "Anne of Green Gables."  As you all know I am a huge, lifelong Montgomery fan, but this discussion still gave me a few new points to think about!  Well done!  

#MicroblogMondays: Annoying things, small pleasures, and other odds & ends

(A multipurpose post...!  lol)  

Annoying things: 

• It's been a busy week!  It feels like there's never enough time to get everything done on my daily to-do lists (especially with a vacation coming up soon...!)  I have days of unopened emails. (I have been checking, in case there's something truly important.)  
• I just got back from the dentist (boo, hiss...). We went for checkups about two weeks ago, where I discovered I had at least one cavity and likely two (the tooth beside it). Oh joy. :p  So it was back to the city this morning.  I barely felt the freezing injection (yay!), but the procedure itself was rather arduous. :(  Not painful, but a lot of tugging and pressure involved.  I felt limp as a rag but glad when it was over (at least until I saw the bill...!  -- thank goodness for dental insurance...!).  As I type, I'm still waiting for the freezing to wear off (it's almost gone!) to try out my new bite (i.e., lunch!).  
• Our building's air conditioning system decided to conk out last Tuesday during a recent heat wave -- one of the hottest days of the year so far (35C/44C humidex), amid record temperatures for June. Temperatures inside reached 80F (about 27C)(normally we keep the thermostat set at 74F. Our HVAC unit WAS running, but the air it was blowing was not very cool/cold. :p  We both felt pretty wilted (especially after three days of high temperatures and humidity, even when the a/c was running!), but ran the Dyson purifier fan, drank lots of fluids, and went to the mall for a few hours for respite. 
• Related small pleasure:  We bought a yummy rotisserie chicken at the supermarket on Sunday so that we didn't have to cook, and used the leftovers with salad to make light no-cook meals for the next two nights too.  

Small pleasures:  

• Kobo has been making some changes to its website recently... I'm not sure I like all of them, BUT I recently logged on and noticed changes to my wish list:  it's now sortable!  Newest to oldest added (which is how it was organized previously), alphabetical by title (but sadly not by author -- A to Z and Z to A), most to least expensive and vice versa. If I choose the "least to most expensive" option, I can see right away if any books on my list are on sale cheap, instead of having to scroll through the entire list. (And I have a very LARGE wish list...!)  
• After complaining (ummm, WRITING! lol) about my futile search for a pair of sandals to wear to a family wedding in August, I found (bought!) not just one but two pairs on a recent expedition to the mall! Both are silver (or silver-ish), flat or low-heeled, wide widths in my size, and feel relatively comfortably on my very wide foot! (I could actually get my foot into them!  lol) And both pairs were fairly reasonably priced too.  This one is silver with a one-inch chunky heel -- so it's not flat, but the heel feels substantial enough that I won't be teetering precariously in it. The other one is completely flat, but I think it's just dressy enough (particularly with the floral print dress I bought). It's "nude" -- gold-ish overtones vs pure silver, but I think it's silver-y enough. Anyway, that's a load off my mind!   

Personal stuff: 

• I recently, mostly, stopped wearing a mask in (most) public places, for the first time in 5 (-ish) years.  (Fingers crossed...!)  Dh has been foregoing masks for a while now, and I will admit, after five years, I was a little tired of putting on a mask and dealing with foggy glasses and a sweaty face -- especially at the mall, when (on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning, which is usually when we go) there were so few people around anyway. 
• I still keep a couple in my purse just in case, and I still put one on if I'm somewhere where there's a lot of people and/or the air circulation doesn't seem very good, etc. And we'll definitely be wearing them at the airport and on the plane west to see my family in a few weeks' time!  
• I found out this week (via my high school graduating class's Facebook page) that our English teacher (in both Grades 10 & 12, as well as our yearbook advisor) passed away last week. Mr. P. was 80. Not only was he our teacher, he had been a student at the same high school himself in the early 1960s, and later went on to become principal -- essentially devoting the better part of his life to the school and the community. He was an excellent teacher -- as evidenced by the hundreds and hundreds of comments on a community FB page I joined, and on the funeral home obituary.  He taught several generations of students from the same families -- their parents, their kids, their aunts, uncles & cousins.  Decades later, he still remembered their names, their stories, their family members. He was, in short, legendary. 
• I added a comment myself, and enjoyed scanning the others, and seeing many familiar names from my past. 
• I didn't know, but learned from one commenter, that Mr. P. was reluctant to accept the principal's job, and only did so on the condition that he could still carve out some time to continue teaching.  
• One former student recalled running into Mr. P. at the grocery store -- who glanced at her shopping list, and pointed out that she'd misspelled an item. (I'm sure she made his day, lol.)  
• And I was particularly amused to read one from a former student (obviously younger than me) whose first year of high school was Mr. P.'s last before retirement in 2010. He recalled Mr. P. addressing a student assembly on the first day of classes, and compared him to Dumbledore at Hogwarts, lol. 
• My class is collecting money and will make a donation in Mr. P.'s memory to one or more of the charities mentioned in his obituary, and/or plant a tree(s) in his honour. 
• The memorial service was held Friday afternoon, and I watched the livestream (three cheers for the Internet!). It was held at the big church where my graduation took place (I don't know if that's still the venue these days). 
• One of the speakers was one of his four (!) sons -- who is also now a teacher AND a vice-principal at the same high school!  
• (I'll admit, as a childless person, it was a little tough hearing all the talk about children and grandchildren, generations of students from the same families, etc... It also stirred up a lot of memories from my school days. Most parents get to regale/bore (lol) their kids with those kinds of stories.  Who do I get to share those memories with??) 
• I've mentioned Mr. P, in several previous posts here -- in particular, this one from 2010 (in which I named him as one of the people who had the biggest impact on my life, outside of family), and this one from 2019, about memorable teachers in my life. 

 Recent reading/viewing: 

• Going through my archives, I stumbled onto this post from June 2015 -- 10 years ago. Very timely, given the recent death of musical genius Brian Wilson, and I decided to share it again. I'm betting you will want to listen to some Beach Boys music after reading it!  
• There was a fascinating/disturbing story in the New Yorker recently about children adopted from China, reconnecting with their biological families through DNA testing.  (I found the link in an ad post on Facebook, and was able to access it without a subscription.)  
• Jody Day's quarterly/seasonal Fireside Wisdom Zoom discussions with a fabulous panel of childless elderwomen (the "Nomo Crones") are always interesting and worth watching!  The topic this time around was menopause. The video of this session is now available on the Gateway Women website (under the "Childless Elderwomen" tab). Just be aware there is some frank/explicit discussion about sex.

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

Odds & ends

• I've whined -- umm, commented ;)  -- a couple of times in the past here about Kamala Harris's apparent reluctance to acknowledge the formative teenage years she spent here in Canada (Montreal, specifically), during the late 1970s/early 1980s (a turbulent time in the country/that province's history). She's still not commenting about that time in her life, but the Washington Post investigated and produced an interesting article about it this past weekend:  "These five tumultuous years in Montreal shaped Kamala Harris."  Here's a gift link, if you're interested!  
• My 2021 review of Harris's memoir. 
• From this past August in the Toronto Star: "Forgive Kamala Harris for downplaying the formative years she spent in Montreal. She has an election to win." (No gift links, sorry, but if there's a paywall, sometimes saving to Pocket.com and then opening it there will work.) 
• 2020 New York Times story: "In Canada, Kamala Harris, a Disco-Dancing Teenager, Yearned for Home."
• Speaking of the upcoming U.S. election (well, I was, sorta...), my 83-year-old American mother voted by absentee ballot in the last election for the very first time! -- she married my dad and came to Canada when she was 19, and the voting age back then was 21. (She didn't obtain Canadian/dual citizenship until she was in her 50s, I think? -- and so was not eligible to vote here either until then.)  
• She's casting an absentee ballot again this year, with the help of my sister, who (as in 2020) will courier the ballot to the courthouse in Mom's home county this week to be tabulated. I told her I'd gladly chip in for half the cost. :)  
• I enjoyed this chat (gift linked) among three Washington Post writers, revisiting Helen Fielding's  "Bridget Jones's Diary,"25+ years after its publication.  I first read "Bridget" back in 1998, I think -- not long post-loss, when I thought I might never laugh again, but desperately needed one.  This was pre-blogs or Goodreads, so I never wrote a full review of it -- but I've mentioned it several times on this blog over the years, most notably here and here. I still think of Bridget fondly.  :)  
• If you love books as I do, you will love Lyz Lenz's wonderful tribute to the power of books, reading and librarians: "I understand why people ban books."  (It's the text of her speech accepting a 2024 Iowa Authors Award from the Des Moines Public Library Foundation.) 
• To mark Baby Loss Awareness Week in the U.K., Jennie Agg, who Substacks (is that a verb?) at "Life, Almost," recently wrote a guest post for another Substack, "Books & Bits," about the books, poems and essays about pregnancy loss that have sustained her: "When a woman loses a baby, she is not transformed into an ethereal heroine." 
• Appropriately on Oct. 15th (Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Day), Sari Botton featured Colleen Long & Rebecca Little, authors of the new book "I'm Sorry for My Loss" on her Memoir Land Author Questionnaire #45 on Substack. (I really want to read this soon!)   
• The authors were also recently interviewed by Ryan Rose Weaver for her Substack, In Tending. 
• I've mentioned this book in two other recent posts, here and here. 
• A Latina woman writes in the New York Times about the unique pressures she faced until she decided to freeze her eggs:  "I Froze My Eggs to Reclaim My Right to Rest." 
• Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon writes about family secrets, including an adoption:  "My mother's final secret: Searching for the little sister I never knew I had."  Sample passage (I love the image of "a tidal wave of skeletons shaken from closets"): 

I am now one of an ever-widening population of people whose lives have been abruptly upended by the revelations of long-held family secrets. The proliferation of at-home DNA tests has ushered in a tidal wave of skeletons shaken from closets, while generational shifts — and rising secularism — have made things that were once life-ruiningly shameful exponentially less taboo.

Odds & ends

A couple of personal notes:  

• It's been overcast, grey, occasionally rainy, and cool to chilly, more often than not lately. Where is my summer??  :(  
• Younger Nephew invited us over for lunch last Saturday, along with his parents (BIL & SIL). They live close enough to us that we could walk there & back. Little Great-Niece entertained us royally  :)  and we left with enough leftovers for lunch for the next several days.  :)  A very nice afternoon! 
• Dh recently remarked on the number of books showing up in his e-book sales emails related to fathers & kids -- and dads and daughters in particular (in advance of Father's Day this weekend).  He usually doesn't say much in this vein, so I'm guessing it was bothering him more than usual...!  :(  

And now, a few good recent reads on my radar lately:  

• A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a thought-provoking piece I'd read by Ruby Warrington in her email newsletter, which (together with a Substack piece from another writer) got me thinking about "information overload versus creativity." 
• Ruby received such a big response to that email that she decided to post the text on her website and to point to it on her social media accounts. I had to do a bit of hunting to find it (it's kind of buried in there!), but here's the link, in case you'd like to read the whole thing:  "Creativity in the The Era of 'Peak Content'."
• Says Ruby, introducing her essay: "I realize the irony of me putting the following into a blog post that I also plan to share on social media. In fact, I hesitated before writing this piece, which I originally shared on my newsletter. Wouldn’t I just be adding to the problem? But the response was overwhelming; clearly, I am not alone in these reflections. Which makes me think a new way of doing things is ready to emerge."
• The New York Times interviewed 10 prominent artists on the subject of grief and how it's changed them. 
• Alison Motluk has a thought-provoking essay about the implications of sperm donation on her Hey Reprotech Substack:  "Anonymous Father's Day." 
• Is U.S. First Lady Jill Biden Hunter Biden's mom? Monica Hesse of the Washington Post weighs in. (I know everyone's story is different, but may step- and adoptive mothers will relate...!)
• As someone whose daughter was stillborn at least in part because of placental issues, I was glad to see this article in the Atlantic:  "A Breakthrough in Preventing Stillbirth." (Subhead: "Half of pregnancy losses have unidentified causes. The placenta could provide answers.")(Gift link, good for 14 days after this post is published.) 
• https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/06/placenta-stillbirths-research/678570/ 
• "You Decided to Become a Mother. What Happened Next?" The New York Times wants to know! (Gift link.)  There's a form you can fill out. (You may be contacted by a reporter for more information.)  It would be nice if they got the message that the journey to motherhood is not always smooth, does not always end happily ever after and, for some of us, motherhood ultimately never happens at all.  
• Jake Tapper mentioned on CNN today that many of the 20 children who were murdered at Sandy Hook school in Connecticut 12 (!!) years ago would be graduating high school right about now. !!!  
• Hearing that was a gut punch that brought tears to my eyes. I remember how incredibly hard it was, watching the parents of Katie's peers proudly posting photos of their child's graduation in June 2016, and then taking them to university that fall (and mourning their "empty nests" -- when mine had never been occupied to begin with...)  My heart goes out to the parents of those precious children who never got the chance to grow up and graduate. 
• At the time Sandy Hook happened, Mel wrote about focusing on remembering just one of the young lives among the many snuffed out prematurely on that terrible day. As I wrote in a blog post at the time, I chose Ana Marquez-Greene, whose family had ties to my home province of Manitoba.  I still think about her whenever Sandy Hook comes up. 

Odds & ends

• The Childless Collective Summit -- a rare opportunity for CNBCers to gather en masse -- was held in Charleston, South Carolina last weekend. I had #summitenvy as I scanned my social media feeds, looking for photos!  
• I was also a little envious when I heard that Australia's Senate is holding an inquiry into menopause and perimenopause. (We in North America really need to get with the program!!)  Sarah Roberts at The Empty Cradle has made a submission that expresses some of the unique concerns of aging childless women (adapted from a previous submission she and Judy Graham made to the Queensland Women's Strategy). Her submission is #121 at this link.  
• The Full Stop podcast is celebrating 5 years of monthly episodes on May 19th! Their May episode is being recorded THIS Sunday, April 21st!  
• Listeners are being invited to ask a question, or share a message via Speakpipe, to be answered by the hosts. Here's a link!  
• There will be a competition with prizes, too!  
• Jess was a guest on the Adoption Unfiltered podcast, talking with hosts Lori (adoptive parent), Sara (adoptee) & Kelsey (birth mom) about pronatalism, and her decision NOT to adopt and to remain childless. (She wrote about it here.)  The podcast is available on the Adoption Unfiltered website, YouTube and various podcast platforms. It's an amazing, in-depth and much-needed conversation, and well worth a watch/listen!  
• Mel recently flagged this lovely article from Oregon Humanities: "Fertile Ground:  Reflections on grief and gardening." 
• This is a great article from Next Avenue (a couple of years old) about "The Long-Term Realities of Being Childless."  
• Medium articles are sometime paywalled (boo, hiss), but if you can access "The Childless Woman Who Soared:  A modern fable and love story to a woman long demonised" by Nadia Huq, it's so lovely, and well worth a read!  Excerpt:  

...a child is not actually a goal, when you think about it.

A child is a map...

But for women without children there is no map.

And instead of a well-trodden highway, there are fields and forests and lakes and seas.

So what does she do?

Perhaps if she has chosen this life with a free and easy heart, she bounds into the landscape, excited by this unconquered territory.

But if not, perhaps she sits down and she cries. How will I ever find my way? She wonders. She has no tools. No handbook. Precious little confidence. She feels wholly unequipped for this life.

She feels sad, and no wonder, for all she has ever heard of this life is its’ many heartaches and regrets. For a time, she simply sits and cries.

But she has courage, and eventually, she rises....

• I'm not sure if this is behind a paywall either, but Alison Motluk's post on her Substack "Hey Reprotech" is also worth a read and share (especially if you know someone who is thinking about freezing their eggs):  "Questions no one asked at the egg freezing webinar." (She recently sat in on a webinar about egg freezing, and she was struck "by how few questions were asked, and how so many seemed vague and unclear. I was also struck by how incomprehensible some of the answers were.")(Are we surprised?)  
• I was struck by a passage in a recent opinion piece by Shree Paradkar in the Toronto Star, about abortion rights and the recently resurrected law from 1864 (!) in Arizona. (Apologies if it's behind a paywall;  there wasn't a gift link.)  This passage in particular rang SO true to me:  

Mainstream pregnancy stories are often about grinning mommies and gurgling babies, often in heterosexual relationships, living in relative luxury, with a shopping component thrown in — what to get for the baby? Heavens forbid we ignore the capital to be squeezed out of every life experience.

If there is a deviation from such narrow representation, it is to express sadness and grief — about a woman’s inability to become pregnant or an inability to carry a fetus to term. Don’t get me wrong. Having babies can be a wonderful experience, and not having one can leave one with profound sense loss. But the archaic, gendered expectation of giving birth is so seeped in the pores of our society that women often internalize feelings of inadequacy even when the issue is outside their control. Someone not wanting to be pregnant is too outside the realm of this blinkered view.

• I read some great pieces about the recent eclipse. I loved how Lyz Lenz ended hers, in her Men Yell At Me Substack, "Chasing the dark."  Excerpt:  

This lasts for three minutes. Three beautiful moments. Time passes. The moon moves. The sun flashes. And then it’s over. We have to pack. We have to go so we can get home before too late. Because there is school tomorrow. And I have to work.

As we walk back to the car, my daughter says she can’t believe things have to go back to how they were. “This should have changed everything,” she says.

I know what she means. I’ve felt this before in moments of grief. The way your world changes with loss, but the stock market doesn’t stop, school buses still arrive. The world ended, but it didn’t. I wonder about all the small world-endings. All the apocalypses we see and walk by. How grief and miracles are the same. A brief rip into the light. We peer into it and then we are expected to return to the same. Together we’ve seen the light change. We’ve seen the sun disappear.  I know they’ll remember this one. Together we will remember the tear in space, how it felt so vast, how we held hands through every minute of it as it passed. 

I think about the last eclipse and I tell her I think everything is different. We just don’t know the shape of it yet.

#MicroblogMonday: Eclipse!

So in case you haven't heard, there's an eclipse happening later this afternoon that will be visible, in total or in part, across a broad swath of North America. It's being billed as a once-in-a-lifetime event.  

Already been there, done that. ;)  I got to see & experience a total eclipse back in February 1979.  I was 18 and in my final year of high school, and my family was living in a town west of Winnipeg, one of the prime viewing areas in the world for the big event. 

(Someone posted a thread on my graduating class's Facebook group last week, asking where we were then and what we remembered about it, and where we'd be and what we'd be doing today. One classmate remembers our English teacher including the eclipse in his speech at our graduation ceremony that June:  he said, "Only this group would conspire to arrange something like a total eclipse to get a day off school." lol!!) 

People came from all over the world to southern Manitoba (and this was in FEBRUARY!!  lol), and were lined up along the main street of town and all along the Trans-Canada Highway west of the city to watch.  There was no Internet back then, of course, or even 24-hour cable news networks like CNN, but there was still a lot of advance hype, and special live broadcasts on TV that day.  We all got the day off school -- presumably the school board did not want to be responsible for whatever we did or saw on that day. We did not have the special protective glasses to safely watch the progress of the moon across the sun-- they were available, but not as readily as they are today (no online shopping!) -- but we could see it getting darker outside, to the point that the street lights came on! -- and when the TV announcer told us we were now in totality and it was safe to go outside and have a brief look with the naked eye, my sister & I did so, heading out to the sidewalk in front of our house. (I couldn't remember my mom being out there with us, so I asked her about it when I spoke to her yesterday. She said she came out onto the front step, turned around and went back inside! lol.)  It was chilly (it was February!) and kind of eerie -- and it WAS pretty cool! 

There was also a partial eclipse here back in August 2017, a little over a year after we moved into this condo. I think we only reached about 70-75% of totality then. It didn't get completely dark, but it did get increasingly and strangely dim and shadowy outside for a while. I took a few photos from our balcony then. (See one below.)  

This time around, we're JUST outside the path of totality -- I found a site that calculates we'll reach 99.13% where we are -- so it will not get completely dark this time either. (Close, but no cigar.) But I'm expecting it will still be darker than it was in 2017.  Niagara Falls, about 1.5-2 hours away, population just under 100,00 (and busy enough on an average summer day), will be a prime viewing area, and is expecting up to ONE MILLION PEOPLE. Officials have already declared a state of emergency, and are warning visitors there WILL be traffic chaos, and to bring plenty of food, water and necessary medications.  (There aren't a lot of main roads going in and out of the area -- look it up on a map -- it's hemmed into a small wedge of land between lakes Ontario & Erie, along the Niagara River and the U.S. border). 

No thanks. I'll be happy to view the effects of near-totality from my condo balcony. (We don't have the proper eyewear this time around either -- and in any case, I have enough issues with my vision as it is, so I'm not going to risk it!)  

How about you? Will the eclipse be visible, in total or in part, where you live? Are you planning to watch or mark the occasion in some way?  (If it's already over by the time you read this, what did you do today?)  Have you seen one before? 

*** *** *** 

Related tangent:  All the eclipse talk stirred up a hazy memory for me, of reading a Bobbsey Twins book that had belonged to my mom & uncle when they were kids in the 1940s/50s (and then to me & my sister), which a band of gypsies (!) who were convinced they were going to lose their sight if they do something the bad guys wanted them to do... not knowing that a total eclipse was on the way.  

I had to do some Googling and digging around, but I finally found a discussion that helped me identify the right book!  -- "The Bobbsey Twins on the Pony Trail" (1944).  "In it, a group of gypsies are being cheated out of their land. A speculator claims he will remove their vision if they don't sell. He knows about the upcoming total eclipse in the area where the story was set. Mr. Bobbsey helps to prevent the injustice."

The Bobbsey Twins were a staple of my early childhood reading. I haven't read any of those books in years & years, but some of the stuff in the older volumes that belonged to my mom & uncle would never past muster these days. Another example (ALI alert!): in "The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May," first published in 1924 (!),  a baby girl is mysteriously left on the Bobbsey family's doorstep (!).  (No wonder people have so many misconceptions about adoption, right?)  I don't think I ever read the revised version published in 1968, but from what I understand, the story was completely rewritten except for the title, and Baby May became... a baby elephant, lol.

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

The eerie half-lit sky outside during the solar eclipse of August 2017,
which reached around 70-75% max hereabouts.
(The crane, partly visible, left, is from another condo building nearby, then under construction.
Also under construction then: the townhouses behind us, partly visible, right.) 
Our balcony doesn't get the direct afternoon sun
(and we didn't have the proper eyewear to view the eclipse directly anyway)
but I took a few photos from the balcony to record the effects. 
I'll probably do the same this afternoon! 

Lots of odds & ends!

• The nightly CBC television newscast, "The National," had a lengthy feature report on Feb. 27th about IVF in Canada and the barriers some people face in getting treatment (financial, geographic, etc.). It focused on one woman, currently on her 7th cycle, who has already spent more than $100,000 (Canadian) and regularly drives four hours (one way) from Sudbury to a clinic in Markham, outside of Toronto (and then another four hours back home again). (I remember chatting with a woman from Sudbury in the waiting room at my own RE's office when I was going through fertility treatments, 20+ years ago!)  
• I don't know if the video is available to view outside of Canada, but here's the link! 
• The province of British Columbia recently announced it will join several other Canadian provinces by funding one cycle of IVF, beginning in April 2025. The Globe & Mail featured a B.C. couple who estimate they spent $80,000 on 16 cycles of IUI and IVF, four of which ended in miscarriage, before their son was finally born in 2018. (Gift link.) Quote: 

Ms. Santos called B.C.’s announcement “incredible news,” and said it would have made a world of difference to her family had their first IVF cycle been covered.

“If we had had funding, that would have taken so much stress off at a time when everyone says all you should focus on is not stressing,” she said. Her husband could have come home [from working a higher-paying job in northern Alberta], she added. “We would have had more opportunity to work on our mental health, to not feel so guilty to take a day off if we needed it. It would have been invaluable to have that peace of mind.”

• On Medium, this post made me want to stand up and cheer: "We Must Stop Telling Women They Should Conceive and Give Birth 'Naturally.' ” (Subhead: "Medical interventions aren’t just for men, y’know".)  It may be behind a paywall :p  but here's an excerpt:  

According to some delightful people out there, women who can’t conceive need to just accept that it’s “God’s will” they remain child-free.

In their words, IVF isn’t natural, so we shouldn’t be doing it.

OK Steve, let’s see how well you fare without medical intervention the next time you need an operation. No anesthetic or scrubbed-up surgeon for you, my friend....

We’re happy to accept modern comforts, science and medicine in almost every other part of our lives. No one thinks it’s weird to live with electricity or a car or to receive anesthesia during a vasectomy.

Which leads to just one conclusion.

The rhetoric about “natural” childbirth and conception isn’t pro-nature.

It’s anti-women.

I found this bit somewhat shocking (and depressing): 

...whilst the perception of IVF has improved in recent years, there are still devastating stats about what some people think of IVF babies.

A recent study revealed that 41% of people think IVF babies are “normal but not natural.”

Twenty-two percent do not think IVF babies are legitimate.

And even more shocking, 13.5% of respondents do not think IVF babies should be welcomed by society.

The Vatican (which represents 1.3 billion Catholics across the world) doesn’t accept assisted reproduction, and now — whether this was their intention or not — neither does the state of Alabama.

And there's this: 

I don’t need people to tell me I’m an infertile failure

I already think that myself.

And it’s not just online trolls or Republican politicians that make me — and women like me — feel like this.

It’s society as a whole.

Not only do we live in a pronatalist world, we live in a pronatalist world where we are expected to a) quickly get pregnant, b) love pregnancy and c) have a natural birth.

And as someone struggling with fertility, I’m told I’m not natural. Because if you’re natural, you’re fertile, right?

This messaging comes from everywhere.... 

One comment read: "'Have more babies.'  'No not like that.' "  Touchez!   

• I only just heard about this book -- I have not read it (yet?) -- but the Washington Post just gave it a glowing review (and there are also some great reviews on Goodreads):  "Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood" by Gretchen Sisson. The Post says it presents "a troubling picture of a lopsided adoption industry, in which aspiring parents spend thousands looking for adoptable infants while people in crisis pregnancies struggle to pay rent." 

Sisson’s analysis gently coaxes the scales from our eyes. If adoption is a heartwarming practice, why are birth mothers wracked with feelings of grief and betrayal that do not abate over time? If every aspiring parent deserves a baby to love, who are we willing to exploit to meet that demand?

...This book may be a tough read, especially for current or aspiring adoptive parents. It feels much better to rescue an unwanted baby than to take one from a mother who would parent if she could only afford a car seat. But, as Sisson writes, if adoption is intended to meet the needs of children and not the “dreams of would-be parents,” then adoptive parents’ feelings can’t drive the future of adoption. 

• Also on the topic of adoption: a great article (with a first-person perspective) from the Atlantic:  "No One's Children: America’s long history of secret adoption."  (Gift link, accessible for 14 days.)  
• Related:  a fabulous, must-read post from Mali at No Kidding in NZ:  "No Kidding Voices Count" -- when it comes to adoption, as well as other aspects of the adoption/loss/infertility experience. Excerpt (and key message): 

Why should we feel that our comments on a process that did not work for us should be disparaged as “bitter” or “sour grapes” compared to those who are considered the “success” stories? Answer = we shouldn’t. Our views are just as valid, and perhaps more so, because we are evidence that the processes are not infallible, that they don’t work for everyone, and in many cases, they don’t work for the majority. Everyone needs to understand why that is. Our voices count, and should be heard. 

• Mali's post didn't specifically mention the recent court ruling in Alabama that has virtually shut down IVF treatments in that state, but I was thinking about Alabama when she said: 

It’s not a contradiction to both be pleased that there are paths to parenthood for the infertile, and to want to ensure these paths take care of those prospective parents during and after this process, as well as act in the best interests of the children who may emerge from this. That’s not sour grapes. It is in fact much more holistic. 

• Also re: the Alabama ruling:  Pamela's Silent Sorority blog/website is currently under renovation, but she's still advocating for fertility industry reform and patient rights, including recent opinion pieces in the Boston Globe and Newsweek specifically related to the events in Alabama. 
• Jess recently posted about how the Alabama case has resulted in increased interest in/media coverage of IVF. Unfortunately, the coverage demonstrates that people (still!!) aren't using the correct terminology when discussing the process. (No wonder there are so many misconceptions....!) 
• Mel highlighted Jess's post on today's Friday Blog Roundup, pointing out that she wrote the New York Times about "implant" vs "transfer" ....back in 2009!  The NYT responded that they understood, BUT "we made the conscious decision to use the word implant. The average reader doesn’t understand what a ‘transfer’ is.”  "...[So] frustrating that I was writing the NYT in 2009 about this, and it’s now 2024, and nothing has changed,"  she says.  :(   Grrrrrrr indeed. 
• In her Substack "The Antidote," Helen Davenport-Peace ponders "The anatomy of an announcement:  Pregnancies that aren't ours, but theirs."  
• Henri Copeland eloquently reflects on the very different reactions she and her family are getting after the loss of her father, versus the lack of support she's had for her grief as a childless woman.  
• At "In Pursuit of Clean Countertops," Sara Petersen spoke with Lyz Lenz of "Men Yell At Me" about her new book (about divorce), "This American Ex-Wife."  Unfortunately, it's behind a subscriber paywall, but I wanted to share a couple of particularly brilliant passages that I thought had some application to women without children (even though both Lyz & Sara are mothers)(boldfaced emphasis the author's):  

...even if you're not going to get divorced, we have to stop thinking of parenting as this all-encompassing thing because children will leave you one day! You being okay can’t be predicated on them being okay. At some point, they won’t be okay. And you have to find a way to be a person in the midst of all of that....

...if our senses of selves and wellbeing is no longer dependent on relationships like motherhood and wifehood (because life is long and complicated and full of tragedy, we could live happier lives. 

• There was some great commentary on the recent State of the Union address in the U.S. -- and, in particular, on the Republican response provided by Senator Katie Britt. Lyz Lenz dubbed her "Dingus of the Week,"  lol. I also liked Monica Hesse's take in the Washington Post -- although I do wish she had taken her rhetoric one step further and made the leap from "moms aren't a monolith" to "not all women are moms" -- sigh....
• I particularly wanted to note Jill Filipovic's take on her Substack, titled "The Two Americas of the State of Union."   Unfortunately, I think it's behind a subscriber paywall... fortunately, I am a subscriber ;)  and I can share this especially relevant excerpt with you:  

The word “mom,” by the way, shows up in Britt’s speech more times than the word “women.” This is despite the fact that more than half of American women do not have children, and roughly one in six reach the end of their childbearing years without having them. Many women who are mothers also do not see motherhood as their sole defining characteristic. “Woman” and “mother” are not identical categories. And yet the Republican Party talks to us as if they are — or as if they should be...

 

The message from Britt and the GOP was clear: All women are or should be mothers; women and mothers should be fearful of the big scary world around them; and they should probably stay in the kitchen.