Calgon, take me away....

It was supposed to be a business meeting -- a daily "huddle," with each team member updating the others on their projects and their expectations for the day ahead.

It turned into a prolonged discussion about the team leader's due-any-day-now granddaughter -- she excitedly sharing the details, the baby's name, what the expectant mom (her daughter) has packed in her suitcase for the hospital, what the latest ultrasound photos look like, how she plans to take off on vacation the moment she gets the phone call, and not return for several weeks -- the rest of the team (all women -- two of them also mothers, three of them young single women with stars in their eyes) chattering excitedly, giggling and throwing in frequent sighs of "Awwwww!!" And all of it taking place in the cubicle directly across the aisle from mine.

On & on it went. I could literally feel myself slumping, physically, mentally, emotionally, behind the wall of my cubicle. With every giggle and every chorus of "Awwwwww....!!" I felt more & more suffocated, their words & excitement weighing me down. At the same time, I started feeling jittery, my skin crawling, a nervous tic surfacing. A voice inside my head started whispering, then shouting, "I've gotta get out of here... gotta get out... gotta get out gotta get out GOTTA GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT..."

And so I did the only thing any self-respecting bereaved mother of a stillborn would do in such a situation. I got the heck out of Dodge. ; ) It was a little earlier than usual for my coffee/tea break, but I took it anyway (& made it an extra long one... lingering over the magazines at the newsstand downstairs, doing some banking at the ABM, etc.). The relief I felt as I fled down the hallway, voices fading behind me, was palpable.

This wasn't the first time (or even the second) that I've had to endure a similar scenario, or remove myself from the scene. Of course, my coworker has every right to be excited. No doubt if it were me, I'd be acting exactly the same way.

But it never WILL be me -- and knowing what I know about how some pregnancies (far more than most people think) end, I find it difficult to get too excited about ANYONE's pregnancy these days. There is always more than a little fear & apprehension until the baby arrives & I know that both he or she & the mom are all right. They may not be too worried whether anything bad will happen. They don't have to -- I'm doing it for them.

I'm not quite sure why I reacted the way I did today... it's not an "anniversary" date or anything like that. I have endured previous such sessions with only perhaps an eye roll behind my cubicle wall. I think it's a cumulative sort of thing, too. I might be able to endure five minutes of such conversation -- but at the 7 minute point, it becomes too much, you know? As I wrote in a post last year, about the Academy Awards ceremony:

I often find that, when it comes to enduring all things pregnancy and baby and mommy-related -- at baby showers & family events, at work, on TV, in the movies, online, on the magzine covers -- I can take it & take it & take it -- but then, slowly, gradually, the steady, constant, never-ending drip-drip-drip begins to erode my sense of self and security -- the relentless talk, everywhere, about babies and pregnancy and children and baby bumps, all reminding me of the reverence (well, the lip service, anyway) paid to motherhood in this culture -- and that I am not a part of it, never WILL be part of it -- & then suddenly, I reach the tipping point, & I've had enough, & I just want to go home, or turn off the TV set and go to bed, and sulk for awhile. And vent about it in my blog. ; )

I know I'm not the only person who feels this way. But please, humour me; go ahead & tell me that I'm not anyway, won't you? ; )

Article: "The War on Only Children"

Salon had a great article by Mary Elizabeth Williams recently about "The War on Only Children." As I read, I couldn't help but compare the reactions she describes to her status as an only child to the typical reactions those of us who are childless/free (for whatever reason) get when people find out that we don't have kids. Tell me, does any of this sound vaguely familiar?

I was making small talk with a woman I’d just met when the inevitable subject of family came up. “Do you have any brothers and sisters?” she’d asked. “No,” I’d replied. And there it was: the subtle change in her expression, the quick reassessment, the pinched face I’ve seen a thousand times before. “Well, that must have been nice for you,” she replied. “You must have been so spoiled.”

It’s one of the standard responses we “onlies” get — near strangers denigrating us because of our parents’ reproductive habits. Nobody ever says, “Youngest of four? So you’re really immature, right?” or “You’re a twin? Wow, you must be a total dick.” But I didn’t answer, “Yeah, after my dad left my 21-year-old mom when she was pregnant with me, you can imagine what a cosseted, pampered existence this princess had.” That’s because I didn’t want to get the other classic reaction: unbridled pity for my no doubt sad, lonely existence. Hi, what year is this?

Growing up in my mostly Irish-Catholic neighborhood, I understood that I was an anomaly. Hell, just having parents who were divorced was considered exotic. Back then, I generally shrugged off my dubious reputation as both wildly pampered and horribly starved for company, content with my childhood claim to fame as The Girl Who Didn’t Have to Share.

As I grew older, I met other onlies. It wasn’t always easy to find them – shockingly, they look a lot like everybody else. We exchanged stories of our similar bad and sad reps, but I noticed we almost never expressed a longing for a different fate. We were just a contented if misunderstood minority. But times have changed. There are now roughly 20 million only children in America, representing nearly a quarter of all our families. You’d think those swelling ranks would have changed those misconceptions. So how come if we don’t smoke in bars anymore, we’re still dissing only children?

I particularly loved this paragraph:

It’s especially galling to hear the contempt for onlies – that vaguely snide attitude that the real selfishness is on the part of the parents – coming as it does within a culture in which the subjects of infertility, pregnancy loss, deferred child rearing, and divorce are the stuff of idle playground chatter. If a child you know has no siblings, chances are you know the reasons why. It’s rarely because the parents are such big jerks. But whether it’s by the hand of fate or conscious decision, who’s to knock another’s choices, anyway? Why be a self-appointed Goldilocks of family size, bloviating that one is pathetic, five is pushing it, but two or three is juuuuust right? As my friend Anne’s mother once sagely told her, having one is a long way from the worst thing you could do to a child.

Read the entire article here. And thank you, Mary Elizabeth Williams!

Birthday girl

Yep, that's me. About 47 (eeeekkkk!!) years ago today, give or take a few. It was January 1965, and it was my 4th birthday party. Note the cake (confetti angel food, from a mix but made by Mom, decorated with plastic flowers -- in other years, it might be Smarties), the pin the tail on the donkey game on the wall behind me, my stylish '60s bob, Mary Jane shoes, tights & crinoline. : )

All my birthday parties as a kid were more or less the same (& so were those of my friends) -- up to a dozen friends would come to our house (decorated with balloons & streamers), we'd play a few games, have hot dogs or sloppy joes with potato chips & pickles, drink Kool-Aid, have birthday cake & then open the presents. I think we might give or get a chocolate bar to the guests as they left -- loot bags were unheard of.

I stopped having birthday parties around the time I became a teenager, instead having a handful of my closest friends over for dinner, & sometimes a movie. These days, my birthdays tend to be much quieter events. The last several years, I've usually tried to take the day off work, maybe go to the spa or shopping (or both), & then for dinner at a favourite restaurant with dh. That's more or less the plan for today. I'm thinking I might be daring & go for blue nail polish on my manicure, lol. It only took 51 years to try it...!

I look at that little girl in the picture, and it seems so long ago and like yesterday, all at once. (And I wonder if that's anything like Katie would have looked when she was 4.) 51 seems old when you write it out. :p But it's one year closer to retirement ; ) & being done with Aunt Flo's visits for good. (And, as my grandma used to say, & as I wrote last year, "consider the alternative.") All things considered... I'll take it, lol.

Anyone out there??

According to Melissa, it's International Blog Delurking Week. : ) I already feel like mine has been under way, since putting out the call for additions to my blogroll. : )

Step out of the shadows & say hello! : )

Sad story in the news

GTA's first baby of 2012 dies

Even sadder, many of the commenters are taking the parents to task for not taking the baby to the dr sooner. :(

Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What it Costs Us by Nancy Berns

This book had me at hello, lol.

You may recall I first learned about it in a newspaper article that I saw & posted about a few weeks ago. Being a topic near & dear to my heart, I rushed to order the book and took it home for holiday reading.

By coincidence, Beef Princess had also just bought & read the book, and left me a comment to that effect. I agree with her assessment: "academic in nature but fascinating." The book is extremely well researched -- full of examples, data and footnotes -- but that does not mean it's a dry or difficult read.

The author, Nancy Berns, is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa, who teaches and researches in the areas of grief, death, violence, justice and social constructionism. She is also (are you surprised?) the bereaved mother of a stillborn son -- something she addresses on the first page of the book -- and her loss has obviously informed her work.

While it addressed the topic of closure in ways that I would expect as a bereaved parent (the pressure we feel from others to "move on" with our lives, for example), the book was also a huge eye opener for me with regard to how many different ways the concept of closure is being applied in our world today -- and how many different parties are seeking to profit from it (financially, politically and otherwise). I consider myself fairly well read & knowledgeable when it comes to grief issues, but I had many "aha!" moments as I read this book. It made me think, and consider familiar topics and issues in entirely new ways.

I particularly liked Berns's introduction of the concept of "feeling rules" -- which, she explains on page 4,

"...are informal guidelines that tell us how we should react to certain situations. Societies and institutions have different feeling rules, and these rules change, with consequences for the people who are expected to meet them. Furthermore, when one set of feeling rules becomes dominant in a culture, it makes it difficult for us to imagine other ways of handling a situation. Closure represents a new set of feeling rules and expectations for people.

"...the way we name and describe experiences has consequences. "Closure" is not some naturally occurring emotion that we can simply "find" with the right advice. Rather, closure is a made-up concept: a frame used to explain how we should respond to loss." [emphasis mine]

Chapter 1, Seeking Closure, introduces the concept of closure and sets out the concepts and structure for the pages that follow. Berns shows that "closure" is a relatively new term that rose to prominence in the 1990s (think about it -- did our grandparents talk about seeking closure after Pearl Harbour?). But while it's become ubiquitous in our society to seek "closure" after a traumatic event (which could include not only the death of a loved one but the loss of a pet, a divorce, adoption, natural disaster, murder, etc.) there is no specific, agreed-upon definition of what exactly closure is or how it can be achieved -- and the impact that this new concept is having on our society is not yet well understood.

Chapter 2, Closure and its Tangled Meanings, uses the recent example of the Caylee Anthony murder trial as a springboard for a discussion about the many different ways "closure" can be interpreted. Berns identifies six: closing a chapter, remembering, forgetting, getting even, knowing, and confessing or forgiving. All six definitions imply that closure exists, and that closure is possible, good, desired and necessary. This statement (from pages 28 & 29) really resonated with me:

"Closure encourages the idea that grief is bad and therefore something that needs to end. These assumptions, and the larger narratives that carry them, build feeling rules for how we are supposed to respond when bad things happen... When the feeling rules fail, or do not produce the emotions promised, individuals may experience... a disconnect between what they feel and what they think they should feel."

Chapter 3 explores research on grief and bereavement, including whether there is a roadmap or standard process and timetable for grief, the medicalization of grief, what's considered "normal" and what's not, and ambiguous loss and disenfranchised grief (concepts that will be familiar to the ALI community). It also introduces the Walking Wounded (people who want closure, but say they can't find it) and the Myth Slayers(those who don't believe closure exists). (Guess which camp I fall in.)

Chapter 4, From Embalming to Teddy Bear Urns, examines the death care industry and how it uses closure to promote "proper" and "dignified" ways to care for and remember our loved ones. (Bury or cremate? Embalm & view or not? Scatter ashes, keep them, or make them into jewellery? The choices are dizzying, and each has an advocate.)

Similarly, Chapter 5, The Assurance Business, discusses how lawyers, private investigators, psychics, medical consultants, DNA testing facilities and forensic pathologists are using the idea of closure to generate more business. Berns argues that it's understandable to want answers, but points out that the search for answers often just leads to more questions -- and not necessarily closure.

"We can survive a loss even when there are some questions that remains," she writes on page 100.

"We can find peace (even if not complete) and healing (even if pain lingers, which it does) , without having all the answers. And even the answers we receive may carry lingering doubt. The trick may not be finding all the answers, but learning to live with some questions."

(I love that passage.)

Chapter 6, Bury the Jerk [!], discusses how businesses have sprung up to offer mock vengeance and symbolic death as routes to achieve closure after the end of a bad relationship (think divorce parties & all the trappings, including cakes, games, and ring smashing ceremonies).

Chapter 7, Should You Watch an Execution or Forgive a Murderer? explores how the concept of closure has come to play a major role in death penalty politics, and whether vengeance or forgiveness is the best route to closure in these cases. Berns illustrates her points through the moving story of Brooks Douglass, who witnessed the murder of his parents in 1979 and spent almost 20 years fighting to bring the killers to justice, and for the right to witness their execution. It's a story with many unexpected twists and turns, and I found it absolutely fascinating.

Chapter 8, Forgetting versus Remembering, explores the politics of mourning, "sacred space" and public memory, including public memorials, such as roadside crosses and Ground Zero in New York City. It also includes a discussion about abortion. It poses the question, "whose life is worthy of memory and how."

The final chapter, Framing Grief beyond Closure, suggests other ways we can think about grief beyond the frame of closure.

"The concept of closure taps into a desire to have things ordered and simple, but experiences with loss and grief are typically messy, complicated, and not easily resolved. Still, we long for peace, order, and resolution. The appeal of closure rests in large part on the hope that pain will lessen and healing will come. Yes, of course we long for healing, and we should seek it. But healing can come without closure. Even if you do not want to give up the subject of closure, at least know that it is subjective and and may take a long time to "find" and that no one particular ritual, product, service, or politician's promise can guarantee closure." (page 162)

I really can't say enough good things about this book. Berns has done all of us a huge favour in shedding a bright light on this subject, and making us THINK about a term that is broadly used but not very well understood. Grief touches us all, eventually, in some way, and while this book's messages are highly relevant to the ALI community, it's safe to predict that many others around us will eventually be faced with pressure to apply the concept of closure in their own lives -- and may well think differently about it then. We'll see...!

Berns has a website, which includes links to the first chapter of her book and a blog, as well as a blog on Psychology Today with similar content. She recently wrote a thoughtful piece, published on both blogs and highly relevant to the ALI community, about the Santorum and Duggar families -- how they chose to mourn the loss of their children, public reaction, and what it says about our society. If, like me, you were appalled by the way these families (&, by extension, my own and possibly yours as well) were treated because of how they chose to mourn their babies -- regardless of how you feel about their political &/or religious beliefs -- you may want to check it out!

If you read the book, I would love to hear your thoughts about it!

So why aren't there more of us?

I don't mean why aren't there more of us choosing the childless/free after infertility & loss option. Any of us who are in this position can understand why. After all, it wasn't our first choice either, & nobody knows more than we do just how difficult a choice that can be (if we feel it was even a true choice to begin with). The decision not to have children -- for whatever reason(s) -- is extremely personal and complex, and not well understood by others in our highly pronatalist society -- even within our own ALI community where -- we know -- we are some people's worst nightmare come true. It's extremely difficult to go against societal norms, not to mention our own biological impulses. For all the positive and wonderful advantages of childless/free living (& there are many), it can be a lonely place to be sometimes.

My question is, why aren't there more of us who write & speak out about our experiences, on blogs or message boards, in books and in public?

Granted, there are more & more of us doing so all the time -- witness the number of blogs listed in my childless/free blogroll (accumulated over several years), & the number of responses to my post asking for more. There have been several great books published on this subject just in the last few years alone (hello, Pamela & Lisa!).

But in the 10+ years since we stopped infertility treatments, I've found lots of message boards, blogs and websites dedicated to childless/free not by choice living. Very few of them are well used. Many tend to peter out after awhile.

I have a few theories:

• People just get on with the "living" part of the equation after the initial adjustment period is over (on the flip side, lots of infertility blogs tend to peter out after the baby finally arrives too).
• Let's face it, infertility blogs are event & drama driven -- the next cycle, the next round of infertility drugs, what protocol to use, the big hpt results, whether to use donor eggs or a surrogate, whether to adopt... living childless/free is... well, just LIVING. The focus becomes our life generally, not specifically the pursuit of a baby. There's the occasional angst when life slaps us in the face with baby showers & cruel comments from unthinking friends and relatives, etc. -- but for the most part, there isn't a lot of ALI-relevant drama to report.
• Having made the decision to live without children, they want to get on with the business of living and not think about ALI matters or angst anymore. That doesn't mean they don't have it, at least occasionally, but they don't want to be reminded of it or dwell on it anymore (just as some people who have been through loss &/or infertility seem to forget everything they've been through once they finally become parents).
• They find that childless/free living is so busy & fulfilling, they don't have time to write about it anymore. ; )
• They find other obsessions/interests beyond the ALI community that consume their time.
• Deep down, they might still feel their lives aren't interesting or worthy of sharing with others, without children to talk about.
• Some of them (especially the younger ones) eventually do resume treatments or decide to pursue adoption, or -- surprise! -- find themselves miraculously pregnant -- and wind up with a baby after all.

Thoughts, or alternate theories to share?

If you blog or otherwise write (on message boards, etc.) about childless/free living, especially if you've been doing it for awhile, why do you continue to do so?

If you don't anymore, or as often as you used to, why not?