Found it! :)

I haven't posted a photo of my Christmas card choice on this blog for several years now... mainly because (a) I've used photo cards the past several years (there were some good ones taken of me & dh at the nephews' weddings, all dressed up) and (b) I've had trouble finding one that says "Katie" (to me, anyway). 

But I didn't have a photo I wanted to use this year, so I had to start looking for an actual card. And I finally found one that fits the bill...!

May I present... Christmas Card 2019:

(Note the three little birds in the Christmas tree -- i.e., one for me, one for dh and one for Katie.)

Now for our great-nephew to FINALLY arrive (official due date tomorrow!)(Katie's was today, 21 years ago...), and I can fill in the details on the accompanying letter, and start getting them ready to send...!

#MicroblogMonday: Waiting

Still no baby (great-nephew)... 

(And that's about as "micro" a post as you're ever likely to get from me!  lol) 

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

"The Home for Unwanted Girls" by Joanna Goodman

"Another tragic one??" one of the women at the last meeting of my library book club commented, as we flipped through our copies of the next month's selection.

Yep.

Most of our book club's picks over the past year have dealt with some pretty heavy (even depressing) material.  "The Home for Unwanted Girls" by Joanna Goodman fits this description. It could be categorized as an ALI (adoption/loss/infertility) read, in part -- adoption, grief and loss (including pregnancy loss) are among its themes. It is also based on a true and shameful chapter in Quebecois/Canadian history -- one I knew nothing about before reading this book.

The title of Hugh MacLennan's 1945 novel, "Two Solitudes,"  has become a metaphor for the historically troubled relationship between English and French Canadians, and their social and cultural isolation from each other.  This tension forms the backdrop for "The Home for Unwanted Girls." The story is set in 1950s Quebec, which was ruled, iron hand in iron hand, by longtime Premier Maurice Duplessis and the Catholic church.

Our heroine, Maggie Hughes, is the oldest daughter of a mixed marriage between her French-Catholic mother and Anglo-Protestant father. As a teenager, she raises the ire of her parents when she falls in love with Gabriel Phenix -- a poor French boy who lives and works on the neighbouring farm -- and then becomes pregnant.  Maggie is ordered to never see Gabriel again.  When their daughter Elodie is born, the baby is whisked away to be adopted, and Maggie is told to forget about her.

But she can't. She and Gabriel marry other people, but Maggie never gives up hope that she will find her daughter someday. Meanwhile, Elodie grows up in a church-run orphanage, hoping that someday her mother will come to find her. The story shifts back & forth between Maggie & Elodie's stories.

I knew about some of the abuses that have been uncovered in church-run institutions, but I'd never heard of the particular brand of horror that little Elodie endures. Because of a new law that provides more funding to psychiatric hospitals than to orphanages, Quebec's orphanages are converted into psychiatric hospitals -- a move that enriches both the provincial government and the Catholic church. Elodie and thousands of other young "orphans" are declared mentally ill. Their education abruptly ends, and they are forced to help the nuns care for the other residents.

This is one of those books I'm not sure I would have picked up without the book club.  It was sad and sometimes downright grim, detailing the abuse these children suffered. There were a couple of subplots (one involving Maggie's father and Gabriel's sister, and another involving Maggie's uncle) that felt superfluous & didn't really contribute much to the book overall.  But it did keep me turning the pages (particularly once Elodie's story started unfolding) to find out what happened next and how it would all turn out. I shed tears in the final few chapters.

Three (3) stars on Goodreads -- 3.5, if I could assign half-stars.

*** *** ***

Sample ALI-related passage (marked with a post-it note):  Maggie -- who recently had her third miscarriage, post-Elodie -- is having coffee with her old school friend, Audrey, currently pregnant with her third child.

"Listen," [Audrey] says, "Before we get into things, how are you coping, Mags?"  

Maggie tips her head. "Coping?"  

"I know you're having a hell of a time getting pregnant," Audrey says, her voice turning sympathetic. She lowers her voice and whispers, "The miscarriages."  

Maggie flicks her ashes into the ashtray. "Where did you hear that?" she asks.  

"Oh, you know Dunham," she says. "Violet, I think."  

"I've had a tubal washing," Maggie tells her. "The prognosis is good."  

Audrey is obviously rooting for Maggie to get on the baby bandwagon. People seem to have so much invested in a married woman getting pregnant within the accepted timeline. It troubles them when it doesn't happen, as though some universally agreed upon contract has been tampered with or disturbed. Maggie can actually feel the unspoken championing of her success at fertility, the simultaneous panic if she were to fail. (pp. 163-164) 

This was book #42 that I have read in 2019 to date, bringing me to 175% (!) of my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I have completed my challenge for the year -- currently 18 books beyond my  goal -- and I have surpassed my reading total for 2018 by 15 books.  :)

"This Particular Happiness" by Jackie Shannon Hollis

As Gateway Women founder Jody Day has said, "the room called childlessness has many doors." Some (like me) are childless because of infertility &/or pregnancy loss.  Some women never find the right man to have babies with before their fertile years are over.

And some are what blogger Sue Fagalde Lick calls "Childless by Marriage." They marry a man who doesn't want children. Perhaps their husband initially said yes to kids, but changed his mind after the marriage. Perhaps he already has children from another relationship(s), and doesn't want any more. Perhaps the woman didn't think she wanted wanted children either, but changed her mind. In these cases, a decision must be made: whether to stay in the marriage (which is often otherwise good), or leave and try to find another partner to try to have a child with while still fertile.

"This Particular Happiness: A Childless Love Story" by Jackie Shannon Hollis is a memoir that falls into the "childless by marriage" category.  Jackie's husband Bill was clear from the beginning of their relationship that he did not want children. Jackie didn't think she wanted children either -- until the day she held her newborn niece and was suddenly overcome with a raging case of baby fever.

The book spans Jackie's life, from childhood to the present, going back & forth in time to tell her story. It's about coming to terms with childlessness. It's about relationships -- with friends and family members, as well as partners -- and about building a satisfying and fulfilling life -- even when that life doesn't go exactly the way we had hoped or planned. 

My own route/door to that room called childlessness was very different from Jackie's, but there were many things in this book I could relate to. Jackie is just a few years older than me -- we grew up in the same era, and absorbed similar attitudes about what women's lives could be like. While I never lived on a farm, I could relate to Jackie's upbringing in a small, rural community. |We are both very proud aunties -- albeit dh & I have just two nephews, versus Bill & Jackie's 40+!! nieces & nephews together (including inlaws & "greats").

I could relate to this passage (which I marked with a sticky note), in which Jackie hosts a baby shower for Bill's unmarried 20-year-old niece:

"I can't wait to hold her," Christy said when she announced the baby would be a girl. "I love babies. I've always loved babies."  

"So have I," I thought. But her strong desire to have a child overpowered any worries that might stop her. Worries about not being with the father, or what she would need to care for a baby, or how she could afford it. This stunned me. How different we were. I'd always had reasons and worries to balance my wanting. 

I could also relate to Jackie's struggles with trying to win and keep her family's approval (particularly her mother's). I did not have as many boyfriends as Jackie did in her youth ;) but I recognized something of myself in her yearning for love and acceptance. I winced when I read about how she hung around her ex-boyfriend's apartment, begging him to explain why he didn't want to be with her anymore. (I'm embarrassed to recall that when my pre-dh college boyfriend broke up with me, I went through a period when I would just show up at his apartment -- "I just happened to be in the neighbourhood..." (often he wasn't home and his bemused roommates had to deal with me) -- and lurk around the building on campus where he had classes, hoping to run into him.) 

And (potential spoiler alert) I had to put the book down for a while after reading about the death of Bill's cousin's 19-year-old daughter in a car accident -- just a few days after one of my best friends from high school lost her 28-year-old daughter in a very similar accident. Wow. That one hit a little too close to home.

As I await the arrival of our first great-nephew, this struck a chord with me (from the closing chapter):

Leanne's girls turn to her for preparing advice. They'll turn to her for mothering advice. She's the one who's been through it.  

She buys baby gifts for her soon-to-be grandchildren and helps paint and set up the babies' rooms. I help some of the time. I buy gifts too. But I'm careful my gifts aren't too many, my offers to help aren't filled with my own needs... 

Wanting something deeply leaves traces, grooves for regret to grab hold of, even when the wanting is gone. 

I loved the closing chapter, and Jackie's reflections on being childless in her 50s.  Excerpt:

Women who are grandmothers say, "It's the best. You have no idea." I don't think they mean it literally. They forget that I truly have no idea what it's like to be a grandmother, and I never will. They're caught up in their own joy. I try to stay caught up in mine. 

They say, "I get all the fun of having the grandkids and none of the drudgery." This part I know. It's the joy I've had all along...

This book was beautifully and honestly written.  It's a moving portrait of coming to terms with a childless life. Overall, it's a great read.

Five stars on Goodreads.

We will be discussing this book later this month -- with the author participating -- in Gateway Women's private online community. (GW founder Jody Day wrote the book's foreword.)

This was book #41 that I have read in 2019 to date, bringing me to 171% (!) of my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I have completed my challenge for the year -- currently 17 books beyond my  goal -- and I have surpassed my reading total for 2018 by 14 books.  :)

#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

• No baby (great-nephew) yet. (Official due date: Nov. 15th.) Dh & I are already fielding calls & texts from extended family members about him, along with requests to be kept in the loop about his arrival...!  Trying to stay calm & positive and not let my Dead Baby Mama nerves get the best of me... 
• Still feeling gutted for my high school friend over the death of her 28-year-old daughter after a car accident last week.  The funeral/celebration of life will be later this week. It's a little too far for me to attend, but I'm comforted knowing she will be surrounded by many members of her large extended family as well as friends. I will be there in spirit. 
• I am waaayyyy behind on my blog reading & commenting, but wanted to share this piece about Pregnancy & Infant Loss Awareness Month... soooooooo true!! 
• The sky is clearing and the sun is shining right now. November is sooooooo much easier to endure when the sun shines!  :)  
• I wish I could think of something more original than an odds & ends post for #MM...! (But it's better than nothing, lol.) 

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

"The Brink of Being" by Julia Bueno

I have read a lot of books & memoirs about pregnancy loss since my daughter was stillborn 21 years ago. "The Brink of Being: Talking about Miscarriage" by Julia Bueno ranks among the very best. It deserves to be widely read, not only by those who have experienced loss, but those around them, including family members & friends as well as medical professionals, human resources experts and others. 

Bueno uses the experience of her own miscarriages (including twin girls), as well as those of composite patients from her psychotherapy practice (specializing in infertility & loss issues), to explore various aspects of this often misunderstood loss.  (I tend to be slightly leery of the use of "composite" figures in books, but these were so well drawn with such compelling and believable stories that after a while I forgot they were composites.) 

"I then stepped back out into the world as a woman who had just had a miscarriage," Bueno writes in the introduction. "This was a world that would struggle to understand both the physical process that I had been through and the agonizing nature of my everlasting grief. A world that didn't want to know the details of what had happened, let alone remember them;  a world that didn't know if I was a mother or David a father or whether my two babies had been born or whether they had actually died. This world was poorly equipped to support me -- and the countless other women and couples I soon discovered who were also reeling in their own versions of such pain."

The book explores "the potentially profound relationship that can come into being with a barely conceived or even unconceived baby, which lays the foundations for profound grief when a pregnancy ends."  It examines the differences -- and similarities -- between early and later losses, and "the gruelling nature of repeated miscarriage." Bueno also addresses the impact miscarriage has on partners and other family members, and how we choose to dispose of (cremate/bury/etc.), and remember, these tiny beings (in a chapter titled "Efforts to Remember, Pressure to Forget").

In addition to personal stories, there is a blend of research and statistics, as well as examples of how different cultures deal with the subject of miscarriage and other pregnancy losses, and advances in developing medical protocols and support structures to help those affected. (Bueno is British, and most of her information is U.K.-centric, but she also includes information from the U.S., Australia and other countries.)  "Although I acknowledge how far we have come, I also want to show you how much further we can, and must, go," she writes in the introduction. 

This was a lovely, warm, compassionate book about a rather un-lovely subject.  Five stars on Goodreads.

This was book #40 that I have read in 2019 to date, bringing me to 167% (!) of my 2019 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 24 books.  I have completed my challenge for the year -- currently 16 books beyond my  goal -- and I have surpassed my reading total for 2018 by 13 books.  :)

Right now

Right now... (an occasional meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current")

Reading:  6 (!) books in October (including 4 while visiting my parents)(all but one reviewed during October on this blog):

• The Education of Brett Kavanaugh by Robin Pogrebin & Kate Kelly 
• The Baby Matrix by Laura Carroll 
• Kate Hardy by D.E. Stevenson (for my online DES fan group) 
• Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro (for my library book club -- or so I thought, lol.) 
• Normal People by Sally Rooney 
• The Brink of Being: Talking About Miscarriage by Julia Bueno (review to come) 

Current read(s):

• This Particular Happiness:  A Childless Love Story by Jackie Shannon Hollis (the next book we'll be discussing -- WITH the author! -- in the private Gateway Women community, later in November). 

Coming up:

• The Home for Unwanted Girls by Joanna Goodman (which seems to have an ALI-related plot -- to be discussed at my November library book club meeting).  

My Goodreads 2019 Reading Challenge YTD total now stands at 40 books -- 16 more than my goal of 24 (167%).  :)

(Some) recent purchases/additions to the TBR pile (that I haven't read yet):  (Ahhh, fall book release season...!  ;)  ) 

• Me by Elton John  
• Parking the Moose:  One American's Epic Quest to Uncover His Incredible Canadian Roots by Dave Hilton 
• Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow 
• No Stopping Us Now: A History of Older Women in America by Gail Collins  

Watching:  We saw one movie in-theatre in October:  "Western Stars," a sort of a companion piece to Bruce Springsteen's album of the same name. Bruce performs the entire album (with a bonus track at the end: Glen Campbell's "Rhinestone Cowboy"!), backed up by a 30-piece band/orchestra in the loft of a 100-year-old barn on his property in New Jersey. The songs are interspersed with scenes from the American West with voice-overs by Bruce explaining the stories and inspiration behind each song. Dh leaned over to me at one point and whispered, "He makes you fall in love with him all over again."  ;)  Bruce never disappoints!

On television:  

• I'm continuing to watch the final season (#5) of Poldark on PBS (slightly annoyed at the deviations from the books this season -- but I do love the characters & actors...). 
• The Battle of the Blades finale was on CBC TV last night (a uniquely Canadian reality competition, which pairs hockey players -- both male & female -- with figure skaters, skating for their favourite charities). The final result was voted on by Canadian viewers... and as I suspected, Sheldon Kennedy & Kaitlyn Weaver won over my favourites, Ekaterina Gordeeva & Bruno Gervais. I liked Sheldon & Kaitlyn too -- they had great chemistry, skated some great routines, and I loved how Sheldon was clearly game to try anything. (The guy is 50 years old!)  He's a national hero, not only because of hockey but because of how he went public with the story of how he (& others) were abused by his junior hockey coach, and became an advocate for victims of abuse & bullying (check out the barebones story on his Wikipedia profile). I just felt Ekaterina & Bruno were the clearly superior team, technically. Oh well! It was fun watching! 

Listening:  Not enough lately... I have a huge backlog of podcasts on my Google Play & Spotify apps! 

Following:  Continuing to follow the unfolding impeachment drama in the U.S.

Drinking/Eating: Leftover Halloween candy, lol.  This was the fourth Halloween that we've lived here, and we've never had any trick or treaters visit us -- although dh insists on buying some Halloween candy anyway, "just in case"... ;)  Maybe next year our little great-nephew will come??

Buying (besides books, lol):  Restocked some of my Sephora staples recently -- which include Benefit Browvo! eyebrow primer/conditioner, L'Occitane foot cream, and Fresh Sugar Advanced Therapy Lip Treatment. Expensive, but sooooo good...! 

Wearing: Back to long jeans, socks & shoes, and (around the house) long yoga pants, long-sleeved T-shirts & sweatshirts, socks and even slippers on some days when the floors are particularly cold.  (I was very glad I brought my winter jacket with me to Manitoba when I was there for Thanksgiving to visit my parents!)  

Trying:  Not to let the gloom of November envelop me this year, as it sometimes does (albeit not to the same extent it once did). 

Wanting:  Some magic answers to appear to my genealogy questions, lol.

Celebrating:  I got tickets to "Hamilton"!!

Loving: My family. So much.

Waiting impatiently: For the arrival of our first great-nephew, very soon!  Feeling: Excited -- but also very anxious (given my own reproductive history & the parallel timelines between this pregnancy & my own, 21 years ago..).... 

Also feeling:  Devastated by the precariousness of life. :(   I posted a few days ago about the 28-year-old daughter of a high school friend who was in serious condition in the hospital following a car accident.  Sadly, she took a turn for the worse, and her parents and husband made the difficult decision to remove life support. She died just before noon today. I am devastated for my friend, who has endured several other sad losses in her family over the past few years too (albeit none quite like  this). I never met her daughter, but from the photos I've seen, she looked so much like her mother. She says "Hug your kids. Tell them you love them every time you say goodbye."