10 years down the road less travelled

I'm more than a little amazed to be writing this. Today marks exactly 10 years -- TEN YEARS!! -- since I hit "publish" on my very first blog post!

When I wrote that very first post on October 31, 2007, I stated two reasons why I was starting a blog: (1) to add my voice to the (very) few I could find at that time that were articulating the views of women (& men) who remain childless/free after infertility, & (2) to participate in Mel's next book tour. (The book we were discussing then? "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood. Plus ca change..)  And, although I didn't articulate it (or perhaps even realize it) at the time, I was also looking for an outlet as I approached the emotionally charged 10-year "anniversary" of my one and only pregnancy, which ended in my daughter's stillbirth at 26 weeks that August (1998).

For the first few years here, I poured out my pent-up angst on various matters related to infertility, stillbirth, and living without children in a world gone mad for baby bumps. (I had already found relief online on various message boards and listservs, but blogging was a slightly different experience, and clearly satisfied an itch I clearly didn't know I had.)  I relived my pregnancy in a series of "10 years later" posts, "1998 memories," and then followed it up a few years later by reliving my experiences with infertility treatment 10 years later in "The Treatment Diaries."

These days, happily, there are a LOT more of us keeping each other company on this road less travelled, writing and speaking out about the ups (yes, they exist!) as well as the downs of life without children. (There was a fabulous article in The Guardian earlier this month, which called us "a movement."  Yes!!) (If you haven't read it yet, please do!)  And after 10 years, I'm still finding stuff to write about (averaging 11 posts per month -- not bad...!)  I still vent from time to time, and ponder (and re-ponder) various aspects of childless/free living and the grief of missing a child who never took a breath.

But I also write about the books I've read, places we've travelled to, being an aunt, early retirement (the pros & the cons), condo living (something we probably wouldn't have done -- at least this soon in our lives -- if we'd had kids) and just about anything else I feel like writing about. After all, my blog, my rules. ;)  And a childless life is not just about childlessness;  it's also about having a life and making the most of it, regardless of the hand we've been dealt.

As I said on my first blogoversary:

Blogging has been the release & record I sought -- and more. It has been a blessing in my life. I did not know who, if anyone, would care to read my blog, and I didn't start out with the intention of writing for an audience. The blog is, first and foremost, for me. But it's been gratifying to read your comments, to feel your support, to know you're out there struggling with the same issues and feelings too -- that you understand.

Those words are still true today.

I'm pondering a few more posts on the blogoversary/10 years later theme...  watch for them to come over the next few days/weeks.

For now, I'm stealing a question from Lori Lavender Luz :)  :  

What were you doing 10 years ago? 

Thank you all for reading/listening, commenting and just being here. I know there are a few of you who have been here since or very near the beginning!  But I do want to give special thanks to Mel for her encouragement & support, both at the very start & over the 10 years since then, and to Pamela for being my fellow traveller and role model for this entire journey to date. ;)  :)    

(Past blogoversary posts can be found here.)

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Blogging stats, 10 years later:  

Number of years blogging: 10 (!!) 
Published posts (including this one): 1,282 
Average # of posts per year: 128
Average # of posts per month: 11
Published comments: more than 8,800+
Page views (tracked since May 2010):  almost 626,000    
Followers (on Blogger):  146 

#MicroblogMondays: "The Misery Filter"

(This isn't quite a "micro" blog post, but it's what I've got for today, so bear with me... ;)  )

I don't always agree with New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, but his most recent Sunday column was fascinating food for thought. In "The Misery Filter," he argues that:

...Americans tend to “filter for misery” in the same way we filter for political agreement in our increasingly self-segregated social worlds... especially for chronic miseries that don’t fit an easy crisis-resolution arc. We tend to be aware of other people’s suffering when it first descends or when they bottom out — with a grim diagnosis, a sudden realization of addiction, a disastrous public episode. But otherwise a curtain tends to fall, because there isn’t a way to integrate private struggle into the realm of health and normalcy.

I, of course, tend to observe "misery" -- my own and others -- through my own filters of pregnancy loss, infertility & involuntary childlessness -- different types of trauma than addiction or disease, etc. -- but all under the umbrella of trauma (or "misery"), for sure.

Douthat goes on to observe (emphasis mine):

But a strong filter also creates real problems, because it effectively lies about reality to both the healthy and the sick. It lies to the healthy about the likelihood that they will one day suffer, hiding the fact that even in modernity the Book of Ecclesiastes still applies. It lies to the sick about how alone they really are, because when they were healthy that seemed like perfect normalcy, so they must now be outliers, failures, freaks. 

And this deception is amplified now that so much social interaction takes place between disembodied avatars and curated selves, in a realm of Instagrammed hyper-positivity that makes suffering even more isolating than it is in the real world.

I agree that an emphasis on relentless optimism and the carefully curated images we see on social media contribute to the shock -- & shame -- that we feel when something goes wrong in our lives (as it inevitably does, at some point). ("Bright-Sided" by Barbara Ehrenreich --reviewed here -- is an excellent book on this subject.)

Douthat notes how so many young people today are struggling when confronted with crisis or suffering. (Witness the explosion of "safe rooms" and the like on college campuses, and the huge surge in stressed-out students seeking mental health counselling.)  "In America we have education for success, but no education for suffering,"  he says.

"Education for suffering"??  That, he says, is a question for a different column. He closes by saying:

Here I’ll just stress its necessity: Because what cannot be cured must be endured, and how to endure is, even now, the hardest challenge every one of us will face.

I will watch for Douthat's further thoughts with interest. In the meantime, I'll offer up a few thoughts of my own:

On the one hand, I don't know if any amount of education or preparation will fully equip us to cope with crisis/tragedy/misery (etc.) when it hits. I knew that all was not well with my baby, almost from the moment I realized I was pregnant.  That didn't make it any easier when my worst fears were realized and I was confronted with a silent heartbeat at my six-month prenatal checkup.

On the other hand, I think there are things we can do to help ourselves cope, when bad things happen. Sheryl Sandberg, in her book "Option B" (which I read & reviewed earlier this year), believes that resilience is a life skill we can all learn that will sustain us when grief, trauma, crisis ("misery," if you like) enters our life -- as it surely will at some point -- and outlines things we can all do to build this skill.

My own "education for suffering" (post-loss) included devouring all the information I could find on pregnancy loss, stillbirth, death & grief (and, later, infertility treatment, and later still, living without children). It included reaching out to others who were going through similar situations, both online & in real life -- giving as well as receiving support & sympathy.  And (perhaps most difficult), it included learning to be honest with myself, to speak out to those around me about my experiences and feelings and about what kind of support I needed from them.  (I'm still learning on that front...!). 

Beyond building resilience, I think we need to cultivate empathy, in our personal lives, in our families and in the culture at large.  It's something that I think is sadly lacking (and needed more than ever) these days. How do we do that? I think we can start by volunteering our time to help others, by learning to become better listeners, by at least considering new experiences and ideas that might be different from our own -- stepping outside of our comfort zones, at least once in a while. (I would credit my lifelong love of reading -- gaining insight into other lives, times, cultures -- as playing an important role in developing whatever empathy I possess as an adult.)  Doing at least some of these things might help us respond to others in a more compassionate way, and help them feel more valued and less alone.

Grief, sadness, "misery," will come to all of us, eventually.  The sooner we realize this and the more willing and able we are to support others who are in pain, the better equipped we will be to cope and to ask for the support we need when we need it.

Read the original column (the comments are also interesting)and tell me -- what do you think?  What do you think an "education for suffering" would look like? 

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

"It is ours"

A Facebook find. :) 

#MicroblogMondays: Odds & ends

• (Odds & ends:  my go-to format/catch-all subject when I can't think of a single coherent subject to write about, lol.)(Which almost always turns out to be more material than I thought I had floating around in my brain...)  
• It's late October, but the weather has still been mild enough that the air conditioning has still been kicking in periodically and I could wear my capris, if I wanted to. I made the switch to long jeans during a cool spell a few weeks ago, but I did wear sandals & shirtsleeves yesterday afternoon. I'm not complaining -- and the weather is supposed to start getting cooler & rainier over the next few days -- but it does seem weird.  (They are also predicting a snowier-than-usual winter -- so I suppose I should just shut up & enjoy this while it lasts...!)   
• Dh was asking if we should buy any Halloween chocolate when we go grocery shopping later today, in the (unlikely) event we get any trick or treaters knocking on our condo unit door. (It took me a minute to realize that Halloween is just a little over a week away -- we are so removed from that now.) Last year, we wound up eating the chocolate we'd bought ourselves. I suppose there are worse things to endure... ;) 
• I booked our plane tickets to spend Christmas with my family out west last week. One more thing off my to-do list, and it's a relief not to have that hanging over my head. (Now I just have to keep my fingers crossed that that "snowier-than-usual" winter weather doesn't affect our flights...!) 
• I always go through an enormous amount of angst when trying to decide which dates/flights/times will be the best for all concerned... if we go all that way, I want to make the trip long enough to be worthwhile -- but I don't want to stay too long because I know it does wear on my aging parents, much as they enjoy having us all around. I also have to take my sister's work/vacation schedule into consideration, as she has been gradually taking over the airport pickup/dropff duties from my dad, to spare him a trip into & out of the city.  Dh is no help whatsoever -- he says whatever I decide will be fine. (Of course, I will hear about it, should it NOT be fine for some reason...!)  
• Speaking of Christmas -- my sister informed me that she, my mother & Parents' Neighbours' Daughter had a discussion about Christmas over the (Canadian) Thanksgiving long weekend. Specifically, the need to cut back on the presents front -- although we haven't yet agreed on just how that's going to work/where the cutting back is going to take place. The Little Princesses/Parents' Neighbours' Granddaughters will still be completely spoiled, of course ;)  (and my sister actually used the "Christmas is for kids" line on me.... grrrrr....).  Right now, everybody (still) buys presents for everybody (and we all also have stockings).  I do realize that's become a bit of a financial & logistical strain for both my parents (on a limited income, in a place where the shopping is limited ( = trips to the larger town 20 miles down the road, or the city, 45-60 minutes away), and my mother doesn't get out & around as easily as she used to), and also for PND & her husband, who have two small children, a mortgage, daycare costs, etc.  Still, it makes me sad.  Another way in which my world seems to be shrinking/diminishing as I get older. 
• I figured out who unfriended me on Facebook a while back: a cousin that I haven't seen in almost 40 years, but whom I adored as a kid.  This person actually went missing from my friend list once before & I sent a new request, which was accepted (again). I will do that if I think the unfriending might have been done in error. I know that older people sometimes don't know exactly what button they're clicking on Facebook. (I've also heard a few people blame Facebook itself for unfriending people on their list -- although I wonder if that's just a convenient excuse...!). But twice? Hey, I can take a hint, although it still makes me sad. :(  

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

No dress rehearsal (thanks, Gord)

Just yesterday afternoon, dh & I were driving and "Bobcaygeon" by The Tragically Hip came on the radio. I remarked to dh how much I loved the line:  "It was in Bobcaygeon/I saw the constellations/Reveal themselves one star at a time."  Just a lovely image -- plus, you've gotta give him (lead singer & songwriter Gord Downie) credit for finding a rhyme for Bobcaygeon, right?

And then I woke up this morning, and he was gone. Dead at the way-too-young age of 53.

As I wrote last year just before the Hip's final concert -- and as pretty much any Canadian of a certain age could tell you -- the Tragically Hip are Canadian icons, and Gord Downie the closest thing we have to a poet laureate.  When the band announced last spring (2016) that he had been diagnosed with incurable brain cancer, it was huge news.  The entire country basically shut down to watch the Hip's nationally televised final concert in their hometown of Kingston, Ontario, in August 2016. It was one of those rare "where were you when..." kind of events where everyone came together, united in love and pride and grief, utterly transfixed. 

Coming on the heels of the deaths of way too many other musicians I've loved lately -- most recently, Tom Petty and Kenny Shields -- and just days after we attended the memorial service for our friend & hairdresser (who also died in her 50s from cancer), I am feeling sad and tired tonight. Reflecting on how much cancer sucks, how short and fleeting and precious life is.

As everyone has been saying, as his family said in their statement, "We all knew this day was coming."  But that doesn't make it any easier when the time comes to say goodbye.  The news channels have been covering the story almost exclusively; radio stations are playing nothing but Hip music;  my social media feeds have been flooded with Hip videos and photos and expressions of grief.  Our prime minister, a Hip fan and friend of Gord's, who attended the Hip's final concert, gave a live statement in the halls of Parliament this morning, choking up and wiping tears.

A friend posted the image above on Facebook today -- a line from a well-known Hip song, "Ahead by a Century." 

Sometimes it seems like time is just zooming by relentlessly. How the heck did I get to be 56 years old?? Married 32 years?  Retired two years already, after working for almost 30? 

Next year will be 20 years -- 20 years!! -- since Katie's stillbirth.  Our nephews -- just little boys when we lost her -- are now grown up and getting married and starting families of their own.

My parents have seemed older and a little slower and more frail the last few times I've visited.  I know I am lucky to still have them. I have been attending far too many funerals for the parents of my peers lately. 

I think about all the things on my to-do list -- the unread books sitting on my shelves, the places I want to travel to, the things I want to see and do. The friends I haven't seen in way too long. Realistically, my life is already more than halfway over. Time to start crossing some of those things off those lists.

What am I waiting for?

"No dress rehearsal/This is our life." 

A lesson for all of us.

Free trade increases infertility -- who knew??

The headline from the Washington Post that popped up on my cellphone tonight stopped me in my tracks: 

"Internal White House documents allege manufacturing decline increases abortions, infertility, and spousal abuse"

I mean, seriously??!!??  Can someone explain the link to me??

The opening paragraphs of the story read:

White House officials working on trade policy were alarmed last month when a top adviser to President Trump circulated a two-page document that alleged a weakened manufacturing sector leads to an increase in abortion, spousal abuse, divorce and infertility, two people familiar with the matter said. 

The documents, which were obtained by The Washington Post... were presented without any data or information to back up the assertions... 

(Are we surprised?) 

So let me get this straight -- Brian Mulroney, George H.W. Bush and Carlos Salinas (the leaders of Canada, the United States and Mexico who signed the original deal in December 1992) are to blame for my lack of children (and possibly yours as well)? Not my bicornuate uterus, wonky hormones, aging ovaries or dh's low sperm count, among other known and unknown factors?

Gee, I wish I'd known this years ago... it would have saved me a lot of angst...

#MicroblogMondays: Tis the season (already??!)

Canadian Thanksgiving wasn't even over yet before Christmas stuff started taking over the stores. Generally, I think the Christmas hoopla could wait until after Remembrance Day, or at least Halloween... but there's one Christmas item I do like to start at least thinking about well in advance: my annual Christmas card.

The stores are already well stocked with a variety of cards, but nothing I've seen has grabbed me so far.  (For many years, I tried to find a card with a Katie-related theme, although they have been harder to find the last few years.)  Quite often, I see something right away that grabs me and says "This one! Buy me!"  But not this year;  at least, not so far.

On the other hand, I was browsing online and saw several photo card designs that I liked -- and one site had an offer for 60% off (which ends tomorrow) -- and I had a nice photo of dh & me in mind that I could use.

I hesitated. I've generally only done photo cards once every five years or so, and I already did one last year (using the photo of me & dh all dressed up at Older Nephew's wedding). I'll likely do another photo card next year with a photo from Younger Nephew's wedding (if I can get a good one of us together).  Would three years in a row of photo cards of us -- a middle-aged couple, no adorable children in the picture -- seem a little self-indulgent, even to the people who (supposedly??) love us?

Then I thought -- why the heck not?  (Dh concurred.)  I have friends who send me a photo card of their kids (or photos of their kids tucked inside their card) every year, without fail. (Unlike some of my childless/bereaved mom friends, I don't mind getting photo cards... although I do wish sometimes I could see a photo of the entire family, and not just the kids. I have friends I haven't seen in 30 years -- they don't do social media & if they send me a photo, it's only ever of their kids.) 

I ordered the photo cards. They'll be here by Halloween. I can cross that item off my holiday to-do list, and I should be able to get them into the mail in plenty of time for Christmas. Yay me. ;)

What do you think about getting photo cards of adults &/or pets (I've had some of those from my childless/free friends too :)  ), but not kids? 

I've tagged past posts I've written about Christmas cards with the label "Christmas card."  :)  

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