Quizzical mama

it takes death for there to be birth

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 16:31:00 +0000

One of the things I really appreciated about Matthew Sanford's memoir Waking is his ideas about death as a continuous part of life. So I was really pleased to see him quote himself on this the other day in his Tumblr blog, musing about the end of the world fantasies that flourished around 12/12/12 and now again leading up to 12/21/12:

The fantasies about the end of the world are so prevalent throughout human history that they should be taken seriously. Not their literal truth, but as expressions of our consciousness. Among other things, awareness of the “end,” (of our death) motivates individuals, civilizations and religious traditions alike. It often helps us appreciate how precious life is or that there is something better waiting for us in the “next life.” But why are these fantasies usually so cataclysmic? Why are they usually fantasies of physical dying?

I am reminded of a line from my book Waking: A Memoir of Trauma and Transcendence, “There are many death short of physical dying….How about the day you realized that you were not going to be an astronaut or the Queen of Sheba?….the loss of innocence is a most serious death and yet necessary for the onset of maturity.”

I plan on having a death this month. I have decided to take myself more seriously. This means all sorts of things, for example, resting enough, eating better, and saying no when I need to. My strategy is not to assert my will onto my life and thus onto the world. Rather, my plan is to let DIE the voice in my head that does NOT take seriously my needs.

the strength of womanhood

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 03:09:00 +0000

Strength in surrendering

All I could do this past weekend was go for a walk in our serene Arb, communing with the trees and prairie grass. Then I got to a crossroads and I paused. I wanted to walk on, but I wasn't sure I had the time for it. A woman who'd been walking in front of me had sat down on a log and was overlooking the view, I thought, and I didn't want her to think I had paused just to follow her next move. So I explained. "I don't know which way I should go." I can't recall the order of our sharing past that, but it sort of went like this (condensed version; I talk fast, so a lot more went into it):

She: "I just want to take the path you don't take."
Me: "I'm just trying to figure out if I have the time for the longer route. I'd really like to take the longer route."
She: "I just want to be here in the Arb. I'm supposed to meet some friends at the college for a concert and it's supposed to be fun, but I just want to be here."
Me: "... I can't decide. I am coming undone."
She: "So am I!!!!"

So then I gave her a big hug.

And then we talked.

I shared some of the hooks that I'm trying to hold onto these days. Like how I last week had that feeling, image, realization; that when things come undone and the pieces of our life fall apart, they will eventually reconfigure somehow — they will have to land somewhere — and something truly beautiful can come out of that.

And we talked about finding peace amongst the trees and their sounds, communing with them, and seeing the full ripe moon those past recent days; feeling a sense of connection.

And I shared this image from the Wise Child, a book I love about the strength of womanhood and that I read and reflected over with my own personal group of strong women; my mama book club — a circle of women, displaying the strength of womanhood through what we all collectively not just endure, but survive, live, grieve, and celebrate together.

The image I shared with the woman in the Arb is about the "wise child:" a young girl, scared of crossing a bridge. And then she has this realization:

Only the other night ... I had felt part of everything, part of animal and bird, tree and stone. If I was part of everything, then I was also part of bridge and stream, of the sharp rocks beneath the water and the tumbling, rushing waters. Even if i fell; into waters. and even if I was swallowed up by them, I would still be a part of it all. In such a world, such a universe, nothing terrible could happen to me.

Suppose, I asked myself, just suppose that I walked across that bridge as if I was part of it and part of the water, that I decided that whatever happened as I did so, it would be all right, what then?

And the woman nodded. And she talked about the moon again. How it always used to make her think of her kids, who're now grown, and she would miss them. But lately seeing the moon would make her feel at home with them.

And we didn't share much of any personal details. But there was just this shared bond, this connection, this strength. And if I said the words or she said the words, it didn't really matter. It was the strength of womanhood, of sisterhood that shun through. It was the feeling of tradition. We have done this; we can do this. We have to do this.

mucking around in the mud, opening my heart to the sun

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 21:13:00 +0000

My yoga teacher said something beautiful the other day about the symbolism of the lotus flower in yogic tradition. — How the lotus flower grows from the bottom of muddy, cloudy waters, rising above the surface and opening itself to the sun. Suggesting how we too can open our hearts to lightness and brightness, even when we feel ourselves stuck, mucking around in the mud, be it our everyday mundane lives or grief-stricken anguish.

This reminded me of how another yoga teacher used to describe me as a lotus flower with her petals always wide open. And how sometimes I might try to protect my heart a little by folding my petals inwards a bit when encountering unkindness or aggression.

For me, this closing in without shutting off is a real challenge; it's like I can never tell before it's too late that this would be a good time for closing in a little.

This fall, I will make more of an effort to follow the lotus flower's balanced modeling of exuberant opening up and graceful closing in.

image: wiki

when sentimentality rules

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 15 Oct 2012 19:22:00 +0000

Our house is a sailboat and the fuck is my life but my life is also a wildly exciting roller coaster ride. And I have been finding more calm lately by simply observing and accepting, returning not only to my yoga mat but also to my former dabblings in Buddhism. I'll write more about that later. The bit I wanted to share today is my newfound lesson that sometimes sentimentality rules.

So I have planned this crazy packed Europe tour for my book, leaving this Friday and returning on the 31st in the afternoon. There is no coincidence in my coming back on Halloween. I feel immensely sad and bad about leaving my four-year-old for so long, even if she'll be in the highly competent care of her loving papa. It's my second long trip overseas this fall and on the previous one I missed first day of preschool. I simply can't miss Halloween.

So I've made these really busy stressful plans, cramming as much as possible into those ten days I'm in Europe before catching a flight out of Amsterdam early in the morning of Halloween to be back, well, for Halloween.

And though it may sound like I've gone entirely mushy, the fact of the matter is that it works.

The concept of time is still way abstract to Lilly. When I asked her if it'd be okay that I'd be gone again overseas to read from my book she paused, then said yes. A while after she added, "but don't leave right now." So I didn't.

We've marked the days on the calendar for when I leave and when I get back. She is wildly excited about Halloween. She tried on her costume this past weekend, and first thing she talked about in bed this morning was about how much fun it will be on Halloween! I added, "yes! And I'll be back for it that day!"

So not only do I repeatedly get to connect something so wonderful as Halloween to my return, I sort of get to sidestep the entire issue of how long I'll be gone. Lilly is more focused on the coming of Halloween than the coming of my leaving. A win-win for both.

But the real lesson that sentimentality is not something to simply brush off, I got from a woman whose father had recently and unexpectedly passed away, a woman who is also the mother of a grown boy with both physical and developmental disabilities. A woman who knows a thing or two about what really matters in our daily life and what's worth holding on to. I ran into her downtown on a recent morning I felt particularly raw and skinless. In chopped sentences I briefly ran my plans by her, sheepishly adding that I knew my itinerary was crazy, but that I wanted to return for Halloween out of sentimental reasons.

"Oh no," she broke me off; "sentimentality rules." "Sometimes sentimentality is the only thing to run your life by."

I go by that.

the f*ck is my life

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:13:00 +0000

This is no f*ck

I went to a friend's mother blessing yesterday and it was good. It was good, because it was real. It was good because it wasn't all about showering her with gifts and well-wishes, though we gave her those too. It was good because we also shared our losses and pains and our sorrows and worries, even as we celebrated the arrival of new life and the strength of motherhood. As a friend of mine pointed out, the fact that we can so genuinely share our times of heartache makes the celebration of our times of joy all the more heartfelt.

Pain and love always coexist, another friend commented.

I take great comfort in my circle of mama friends; we are the rock mamas.

I need this kind of communal comfort these days. Feeling the ground shifting beneath me, I find comfort in coming together to share pain — and joy. Just life.

There is a section in Cheryl Strayed's bestselling collection of advice columns originally published at the Rumpus Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Dear Sugar that really resonated with me. It's a column she wrote in response to a reader's query that simply asked "WTF, WTF, WTF?" Cheryl responds by sharing one of her own immensely fucked-up childhood experiences of her father's father having her jack him off when she was three, four, and five.

As founder of the Dear Sugar column Steve Almond writes commenting on this particular column, Cheryl's point with this wasn't to shock. It was to convey the message that inexplicable sorrow awaits all of us. Life isn't some narcissistic game you play. And it all matters — every sin, every regret, every affliction. They shape our lives, even as we have a choice in how we deal with that.

"Ask better questions, sweet pea," Cheryl ends her answer to the question "WTF?" — "The fuck is your life. Answer it."

We all can have a lot of fuck in our lives at times.

And great fuck can have great meaning.

our house is a sailboat

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 15:51:00 +0000

This time right now, these weeks, these months, is probably the biggest and most significant time in the lives of our little family. Leighton and I both got a lot going on, both professionally and personally. Some days it's like I can barely hold on, there are so many things and they are all moving so fast.

It's like time stood still just long enough for us to open up to bliss and savor before we were thrown on board on this whirlwind thing; no, *these* whirlwind things. "Weary legged," a friend of mine said the other day over coffee, commenting on how she personally felt this fall after an intense stretch of professional change.

I've always thought of our house as my sanctuary, but what happens when there's a whirlwind of change going on at home too?

I saw my therapist again earlier this week after more than three months off, savoring said bliss. She encouraged me to think of where home is in all of this. She left me with that question, but at a later point in the conversation she started talking about sailboats. I can't remember what the context was, but then it struck me: some people live on boats! Some people live on boats with sails!

Now, I'm not much of a sailor, but from my experience, when the sailboat moves really fast, it doesn't necessarily feel like you need to hold on so much as it feels like you need to align yourself with the winds and the waves to sail smoothly.

I lived on a houseboat one summer in Seattle while still in grad school, housesitting for a professor. I remember walking to campus after the weekend, feeling the solidness of the ground strange in its fixedness.

Sailing fast doesn't necessarily leave a person weary legged; sometimes it's the most beautiful and serene thing to do, even as it invigorates; even as it takes you far away.

In the days and weeks ahead to come, I'm going to approach life more with this mindset: where I not so much grasp for something to hold onto, but tune into the waves and the winds that will help glide me forward.

i've caused my sweet 4-year-old to lose her cool

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 18:40:00 +0000

First day of school

We had a sunny summer of bliss, Lilly and I, me taking time off from work to regain some perspective, and she growing ever more confident and amazingly competent at the pool and at the beach. There was no hurry. There was only savoring.

Then comes fall. "Fall of excitement, here I come!" I posted on Facebook while packing up for my first trip abroad to promote my book. Preschool resumed while I was gone; missing first day of that is in itself a faux pas.

I've never missed any of her big milestones. In fact, I've only been gone from her a single night before on two different occasions and that was both three years ago. Then towards the end of this summer, Leighton and I had our first couple's only vacation, leaving her with grandparents she doesn't see that often for three whole nights.

And then I go over seas for ten days. In turn she starts extended days in preschool so Leighton can get his work done.

Seeing her again at the airport last Tuesday was pure bliss. She was so happy to see me! So excited! And the feeling was completely mutual.

But then came the nights with my exasperation at her crawling all over my body. And a house full of stress with both Leighton and I having more than our share on our plate this fall. As they say; when it rains, it pours.

It's not an exaggeration to say we've been feeling frayed. And there's been tension at the house. It's like we all crave more comforting and support from the other than the other is able to offer. And Lilly is still in extended day at school three days a week. We can't afford the money, but we also can't afford not getting that time to work; if we do, we will surely lose our cool completely.

And sweet little Lilly? She has already lost her cool. If not completely, then more so than we've ever seen before. Sure, her acting out is making it even more challenging to parent her, but more than anything, it just breaks my heart to see the consequence of how she must feel. Abandonment. Lack of attention. Adjusting to new kids at school, some of whom are really struggling; I see them crying in distraught at drop off. Emotionally overwhelmed parents. Tension. Not safety.

She loves school and makes a fit over the fact that she can't be there every day till closing hour, including on the weekend. But she's acting out there too. When I picked her up from school the day after I got home, she told me her teacher had taken her hands and held her because she wasn't being "good;" she wasn't calmly doing her work. She was jumping.

It's like there's all this emotional unrest inside of her manifesting in her physical behavior and it's enough to punch me in my gut. We made a vow, Leighton and I, this weekend to both resume therapy and I will return to my yoga mat and we are going to work really hard to be more there for her in an attentive, grounded, and emotionally stable manner.

I lost my balance. I guess I always knew I had to lose it before I would feel more compelled to get myself back into it.

independence: you crave it, and then you don't

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 10:29:00 +0000

In many ways, this has been our big summer of independence for us. Sure, I've been more with Lilly than I was this spring. What with my healing journey and taking time off from work to be with her. Time we've spent mostly at the pool or at the beach. In the glorious sun and heat we've been blessed with this year.

But she turned four this summer in June. And she had her very first sleepover at a friend's house while Leighton and I celebrated our five year wedding anniversary in July, going out on our very first full date night out ever, all previous "date nights" having been arranged early in the evening with her at a play date, meaning we'd pick her up and put her to bed after our date (read: anticlimactic). And she hosted a sleepover for that same friend later on. And she spent three nights with grandpa and grandma while Leighton and I got our very first couple's only vacation, on which we had a blast, by the way.

So she turned 4. And she wanted goggles for her birthday. It was a Friday. It was an overcast weekend. The sun returned that Monday, so we resumed our afternoons at the pool: first thing there, she dove under water. She'd been wanting to do that for so long! Her jumping grew steadily more adventuresome. Soon she was jumping far out, swimming 8 feet and more doggy style, scooping up pool water with her arms as if it were ice cream, to get back to the edge of the pool.

By August, she joined the big kids at the diving board. Jumping and jumping, oh so gleefully, her mama (ME!) cheering her on with the true and amazed and triumphant joy and glee of someone high on stunned pride.

Then came the swimming across the pool diagonally at its 50 feet. Seriously! After no swimming lessons whatsoever.

And then there was me and then Leighton leaving her alone at home at the house a few times for short whiles upon her insistence as we did a few quick errands post-pool and in prep-dinner mode, her watching a DVD, which she gets to do when she has "behaved well" that day (we don't have TV but have typically let her watch a (pedagogical, mind you) kids DVD a day post nap if she "did well" that day and napped. Well, now that I basically said "let's be done with nap and have fun at the pool instead," it's turned into "you get a DVD while I make dinner" sort of thing, "if you 'behaved well' today"). And then there is also how intense the constant self-chronicling can be and how at the end of the day you just really need a break from it all. And then there are those days where you reach for the DVD in moments of dire parenting emergency; when you really need a break from the kid who can't be blamed for needing a break herself or something else big and crucial came up.

And there's more. The explosion in her writing. In her language. In her climbing up and down all those crazy scary things for the big kids at the playground, in fact falling down one time the other day on her way down, when she was already almost all the way down and so had become lazily absentminded, thinking herself already almost down on the ground, "so why focus." And so when she was no more concentrating, she fell and hurt herself.

And then the trooper that she was thereafter. crying in my lap before leaving me for a quiet corner in the park to finish off her crying there (which really, truly, extremely so much hurt and ached my heart. I just so wanted to hold and comfort her). But then there she is again: yet again acting like a big girl, as if big girls have to just take care of their wounds and sorrows all by themselves, which really they don't, and nor do big mamas, so why is this a new thing of hers? It just aches me.

But then the sentiment seems true, like she just wants to be done with it so she can move on; because there she goes, back onto the horse again. Climbing and jumping and diving, done with her cry and fear.

So big. So huge!

And yet every day, throughout the day, she tells me (in Norwegian still, thankfully): "I need you, mama." — "I need you too," I reply. Because it is true. Truly and powerfully viscerally so. At one point or another she'll typically join Leighton and I in our bed at night and at one point or another it will typically be too much for either him or me. Usually he'll leave before I have the chance. Last night for the first time, I left too, after him. The climbing-on-top-of-my-body-to-apparantly-get-back-into-it just got way too exasperating. So Leighton and I spent the chunk of the night in her bed the two of us with her in ours by herself. How interesting.

Then there are those nights where she's safe and sound asleep in her bed and I go to bed before Leighton and yet I can't bear the thought of her alone in her room, him out there in the living room and me alone here in our bedroom, so I'll go in to her and lie next to her.

And I'm wondering if maybe it won't rather be me and not her that will be the one who'll be having the hardest time this next plus week or so while I'm in Norway to do all my sex and disability research; feminist porn book promotion; film festival presentations and so forth — if maybe she might just be so excited to be back in school; to have her papa all to herself at night; to have her grandma come for a visit -- that I will just be an afterthought? Something she'll occasionally reach for at night, but then there's also papa's body; a body she'll also gladly attempt to crowd and apparently also try to enter, from what I gather from Leighton's reports.

I know. A mama is not replaceable. But a mama is also not the be-all and end-all. And nor should she be. I don't want me to be that.

And yet it's hard when I feel I'm not. When I used to be the world to her. And she in so many most ways still is to me.

Crazy feeling. That's motherhood in a nutshell to me. Crazy feeling with love and yearning to be with her, and yearning to be and do just me.

link-love: gender boxes, sexual fluidity, and extreme breastfeeding

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 17:35:00 +0000

These are excerpts from some posts worth reading if you haven't already:

Gender boxes limit all kids by Margot Magowan at Reel Girls
A thoughtful post with helpful, practical advice for parents:

I do have some tactics to suggest for parents to deal with sexism/ gender-pressure, but before I even go into that, it’s really important not to let this issue devolve into: who has it worse, girls or boys? When we create rigid gender boxes for our kids, everyone loses out. Everyone. This is about raising healthy, happy, children, helping their brains grow so that they can reach their potential. [...]

Here’s the thing: Most kids like to play with dolls, but we label them “dolls” or “action figures.” Most kids enjoy pushing objects on wheels, but we sell them either trucks or babystrollers. As I wrote, most kids would have fun painting their nails if they thought it was OK to do so. Most kids, while playing outside will pick up sticks and occasionally poke each other with them. Most parents respond to that same act with “Boys will be boys” or “Sweetie, stop that! You’ll hurt yourself and rip your dress.” [...]

Here are some ways, daily, that I decode gender talk, because though an email won’t work, saying the right thing at the right time sometimes does. Here are three main groups parents need to speak up to [teachers, doctors, and other kids], even if it’s awkward, even if you feel like a bitch. [...]

It’s hard. It’s awkward because we can’t send an email like “GET A CLUE. BE OPEN. BE KIND.” And the fucked up thing is, people are often trying to “be kind” when they push stereotypes on kids. Except when they’re not…

Children's Clothes and Gender: What's Our Role? at Balancing Jane
And this one broadens the issue of boxes and labeling:

How often do we push our children to label themselves (or even do the labeling for them) because it makes it easier to function? After all, we label things so that we can make sense of our world. Those labels exist for a functional reason. It's only when they become mired in restrictive stereotype and prejudgment that they become a problem. But how many labels have I already put on my child? How many times will I push her to choose a path before she's ready?

And how can we differentiate between labeling and providing opportunities? If I call my child "active" and decide to enroll her in toddler tumbling, am I giving her the chance to explore who she is or am I pushing her to be someone in particular? If I decide my child is "smart" and then ensure that I get her into the most academically challenging environment, am I opening doors or deciding her future path?

Talking Sexual Fluidity with My Preschooler by Quizzical mama (aka Anne G. Sabo aka me) at Love, Sex, and Family
I was invited to crosspost this at The Buzz: Good Vibrations Online Magazine and I think it's worth sharing it here too if you haven't already seen it.

The beautiful thing about talking sexual fluidity with a four-year-old is that she totally gets it. She gets that we can look female and feel male inside. She gets that the object of each person's affection can manifest immensely differently for that one person. She's not confused by our friends who are currently same-sex partnered while previously opposite-sex partnered. She's unfazed by the prospect of a woman gradually changing to look more like a man and vice versa.

It's not like I'd be doing my daughter a disservice by not teaching her that the "new" normal is that there is no "normal;" she already gets this. Children already get sexual fluidity. Ignoring or pretending there is no such fluidity would constitute a disservice; closing their minds and hearts off to that wonderful plurality of gender identity and sexual orientation that exist among us.

Meet Your Local Extreme Breastfeeder by blue milk at Feministe
This post tackles a lot of our culture's unease about breastfeeding and stereotypes about breastfeeders:

I hear you have a reality TV show coming to your screens in the US about ‘extreme breastfeeders’ and I thought you might like to know one of those weirdos for yourself. Here I am. Before I had children I thought breastfeeding for twelve months was pushing it. Six months is fine, but if they can eat solids then why breastfeed any further? With the first child I really surprised myself and I breastfed her for just under two years. Now I am breastfeeding a three and a half year old who is tall enough to look like a five year old. We could definitely do an impression of that notorious TIME magazine cover. He’s partial to a bit of standing-up breastfeeding, too. ‘This me’ would totally have horrified ‘old me’. Public breastfeeding? Wasn’t keen on that. Breastfeeding toddlers? Really wasn’t keen on that.

The thing I didn’t realise back then when I was repulsed by the idea of breastfeeding a child ‘old enough to ask for it’ is that babies ‘ask for it’ right from birth and they never stop asking for it, their methods just get increasingly sophisticated. And that sophistication, like all other milestones your baby achieves, makes a parent beam with pleasure. If you found yourself compelled to respond to their earlier requests you will quite likely feel compelled by their later requests. [...]

Motherhood is a very challenging identity for many of us. There’s a huge fear of losing yourself, and your boundaries, and your sex appeal, and your focus and direction, and control over your body when you transform into a mother. Breastfeeding can push all of those buttons. We live in a very misogynist culture. The worst trolling on my blog has always been about calling me a cow and trying to humiliate me about breastfeeding. Clearly, the concept that we can be lactating animals scares the shit out of some of us.

Photo credit: What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?

wild: staring down fear and aloneness

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 15:10:00 +0000

I picked up Cheryl Strayed's Wild because I so loved Lidia Yuknavitch's The Chronology of Water featuring one woman's journey from loss and hurt to empowerment and peace through the rugged path of alcohol, drugs, and a lot of sex. The marketing of Wild made it sound like the two women had some things in common (and in fact they belong to the same writers' group). And they do. All of us on healing journeys do. But this one was different. Like with The Chronology of Water I got hooked but not quite as viscerally. The waters didn't run as deep nor wild in Wild I thought whereas reading The Chronology of Water was an immensely cleansing experience.

Yet I couldn't put Wild down and I found it both greatly entertaining while also rather lovely and even poetic at times. Subtitled From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail it features memories from Strayed's childhood and recounts how her own first marriage as well as her family fell apart when her mother died from cancer when Strayed was only twenty-two. On the trail four years later, she is forced to come to terms with the aloneness and fear she'd sought to numb in heroine and sexual affairs. Tapping into her own strength, and detecting her connectedness with it all, she comes out on a quite beautiful note.

Some of the lines that struck me about fear and aloneness:

"Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was."

"I wasn't out here to keep myself from having to say I am not afraid. I'd come, I reazlied, to stare that fear down, to stare everything down, really — all that I'd done to myself and all that had been done to me."

"Maybe I was more alone than anyone in the whole wide world.
Maybe that was okay."

"but I'd forever be alone. And why? What did being alone do? I'm not afraid, I said, calling up my old mantra to calm my mind. But it didn't feel the same as it usually did to say it. Perhaps because that wasn't entirely true anymore.
Perhaps by now I'd come far enough that I had the guts to be afraid."

And about the father who abused her mother until she finally left him for good:

"Once, in the midst of one of [my father's] tirades, he threatened to throw my mother and her children naked onto the street, as if we weren't his children too. We lived in Minnesota then. It was winter when he made the threat. I was at an age when everything was literal. It seemed precisely like a thing that he would do."

[Spoken to Cheryl by an astrologer about Cheryl's father] "He was deeply wounded. He was damaged. His damage has infected his life and it infected you. ... That's what fathers do if they don't heal their wounds. They wound their children in the same place. ... The father's job is to teach his children how to be warriors, to give them the confidence to get on the horse and ride into battle when it's necessary to do so. If you don't get that from your father, you have to teach yourself."

While Strayed's narrative is often powerful and true, I felt it ended on a trite note of living happily ever after with the man she married four years after her hike and their two kids. And while Yuknavitch too ends her memoir on a note of embracing the family she creates for herself, she does it very differently.

Here's Yuknavitch's:

So here's the deal. About family, you have to make it up. Seriously. I know amazing single women and their children who are families. Gay men and women with kids who are families. Bisexuals and transsexuals who family up all over the place. People who don't have partners create families in everyone they touch. I know women and men from a multitude of sexual orientations without any children just doing their lives who create families that kick the can down the street. The heterosexual trinity is just one of many stories.

If marriage goes busto, make up a different you. If the family you came from sucked, make up a new one. Look at all the people there are to choose from. If the family you are in hurts, get on the bus. Like now.

I'm saying I think you have to break into the words "relationship" or "marriage" or "family" and bring the walls down. Don't even get me started on the current BAR PEOPLE WHO LOVE EACH OTHER FROM MARRYING fiasco. Annie get your gun. Jeez. Anyway. The key is, make up shit.

Make up stories until you find one you can live with.

I learned it through writing.

Writing can be that.

And here's Strayed musing on a bench at the end of her hike on the trail:

Thank you, I thought over and over again. Thank you. Not just for the long walk, but for everything I could feel finally gathered up inside of me; for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn't yet know, though I felt it somehow already contained within me. ... How in four years I'd cross the Bridge of the Gods with another man and marry him in a spot almost visible from where I now sat. How in nine years that man and I would have a son named Carver, and a year and a half after that, a daughter named Bobbi. How in fifteen years I'd bring my family to this same white bench and the four of us would eat ice-cream cones while I told them the story of the time I'd been here once before, when I'd finished walking a long way on something called the Pacific Crest Trail. And how it would be only then that the meaning of my hike would unfold inside of me, the secret I'd always told myself finally revealed.

But then further down the page, she presents this quite poignant final paragraph:

It was all unknown to me then, as I sat on that white bench on the day I finished my hike. Everything except the fact that I didn't have to know. That it was enough to trust that what I'd done was true. To understand its meaning without yet being able to say precisely what it was, like all those lines from The Dream of a Common Language that had run through my nights and days. To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface of the water was enough. That it was everything. It was my life — like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

How wild it was, to let it be.

Yes. Let it be.

And both books are worth reading.

free to be you and me

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 14:44:00 +0000

What my first couple's only vacation since becoming a parent gave me was the opportunity to simply be free to be you and me. "We're off on our 'first romantic getaway,'" I wrote a couple of weeks ago, but that really didn't put the right spin on things at all. There's something so awfully 1950s about the term. Like she dresses up for him and he courts her, and they live happily ever after.

Our experience was nothing like that at all. What I found was the chance to drop our roles as both parents and husband-wife and simply have a lot of honest, sexy fun together. We both went giddy wild consignment shopping together for a whole afternoon, after which we drenched our thirst with local beer at one of the many brewery pubs in Fort Collins. We dressed up and dined at all the recommended restaurants I'd tracked down in Denver, but our conversations weren't dressed up. They were the kinds of conversation shared by best friends and lovers, fellow travel through life companions and soul mates. Lounging on roof top decks and court yard patios, surrounded by the nighttime fireworks of thunder and lightning, we not so much gazed lovingly at each other as we gave ourselves and took each other in completely with our words and eyes.

Delighted by what we saw of an openness to a more sexual fluidity, we enjoyed ourselves in that respect too. We went to a very merry and inclusive drag show one night, and a frolicking burlesque striptease show another night, admiring the beauty of the human body in all its forms and sizes. We want dancing and we listened to live music and we stayed up later than I can ever remember having done since becoming a parent, not counting staying up because of a sick child.

Of course our bodies still woke us up in the wee hours, but at least we could lounge in bed and enjoy each other for hours more. And it was all good.

Of course, it was great to see Lilly again too after our three amazing nights away. And it was wonderful for all of us to return to our home and sanctuary after another stretch of nights visiting with family. And now we have our memories to savor and the deep knowledge of what we have and can be when we're not so busy with all our other daily responsibilities. I'm already looking forward to having a night here and there this fall to be just us, and will put in every effort to make those nights come true. Hopefully through more sleepovers (Lilly had her first at a friend's house this summer, and that was a huge success). Though we might just have to start paying for someone (which we still never have); it would mean that much to us, even if we don't really have the money. And at least now we know there are people in our life Lilly can feel comfortable being put to bed by. The assistant teacher at her Montessori preschool for instance would be just perfect and has already said she'd love to do it.

Our "romantic getaway" wasn't "the final bravado" of anything at all. It was the beginning of so much more.

final summer bravado: first romantic getaway as parents

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 16:38:00 +0000

On this last morning of work before we head off on vacation, I've finished up a few things I had to do this week for an erotic film festival I'm co-curating. I was also going to work on an abstract for an article on the speed limits of women's desire in Norway. Instead I've found myself googling fun and romantic things to do in Denver, Colorado where Leighton and I will be spending a few days and nights while Lilly gets to visit her grandma and grandpa in Wyoming. It'll be our first couple's only vacation after Lilly was born and we are all very excited. I'm hoping it stays that way, and that we won't get a phone call with a crying child on the other end begging us to come get her. She had her first sleepover at a friend's house a couple of weeks ago while we went out to celebrate our five-year wedding anniversary, and we all had a wonderful time that night, so I'm hopeful.

I'm particularly excited about the romantic date nights we've got planned, getting hungry just looking at all the mouthwatering pictures from recommended restaurants, such as Le Central (French food, French wine, French desserts... nothing says romance like a French bistro... Call ahead to reserve a spot in the delightful garden room at the back of the eatery for a French countryside ambiance); Cuba Cuba (Cuba Cuba offers traditional Cuban fare in a cozy setting — plus they serve Denver's best Mojitos. Dine by candlelight on the patio for that perfect date ambiance); Highland's Garden (Soak in the quiet ambiance of the restaurant while savoring the fine dining. After a sumptuous meal, stroll hand-in-hand through the gardens and take in the sights of the lush gardens); Tamayo (A rooftop deck that affords gorgeous views of the Front Range... This sleek, contemporary Mexican restaurant is appreciated equally for its to-die-for margaritas and tequilas and its unexpected, delicious takes on old standards); and Sushi Den (Wonderful, high-quality dishes are sure to please, and fresh fish is flown in daily — a practice that makes for a slightly pricier, but more than worthy, menu. The modern decor encourages trendy crowds to visit over sake, sushi, and sashimi).

Our hotel is in the Cherry Creek area where we can stroll along the creek after breakfast and do some crazy damage at the shopping mall updating our wardrobes. There's a fitness facility and pool at the hotel; what a treat to actually exercise together again! And to sleep in (if our bodies let us), or in either case enjoy the spaciousness of a king sized bed TO OURSELVES after spending nights out late, perchance strolling down 16th Street Mall (Walk hand-in-hand down Denver's pedestrian mall, draped in lights and dotted with outdoor cafes and street musicians), catching a show or two, taking a late night stroll through a park with a lake (don't forget a bottle of wine), and watching the sunset from Peaks Lounge (Make your way to the 27th floor of the Regency downtown and grab a seat in Peaks Lounge. Position yourself in front of the massive windows and enjoy one of the city’s best views of the sunset over the Rockies with a fine wine in your glass and a decadent dessert on your plate).

I won't be trying to squeeze in any time for writing or blogging here or elsewhere for the next ten days, because after our romantic fling in Denver, we'll be joining the family in Wyoming where we'll spend some time with them. Lilly's been saying she wants to play golf (?!) while we're there and drive around in the mountains. I imagine hot days will also see visits to the pool and cooling off at night with drinks on the patio. And there'll be more scrumptious dining. I'm hoping to also find some yoga classes to attend and I look forward to some hiking.

We'll be facing August when we get back from our trip but I'm trying not to think too much about that. Come August, I'll have to kick back into more serious work mode, which I fear will take quite a bit of effort seeing as is I've been taking time off from work since the middle of May. The fact that my book is scheduled to be released on Amazon US in the middle of the month (the official publication date is not till October 26 though), and that I'll be emceeing at the erotic film festival I'm co-curating at the beginning of September, there will surely be a significant amount of stress forcing me to get my act together.

But summer has been oh so sweet to me this year. Putting all work responsibilities aside, I will savor its last bravado.

fighting the US resistance to taking a break

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 01:14:00 +0000

It started out slowly. The sigh-it-out feeling of relief; that things are coming together; my first book will soon be released (which I hope will free and inspire a lot of moms and women — and dads and men! — in general to claim, own, and explore their sexuality on their terms). Suddenly all the blogging and Facebooking and Tweeting just seemed less urgent. Plus, the days were getting longer, warmer, sunnier. And are still lovingly long, warm, and sunny, even if we've passed the solstice.

I grew up in Scandinavia, light and heat deprived and all: how could I not seize the moment to soak in pleasure and joy right now?

So I did. Like I've done many times before (though not last summer when I was crunching in work hours to get said book done).

Taking time off is definitely not an uncommon thing to do for me and most of my fellow Norwegians (who claim five weeks of paid vacation each summer), as well as numerous continental Europeans. On the contrary: we take pride in it. Which is so unlike most Americans who in the US take pride in their workaholocism though their production and achievement focused obsession shows no improvement is results from those of the Europeans.

It's kind of strange and delightful at the same time though to be the odd bird who's taking "time off" (I mean; look at me blogging here at night: it's contagious). Time off, that is for me, in like a "forever" context by now it would seem; within this US context. I mean, we're getting close to two months, and there will be more!

Sad fact about the US: "We're the only advanced economy in the world without a federally-mandated minimum number of vacation days, and more than 50% of workers don't use all their vacation days, anyway," reports The Atlantic.

Yet: While I know this time-off-thing is right for me, right here, right now; doing it alone amidst the masses takes work. Which is why I've taken courage from a few recent articles that address this matter, highlighting the importance of rest. To quote the most entertaining one:

The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life and seeing it whole, for making unexpected connections and waiting for the wild summer lightning strikes of inspiration — it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done."

Don't be too busy to read all of this article: The 'Busy' Trap

(This one is also worth checking out, especially for parents, reminding us to allow kids to have unstructured time: Rest Is Not Idleness: Reflection Is Critical for Development and Well-Being.)

So: how to take the time off for rest? — Just take it. Unpaid or not.

Why? You'll be a much more satisfied and fulfilled person.

How again?

Well, there are many ways. And each to his or her own. This prescription has been working for me:

lounging in the late afternoon sun while child per chance naps (bonus: coming up with new ideas for new books and articles while sipping on a a beer or a glass of wine)
long, lazy or busily active (workout opportunity!) days at the beach and pool (mind can still drift and rest...) followed by margaritas on the porch (no; it's not all about the drinks this time-off thing of mine)
savoring hours of sex at night rather than cranking out blog posts or Facebook updates (see? We enjoy in other ways too.)
taking time for long outings with friends that allow the conversation to meander and create new connections
beginning each morning practicing mindful and giddy yoga
worshipping the sun (even if it'll cost me wrinkles)
lingering in bed in the morning, as a family
dreaming about, planning, and executing a night out and a mini-vacation away from home (soon you'll see even less of me over here!)
finding light summer reads
savoring the smells of barbeque and freshly cut grass
watching the sky change in the evenings as the sun sets and the fireflies begin their fireworks (I'll be soon heading out to our porch for this part)

How about you? What inspires and fuels you for the feel of time off?

the vulnerability of writing

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:11:00 +0000

I'm writing a new book and it makes me feel skinless. It's a painful and slow process and it's all I can to do. I write and I cringe and I edit and write and cringe over and over again. I become hyper critical of my writing. I look at old posts and I cringe. I look at new posts and I cringe.

Leighton reminds me it's always like this for me when I start a new writing project, that this is also how it was when I was in the early stages of writing my After Pornified book. I would write and go back and cringe and edit, over and over again.

Part of the reason is that writing is to me thinking. I can't think it all out and then write it down, rather writing is discovery and working and re-working through problems. Because, wait; isn't there another way of looking at it?

When we're at the pool or I'm doing the dishes or I'm looking at the evening sun, scenarios, ideas, solutions, and questions run through my mind and I can't keep up with them. I write notes all over that I later can't decipher. Some I hold onto to discover I've written the same note copious times various places.

Those little flashes of ideas and inspiration that my mind can't keep up with; since they've run through my body, will my body remember? I cross my fingers and hope that's the case. That when I get to a certain blank page, a memory of that idea will come to my fingers.

With my body and mind floating in this space, there's barely any room for other lines of reasoning. I read articles on my phone at the gym in the morning, listening to my ipod, treading the elliptical, and I make a mental note to share this interesting article on Twitter and that one on Facebook and write about this one in one of my blogs. And I form the argument I will make, but by the time I'm at my laptop, the argument is lost and I'm pulled instead to the blank page where I write and I cringe and I write and I cringe and I feel so little, so vulnerable, so skinless, yet all I can do is go on.

So if my writing here or in my other blogs lately seems like it trails off without completion, it is because I can barely collect my mind to drive straight and stop at the red light. I am here, yet I'm not here, I'm drifting somewhere and trying to hold on to something and put it down and it's all spinning very fast and there is no time and there's all the time.

photo credit: qisur

getting up and going down

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 18:19:00 +0000

Lilly turned four last Friday: goggles was on the top of her wishlist. She tried them on in the bathtub last weekend as the rain poured down outside, and then when we went to the pool on Monday, she excitedly started jumping up and down, prepping to duck her head down beneath water. And then she did it! Just like that. She enthusiastically kept jumping and ducking up and down, over and over again.

It's not that she's fearless or reckless; it's not that there isn't some apprehension. It's just that this is something she's been wanting to do, testing the waters to do, for a very long time. Lilly, as a close friend of mine once pointed out, very much demonstrates a sense of caution and competence. The quality of standing back and observing, making judgment of what she may or may not be capable of doing; what may or may not be wise to be doing; what she truly would like to be doing or not. I'm quite impressed and invigorated by this modeling; I'd like to do the same.

So this week, I've worked on kicking up into handstand.

With the right words of a teacher, I finally managed to kick myself up into my very first handstand at the yoga studio a couple of weeks ago. I was so surprised when I finally got up there; so giddely excited! This past week, I've been practicing on kicking myself up by myself. It took quite a few kicks that first morning, but every day it got easier.

After falling off my bike on my face as a kid I've been so terribly afraid of falling on my face, but for Lilly AND for me I want to be strong. And from Lilly, I've learned a sense of playfulness. A sense of taking risks; of giving it a shot. Her wise display of caution and sensitivity as to how far she's comfortable going intrigues me; her eager desire to test and push her limits inspires me.

There are two other major balancing poses that used to freak me out that I'm now also able to do with some sense of gracefulness. The first is headstand, freestanding in the middle of the room with no support. The other is crow, a hand balance pose where you plant your hands on the floor, bending the albums to create a shelf for the knees before lifting the feet off the floor as you slide your face forward, all the while staring into the floor. I am still working on holding this pose. It has terrified me for years.

What has helped me in all these balancing poses is feeling my core; that I'm in control. Headstand and handstand are not just about flopping the feet up into the air; just as crow is not just about lifting the feet off the ground. Rather the pose is about finding that core strength that holds the entire body in shape. When I feel that strength, I know that I have what it takes; that I can do it despite my fear. It is an incredibly invigorating and empowering feeling.

In Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life, Judith Lasater writes this about courage:

The most important thing to know about courage is that is cradles your action even though your are afraid. ... The point is not to do something just because it is scary. The point is to choose to do what is possible in the face of fear. That choice defines courage. And with it comes a sense of freedom.

four years and healing

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000

After 64 hours of labor: first of many nights together

My child turns four today. How did it happen? Where did those sucking-at-the-breast all the time days go? Now replaced by the talking-all-the-time days. They were, are, both wonderful and draining at the same time, sucking it all out of me while filling me up again all the more too. Plus with some.

Really, I do feel, as I posted on Facebook a couple of nights ago, that my child is my little yodi; my little teacher and inspiration.

I started therapy again this past winter because I fell apart one sunny winter morning; the morning of Christmas eve. I fell apart because I wanted her not to suffer as I did when I was a child. A few sessions into therapy, I confessed this to my therapist; that I felt somewhat inauthentic in my quest for therapy. That I was doing it for her. To be a better mom than mine was.

"Then bow to Lilly," my therapist responded.

So I bow to Lilly.

Towards the end of this latest cycle with my therapist, and after writing about the various ways of finding healing over at Love, Sex, and Family, I dared to do what I described there, which is this:

In psychoanalysis, the idea is to expose the wound by facing the original trauma and thus in a sense reentering it in order to let go of it.

I postponed it till the end of one of my sessions; still reluctant to go there. Fearful I'd fall apart. But then I did it. Spastically, I sobbed the words to something ugly that happened to me as a child.

It was hard. I hyperventilated. I put my head beneath my knees. While I purged the words out.

"He's not your father," I heard her say.

"Tell her you won't ever let it happen to her again."

I saw her, I saw me, at Lilly's age. And I told her; "I will NEVER let this happen to you again!" And I felt it! For the first time, I felt rage. Not shame. Not dirtiness. Just pure: "How the f*ck could you?!!!" And it was so cleansing! So empowering!

I was already a mama bear for my child; from now on you can bet on me also being a mama bear for me.

I couldn't stand on my legs after spitting those words out. Of what he did. I couldn't feel my hands. I was shaky all over. It was nothing I had experienced before, and it was everything I had experienced.

For the first time, she let our session go over time. Like, for a really long time.

Eventually I left her office. Then I sat down in the waiting room. After a while I braved it to my car to take me home to our house. Where I kept sitting. I wrote a letter to my sister who endured worse than me. And then I kept sitting, still shaky in my body. I made tea. And upon the advice of a good friend, I drank a glass of water, really slowly. At the end of the day, I was okay.

Today we are celebrating Lilly's four-year-old birthday. And I am bowing to her. I teach her and she teaches me. Or the other way around.

i don't have ADD, just an interesting EEG

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:20:00 +0000

I posted a while back that my therapist suggested I be assessed for ADHD. I've been experiencing inattentive moments since I can remember, but this can also be caused by my anxiety/PTSD. The therapist who tested me for ADHD concluded that I do not have many symptoms consistent with other adults who have ADHD, just "an interesting EEG," as he put it.

Apparently, adults with ADHD experience inattention more persistently whereas all the QEEG recordings done of my brain electrical activity ("brainwaves") show a pattern of transient half second "momentary lapses." It is possible that these lapses occur more frequently under stress, amplifying my experiences with anxiety; of not being in control. Because they don't feel like merely drifting off or tuning out in conversation. They have a more jolting, disconcerting effect of dropping into a black hole; like something was entirely lost for a split second and I can't hold on to anything.

The therapist has recommend I see a neurologist to look further into my "interesting EEG" pattern and to see whether there might be some medications that could help me. At this point, as a freelance writer, I don't have health insurance so this is not an option. I'm also not thrilled about the idea of medication. And frankly, I already feel that much better from knowing I simply have an "interesting EEG."

The therapist who assessed me was so helpful in this respect. "What do I do when I go blank giving a talk?" I asked. "Show them your interesting EEG," he suggested with a grin.

He was helpful also in helping me feel better about not being able to catch what people are saying at parties or bigger gatherings. "It just doesn't interest you," he explained; "when you're bored, you can't focus."

And it is true that when a conversation or article truly fascinates me, I will hyperfocus and remember the littlest detail. Whereas chitchat goes in and out, leaving me with that same unsettling feeling that I can't grasp anything.

But really I can. And people with ADHD can too; ADHD or inattentive moments have nothing to do with a person's level of intelligence. On the contrary, a high level of intelligence, creativity and intuition are often observed in people with ADHD. You can think of people with ADHD as super intelligent but bored out of their minds when they can't focus on what interests them. I would have been proud to join the circle of adults with ADHD. At least I have my "interesting EEG" to hold onto.

The Womanly Heartaches of Bleeding

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Infertility

As if it's not hard enough going back to work after a lovely long holiday weekend, I got my period that day too. We've been trying to conceive another child for a good year now. In reality, I feel like we've been trying much longer. Heck, I was taking pregnancy tests before Lilly turned 1 and I didn't even get my period back until she was close to 3 and stopped nursing.

I winced upon seeing the blood. Lilly looked at me. "I got my period," I explained. "Oh," she said; "that means there's no baby. It's okay, mama; we can try again tomorrow!" (tomorrow representing all future tense for her at the moment) She smiled at me and I did find some comfort in her words.

For more than two weeks, I'd been feeling the stomach cramps. But weren't they a little different this time? Couldn't the first pain have been from a fertilized egg attaching to the lining of the uterus? I did seem to feel more pain on the left side. Perhaps the egg had been released from the left ovary, where the corpus luteum was now busying itself producing progesterone until the placenta could take over that job?

The hardest thing about those two weeks between ovulation and menstruation is to me that kind of spiraling thinking that the stomach pain spurs. A dreadful mixture between hope and fear. In some sense the actual arrival of my period brings a bit of relief (on top of the grief). At least I'm still bleeding. We can try again next month.

It made me think about all the other women out there who menstruate. How many experience it as a womanly art and how many experience it as a womanly heartache? Living in the body interpreting and re-interpreting its signs can be exhausting. Why is there so little talk among women about the amazing beauty of our cycles and their pains?

What I do know for sure is that there are many women who struggle so much more than I do. As I try to stay hopeful and maintain some perspective, re-posting this post from Love, Sex, and Family featuring the heartaches and hopes of one couple who struggled with infertility seemed a meaningful thing to do.

The Womanly Heartaches of Bleeding, Infertility, and Miscarriages
I've written about the womanly art of bleeding. But what often goes in silence are the pains and heartaches many women experience on a regular basis as their bodies cycle through their periods. The swelling and the cramping, worsened for many by fibroids and uterine thickening, and the emotional effects of the hormone shifts.

And then there's the bleeding women don't want to see when it becomes a message of infertility or the dramatic experience of miscarriage.

Unbeknownst to the public, Anna Arrowsmith, also known as feminist pornographer Anna Span, has endured much of all of this over the years. Suffering on a regular basis from intense period pains and prolonged bleeding as a result of adenomyosis (endometriosis interna), she has over the last three years also gone through the added exaggerated effects of hormone treatments and IVF with its high hopes and wrenching losses. Four IVF cycles, four pregnancies, four successfully detected heartbeats, then no more.

And nobody knew. When Anna was actively campaigning last year as a Liberal Democrat Candidate for Gravesham in Kent, advocating for comprehensive human sexuality education among other issues, nobody knew all that she was suffering off the political scene.

Then after a dramatic conclusion to the fourth pregnancy this fall followed by near fatal illness due to treatments she'd received to keep the pregnancy going (by suppressing her immune system), Anna's husband Tim Arrowsmith last month finally posted about their experiences and they both shared his post on Twitter.

As Anna commented in her tweet sharing Tim's post, the topic of infertility is still a bit taboo. For that reason, the couple sharing their experiences with it is all the more significant. As Tim writes, his hope is that "some of this may resonate with some of you who have had similar experiences and might promote a bit more open discussion of a taboo subject, even amongst friends."

It's a powerful post, worth a read in its entirety. While heart-wrenching and moving, I in fact also find it quite beautiful: empowering and inspiring as a testimony to their unswerving hope and the strength of their relationship.

"We are all the product of varying degrees of effort to bring about our existence."
By Tim Arrowsmith (published at rollinglow)

In our case we started hearing the word ‘infertility’ about 18 months into the process of what is known as ‘trying for a family’. Luckily our GP was, and continues to be, both sympathetic and ruthlessly efficient at referring us for treatment. If we lived 20 miles away in a different NHS trust, the process that took us a few months would have taken two years or more. Once initial appointments took place and waiting lists were negotiated, we started our first cycle of IVF. The various initial investigations carried out involved numerous scans of Anna, counts of my sperm, lots of form filling, identity checks and a number of blood tests, some to demonstrate we were clear of STIs. The latter was easy, we knew there wouldn’t be any surprises, having carried these tests out early in our relationship – part of us getting serious in our relationship was getting tested. What wasn’t so simple was our medical reviews. By the time we met Anna had already had several gynae operations: a fibroid removed, two ‘drillings’ of her ovaries to clear obstructions and an investigative laparoscopy. I had a reduced sperm count due to illness as a child and for some reason this issue doesn’t seem to interest IVF specialists. One has to wonder if there’s some hidden gender bias at play.

From the outset we were typical candidates for ICSI, a process whereby the ovaries are artificially stimulated, the eggs surgically removed and injected with sperm obtained in a quiet room containing lots of adult magazines (or under sedation if medical problems preclude the DIY option). Forgive the pun but I’m an od hand at this. The regular provision of sperm samples for both counts and IVF itself is something the chaps have to get used to, and compared to the much more uncomfortable and invasive procedures that the women endure, it’s nothing of consequence. That’s easy to write – in practice it always feels odd…. Once the medical team work their magic, the fertilised eggs are allowed to develop in a carefully controlled environment and those that progress to a healthy cluster of cells are assessed at between two and five days, at which point they are placed in the woman’s womb.

The extraction of the eggs is the culmination of several weeks of careful manipulation of a woman’s hormones, first to interrupt ovulation and then to stimulate it at an accelerated rate. During this process Anna’s ovaries swelled to the size of grapefruit as the egg follicles developed. A constant fear is that the ovaries will become overstimulated, a condition which has some rather unpleasant effects on the woman’s health and will usually bring the whole process to an abrupt halt. If that is avoided, extraction is done under sedation. It’s painful; I’ve been in the room twice whilst it was done and Anna unfortunately wasn’t quite asleep during the procedures. She squirmed with pain throughout and I found it unpleasant to watch. Luckily the sedative ensured she remembered nothing.

Once the hurdle of successful fertilisation is overcome and the (hopefully) high number of eggs is converted into a much lower number of ‘blastocysts’, the wait begins to find out if the implanted cluster of cells have gone on to develop in the womb.This starts with the growth of foetus in an egg sac and eventually the detection of a heartbeat at six or seven weeks. Various blood tests along the way confirm a successful pregnancy, some clinics testing hormone levels every two days to check adequate progress is being made.

The euphoria felt when the heartbeat is identified is huge. All the time, effort and money seems justifiable; the process has been a success. In a few months there will be a pram and clothes to buy, a room to decorate. All the usual excitement of a normal pregnancy suddenly arrives to put a highly medicated experience in its shadow. Even the daily progesterone intramuscular injections I had to give Anna with a 40mm needle, with the lumps and bumps they caused on her bum, were all part of keeping the good news coming.

The moment when you are told the heartbeats have disappeared its horrible. The medical staff check and check again and on one occasion we were even sent to another clinic for a more detailed scan. Unfortunately we have been through this more than once. Four IVF cycles, four successfully detected heartbeats. In our four cycles we scored one, one, nil, two.

None got further than the first: ten weeks. The loss of the first one hit us hard and we mourned it by scattering some rose petals in a forest near our home. Undeterred, we spent the next year trying twice more. Once in summer – one heartbeat until seven weeks – once over Christmas – no heartbeat.

During that year Anna was also prescribed a drug called Zoladex. It is used to temporarily reduce the production of oestrogen, a strategy used to control a condition known as adenomyosis. The drug induces an artificial menopause for three months, with all the accompanying emotional highs and lows one might see in the real thing.

Adenomyosis used to be known as endometriosis interna. Endometriosis is the growth of fibroids on the surface tissue of the uterus/womb. As the name suggests endometriosis interna is when the fibroid tissue penetrates and grows within the muscle of the womb. Oestrogen encourages this tissue to grow and during pregnancy the womb expands at an exponential rate. At 10 weeks, Anna’s womb was a size normally seen at 22 weeks. Zoladex can shrink the womb and reduce this effect. Surface fibroids can be easily removed surgically, adenomyosis cannot.

The uterus is a fascinating part of the body. During a woman’s monthly cycle, it provides a safe environment for a foetus to potentially grow, providing it with nutrition via blood. Imagine a sponge, into which many large blood vessels feed blood, building up a rich lining on the walls of the uterus. During menstruation, muscle contractions (known as cramps) close off these blood vessels and the lining is expelled. Soon the process of replacing the lining begins, the blood vessels open up and the cycle repeats. Adenomyosis intervenes in this process, preventing these muscle contractions from achieving the temporary closure of the blood vessels. Blood continues to flow into the womb at elevated rates and pain levels climb exponentially. Anna has only been able to manage this problem with high doses of codeine and anti-inflammatory medication. She usually spends at least 48 hours in bed, immobilised, bleeding heavily. At times the bleeding is continuous lasting months.

Any condition that affects blood flow into the womb will potentially affect the viability of a pregnancy. This is where things get a little more difficult – known causes of adenomyosis are thin on the ground and there is no known treatment. The womb tissue is gradually penetrated and replaced by the fibroids and can spread to surrounding areas like the colon. Of the many surgical procedures Anna has had, the most recent was the removal of two egg-sized areas of her womb, front and back, to reduce its size and improve her chance of a successful pregnancy. Sometimes the adenomyosis is located in specific areas and easier to remove; in Anna’s case it was shown on scans to be present throughout. Once a surgeon starts removing parts of the womb, you start to realise the options are getting fairly limited. More than once in this process the consultant said he’d be recommending a hysterectomy if we weren’t trying for children.

Our most recent ICSI cycle was at a very expensive central London clinic colloquially known as ‘IVF Bootcamp’ to the many women who have enlisted their services, based on the intensive treatment and the highest live-birth success rate of any IVF clinic in the UK. By this time we had exhausted our two free NHS-funded cycles, had paid for one ourselves and had decided to go for one more a a last shot. We attended daily for almost a month; daily blood tests and scans became routine. Hang around the right cafes in Marylebone High Street and you’ll spot lots of women with cotton wool taped onto their arms, all doing the same thing. Hormones are being manipulated, immune system strength determined and various treatments provided to create the highest possible chance of a successful pregnancy.

Immune treatment takes two forms: in the crudest terms, these are weak and cheap, and strong and expensive. The theory is that suppressing a woman’s immune system prevents a rejection of the foetus during the pregnancy. The strength of the immune system’s response is determined by expensive blood tests that are sent to Chicago for analysis (there’s a theme developing here, isn’t there?). We were twice recommended the cheaper option to reduce levels of ‘natural killer cells’ in the womb. The expensive option costs £2,000 and some women receive it monthly throughout a pregnancy.

Our last appointment at this clinic was in September this year, when we were told the two heartbeats visible in previous scans had stopped. Anna remembers feeling subtley different a few days before; less hungry and needing to pee less – the two main symptoms she’d been experiencing for the preceding weeks. Fertility treatment tends to demand that the participants submit to a completely medicalised process – intuition seems to take second place behind endless test results and scans. These are necessary and valid, Anna just felt she knew the result before the Doctors.

The conclusion to an unsucessful pregnancy takes two forms. The more squeamish can look away now. Without medical intervention the sacs and their contents pass out naturally, usually within two weeks. I wouldnt recommend this; it’s an unpleasant enough experience for a partner to observe, never mind the woman. Let’s just say that seing this once was enough for me. The clinical method is termed an Evacuation of Retained Products of Conception, or ERPC. A perfunctory acronym by necessity, it describes an event loaded with emotion. It’s carried out under general anaethestic in hospital with patients usually in and out on the day, at the most 24 hours. When Anna went in for her ERPC, she was nil-by-mouth for 20 hours while she waited for the on-call surgeon to come available. She threatened to discharge herself several times. Eventually she was seen, wheeled away and I began a nervous wait for her to come round after yet another general anaesthetic. She was kept in overnight after the procedure then sent home.

At this stage we were in a fairly heightened emotional state. We’d experienced this stage before but until the last scan in this last IVF cycle we had been achieving perfect test results. We really thought this one was going to go the distance.

Recovery from an ERPC takes some time and we returned home to start dealing with things. A few close friends and family were told (those who already knew what we were up to) and all were incredibly supportive. They deserve our eternal thanks – you know who you are and your kindness and support was overwhelming.

We then learnt what kind of impact immunity treatment can have on the body. Over a period of a week Anna began to feel steadily worse, bleeding much more heavily than expected and showing signs of fever. After a rather terse phonecall on Saturday with a nurse who suggested we go to our GP on Monday, I drove her to the hospital and she was admitted. She was diagnosed with sepsis, given IV antibiotics and over three days was given 4 blood transfusions to treat her for very low haemoglobin levels. Anna’s donated blood in the past, I deliver it to hospitals. She got it all back that day!

I’m very glad she was treated promptly and we didn’t wait until the Monday to see the GP. Medical staff monitored her closely, checking her temperature, pulse, oxygen levels and even urine quantity to monitor her response to the antibiotics and transfusions. We were given various updates, some with two Doctors in the room. When that happens you start to wonder how bad the news is going to be…

She was in for three days, and phrases like “You had us worried for a while” started being used. This was followed by a quick reference to a scan that could have been put a little more delicately: “You shouldn’t be having babies with that womb”. Short and to the point. Anna was discharged with a bag full of strong antibiotics to take every few hours for the next week.

This all happened about a month ago at the time of writing. Anna was very weak for quite a while. Sepsis has a 40% mortality rate and recovery times are long. 10 days after her discharge we cashed in some airmiles gained from using a credit card to pay for the IVF treatment and flew to Cyprus to stay with my family for a couple of weeks. We’d blown all our cash so it was done on the cheap, and most of this was written there.

The sepsis put a lot of what had happened into perspective; wanting a baby is too high a price to pay for messing with Anna’s health. IVF is no longer an option – her womb won’t now support a pregnancy – but we have 3 frozen eggs that may be used for surrogacy if we decide to go in that direction. UK law prevents us from advertising for a surrogate and only reasonable expenses can be paid. Those that go abroad encounter a long list of potential risks and expense, sometimes resulting in border authorities preventing a child from returning to the UK with parents.

Adoption is another possibility we might consider in time. We don’t yet know if Anna’s career will cause problems with this but time will tell. The legal and procedural hoops that prospective parents, local authorities and courts have to jump through mean that many children spend longer in temporary care than I believe is necessary. The Guardian has published articles on this and it was mentioned at the recent Conservative party conference as something the Coalition government hope to change.

We’re having a bt of time out to restore some normality back into our lives. We’ve spent three years on this ‘project’ and now feel we owe ourselves a little fun. We have some places we would like to visit and some people we need to catch up with. I fear we may have neglected some friends and family since 2008 and occasionally some may have found us a little short-tempered or just a bit stressed. My hope is that this chronicle of our journey serves as both explanation and apology.

I also hope you don’t find it too self-indulgent – I know friends have been through just as much as we have, in some cases much more, and not felt the need to tell all and sundry about it. My hope is that some of this may resonate with some of you who have had similar experiences and might promote a bit more open discussion of a taboo subject, even amongst friends.

Anna has recovered well but the emotional legacy will probably stay with us for a while. The next challenge is a hysterectomy, which Anna wants to have as soon as possible. That’s pretty final, but she’s had enough of the pain, so out it comes!

Both our parents have helped us through some tough times when they probably have enough going on in their own lives to worry about. To them, lots of you and especially my wonderful, resilient wife, thank you.

x

p.s. Now you know the real reason why we gave up drinking three years ago – Chin chin!!

Anna and Tim enjoying their first glass of wine in 3 1/2 years (Oct. 28, 2011)

In a welcome move, the women's magazine REDBOOK also confronts the taboos of infertility in this month's issue in an article titled "The invisible pain of infertility." Together with RESOLVE, The National Infertility Association, REDBOOK has also launched "The Truth About Trying: Infertility Stories From Celebrities and Women Like You," an online video campaign to fight the taboos and silencing of infertility, and promote an open conversation about infertility, which strikes one in eight women in the United States.

balance: it takes work

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:14:00 +0000

I believe a lot of us think of balance as letting go. To go with the flow more. And not work so hard. Stop striving towards the impossible goal of fitting it all in. Let go of perfectionism. (I too have been thinking in these terms). However, last week, I came to another conclusion. — Achieving and maintaining a sense of balance takes work. Real, hard work.

It's like in yoga. When you practice a challenging balance post, you have to muster all your core strength and mindfulness not to fall out of the pose. Balance is hard to attain and it's easy to fall out of. But in yoga, if you fall out of the pose, the idea is to always enter the balancing pose again before moving on to the next pose.

It's easy to blame the time crunch for the apparent impossibility of attaining a balance between all those things we're supposed to be doing, but now I've come to think that a sense of inertia can have more to do with it.

My tendency is to be a perfectionist and a workaholic. It's easiest for me to keep going, going, going. For ten years after grad school, I worked as an academic. Academics take pride in being overworked. It's like there's a competition between academics to be the one who's the most overworked. And since you're never really done — you could always course prep more or write another article to add to your growing CV to get that promotion and then another one, and so on and on — it can be hard to take a break without feeling uneasy. There's always something you ~~should~~ could be doing.

But there's inertia on the other end too. So you're on a vacation and after those first restless days, you're finally able to sort of be in the moment. And then you have to go back. Or on a lazy weekend morning and you really don't feel like cleaning the house or run those errands or plant in the garden. A part of me even strongly dislikes it when we are asked to go into child pose for rest in the middle of our yoga practice because I find it that much harder to get going again with the flow afterwards.

backyard

For me I realize it will take constant mindfulness and work to maintain some sense of balance or equilibrium in my life. Is work stressing me out or am I enjoying it? Am I spending enough time with Lilly or am I getting grumpy from the tedium of parenting? Am I liking my reduced hours of work or are things beginning to feel decadent? Is my unease with taking time off legitimate or is it caused by an inability to be mindful of my needs?

Since I'm on this healing journey and trying to be more mindful and kind to my needs, I realized last week that I needed to put the breaks on my working. I was reacting with undue stress at work and in my marriage when I really didn't need to.

So last week and this one too, I took a break from my writing work to focus on my mama work. Not a clear cut break, but some mornings spent doing yoga and seeing my bodyworker, and most afternoons spent not at the library with my laptop but with my daughter outside. It helped that we've been in the midst of an insanely nice string of sunny, warm summery days that we could enjoy gardening, biking, and exploring new parts of the Arboretum. Skinny dipping in the city fountain. Park hopping. Stocking up at Trader Joe's. Sipping margaritas in the afternoon sun.

arboretum

It's been good. It has helped me regain a sense of perspective and allowed me to see the roots of why it is that I respond so easily with stress to things that I really don't need to make such a big deal out of at all.

Striving to stay balanced, I've this week had to struggle with this irky feeling that I "should" be doing more. "Everyone else is." If I'm not writing or researching, I "should" at least do some long overdue housecleaning, shopping or cooking, right?? Resuming regular work hours would be an escape from feeling the weight of other (self- or culturally?) imposed "obligations." And there are some deadlines that are fast approaching. And really, shouldn't I spend this lull while waiting for my book to come out starting a new book or finishing my Sleep Question book? Am I avoiding work because of inertia and all the efforts it takes to get started with a new big writing project? Or am I just having these thoughts because we live in a culture that measures success in terms of how much you produce?

How interesting that it can be so difficult to savor rest and restoration. To put the breaks on my urge to work. In the end, I opted to work at silencing my unease and focus on enjoying this: our garden, our new patio set, yoga, stocking up on good food, being with Lilly, being with my family, enjoying being with them outside in the warmth of the sun.

trader joe's

I know I need to remain vigilantly mindful though to catch cues that this time off thing isn't turning into something that is too much of a good thing to be good for me anymore. How seriously am I craving computer time? Getting antsy? Feeling impatient? Avoidance? Stressed with approaching deadlines? Feeling too whatever?

The thing is, though, that I know that even when I will know that it'd be best for me to resume regular work hours, it will require effort. It will take fighting the inertia and the pleasure indulgence. Right now, we have a long holiday weekend ahead of us that promises more sunny lounging, perhaps a day at the beach and a relaxed day barbequing outside sipping margaritas. Who would want to give that up? I know it will be hard for me.

It's probably going to take my falling out of this enjoyable place for me to try to get back into the balancing pose. And it'll require that I muster all my strength and mindfulness and it won't be fun at first. Fighting inertia never is.

Holding a challenging balance pose doesn't necessarily feel "fun" or "great." But it can be immensely rewarding.

photo credit: fitsugar

why we must normalize, not hyper-sexualize breastfeeding

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 21 May 2012 13:52:00 +0000

With the lingering effects of the controversial Time cover that has a mom and her nursing son gaze at a voyeuristic (and thereby sexualizing) camera, I am re-posting a post that I wrote a while back in response to the hype around a European baby doll made specifically to teach little girls about breastfeeding. Writing against the negative sexualizing of breastfeeding, I also address the healthy sexual aspects of breastfeeding and our bodily functions. And the need to normalize breasts and breastfeeding in our culture, also by teaching young girls about it.

little girls need to learn to breastfeed

Reading a post about a European Breast Milk Baby toy coming to the U.S. had me thinking about the unfortunate hysteria that lingers around breasts in this culture that apparently obsesses about the female sex while bemoaning it. Think for instance of the public outrage Janet Jackson’s now historic naked breast during the Super Bowl halftime show caused, which had Europeans shrugging their shoulders incredulously. Or nursing tents used to cover up the breast (and pretty much all of baby) while mama nurses.

I am a huge advocate of breastfeeding, and my toddler daughter (whom I still nurse) will often pull up her shirt to "nurse" her baby dolls. I would not invest in $89 to purchase a specific doll for her to pretend nurse, but I think the concept is interesting. The (small Spanish family owned and Christian) manufacturer of this novelty toy claims that “little girls need to learn to breastfeed.” While this may sound preposterous, I actually agree that this is the case for American girls where breastfeeding is not sufficiently supported.

In the U.S., many new moms have likely not seen a lot of breastfeeding women in action and are often not surrounded by a whole lot of breastfeeding moms. High breastfeeding initiation rates show that most women in the U.S. want to breastfeed and are trying to do so; however, even from the very start, they are not getting the breastfeeding support they need: "Across the United States, the average level of support that birth facilities provide to mothers and babies as they get started with breastfeeding is inadequate, and hospital practices and policies that interfere with breastfeeding remain common" (CDC). Low breastfeeding rates at 3, 6, and 12 months illustrate that mothers continue to face multiple barriers to breastfeeding.

I grew up in Norway where women's rights and substantial human sex ed. have been promoted for decades. My mom, born in the mid thirties, has never thought twice about sunbathing topless on her own porch as well as at the beach; and this is quite common in Norway where breastfeeding is also widely encouraged and supported, including through public health stations that offer free services to all new moms during their (paid year-long) parental leave, and by receiving an hour off from work to nurse or pump thereafter.

I agree with Sarah Whedon that the argument “breast milk is just food” (which some breastfeeding advocates make when women are asked to nurse or pump in a bathroom, arguing that if you wouldn’t eat your sandwich in a bathroom then why would you feed your baby there), takes away a significant element of breastfeeding. Nursing is more than nutrition; it’s about nurturing and bonding with the baby, and it can be a very sensuous and pleasurable experience for women. As sex educator Debra W. Haffner writes in her book, From Diapers to Dating: A Parent’s Guide to Raising Sexually Healthy Children, "some even reach orgasm during breast-feeding. This is a perfectly expected physiological response: Oxytocin, the hormone that triggers the letdown of milk when a baby suckles, is the same hormone that triggers orgasm. It does not mean that you are having sexual feelings towards your baby or having sex with your baby. Your body is simply responding to your breasts' being stimulated in this way" (27).

A more holistic approach to human sexuality, and not simply reducing it to intercourse and reproduction, can ensure a more positive approach to breasts and breastfeeding, in private and public. That way one day we will not need breast milk baby dolls, because new moms will have had for their models real women comfortably nursing and displaying their breasts.

(Originally posted on LOVE, SEX, AND FAMILY.)

quizzical mama's feminist vision at the mamafesto

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 11 May 2012 14:21:00 +0000

Quizzical mama aka Anne G. Sabo

I was proud to be featured at The Mamafesto's "This Is What A Feminist Looks Like" series this week. In case you missed it, here's a link to it. And below is a brief excerpt.

At least here in the US, I see working for more comprehensive, paid parental leave as one of the most pressing items on the agenda for feminism. With only 6 to 12 weeks of maternity leave, many new moms opt to sacrifice their careers to stay home with their children, and for good reasons too, breastfeeding being one of them. This pattern will continue to reinforce traditional gender roles to the detriment of women and men. Cut to Norway, where political groups are now lobbing for an even more equal division of the one-year parental leave between the parents, lest the women lag behind in the workforce in terms of promotion and retirement plans.

But the future of feminism holds more than an empowered motherhood and gender equal parenting as a viable option, and includes working for equal rights, respect, and opportunities for all groups of our population, regardless of gender- and sexual orientation, age or race.

Read the full piece here: This Is What A Feminist Looks Like: Anne

french parenting is not for me

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Mon, 07 May 2012 01:24:00 +0000

Pamela Druckerman: wannabe French

I got interested in Pamela Druckerman's memoir Bringing up Bébé: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting based on a couple of reviews that suggested I had some things in common with French moms. As it turns out, we got just about nothing in common. Nor do I care much for their approach to parenting.

Druckerman, on the other hand, does. Druckerman is practically drooling in awe over French moms' approach to parenting, from how they get their kids to sleep, eat, and behave so well, to their attention to adult time and sassy looks.

Of course, all these things sound great. But then take a minute to pause as Druckerman learns to do the French way with her children and consider this: practicing the pause in terms of (not) checking on their babies when they are learning to "do their nights" when only a few days or weeks old (and at least by three months) is the same as Ferberizing or even crying it out at a very young age. It only has a different name and since "everyone" in France practices it, nobody worries about it either.

Everybody knows that having children changes one life. But not so in France. In France, the goal is for the children to interfere as little as possible with the lives of the adults. This laissez-faire approach appealed to me in only one instance: encouraging children to play independently at the playground. This is what I had picked up on from one of the reviews I had read. However, within the context of the entire book, even this became a troublesome indicator of French parents' preference for playpens and pacifiers. Plop them down and prop it in. Leaving the latter in there often till the kids are three or four.

And lest you think the goal of having children interfere as little as possible with the adults' lives is an indicator of gender equality in France, think twice. French moms have the benefit of paid maternity leave, subsidized full-time daycare, and free preschool supporting women in their return to work, which they do: France has more working women than any other country in the European Union. French moms also take on the parental and domestic responsibilities, and don't even expect "help" from their husbands (forget about gender equal parenting) for whom they cook and clean and still make sure to dress up for.

For French moms it is crucial to get their thin bodies back within a maximum of three months. The focus is on ensuring monsieur is happy, including in bed. Doctors even prescribe reeducation of the abdominal and perineal areas that involves exercises and even some nip and tuck. Breastfeeding is not encouraged and apparently many find the sight disturbing. Instead babies are formula fed four times a day to match adults' mealtimes.

There was one section of the book I enjoyed, and it was the one in which Druckerman finds out she's pregnant with twins. When shifting her focus away from the French model of parenting, or the American moms she thinks she's got pigeonholed, to document her own marriage and parenting, Druckerman shows that she has exceptional talent for hilarity and wit.

Her biased comparison of French vs. American parenting, on the other hand, is downright offensive, reflecting that same kind of prejudice against attachment parenting that Elisabeth Badinter perpetuates in her new controversial book Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women. Gradually Druckerman takes on the traditional French parenting model with its big eye disciplining and sleep training and meal scheduling, also adopting the French four course meal — a working mom cooking four course dinners. That's not modern motherhood to me at all.

people who never get angry frighten me

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 18:45:00 +0000

One of the things I respect the most in people is relentless honesty including on the less finer moments of life. Like couples' arguments, of which you don't see too many blunt personal anecdotes, despite their commonness and recent research finding couples arguing stay together. Which is why I ultimately fell in love with Poser with its forthright disclosure of everything, including marital bickering which the author, Claire Dederer, comes to see "not as the beginning of the end of the world but as just another way families communicate." "We bickered pleasantly," she concludes.

Recounts Dederer earlier in her book about a "not entirely successful" date night out, "that vaunted American custom," which, when you are married "buzzes irritatingly on the periphery of your consciousness, the way New Year's Eve does for single people." They were out on a date night to celebrate her birthday, but both were exhausted, possibly with the flu, and on deadlines. Feeling rebellion fomenting on her side of the table at the lack of her husband's courtship and conversation, she "glared briefly" at her husband.

"What?" he said. This may be the most ominous syllable in the lexicon of marriage. And of course there was only one answer for me to give, and I think any married person knows what that answer was:

"Nothing," I said.

He sat his fork down with a minuscule, almost inaudible clank, a tiny little sound that was marital shorthand for "This dinner is pretty expensive. Do we have to ruin it with whatever is about to happen?" There was a little bit of "Go fuck yourself" thrown in for good measure.

"What?" he said.

"Nothing," I said. Really, this two-word exchange could make up an entire play about marriage.

Lidia Yuknavitch delivers more gritty narrative about couples arguing in her memoir The Chronology of Water:

People — I guess I mean couples — don't like to talk much about fighting. It's not attractive. No one likes to admit it or describe it or lay claim to it. We want our coupledoms to look ... sanitized and pretty and worthy of admiration. And anger blasts are ugly. But, I think that is a crock. There is a kind of fighting that isn't ugly. There is a way for anger to come out as an energy you let loose and away. The trick is to give it a form, and not a human target. The trick is to transform rage.

Yuknavitch describes how watching her husband go at the heavy boxing bag, or "work his body to drop doing mixed marital arts," she can see how "anger can go somewhere — out and away from a body — like an energy let loose and given form. Like my junk comes out in art. Though," she continues, "like anyone else, our arguments are sloppy and dumb and artless. We look like cartoon adults, just like everyone. Like the time he put all our living room furniture out on the lawn. Or the time I grabbed his computer mouse and bit the cord in half. Yeah. Subtle. But I gotta tell you. People who never get angry frighten me."

If not exactly frightened, I do feel a deep unease around people who feign peace on all fronts. It's just not realistic to me. Anyone who is interested in personal and relationship growth knows that growth comes with a sense of internal and relational conflict. Recounts Yuknavitch about how she and her husband fought at first:

In the beginning, we fought. Boy howdy. I fought like a woman whose father had betrayed her and whose mother abandoned her. He fought like a man who never had a father and whose mother's heart didn't quite reach him. Working out our childhood wounds at each other. Because ... because we could take it. Because there was something on the other side.

What a gift to have a spouse with whom you can work out your wounds and grow through them. My husband has certainly provided a safe space for me throughout our years together to confront and attempt to solve my personal issues, and he continues to do so. And I can tell on a very deep level that our marriage has grown and keeps growing stronger for the conflicts we have dared to delve into to figure out and resolve. The problem I have had with arguing, is not arguing per se, but the conflicted feelings I have had about it in the past. These days, I'm been making friends with healthy conflict and arguing.

photo credit: marriage and family

look at these two girls' swimwear and tell me which one is "improper"

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000

What Lilly wears in the below picture is what was judged "improper swimwear" at our city pool last summer:

Lilly flanked by her grandpa and papa

This, on the other hand, would have passed as "proper:"

An advertisement from Submarine Kids

Clearly, placing "sex" where there is none negatively sexualizes both these girls. The bottom is featured in a commercial from Submarine Kids, "a swimwear line with a questionable marketing campaign," as Avital Nathman (aka The Mamafesto) puts it at Gender Across Borders. Continues Nathman:

My issue revolves around the sexualization of these young girls in order to sell these particular bathing suits. There is healthy sexuality, and then there is sexualization, which is something entirely different.

According to the APA, sexualization occurs when:

a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of of other characteristics;

a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or

sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person.

The marketing campaign that greets you when visiting Submarine Kids falls right into the above, with little regard for the potential affect it might have on their target audience.

There is no need to dress up young girls in a manner that clearly brings to mind older, sexual women. Vampish wigs, thick make up and poses that show off body parts that are years from even being developed comes across as not only vulgar but almost predatory.

To place overt sexuality upon these girls to sell swimwear is both out of place and damaging on many levels. It not only encourages the idea that it is okay to sexualize little girls, but it attempts to normalize it, when it is anything but normal.

While the rules for swimwear at our local pool does not state that a top is required for young girls, it was the pool manager's practice to require one for school-age girls and up to wear one. "Girls under four or five," added the pool manager, could be exempted from wearing a top. FOUR?! FIVE?! A completely undeveloped girl?!

I have written a lot about my issues with this (see here and here for a start). This week, the issue came up again as the pool rules have been revised by the pool manager's supervisor and the pool manager in time for yesterday's Park and Rec board meeting. The rules are still in draft version, but I am hopeful that the voice of reason will come through. An upper age limit for girls to be top-free has not been imposed, and a report was given in which the board was informed that "the rules on attire are focused on safety. We will work with the pool staff to be sensitive to parental rights to determine appropriate swimwear for small children.”

Visit Locally Grown Northfield to read all the powerful comments in favor of not negatively sexualizing and discriminating against young girls; powerful ammunition to have at hand should any unreasoning come up again (heaven forbid).

introducing babysitters and parents-only vacations

noreply@blogger.com (Anne) — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 14:52:00 +0000

Just in time before Lilly turns four, Leighton and I had our first date last weekend while she was with a babysitter. This isn't to say we haven't had dates before, child swapping with friends, but not too many times; 10 times tops. And with family scattered across the US, we've had a total of 4 dates while either visiting or being visited by them, counting a yoga class and coffee too.

Needless to say, we would have liked more dates, but we are not martyrs for having opted out of them.

First, both Leighton and I have been opposed to any needless stress and crying, and for us, leaving our child anxious and possibly crying, even in the care of good friends or close relatives, has not been an option. Instead, we've waited till she was ready for separation.

Second, I nursed her to sleep at night till she was close to 3 and by the time I'd gotten my body out of our bed, it was usually too late for a date. Lilly was about one by the time we managed to haul ourselves out for a couple of late night beers (9:30 felt pretty late to us at the time). We are grateful to our friend who gave us this first date. And to another friend who helped us have our very first date six months before this: a quick lunch while she strolled Lilly around outside.

Spelling this out, I'm not looking for your sympathy (or perhaps a bit) or recognition (perhaps a bit of that too). I'm just providing back story for some bigger events to come.

So, around the time Lilly turned two, she had grown more attached to a few close friends of ours and their kids, and after that, early evening dates for us while she was with them at their houses became more practical. We've enjoyed them every time. But leaving your child with a babysitter to go out for an early drink and dinner was on a completely different plane. We felt so adult! Even just the simple experience of picking up the babysitter and dropping her off later: what a landmark!

Lilly's closing in on completing her first year of preschool and amazing developments have occurred. She can read. She can write. She has new friends. She likes the idea of a babysitter. And now is even excited about the prospect of a vacation just her this summer visiting her grandparents in Wyoming. That is, we'll out fly out to Denver and spend some time together the five of us there before Lilly and her grandparents head up to Wyoming while we enjoy a couple more nights in Denver. All by our two-selves.

Of course Leighton and I are both excited and nervous. I know she'll be brave and probably have a lot of fun too, but I also realize she'll be missing us, and especially at night. I know Leighton and I are bound to tie ourselves up into knots of worry, but I hope we'll be able to let some of that go too and enjoy ourselves and the growth this vacation will mark for her and us.

It will be a good preparation for my own travels this fall too, leaving Leighton and Lilly at home while I go traveling to give talks and readings in conjunction with the release of my book. My first trip will take place just a month after our family slash parents-only vacation, taking me all the way to Mexico City where I've never been before. A trip to Oslo follows only a week after that, with another cross Atlantic journey to Germany and England the following month.

So far I've spent a total of two nights away from Lilly, once the summer she turned one, and then again that following fall. At least this time around, I won't have to pump. At least this time around, she understands I'll be back. I should feel elated and free, and I do, at least a tiny bit. But separation like this is only a snapshot of the overall thing going on here with both her and I shedding the cocoon we've spun around our little family. Separation like this takes courage.

Yes, Of Course It Hurts --

Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking.
Why else would the springtime falter?
Why would all our ardent longing
bind itself in frozen, bitter pallor?
After all, the bud was covered all the winter.
What new thing is it that bursts and wears?
Yes, of course it hurts when buds are breaking,
hurts for that which grows

photo credit: date night in denver