Unimaginable: Life After Baby Loss

It's here! My book is now available on Amazon in paperback or ebook format. It is ONLY here because of the connections and friendships and comments and encouragement I got from folks reading this blog. What an enormous gift it has been. I don't know how I would have survived without it. 

You can order the book here. (!!!!!!!!)

I dedicated the book to Eliza, but blog readers are #1 in my list of acknowledgments. The internet sure can be an ugly place, but this little corner of it has been so, so good to me. Thank you! I hope you'll read the book and let me know what you think. 

Blast from the Past: Ms. B Returns with Some Advice on An Un-Lovely Neighbor

I haven't done a Ms. B advice column in years, mostly because I started to feel woefully unqualified to offer actual advice (I don't knoooooow, everything is so nuanced! This feels too hard!). Also fewer people started asking me for advice on this blog, so that made it easy to stop offering it. Lol. BUT a blog reader (they still exist!) wrote in with a question that I'm going to do my best to respond:

Hi, I know you don't do your Ms B advice column anymore but I wonder if you could revive it (even here in the comments?) one last time. I had a neighbor say that she didn't believe that people who couldn't have babies should be able to have 'lab babies'. My child is a baby born thanks to IVF and she knows this. What do I do? How do I continue to be civil go this person? Should I even try? She has two children close in age to my child, and my child likes playing with them. I need advice, and I don't know who else to ask. (You can feel free to not post this question and answer this anonymously, if you like - if you do choose to answer it. Thank you if you do!) - Anonymous

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

Dear Anonymous,

So I confess that I outsourced this question to my best friend whose two darling babies were conceived via IVF and her response was (and I quote): "What. The. Actual. F#$%?!" She then followed that up with, "Does she want to maintain this relationship?"

So we'll start there. Actually, let's start by saying that the neighbor was way, way out of line. Being entitled to an opinion is not the equivalent of having the right to say to a neighbor that you think their child should never have been born. I'm sorry that you had to hear that, and I know it had to be unbelievably hurtful.

Back to the question: Do you want to have any kind of relationship with this neighbor and, if so, what kind of relationship would that be? It seems like it would be hard to be more than cordial with someone who would say that to you, so I'm guessing you're not looking to build a real friendship. Can you avoid her and still let your children play together? Are you comfortable letting your child play in her house/yard without being there? 

Next question: Would you rather put on a thin veneer of politeness and never confront her about this statement, or are you just looking for the right words?

We're all pretty well socialized on how to seethe silently and never confront someone, so if that's what you choose, I'll just say that you're not wrong to prioritize keeping the peace for the sake of your child or for your own mental health if the idea of confrontation really stresses you out. It might not be worth it. As long as I was confident the neighbor would never say something hurtful directly to my child, I don't think I would try to put limits on the friendships with her kids. And for that reason, I can see the benefit of just avoiding her as much as possible but keeping things peaceful so that the kids can still play.

However, her opinion is likely never to change if she's never asked to reflect on it. If you decide to have a conversation with her, I would imagine starting with something like this:

"You know, you made a comment a while back that has really been bothering me, and I wanted to make sure I understood what you said." Or "You said something a while back that I can't stop thinking about, and I'm not sure you realized how hurtful it could be."

Presumably she'll look shocked and ask you to say more, and then you can say, "When you said that you don't think people who aren't able to have kids should not be able to have 'lab babies,' are you talking about children who are born through IVF?"

Pause to let her talk... and I have no way of knowing how this might go. She might talk about religious beliefs, in which case you'll have to say firmly, "Well, we obviously have very different opinions on this issue but I'll pray for you" and leave it at that. Or she might try to explain it in some other way. Best case scenario, she apologizes! If not, you can listen and then say, "You are aware that we were able to have [child's name] because of the miracle of IVF?" and see if she has further comment. 

If she doubles down, then you know she is unkind and pretty toxic and you want to avoid her. You can close the conversation by saying something like, "I think it is easy for you to have those opinions because this has never been your personal struggle. I'm grateful every day for my child." And then walk away.

If she seems open to a conversation and you feel like sharing, you could talk more about your experience with infertility, or the issue of infertility more broadly and see if you can get to a clearer understanding or educate her about how to be a little more empathetic. It's possible that she has never deeply reflected on what her statement actually means or how it would impact people that she actually knows. (It's easy to make sweeping statements, but it's much harder to be hateful up close.)

The other thing you can do is to write a letter or email, starting it the same way you might a conversation, but without having to wait for her to respond. You can restate what she said and explain how it made you feel. This leaves open three outcomes:

- She confronts you and is unapologetic or she tries to offer context but stands by her statement.
- She apologizes.
- She avoids you forever.

But at least you'll get to say your piece and she'll know where you stand. 

Once again, I'm sorry you had to hear someone say that. I'm so grateful for IVF as it has created some of the coolest kids I know. Celebrate your miracle kiddo and know that the opinions of your neighbor can never diminish the value and sparkle that your child brings to the world. 

xoxo,
Ms. B

Disconnected Thoughts

So remember how last week I was like, "Probably my book will be available this weekend!" 

Womp-womp. Not so much.

Here's the thing: I'm working with a company helping me do cover design and page layout. I chose to do this because I want the end product to really look and feel polished and professional. After everything I put into the pages, I want it to not look crappy, you know? But that means that they send me something and I ask for a change and they make the change and then I approve the change and even the smallest changes can take a whole business day in terms of the back and forth email exchange. So it's just a whole process and everything takes so much longer than I think it will. I had to approve the interior pages, the e-book cover, and now the paperback cover. It's all coming together and I'm really excited, but I also want to make sure I'm not missing something that will have me kicking myself later.

(Although I think it was Jen Hatmaker who got Glennon Doyle to write a forward for her new book and then her publisher accidentally printed the whole first run of the book with NO FORWARD INCLUDED even though it said "foward by Glennon Doyle" on the cover and that is a true publishing disaster and yet Jen is doing just fine, so her story gives me hope.)

Anyway, let's just say the book continues to be forthcoming (AS FAST AS POSSIBLE, I SWEAR!) and I will keep you posted.

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Photo by Matthew Bornhorst on Unsplash

It's Groundhog Day and Punxsutawney Phil apparently saw his shadow, which is not the news we need right now. When I told the girls that the groundhog predicted 6 more weeks of winter, Zuzu replied, "Well, I don't really trust that dude." 

I appreciate the health skepticism. The sun is shining today and that's helping my mood immensely.

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Meanwhile, I read this article about historians doing work on Alexander Hamilton and then I had so many thoughts about it that I wrote a multi-paragraph Facebook post and the comments were CIVIL and thoughtful and I didn't regret posting it, so there's a FB miracle for you. Here are my thoughts on this article.

Something I think about a lot is how to be a fan of things that are also partly terrible. And I don't just mean Emily in Paris (although, yes, that). There are things I really loved as a kid that no longer sit well with me. Some I think merit discussion, even though the shine has worn off (Little House on the Prairie books) and others I'll never read or watch again (Gone With the Wind is just too horrible, even though that scene of Scarlett and the Tartleton boys is a visual delight). It's harder and less pleasant to have a complicated and nuanced perspective--I loved GWTW as a kid until I realized how gross it is in its depiction of slavery. I read Chernow's book on Alexander Hamilton and I was definitely not alone in falling in love with Lin Manuel Miranda's musical. So now that historical documents show that Hamilton was not an abolitionist but an enslaver, does that change things? 

Yes. And no. Yes--Hamilton is not a hero. He was already a cheater and a liar though, so I've been on #teameliza from the start. LMM is still brilliant and the musical is still wonderful in other ways (but not perfect--it doesn't pass the Bechdel test, so that's important, too.) 

I guess my point is that it's sad and hard for be disappointed by the people (and movies and musicals) that we love. Sometimes that means avoiding them as we go forward. Other times it just means having a conversation about these important problems and not shying away from confronting them. (Game of Thrones is too rapey and I can't even begin to unpack Sex and the City here, but let's watch and analyze them because they are great TV even though they are problematic.) 

It's unpleasant to learn that the founding fathers so many of us were taught to revere (haha see what I did there?) were actually smaller, more flawed, and less moral than we thought. It would be better if this country were built on men who lived what they preached about morality and equality and liberty for all. But we own up to reality so we can improve on it. We acknowledge that George Washington, a great leader in many ways, also did the unforgivable in enslaving people and not freeing them even upon his death. We acknowledge that Hamilton was brilliant (and, apparently, quite good looking) and also he made choices that cannot be justified or excused--not just cheating on his wife, but, according to historical evidence, enslaving human beings.

We don't want our heroes to be flawed, but all the real ones are. We can't expect them to atone for their mistakes because they're dead, and maybe we give them a little grace for the context of time and space (not that much, though, because there were men in the 1700s and 1800s who fought against slavery and remained faithful to their wives... it's not THAT hard). 

It's important to reckon with the truth of our flawed history so we can make the future better. Historical footnotes don't mean everything Hamilton did was garbage. It means he was selfish and inconsistent and ego-driven. And who among us isn't? So maybe he didn't deserve the glorious musical LMM gave him, but what a gift that was to us and to theatre (a musical which, again, can be problematic and still awesome).

This is literally the longest thing I've ever written on FB so I'll just assume everyone has stopped reading by now and I'll say that we we shouldn't pretend not to see what's there, even if we honestly didn't notice it at first. We can appreciate imperfect art and we can acknowledge the gifts of imperfect men while also calling them out so that the whole story is told, including the names of individuals whom history has tried to erase. (Also you should read this article which made me think all these things first thing on a Monday morning.)

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Also I wrote about grief and yoga for Sharing Magazine and that article is up. 

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My to-do list is calling persistently, but I just wanted to drop a quick book update. Will tell you more as soon as there is more to tell. xoxo