Category: Adoption

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When Facebook Sucks

You a Sex and the City fan?  I was.  I always wanted to be a Carrie, but was instead a Charlotte, with a sprinkle of Miranda to cut the sweetness.  Being a Charlotte is a little bit like height — it just is and you can’t really change it.  I could dress like Samantha, but it wouldn’t make me any more bold.  It would just make me look silly.

Back to Charlotte.

Truth be told, I loved Charlotte.  She was hilarious.  Charming, prudish, but with more than a hint of naughty, a proper girl who didn’t judge and always hoped for the best.  Do you remember when she miscarried?  She was newly pregnant, miscarried pretty quickly, and then sank into days and days of bad television.  Faced with the first birthday party of Miranda’s son, she couldn’t go.  It was too hard.  She couldn’t face celebrating the birthday of a baby when she mourned her own.

I get it.

I am struggling right now, for a lot of reasons, but adoption is one of them. Adoption is hard.  Many things in life are hard, I know, but this is one of my challenges right now.  We are waiting to adopt.  And there isn’t a damn thing to do about it, but wait and hope.  So wait and hope we do.  But it’s hard. Facebook makes it harder.

Today I logged on to find that two acquaintances just learned they are pregnant.  With twins!  Scrolling further down, I see a friend’s enormously pregnant belly with a pint of ice cream resting on top.  Yum!  And, oh yes, the ultrasound photos.  There are lots of those.  Did I ever mention that three of my four miscarriages were detected in ultrasounds?

So pardon me, please, if I wallow for a bit as I have done today.  I do NOT want to be that woman — you know the one cause you all have one in your life — the woman you are afraid to share your good news and fortune with because you know she wants nothing more than the same good news and fortune and it just ain’t happening for her.  Ugh.  I am now, officially, at least today, THAT WOMAN.

I hate being that woman.  I do.

I want to share in your joy, I want to applaud all the new life and growing families and hope and love that these new babies will bring.  I do.  I really do. And most every day I can.  Today, I am struggling.  I hate to admit that, but it’s true.

Facebook, such a staple in my life, is not always good for me.  Sometimes, it makes my life harder.  Completely unintentionally, but still harder.  My friends and family should post their joys on their feeds, just as I post mine.  And their joys should not lead to my sorrow.  But sometimes they do.

I am not proud of that.  And I wish I could change it, but in all honesty, I probably can’t, at least not today.  My best bet, for now, is to step away for awhile.  Build up my reserves, replenish my strength, lick my wounds, pick up a book and put down my keyboard.  Stop obsessing about surprise pregnancies and babies and growing families and waiting, waiting, waiting.

UGH.

Damn you, Facebook.  So much of you I love, but parts of you I hate.  You bring out both the best and worst in me.  I can be witty and inspired and impassioned on Facebook, but you can also make me feel small, petty, and isolated.  It’s hard to lick your wounds when every time you open your lap top you’re faced with news that for a million different reasons you will view from your own personal lens, even when it has not a fig to do with you.  Not a fig. Which, strangely, is the size of the eleven week old fetuses my friends keep posting photos of on Facebook.

Not so confidential note to friends:  You know I love you.  Forgive me my transgressions.  I still want that shower invitation.  

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Internet Hate: What You Don’t Know Might Hurt Me

Yesterday, I called “Uncle.”  I was done.  Over.  Wounded.  A tearful, salty mess on Valentine’s Day, when I thought I was long past those days.  It wasn’t my husband or long lost secret crush that brought me to that place, but strangers.  Yep, freaking strangers on the Internet.

I know, someone call the wahmbulance.  Mary Tyler Mom got her feelings hurt.  Boo to the hoo.

Truth is, I have been at the receiving end of some fairly hard core Internet hate for weeks now.  And for the record, I use the true definition of hate as it was intended, “intense and passionate dislike,” that results in malicious attempts to hurt or harm others.  Disagreement is not what I mean.  There are lots and lots of folks who disagree with me and my POV and that is always welcome.  Hate is irrational, disagreement is rational.  And welcome.

When a piece I wrote about adoption was featured on the Huffington Post last month, it attracted the attention of a particularly rabid subculture of haters.  Ones that I didn’t know even existed.  That was a wake up call.  And the hate was significant and brutal enough where I severed an agreement made with my editors over there to publish any future post I wrote about adoption.  That hurt, as I had fanciful hopes that our next child coming to us through adoption might be found through my writing, and The Huffington Post is a national platform where my words are exposed to a whole new set of eyes.

This week the hate has been much more contained, and with less volume, but no less personal and biting.  I dared write about my feelings related to the language used to describe sick and deceased children.  My feelings on my blog.  Well, 1,300 of you “liked” it, and man, did that feel validating, as many that I heard from were other parents of sick and deceased children who felt the same way.

What didn’t feel so good were the parents of sick and deceased children who did not feel the same way, and sadly, felt shamed and criticized by me.  Yeah, that was not my intent.  Ever.  What works for me does not work for everyone.  Of course, that is the case, but because I have a voice and use it and that voice is recognized, it carries some weight.  My intent with “Angels and Warriors” was to cast a bright light on words and language and to explain how the words and language most commonly used to describe my Donna never felt good or right or comforting.  End of story.

Honestly, I knew the “Angels and Warriors” post would cause a stir.  I did.  I knew it was a risk because I was removing a defense.  As a trained clinical social worker, I know that a cardinal rule of therapy is NOT to remove a defense if you have nothing to replace it.  My words did just that:  I trashed the defense that employs metaphors and romanticized imagery of angels and warriors to describe children with cancer.  I knew and accepted that risk going in, knowing that it would most likely hurt some parents I know and respect who take comfort with those metaphors and imagery.

Because I write so openly about Donna and pediatric cancer, I get a tremendous amount of support from those near and far.  Many, many of the kind notes I receive refer to Donna as an angel and me as a warrior.  Each time I read a note of support I feel grateful, but each time I am called a warrior or Donna is called an angel, it stings.  If I am a warrior, that means I am some sort of super hero that can handle each and every thing that comes my way.  If Donna is an angel, it means that she is flitting amongst the clouds, happy and peaceful as a clam.

Here is the truth.  I am a mom.  Right this very second I am sitting at my dining room table writing these words.  My dishwasher is humming in the next room, the clothes are moving through their own wash cycle downstairs.  My boy is playing with some Lego trains about ten feet away.  I am a mom.  No  more, no less.  I have no weapons, no shields, no super powers.  I am a mom with a keyboard.

Now I get that that can be a powerful thing.  Clearly, or neither of us would be here, right?  And I work hard to honor the power my words hold for folks.  I always employ respect.  I have grown that way.  I used to trash Gwyneth Paltrow for fun.  It’s not fun anymore, since I realized that when I trash Gwyneth in a clever and pithy way, others take it as a cue to call her a word used to describe female genitalia that I choose not to use.  Me making fun of her calling Chicago BBQ “meat heavy” was suddenly translating into a whole lot of heavy, ugly hate.  I stopped that.  I am happy I did so.

Me writing about the defenses we use to cope with pediatric cancer also lead to a whole lot of heavy, ugly hate.  My beautiful Donna and other children whose parents had commented to offer support were being exploited and called horrible, twisted things.

That is not okay.  And, yeah, dammit, I have feelings about that.

Apparently, having feelings about Internet hate that is being heaped and piled on me is a silly thing to do.  I am told time and time and time again to ignore the hate.  Move on.  Embrace my supporters.  Rise above.  Don’t let the haters win, blah, blah, blah.

That’s all fine and good.  Honestly, I wish I were a better, stronger writer that could do that.  Truth is, as already pointed out, I am a mom at her dining room table.  Not a warrior.  Not a super hero with deflective powers.  When people suggest I am a cold, thieving, narcissistic, heartless, self-righteous, baby stealing mother of worm food, yeah, guess what?  IT HURTS.

Don’t feed the beast, I am told.  Don’t respond to the hate, is the rule.  Here’s the deal.  I don’t make the rookie mistake of feeding the trolls.  I never responded once to the Huff Post hate, which is it’s own premium, top shelf brand of hate.  Not once.  I was, though, guilty of reading the hateful things about me.  Yep.  Guilty of that.  And made to feel stupid and weak because of that.  Just walk away, I was told.  Don’t read it.

I gots to say, I have a whole new level of empathy for kids bullied through social media.  It pulls you in, it does.  I am trying and learning, but my first time as a target of lots and lots and lots of hate, I failed.  I read every sick and twisted word about me.  Yep, I did.  And I kept it to myself for the most part.  Just me and the hate.  Opted not to write about it.  Opted not to send the amazing followers of this here blog and Facebook page to the site to defend me.  Nope.  Didn’t do any of that.  I am guilty of just reading it and carrying that shit around with me until it wears off.  My defense with Huff Post was to opt out of publishing anything that makes me or my family too vulnerable.  The sad truth is that I haven’t written a single thing about adoption since.  I am still feeling bruised and battered.

In my own safe place, here at MTM,  I ban and delete when I see offensive remarks,  as soon as I am near a device that will allow me to do that.  But if I am out with my boy and waiting for him to get out of school, and happen to check my comments in the car and see some hard core, hateful garbage written by a pathetic stranger taunting me?  Well, I have no way to deal with that on an iPhone.  This here MTM enterprise is me.  Just me.  There are no other admins, no one managing the fires at home.  Just me.  And as has been made patently clear, I lack the super hero street cred and yep, have pesky feelings that get hurt.

But damn if I will stop.  Writing is release and connection and probably the single healthiest thing I do for myself.  It hurts like freaking hell when people shit on that.  It does.  My go to response is to withdraw, hole up, and seek comfort in chocolate and a down comforter.  My haters would love that, wouldn’t they?  Such is the price I pay for exposing my vulnerabilities on this here Internet.

Cowardly haters love to say that when you put yourself out there, as I do, you best expect folks to have a response, and it won’t always be pretty.  Problem with that logic is that the same rationale is used to blame the victim in rape cases — “She asked for it,” “She was dressed provocatively,” “She was walking alone at night,” yada yada yada.  That is not acceptable.  I do not mean to diminish the pain and suffering of rape victims, nor to equate my hurt and bruised feelings with those of a rape victim, only to demonstrate how hate works in our culture and on the Internet.  People who violate others, either tangibly or intangibly, will always suggest they were provoked, that their hateful actions are justified.

By writing about my family’s wish to adopt and by writing about how I cope in my grief, I do not ask to be sliced and diced on the Internet.  But I am and it hurts.  My words cost me, expressing my opinions and POV cost me something.  The question, then, becomes, how much am I willing to pay?  How much am I willing to share?  How much am I willing to expose?  I hate that the onus is on me, but truth is truth.  The onus is on me.

I am figuring it out.  In the meantime, fuck you, haters.  Seriously, fuck you.

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It’s the End of the World As We Know It (and I Feel Fine)

Sometimes a bottle cap can change your life.  This is the bottle cap that changed mine.

Quote Cap

When Donna was in the thick of her cancer treatment, we were blessed with tremendous support.  Our family cooked for us, cleaned for us, laundered for us, shuttled us around, comforted us, and supported us so we could support Donna.  Truly, we were lucky.

During that time, despite all the help we had, I remember just pining for simple things.  I wanted to shop for ourselves.  I wanted to fold our socks the way I wanted to fold our socks and felt embarrassed when my undies had been folded by someone else.  I wanted to do dishes.  It’s hard to imagine the simple things you take for granted when your world is turned upside down and inside out.  And that pining for the ability to just simply run our household by myself always made me feel like an ungrateful jerk.  I have no doubt that the beautiful folks who provided us with so much help sometimes felt that from me (I’m sorry, Grandma!  I’m sorry, Papa!  I’m sorry, Auntie!).  I still feel guilty about that and only hope they understand and forgive.

One blessed day, I got the chance to do dishes.  In the midst of chaos and uncontrollable circumstances, having a task with a beginning, middle, and end feels like pure bliss.  It makes sense, you know?  The kitchen starts out with crumbs and dirty dishes and coffee rings under mugs left on the counter.  Twenty minutes later, the sink is empty, the crumbs are gone,the counters are clear, and the dish rack is full.  This is a simple pleasure of life, if you can get past the oppression of its constancy.

So the cap.  On this eve of the Mayan apocalypse, this bottle cap that now hangs on my bulletin board is worth some consideration.

As I was clearing dishes into the soapy sink that day years ago, I found an iced tea bottle.  I rinsed it out and saw its companion cap.  As I was rinsing the cap, I noticed the words on it.  Huh.  Then, Whoa.  Followed by, Wow.

The quote is falsely attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.  These words were actually spoken by Martin Luther of the Protestant Reformation Luthers.  Apparently, Snapple doesn’t sweat the details.  Pfffft.  16th century theologian and 20th century civil rights activist — they all look the same, you know?

Anyway.

When I read these words, I knew that my world would shortly be going to pieces.  I knew that my first born would die.  I knew this intellectually and emotionally.  It is crippling to have this knowledge about your child.  Just typing that sentence makes me burst into tears, leading Mary Tyler Son to offer me the green car he is playing with at my feet, as he knows well what his mother’s tears are usually about.

And yet, after last week’s shootings in Newtown, I remain so very grateful that I knew of my daughter’s death.  That knowledge, crippling and brutal as it is, is like all knowledge.  It is power.  Because of that knowledge, I had the power to say goodbye.  Because of that knowledge, I had the power to try and prepare Donna to die.  Because of that knowledge, I had the power to try and prepare myself for Donna to die.  Sigh.  None of these are anything that I would wish for, but in the face of uncontrollable circumstances and the harsh reality of life (life = death), having the ability to know your child’s fate is a blessing.  My heart will always hurt when I think of those twenty families who sent their child off to school where the worst thing imaginable awaited them and no one knew.  No one said goodbye.

My family had what those twenty families did not.  We had the opportunity to plant those apple trees knowing what we were doing.  Martin Luther’s words are, in essence, all about choosing hope.  Despite knowing the end of the world is nigh, plant those apple trees, he advises.  Hope for something better, a different outcome, eternal salvation, whatever it is that brings you comfort and solace.  Our apple trees were more concrete:  buying a larger home that could accommodate more kids and guests, pre-school for Donna in the last weeks of her life, welcoming Mary Tyler Son into our lives in the midst of such a sad, sad time, dance class for Donna in the face of four relapses, and the forming of Donna’s Good Things, the charity created to honor Donna’s memory.

I look back, three and a half years after I first wrote about choosing hope and this bottle cap.  I am so grateful for the proverbial apple trees we planted.  In August 2009, just two months before Donna died, I wrote of these choices, “These are our apple trees. And my latest hope is that these trees will sustain us when our world does go to pieces. That these trees will feed us and shade us and shelter us from the inevitable storms that will be.”

Yes, there have been storms.  Some days stormier than others.  Some days the rain falls steadily in our hearts and out our eyes even though the sun is shining brightly outside.  But those apple trees have done exactly what I hoped they would do.

We are still in the home we bought when Donna was diagnosed, and it is large enough for our next child to have their own room.  The pre-school that Donna loved so much welcomed Mary Tyler Son this fall.  The warmth of the school community, the connection to Donna on a regular basis, is so very sweet to have.  The dance studio where Mary Tyler Son takes his weekly class has been renamed, “The Donna Quirke Hornik Dance Studio,” and there is a photo of Donna above the door that he walks under as he enters.  700+ students from Rogers Elementary School in Chicago now receive weekly dance instruction thanks to those apple trees and our generous donors.

Choosing hope has and continues to feed us, shade us, and shelter us from the storm of grief over losing a child.  Those apple trees, the decision to choose hope, most meaningfully benefits our beloved son and the next child we will be blessed with through adoption.  Choosing hope and planting those apple trees both allow us to keep our roots, the memories of our dear Donna, and grow and reach and still produce the sweet fruit of parenting other children.

Thank you, Martin Luther!  Thank you, Snapple!  This sad, grieving, joyful, agnostic mom thanks you.

I also thank Moms Who Drink and Swear, who asked that I write about a quote that inspires me, then specifically asked me to write about this quote.  I love her dearly.  If you like this, please consider pressing that little “like” button above, so all your peeps can like it, too.  We all could plant some more apple trees, right?