I read about the term “grievability” this week in The New Yorker. It’s part of a larger piece, but this is the part that caught my attention. Mostly because it feels familiar: that idea that “some lives were considered to be more worthy of grieving publicly than others, depending on the status and recognizability of those persons and their relations.”

It’s discussed in both the collective sense and the individual sense. Some losses are more acknowledged than others; some types of losses are more acknowledged. It’s not just the famous who get publicly acknowledged while lesser known people are a footnote when part of the same event. It’s that some people aren’t really given the space to grieve at all when other people don’t acknowledge they lost something.

The loss was not recognized, and it was not marked, which means that it was treated as if it were no loss. Of course, that follows from the fact that the love they lived was also treated as if it were no love.

It’s thought-provoking, mostly because the term is the exact opposite: it’s an acknowledgement that all loss needs to be grieved.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

*******

There was a beautiful piece in DCist last week–titled “‘What Am I Going To Do To Keep Her With Me?’: Army Officer Commissions Music To Honor Stillborn Daughter” about the creation of an original piece of music. You can hear part of the piece if you click over to the article. It’s embedded in two parts.

The article states: “Two months after giving birth to Madison, she reached out to Baltimore-based composer Balmages with the idea to commission a piece of music to honor Madison’s memory and provide the comfort Elliott felt from music to others. Something that could help someone cope with a tremendous loss.”

What an incredible way of grieving and keeping someone close and helping others, all at the same time. Loss, which is sometimes so private, becomes a shared experience when converted into sound.

It’s a beautiful way of remembering someone who was here.

*******

Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

I may stop reading a book when I’m still near the beginning, but once I’m a third of the way through, I generally stick with it, even if I’m not enjoying myself. That is notable because I stopped reading a book (that I was a third of the way through) after I had the most amazing day last week.

I woke up and took my time drinking my coffee while reading in bed. I ate bread and butter without thinking about the calories. I meditated. I grabbed water ice with the ChickieNob and then bought myself six books at the used bookstore. I watched television. I started a new book, got several chapters in… and decided I hated it.

And then I felt depressed because my amazing day was over.

I don’t take days off. I usually work part of each weekend day, and if I’m not working, I’m volunteering or running errands or doing something for someone else. But I decided I needed this––a full day for myself. But that final book: I thought I would love it, and I felt like I should read it because it was connected to a project I’m working on. But it was like ending the perfect day by walking through literary mud. This book was a slog. And it was irritating. But I kept it going until bed.

Until the next day when my cousin pointed out that I should (1) stop reading it and (2) read the newish Anthony Horowitz book instead that I knew I would love. Because holding books for a future time is pointless. Read the books you’re excited to read now because there will always be new books you’re excited about in the future. It made me think about how I used to save my Halloween candy as a kid, waiting for a better time to eat it in the future. It would inevitably go bad and be tossed months down the road. Uneaten.

Letting books sit there unread for some future point when I’ll be more deserving of joy? Saving candy for some time in the future when I’ll be more worthy of the calories? Tucking away every small thing that could make me happy for a future point that I almost never acknowledge is here? THAT is a recipe for burnout.

I got the Anthony Horowitz book. I am loving it hardcore.

The Guardian had an article a few weeks ago about doing a joy audit. These words got under my skin: “Many of us treat joy like the good china, only warranted on special occasions. Even if we know it is within our reach, we may not see it is within our control.” So many things aren’t under my control, but which books I read (and taking days to myself) are.

So there’s that. And the article has good ideas if you’re looking to bring more joy into your life.

I haven’t run BlogHerAds on my blog all year, but I finally got around to removing the code this week. I’ve been part of the network since 2007. It was my last tie (beyond human beings) to the old BlogHer site. So I kept moving it over on my to-do list until I got sick of recopying the task.

I never really thought about the ads––they asked if I wanted to put them on, I said sure, and I rarely thought about it again. But taking off the ad code, deleting that last tie to the site, made me super sad. It wasn’t like losing the conference or the articles or the community, but because it turned out to be the final snip, it took on a great weight.

For me, that was truly the end of the era.

Luckily, the relationships to the individuals I met through the community live on. So there’s that. And I still have the Hermoticon, which currently leads to nowhere, on the right sidebar. And all the memories and emails and such. But no more BlogHerAds.

*******

Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “#MicroblogMondays: Never Mind” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “Currently Reading: Midnight in Chernobyl and The Radium Girls” (Inconceivable!)
• “Complex Legacies” (Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Again, I don’t usually feature articles from mainstream media, but I found The Atlantic’s coverage of Todd Hochberg’s work with parents after a loss incredibly moving. He comes to the hospital after a stillbirth to give parents photographs of their child. The pictures are beautiful.

Fighting Infertility pops in for a quick update. Despite a bunch of canceled cycles, she’s upbeat and feels like she’s already in such a good space that she isn’t getting down about the situation. Even though the post doesn’t contain happy news, it made me smile for her. It’s a good mental space to be in.

Waiting for Baby Bird has a post about the day she sets aside on the calendar each month to reflect on their family building experience, specifically that day each February, when her father sends her a rose to mark the occasion. It’s a religious post, and as someone outside her religion, I found it moving and fascinating. She writes, “I’ll be honest, I dreaded receiving the rose for this year and secretly prayed it would slip his mind. It’s been five years since his tradition started, but nearly eight years of contending for a miracle and waiting to see if it would come to pass.” It’s about keeping your faith during a long journey.

Finally, Lavender Luz has a guest post from an adoptee unpacking a moment when she yelled at her mother. She writes, “But I wish my mother had paused to realize the inherent compliment I was giving her when I mentioned finding my ‘real mom.’ I felt safe enough with her to lash out in anger. But more importantly, secure enough in her love to reveal my inner, deep, usually very private feelings.” It’s an incredible piece on why it is so important to allow someone else to speak their heart.

The roundup to the Roundup: No more BlogHerAds. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between February 14 – 21) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.

New Republic had an article about “responsible tourism” and whether it’s ethical to travel. At all. There are all the benefits of travel; it exposes you to new people, new ideas, new experiences. But there are also all the drawbacks of travel: the impact on the environment, the exploitation of people, the division of haves and have nots.

As lovely as tourism is for the individual traveling and as helpful as that tourism can be for an economy, it is rarely a great thing for the world. After all, “tourism alone—that’s nonessential pleasure travel—is responsible for 8 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.”

Gulp.

We’re a travel family. We go on trips. Sometimes they’re to visit people. Often they’re to visit places. We contribute to that 8% of emissions. When we talk about climate change, we can’t just talk about the ways companies need to change. (They do.) We also need to talk about ways we need to change.

If you knew that staying put at home, keeping your movements to a small area, never taking an airplane, would help reverse the impact of climate change, would you do it?

The author admits that he won’t give up travel, even if he knows it’s the right thing to do. And I don’t think anyone will give up travel reading this post. I’m not giving up travel.

But this whole thing is food for thought.