There was a great article about adult resilience recently in the Washington Post; namely, “whole-life resilience, that ability to bounce back when upsetting or stressful things happen.”  The author was talking about ways he tried to wrap his brain around normal, everyday stress, though once he dipped into the Pain Olympics, my brain instantly turned to infertility and loss.

He tells the story of a person who goes to a hospital waiting room when she needs to gain some perspective on her own problems.  She looks at the people waiting and realizes that whatever she’s dealing with isn’t as bad.

The author points out that we can’t minimize our own emotional suffering just by pointing out that we would be feeling worse if we were in that person’s position.  We have no clue how we would deal with their pain because it’s their pain.  And, frankly, we have no clue what other factors are at play with their stress or situation.

He writes, “Who gets to judge another person’s suffering? Aren’t there degrees of it that are relative to an individual’s own experience? Does someone really suffer less just because his life has been less fraught, say, with poverty or extreme trauma? ”

He goes on to dissect one of Viktor Frankl’s ideas, stating: “Even small-scale suffering shouldn’t be dismissed outright: It may look like nothing to an outsider, but to someone who is hurting, it can fill all their emotional space.”

Fill all their emotional space.

Isn’t that a perfect description of it?  Regardless of your infertility situation, it’s filling your emotional space.  It coats each one of us evenly inside, even if the amount may be different if poured into another vessel.

But that’s sort of the point.  It can’t be poured into another vessel.  You get your own liquid filling your own emotional space when the stressors pour inside.

An interesting take on the Pain Olympics.

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

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I’ve purchased — but haven’t read yet — Dan Harris’s 10% Happier.  The idea appeals to me because 10% sounds totally do-able.  100% happier… that’s like Disney-level happy.  But 10%, that’s more like a-really-good-salad happy.  That’s finding-an-easy-parking-space happy.

Which is why I clicked on Elisha Goldstein’s article about putting 10% more kindness into the world.  100% more kindness… that’s the first step towards burnout or sainthood.  But 10% kinder, that’s more like smiling-at-someone-when-they’re-snarling-at-you kind.  That’s offering-to-take-something-off-someone’s-plate kind.  I like the idea of being 10% kinder to myself as well.

As Goldstein states: “Remember, the immediate outcome isn’t the point; it’s more about giving your brain practice in kindness.”

Tell me one kind thing you did this week.

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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’ve always hated that saying, “Don’t cry because it’s over.  Smile because it happened.”  With the exception of pain — physical or emotional .  THAT I don’t cry about when it finally passes.  Everything else, I cry about long before it’s over.  I think of it as pre-mourning.  It works for me.

Instead I like that quote from Synecdoche, New York: “The end is built into the beginning.”  Everything you start automatically gets an end point tacked on, whether or not that end point is known before it happens.  I can take comfort in that idea because it allows me to mourn beforehand.  I know the end is coming, even if I don’t know when the end will be.  So it’s totally cool to indulge the sadness, to engage in pre-mourning rituals.

The school year is coming to a close.  We have one more year at this school before we have to switch again and learn another new community.  That school will be the final buffer between the now and that world beyond when the twins will go find their passion at a distant school and only call me for pizza money and to send more Costco socks.

[I will seriously have a nervous breakdown if they only call me for pizza money and Costco socks.]

[I don’t think it will only be pizza money and Costco socks, but you never know.]

So I’m blue, thinking about them growing up and away.  I want it to happen; I mean, I really want them to find work that is meaningful and happy moments.  But I wince as buffer after buffer gets removed, pushing me closer to that end point that was built into that beginning.  They weren’t going to stay my little babies forever.

[Seriously, I’ve tried keeping them small, but they don’t listen.  They keep growing.]

I know the pre-mourning is just the working out of fears of how the actual mourning will go.  Because I don’t know if it will be pizza money and Costco socks or something more.  Something more akin to today, albeit with older humans on all fronts.  I’m hoping for more of today.

We are officially out of baby teeth.  The Wolvog had his final two teeth pulled this week.  That was a special experience.  It kicked off with a sleepless night because he was worried about how this whole thing was going to go down.  It was followed by my alarm going off at 5:45 am. (Don’t worry — we didn’t sleep anyway, so what’s the difference between 5:45 am and a normal wake-up time when you haven’t been to bed yet?)  And a silent drive to the office where we had clearly been slotted before all other appointments because they did not trust us to remain calm and collected.

The dentist, to his credit, listened carefully to the Wolvog’s fears about needles and his gums, and then agreed that they could try to do it without Novocaine.  The Wolvog has a high threshold for pain and a low threshold for needles in his mouth.  He rocked that Novocaine-free double tooth pulling like a boss.

They gave me those final two teeth in a gaudy tooth-shaped holder.  It was bittersweet to know that was it.  No more baby teeth.  No more forgetting about said baby teeth.  That stage of life was over; the door closed.

I would have curled up on the floor in the dentist’s office and cried, but we had already given them enough drama for one day.

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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.

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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:

• None… sniff.

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has a post about resilience.  They are words you need to hear, especially #5: “Stop being so hard on myself, and show myself some self-compassion – I don’t need to justify my actions to anyone when they are coming from my heart.”  It’s a great post that everyone should internalize.

It’s not a post about infertility–in fact, it’s a post about eating disorders–but it is also about when people lash out without knowing someone else’s story.  Surrender, Dorothy recounts a nasty email she received after she sent a response directing the person to her book where she wrote deeply on the topic of eating disorders.  There is the initial reaction and the deeper reaction, and I love this post because it points out that when we connect with someone new (or, frankly, sometimes someone we know quite well), we don’t know what else the other person is going through.  So be kind.

Jewish IVF has a post about this year’s Pesach, a difficult time on its own made more difficult by her recent loss and an emergency with her niece.  Even though it’s normally one of her favourite holidays, she writes, “I wasn’t in the headspace and didn’t want to participate in general life, let alone prepare a massive holiday.”  Go give her some extra support.

Lastly, The Road Less Travelled has a post about upsetting comments on a post about infertility and depression.  She gently points out that we created this pressure — “we” being society as a whole — and writes about living without children, “Those who deviate from the norm — by choice or circumstance — are objects of curiosity and concern, pity and paternalism, sometimes even derision and scorn.”  But the real reason you should read this post is because of this line: “Deep down, I always felt that I could have a good life without children — because I already did, up to the point we started trying to conceive.”  Such important words for everyone to remember.

The roundup to the Roundup: The last baby teeth.  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 March 30th and April 6th) 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.

While it would be ten times easier to take the damn Myers-Briggs quiz (it’s a quiz, right?) and definitively get my type, it is a lot more fun to look at Myers-Briggs types in action and try to reverse engineer my category.  I have determined, once and for all, that I am an INTJ based on how I organize myself.

Basecamp?  Yes, I love Basecamp (though Trello and Slack in combination with Google Docs are close seconds).  I love any organizational hub where I can colour-coordinate items and tag people.  And notifications make me so happy.  I put two notifications on every meeting — one fifteen minutes before and one five minutes before.  I’m smiling just writing that.

I can eliminate INFJ at this point.  I don’t need to be motivated to complete tasks.  Crossing them off my to do list is enough of a motivator.  But ISTJ… wow.  That sounds like me, too.  I love spreadsheets.  Like love them with all my heart.  A colour-coordinated spreadsheet… I would have married one if Josh hadn’t gotten to me first.

I can’t tell if I was more interested in the Myers-Briggs element of the article or the fact that we were talking about organizational stuff.

So does your Myers-Briggs type match with how you organized yourself?  Or are you able to reverse engineer your category at this point?