The story of Angela Maier is horrific any way you look at it.  Over three years ago, in deep grief after experiencing three miscarriages, she poisoned both her pregnant sister-in-law and friend, causing them to lose their pregnancies.  She recently confessed to the crime stating that she couldn’t fathom watching their children grow up while hers were dead.  The two women are currently pregnant again, hence the timing of the confession, and Maier has a three-year-old child.

If we want to, we can enter into the somewhat pointless conversation of whether her punishment fits her crime.  I personally don’t feel that I have the ability to make a statement, since I know nothing about the Austrian legal system, and the only details I know about the case come from the newspaper and blogs.

What I can comment on is the disservice we do to women, compounding the depression after a loss, by sweeping conversations about miscarriage under the rug.

For a fairly common occurrence — anywhere from 15% to 50% of all pregnancies end in loss — it’s somewhat staggering how many women state that they feel alone in their grief.  It’s not just that they weren’t mentally prepared for the possibility, but with 80% of those miscarriages happening within the first three months, pregnancy loss is a very heavy, lonely loss without other people to share the burden.  When a person dies, the weight of remembrance is spread out over all the people who knew them and loved them.  But when an unborn baby dies, sometimes the only people who even knew that he or she was here were the parents.  Pregnancy loss is a death that leaves behind no objects in which to draw comfort, no memories shared with the person to turn to in your grief.

In other words, those who experience pregnancy loss, stillbirth, and neonatal death need to find a new way to mourn because the traditional methods for dealing with grief — speaking about shared memories with others, holding objects, remembering moments — are out of reach for those experiencing this form of loss.

It is our responsibility to talk about this reality as a society and to reach out to those who are experiencing this form of loss in order to ensure that they don’t feel alone in their grief.  I wrote several years ago, and I still think it’s true:

I’ve always thought it was a failure by the medical community to not prepare women better for the possibility of pregnancy loss, stillbirth, or neonatal death.  That it does women a disservice to imply that all children are born.  It’s great if your life follows that continuum: sex = baby = birth = rest of life.  But for anyone who doesn’t, I feel like it’s an extra cleaving: not only is your heart split in half from the actual event, but in addition, you were essentially promised via language choices that this could never come to be.  And suddenly, it is.  How do you trust again after that?

One only needs to look at our language and see the dearth of words that explain loss to realize that we’ve left a lot of people — men and women — walking across family building without a safety net.

For anyone currently going through a loss or who has gone through a loss in their past, I am so incredibly sorry.  The Mayo Clinic has a wonderful webpage to serve as a starting point for the mourning process.  As they state, you may move through all stages, you may move through only a few, and you may double back and go through certain stages more than once.  Every person mourns uniquely, hence why no one can give you a straightforward method for dealing with your grief.  And because grief is personal, you are going to need to find your own path through it unfortunately.  Just know there are many women out here who have gone through something similar, and many of us are here if you want a willing ear to listen to your story.

For anyone supporting someone who is going through a loss or has went through a loss in their past, take your cues from the person in mourning as to how much they want to speak about their loss.  But know that being present, asking questions, and quietly listening can go a long way to help the grieving process.  Be mindful of dates that may be difficult for them — holidays, unfulfilled due dates, anniversaries — and check in on those days.  Be less concerned with trying to find the perfect words as a response; the truth is, there are no perfect words.  But there is perfect listening; just letting the person know you are there, abiding with them, so they don’t have to carry their grief alone.

There is no excuse for what Maier is done, and I’m reluctant to even tie it to infertility because she is no more the face of loss than Nadya Suleman is the face of IVF.  I have no clue what sort of resources Maier had to process her losses.

But there is an opportunity to have a conversation that we need to have about pregnancy loss.  There is an opportunity to ask people to reach out to those who have suffered a loss rather than treat them as a pariah or dismissively expect them to swallow their grief and “move on,” with the unspoken (or sometimes spoken) message that “there’s always next time.”

Let’s stop focusing on trying again or “next time” and stay for a moment to talk about the immediate situation of pregnancy or infant loss.  In doing so, we may save other women out there from processing their grief alone.

The 2013 Creme de la Creme list opened for submissions this week and we already have 40 on the list.  Thank you to all who submitted early.  It makes writing the blurbs that much easier.  Off to do a lot of reading this weekend…

And if you haven’t gotten in your post yet, just know that the December 15th hard deadline sneaks up on you. (No one will be added after December 15th.  When the list goes up on January 1st, it’s complete.)  Put a note in your calender to remind yourself to submit so you don’t miss out having your voice included.  I’d love to have everyone on the blogroll (or could be on the blogroll) represented.

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I’ve been struggling with my Halloween costume this year.  I am difficult to dress because I will only wear costumes that are warm and comfortable if I have to be outside.  No dresses.  No masks.  No makeup.  No crazy hairstyle.  Usually I just wear a sweater and jeans, and then I tell people that I’m a substitute teacher or a college student.

But this year I came up with something that only requires me to wear a hat.

That’s what the fox says!

Thank you, Ylvis, for my cozy costume.  And for including so many animals in your song.  If I can’t make the fox hat happen, I have many backup plans.

What are you being for Halloween?

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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:

• “Surviving Hospital Bedrest” (Home Grown Love)
• “An Anniversary of Sorts” (Family Building with a Twist)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Road Less Travelled has a thought-provoking post on expectations and how they impact our happiness.  But she also asks the all-important question: if those expectations are ultimately detrimental when they aren’t fulfilled, how do we enter something as hugely emotional as family building without expectations?

And then a different The Road Less Traveled (this time with a single L) has a post about waiting and looking for an answer.  It’s about reaching that point where her infertility just is: “I equate it to a little kid who has asked for a toy for Christmas and 37 Christmases have passed without that toy appearing under the tree.   At first it was frustrating, then it was disappointing, then it was depressing, and now it just is.”  It’s a wonderful piece about reframing how she views the wait.

The Barreness admits that she was thrown off by kind words left because it’s pregnancy loss awareness month, touched that someone else remembered her losses.  She revisits who she was back then and who she is now.  I love the end: “As I see that girl who was, I embrace her and whisper in her ear…  you did not do this to yourself.  This was never your fault.  You were never meant to carry that weight.”

A Good Mother has a post about restarting blogging.  I cracked up over the opening: “I debated deleting the handful of posts preceding this one and starting fresh, but I’m a notorious packrat and the thought of throwing anything away, even data, makes me feel…twitchy. So, I’m going to leave them there and just ignore them.”  But it’s really the meat of the post; what this new blog is about after a long time writing about her journey.  All I can say is welcome back.

Thinking Miracles has a lovely tradition of remembering everyone else’s babies on October 15th too.  She takes the act of remembering — something so inward and personal — and extends it outward like a hug.  I love that she does this.

Lastly, Riding the IVF Roller Coaster has a post about how surfaces may not reveal much about the contents below.  Though her life looks perfect on the outside, she’s falling apart on the inside.  It’s a good reminder that we rarely know how much a person is dealing with that they keep tucked away.

The roundup to the Roundup: The 2013 Creme de la Creme opened: is your post on the list?  What are you going as on Halloween?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between October 11th and October 18th) 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.

I’ve been accused, for good reason, of getting obsessively stuck on certain topics.  In this case, the culprit was Candy Crush*.  I’m obviously talking about it again, but that’s sort of a trick.  I mean, how can I talk about my obsessive tendencies without talking about the recent objects of my obsessive tendencies?

Anyway, I’ve been very anxious lately, my monkey mind jumping about and not allowing me to concentrate.  Or sleep.  And I think it’s tied to some of my obsessions.  So I cut back on caffeine and I’ve made some rules for myself concerning Candy Crush: never during the work day (not even one game while I’m thinking since that always turns into using all five lives), never last thing before bed, and trying to limit it to five games total vs. switching devices, resetting the clock, or begging for lives.

I decided last week that I need a treat; something on which to build a new ritual since I was partially removing two things that brought me great joy from my day: coffee and Candy Crush.  On a whim, I purchased a box of Trader Joe’s Harvest Blend Herbal Tea.  I should add that I almost never enter Trader Joe’s.  I was sort of amazed and confused by their vast quantities of pumpkin-flavoured products.  Do people really enjoy pumpkin that much?

Anyway, back to the tea.

It has become the new object of my obsession.  Every day I look forward to my tea time, moving it earlier and earlier, making up reasons for why I need a second or third cup.  It seems to be a seasonal product, which means that it may stop being sold at some point.  I can’t imagine they have Harvest Blend tea on the shelves in the spring.  What do I do?  I try to never allow this to happen: getting attached emotionally to products that will be removed from shelves at some point.  I know it isn’t really fair, saying I can grow bored with a product and stop purchasing it, but a store isn’t allowed to pull a product from me.  But that’s how I feel.

So I’m going tea hoarding this week.  Buying up boxes of Harvest Blend to get me through the long winter.

Here’s the thing though, I’ve never obsessively written about tea.  At least, in almost 2500 posts, I have no memory of obsessively writing about tea.  So I offer up this post as a mental palate cleanser.  For the first time ever, you’re getting my thoughts on a box of tea.

I love this tea.  I know that I haven’t told you anything actually about the tea.  If you really need to know to judge for yourself, it has cinnamon and apple and a bunch of other stuff in it.  Ginger.  Orange peel.  Chamomile (which I normally dislike and somehow missed was in it).  It has a fox with a wan smile on the cover, balancing a steaming hot cup of tea on his misshapen paws.  His paws are like the fox equivalent to Barbie feet.

I don’t promise that there won’t be several more posts about this tea, in the same way that I can’t promise that there won’t be future posts about Candy Crush, crickets, Harry Potter, TOS, or Green Day.  Especially that last one because I get to see Broadway Idiot this weekend.  And I am practically peeing in my pants at the thought of that.  I could not be more excited to see that movie and then blab about that movie.

Wait, no, this post was about tea.  Bringing it back to the tea.

These are the things on the forefront of my mind, that tip out and into my blog.

* I’m on level 254.

The headline on the Daily Beast labeled it Banksy’s greatest trick yet. Apparently everyone who walked by the Central Park stall selling his art are right fools for not purchasing an original Banksy for $60.  The Daily Beast writes,

On his website on Sunday, the artist announced that he had set up a stall along Central Park on Saturday—selling “100% authentic original signed Banksy canvases. For $60 each.” That’s right: Banksy, whose works sell for millions at auction, sold canvases for $60 on the streets of New York. And the most unbelievable part? Almost no one bought them. It was part stunt, part social experiment: If people don’t know they are looking at work from a world-famous artist, do they even care?

I’m not really sure about labeling this a trick.  Humans have since the dawn of time assigned worth to objects, and that worth may even change from person to person.  Someone feeling dehydrated on a hot day may not think twice about shelling out $2 for a bottle of water.  That very same person would balk at paying $2 for that same amount of water at a restaurant.  And the same goes for art: when we love it, when we think it has value, we are willing to pay for it.  And when we are meh about it, or we believe that it isn’t worth the cost, we don’t buy it.

Image: Eadmundo via Flickr

In other words, New Yokers love Banksy when they know it’s a Banksy.  But it seems as if New Yorkers feel pretty meh about his work when his name isn’t clearly attached.  It speaks more to the power of the PR machine — either the informal one created by society at large or by firms.  Names (and reputations) mean something.  Yes, there needs to be some talent in place to get it started, but there is some truth to the SNL sketch where Jon Lovitz’s played Picasso and called his used tissues “art.”  We are way too loose in giving attention and accolades to works of art and performances based on the name attached to the project.  And we overlook way too many great books, songs, and movies because our attention is being dragged towards a select few.

As a social experiment, I’m fairly disappointed in Banksy’s lack of creativity.  Joshua Bell already did this stunt back in 2007, and Bell certainly wasn’t the first to show how art sometimes needs context for the common person to recognize its value.  JK Rowling recently showed us just how much her name means.  When she published a book as Robert Galbraith, she sold about 500 copies.  Within days of the reveal, that number shot up to tens of thousands.  We’re supposed to be red-faced because we didn’t realize we had the ability to read a new book by JK Rowling, but really, what does it say about the work itself without the name attached?  It was the exact same book when it was written by Robert Galbraith as it was when it was written by JK Rowling: not one word changed.  The sales figures tell the story of so many books out there: it was fine; it may have even been fantastic but without a household name or any PR muscle behind it to get it into reader’s hands, it’s going to languish in the shadows.

And that sucks.  That part really really sucks about being an artist of any nature — blogger, musician, actor, author.  You either need a critical mass to find and become smitten with your work, or you need a calculated push behind it.  Once that attention is established, it becomes self-generating even if individual works are praised or panned.  But getting that attention established takes a lot of work.

It’s clear that sometimes we’re told what to love, what to find worth in.  Publishers pay big money for some of their books to feature prominently in bookstores.  It’s not that those books that are on the tables are actually better; they just have publicity dollars behind them.  And sometimes those publicity dollars paired with a fairly decent novel cause a book to skyrocket.  But the scary thing is that often times, that very same book without the publicity behind it would be lost in the pages of Amazon.

Maybe what Banksy’s stunt tells us is that some things that receive attention are really unworthy of our attention just as much as things worthy of our attention slip us by.

I think if all art and performances were anonymous, weighed by their own merit without any ability to follow a single artist, musician, writer, or actor, we’d have a purer system of judging work.  But we know that celebrity and reputation plays an enormous role in how we interact with a piece or determine its value.  So I don’t think there’s anything wrong with people walking on by a stall in Central Park and not purchasing a Banksy because it didn’t grab their fancy.  We’d be better art connoisseurs if we didn’t get so wrapped up in assigning worth based on celebrity.

What do you think?

It is the eighth anniversary of the little Creme de la Creme, and it is fitting that we open it on Pregnancy and Infant Loss awareness day. Words can light a figurative candle. 156 bloggers participated last year. If this is your first time hearing about the project, this post should tell you everything you need to know. If you’ve participated in years past, you know how much fun the list is when its revealed on January 1st. So, I hereby declare the 2013 Creme de la Creme list open.

I know this is loooooong, but please read this whole post before submitting your entry.

If you didn’t read or participate in this list in 2006 or in 2007 or in 2008 or in 2009 or in 2010 or in 2011 or in 2012, the impulse behind this list are the ubiquitous award ceremonies that crawl out of their hiding spaces usually around December or January. Awards are nice — it’s good to honour someone and mark big accomplishments. But we all have a best post tucked into our archives. We all have words that have moved another person or ideas that have kicked off a series of musings. Bloggers are writers, and all of us deserve to be celebrated.

And we’re doing just that.

This is the way it works. If you want to participate, read through your archives from 2013 and choose a favourite post. You can leave all sorts of comments below telling me how fantastic I am, but fill out the form to send in your submission (do not leave it in the comments section — the point of this list is also the surprise of seeing the choices revealed on a single day). If you post your link below, I will delete it. Again, feel free to leave love comments below — in fact, please do leave love comments below — but not your submission for the list. Let’s keep it a surprise until the list is ready to go up.

You can only choose one entry. You cannot be modest. Everyone has a best post. There is no such thing as a boring blog. Even if you don’t think you have any readers because you’ve never received a comment, you have a best post. The one that you felt really good about when you hit publish. The one that would be the post you’d put forward if an editor called you tomorrow and said, “I have this great writing job for you that will pay a million dollars an hour. You just need to submit one blog entry to get this job so we can check your writing style.”

Even if you just found my blog because you read about the Creme de la Creme on another person’s blog, you are not only welcome to submit; you are encouraged. It is the best posts of 2013 for the ALI community and that community includes anyone who writes about infertility, adoption, pregnancy loss, stillbirth, neonatal death, assisted reproduction, pregnancy after infertility or loss, and every related topic — from living child-free after infertility to parenting after infertility. Everyone on the blogroll (or could be on the blogroll) is welcome to participate. Really, you don’t need to be a regular reader of my blog to join in. It’s open to everyone in the ALI blogosphere. I can’t say this in more ways than that. Which means you don’t need to write me a note asking if it’s okay to participate. The answer is yes. Okay?

Actually, it’s not only “yes;” it’s “please do.”

The list will be posted January 1st, and I promise that you will use up a good portion of the beginning of the year reading through the most stunning posts you’ve ever seen. We had 156 posts last year, and I’d really like to top that this year. My goal is all 3000 blogs currently on the blogroll, but barring that, let’s aim for over 200. Which means that not only do you have to participate if you’re reading this, but you need to spread the word and get other bloggers to participate (more on that below). Link to this post, send out a note to other bloggers you like, and suggest favourite posts to bloggers from this past year.

Um… other FAQ-like things:

How many posts can I submit?

You can only submit one. Please don’t submit two and ask me to choose. Submit one.

How will I know that you received my entry?

When you hit submit on the form, you should get a screen telling you that I have my entry. If you don’t see that screen, I don’t have your entry.

I sent in a post last week but I just wrote one that I love more! Can I switch my submission?

The short answer is no. The reason is that I write up the blurbs that appear next to each entry. This takes a lot of time. When you change your post, I have to write another blurb. Therefore, think carefully. But get your post in early so it’s high up on the list. But take your time picking it so you’re positive it’s the one you want on the list. But don’t give this too much thought…

If you just submitted it an hour earlier and realized you sent the wrong link, email me quickly so I can change it. Once I write the blurb, it’s set. I mean, you can pull your blog from the list, but you can’t submit a different link.

How do I know which one is my best?

Think of this list in sort of the same vein as those “Best American Short Story”-type collections except that it’s blog entries and everyone in the blogosphere should be represented with a link. The idea of the creme de la creme is not to put out there “the best” by someone else’s definition of “best.” It’s to put out the entry that means the most to you. Everyone has a best entry from 2013. It’s the one you would cry about if it was ever eaten by your computer. Even if it’s only meaningful to you.

I’m having a lot of trouble choosing my best one.

Why don’t you give a few choices to a friend and get their opinion? Don’t get hung up on the word “best.” It’s more about presenting a small taste of your blog. A lot of people read the list each January and it’s a chance for them to get to know your blog in one post. The goal, of course, is not only to honour every blog, but to also introduce everyone. Think of it like a cocktail party. You certainly think about what you wear, but everything doesn’t hinge on this one outfit.

I want to submit a post about my dog/favourite recipe/vacation in Hawaii. So … er … it’s not about adoption/infertility/loss. Can I? Or I want to submit a post but it has pictures of my baby in it. Do you think this is okay for an IF list?

Well, this list is sort of a pu-pu platter of the ALI community. Therefore, if your post is about your ski trip last winter, it doesn’t really show any emotion, thought, or event flitting through the community. Still, people have submitted off-topic posts in the past. If you have any part of the post that if ALI-related, all the better though.

The second question is a sensitivity one. Personally, I think that babies are part of the community and territory. The reality is that we’re all working towards parenthood or were once working towards parenthood. And children are included in that. I try to always mention in my blurb if it’s about a baby or if there are photos so people are given a heads up before they click over. So, yes, send posts that have photos in it and I will make sure that people know the gist of the post before they click over if they’re in a sensitive space.

I’m a man. Can I participate?

Are you part of the ALI community? Then didn’t you read above? EVERYONE is invited to participate. Male, female, young, old, married, single, gay, straight, everyone everyone everyone.

I’m a hedgehog. Can I participate?

Er … a hedgehog with a blog? An infertile hedgehog with a blog? I guess … I mean … I did say everyone …

I just started my blog in October. Can I participate?

As long as you’ve had one post in 2013, you can participate. Even if you didn’t start your blog until October 2013. Just choose your best from the last two months of the year.

My blog is password protected. Can I participate?

If your blog is password protected and you want to participate, choose your blog entry and create a free blog at Blogger or WordPress and post that single entry. Then send me the link so I can place it on the list. I can’t link to password protected blogs.

When is the deadline for getting in my submission?

To ensure that you’re on the list, please fill out the form by December 15th. No entries will be accepted after 11 pm EST on December 15th.

In the past, the list didn’t close until January, but as of last year, the list will not be updated after it goes up on January 1st. December 15th is the only deadline, and it is a hard deadline. Meaning, no one will be added who hears about this project after December 15th.

Which is why I am asking you, begging you, pleading with you, to spread word now. Tweet it, Facebook it, Pinterest it, blog about it, email about it, talk about it with that random stranger in the fertility clinic waiting room. Spread word now because people will not be able to add themselves after December 15th.

Can you post another link to the form right now because I’ve decided to submit.

Sure, here’s another link to the form. Just fill it out and hit send and it will go into the Creme de la Creme spreadsheet.

If you don’t want to participate, do nothing. With the Creme de la Creme list, I never add a blog or highlight a post unless the author has sent it to me. Therefore, no hurt feelings. If your post isn’t on the list, it’s because you haven’t sent one.

Spread the word with the following button on a post or your sidebar to encourage others to send a link:

The code for adding the link to your blog can be found here. You can also use the social media buttons at the bottom of the post.

Everyone has a best post. It is your personal best. It is not best by any other standard. Stop comparing yourself. Stop feeling shy. Stop thinking it’s immodest to toot your own horn when I’ve told you to toot your own horn. Start reading through your archives. Reflect on the year. And then send me a link for the list.

Wheeeew. Sorry about that last part. But everyone in the blogosphere should be represented and honoured.