I write the daily prompts for NaBloPoMo weeks in advance so I can have threads running through the whole month.  Then I upload one each night according to a calendar I create. (Oh, you thought my analness had limitations?  No, you were wrong, my friend.  And yes, the calendar is colour-coordinated.)

Sometimes I read them and suddenly want to answer them too:

Would you rather always know the truth or remain blissfully ignorant sometimes?

My kneejerk reaction is to choose truth over ignorance figuring that I would rather know emphatically where I stand than flit through a relationship without realizing what the person truly thinks of me.  I’d rather know that someone did something horrible, that they planned to do something horrible, that they didn’t do something horrible but seriously considered it for a long period of time.  I think it’s the same impulse that makes me sometimes flip a few pages ahead in the book even knowing that I’ll get to page 136 eventually: I would rather know everything than not know something.

But truth is sometimes incredibly, unmanageably heavy, AND you can’t set it down.  You can’t unknow truth.  I’m thinking that there are something things I’d rather not know.  That truthfulness isn’t always admirable.  I don’t really agree with Billy Bragg anymore when he sings: “He said that some things are really best left unspoken / but I prefer it all to be out in the open*.”  You know, like Jim Carrey in Liar, Liar.

I don’t know — where do you stand on knowing the truth?

* Actually, Billy Bragg was singing about sex and how we’re squeamish talking about it.  So yeah… I guess I still stand by Mr. Bragg and agree wholeheartedly with him.  We should talk more about sex.  But not when I co-opt his lyrics and make them about truth-telling.

Off-topic: For those seeking the Healing Salon list of host blogs, it was posted last night on the LFCA.  You can jump through the conversations and leave your thoughts.

Last Wednesday was a day that I think of in my head as my Lost Day.  It’s the anniversary of my first miscarriage, or, more accurately, it’s the anniversary on the Hebrew calendar.  I have no clue what the day was on the English calendar, but it was the 13th of Adar.  There was such an otherness to it that it’s sort of fitting that I remember it on its Hebrew date — a calendar I rarely if ever use — instead of the more familiar English one.

It’s not that other losses after this one weren’t important, but for whatever reason, I have chosen over the years only to mark this one, so that day becomes infused with all the emotions I feel about infertility and loss in general.  I am efficient; why ruin five days when you can emotionally bomb a single day?  Which isn’t really true at all.  There are always triggers, and they come when I least expect them.  I pass five round pregnant bellies without blinking, but the sixth one startles me.  A photograph, baby clothes discarded in the wrong section at Target, an Enfamil coupon handed to me by the cashier.  It usually comes out of nowhere.  For no clear reason; at least, not one that I can easily understand.

The 13th of Adar is also the Fast of Esther, and I usually fast though I didn’t this year.  I’ve been trying to fix my relationship to food for the last two months, and I thought it healthier to forgo the fast.  I went running instead, which is a time when I get a lot of thinking done.  Fasting is traditionally used to bring people to a space of reflection, shutting out the rest of the world, so I wrote it off as a fair trade.

And then I went through the rest of my day.

I worked in the morning and I read the very divided comments on the second blog post.  We rode scooters after school.  I heated up leftovers of green rice.  We went to shul at night for the megillah reading, part of the Purim service.  I cried in the car and Josh rubbed my hand.  And that is how it fits in my life now.  A long time ago, this day would have stretched out over a whole year.  Every day was Lost Day.  I was so lost, so devastated, so confused.  And now, the emotions have shrunk to fit a smaller space and life has forced me to squeeze my emotions into the nooks of my day.

But it is a strange feeling to go about the day-to-day tasks, holding conversations, turning in work, all the while feeling a bit shriveled inside as if there was a smaller Melissa inside the larger Melissa.  I talked with a friend about hamantaschen, and as he was talking, I suddenly wanted to blurt out, “I’m thinking about dead babies.”  He was talking about Israeli hamantaschen, and I was thinking about blood and failed cycles and curling up on the bathroom floor.

And then I’m back.  And then I’m gone.  And then I’m back.  And then I’m gone.

*******

The next night, because I always feel like Erev Purim is ruined for me since it falls on the 13th of Adar, we went Israeli dancing with some friends.  Sometimes I danced with the twins, sometimes I held back with my friends and we watched the kids trying to master cherkessias.  At one point, the ChickieNob grabbed me for her partner in a row dance that I remembered doing when I was her age.  Two people skip down the aisle and back up, leading their line in a J-shape until the partners meet and hold up their hands so the rest of the line can snake underneath.  And then it continues again and again.

When we reached the front of the line, the ChickieNob slipped her hands in mine and pulled me down the aisle in a wild side sashay.  And then we parted, running with our respective lines until we met each other again, feigning surprise to end up in the same place, and she fit her palm against mine so we could raise our arms in the air and create a human canopy for people to pass underneath.  That was my closure, my bookend, the switch I needed to flip in order to say goodbye to Lost Day for another year.  The ChickieNob’s tiny hand pressed against mine.

All the difference.

So.

I am rarely at a loss for what to say, but I can’t really sum up my thoughts on this week into words.  Maybe it would work better as an interpretive dance performed by someone like, let’s say, Mikhail Baryshnikov at the beginning of White Nights.  Maybe a Rachmaninoff piece with its lilting measures dipping into discordant harsh passages.  I’m not sure; I just know that these thoughts don’t work with words.

Those two posts were mine, as is this one.  My thoughts, my feelings, my observations.  As in, this is my blog, my place to write things on the Internet.  It has community components such as the blogroll, but these center post boxes are for me to write my thoughts.  The Roundup, for instance, is my own personal opinion (well, with your opinion in the center of it).  My thoughts on PAIL are my own personal opinion.  You may agree or disagree, but the point I am making is that I am grateful to all who listened, who respected me as an individual and let me have my say.  Feelings are always subjective, and in my opinion, always valid.  So thank you for supporting me in reading the things I needed to say.

And to that end, I apologize that if in writing about my hurt feelings I ended up hurting your feelings.

That said, I’m not sorry for the act of expressing my feelings.  Yes, they caused an explosion and other people’s hurt feelings, but the alternative is that everyone else gets to feel good and I have to suppress my thoughts.  That doesn’t seem like a very helpful solution — at least not from my end.  I am a human being, just like you.  I am in this community, obviously reading blogs — how else would I be able to construct the Roundup — and just as you would, I react, I have emotions, I get hurt.

A lot was released in the comment section of the posts this week, and I personally think we need to clean up the mess.  Other people disagree.  But for those who find it helpful to discuss things, I want to have a discussion.  Not talking about it does not make these underlying problems go away.  But here’s the thing: it struck me on Thursday morning that I do not want to lead this discussion.  I want to participate, but I don’t want to lead it and the reason is a very personal one not related to this incident.  I considered asking three different people to host the discussion, three people who would do a great job presenting questions, listening to answers.  But I didn’t ask them because I didn’t want them to feel any pressure to say yes.

And then I realized that there were many many more people popping into my head, people who could host.  The vast reality is that the best hosts are ones who have an interest in the topic and a desire to move things forward.  Rather than ask people directly, putting them on the spot, I am going to ask people generally if they would be willing to host a discussion.  What I would love to have happen is for bloggers from various areas of the ALI community to be hosts since I think each will bring a unique viewpoint.  People who are childfree, people who are parenting, people who are waiting to build their family through adoption, GLBT bloggers, those who haven’t started treatments yet, etc.  The more areas we have represented, the better.  Of course, it also doesn’t matter if we have multiple representatives from the same area.  As we saw this week, even people in the same situation have vastly different viewpoints.

To understand what I want, think of it like the salons of the 17th century.  Each blog is a house with a host.  The host pulls out questions they think could start a helpful conversation (feel free to peruse the comment section in order to see what people have been asking or proposing).  They write a post introducing themselves briefly (making a promise to listen with an open mind) and pose their questions.  People are then invited to give their thoughts in the comment section.  Towards the end of the week, each host would take a look at what was said in their comment section and summarize it into a paragraph or two.  All these paragraphs would be pulled together to create one summary of the various conversations — a summary that would hopefully be helpful to read.  It’s a way of processing an event that I’ve used with my students in the face-to-face world that translates easily into being utilized in the online world.  Let’s call it a Healing Salon.

If you’d like to host one of these salons, I need to know by Sunday at 4 pm EST.  Your post, if you are hosting, should go up any time between now and Sunday at 4 pm EST.  The conversation may naturally start then beforehand with your own blog readers, but I will post in the LFCA Sunday night all the participating posts.  People will then be able to go from blog to blog, adding their thoughts and reading other people’s thoughts.  If they don’t want to read other people’s comments at the moment, they can also skip that and just leave their own words because they will be able to read a brief summary from each blog afterward.  So, just to summarize, people who want to host should email me the url of the blog post and have it up by 4 pm EST on Sunday.  They’re also making a commitment to summarize what was said in the comment section as the response to their discussion question by Sunday 4 pm EST of the following week (the 18th).  I’ll help direct people to where the discussions are taking place.  People who do not wish to participate at all will not need to click over from the LFCA.  It’s there for the people who need it and can be ignored by the people who find it unhelpful.

If no one steps forward to host, I’m going to assume that everyone feels at peace and doesn’t need to discuss this more, and we can move on to discussing other important things such as Mikhail Baryshnikov in White Nights.

*******

There is one thing I think that needs to be covered in the discussions that maybe won’t come up because the host will need to have been blogging a long time in order to see this.  So I’ll throw it out here, and people should definitely run with it if it resonates with them.

This inability to post about pregnancy or parenting is a newish phenomenon.  Six years ago, it literally would never have passed through my head not to blog about the twins, though I knew that if I was going to blog about them, I needed to do it sensitively.  My first post to go “viral” was actually a parenting after infertility post called “Sniff” back in July of 2006.  It was my blog, and I wrote what was on my mind at the moment, and the twins have always been a big part of that.

When I think of other older blogs, everyone I know moved from treatment/adoption into parenting without huge fanfare (or, in some cases, bloggers I read didn’t move into parenting at all, but that is another topic that should be in the discussion as you can see someone asked already on the last post).  They either kept writing, talking about their children or their experience parenting as well as other things, or they stopped writing entirely because they didn’t have the time or the inclination.  Some people noted “children mentioned” at the top of a post if children were mentioned (as you can see in the explanation at the top of that post titled Sniff).  Others simply launched into the post with the understanding that if they had kids, they might write about their kids.

Then there was a period of time when it was in vogue for people to drop what they thought of as their infertility blog and start a new parenting blog.  Same person, same readership, different url and blog name.  It was understood that everyone who followed you over was committed to reading your story.  Almost everyone followed you over to the new place.  Not everyone did this, but it was a common enough option that I can look at my personal blogroll — my Google Reader account — and remember people’s old blog names from pre-kids.

And now there is today when people write that they can’t say what they want to say.  How were we able to do it for years and years, and now we can’t?  Or is it just a portion of people feel they can’t, and we’re attributing it to everyone?  Are people being asked not to write about parenting, or is that just their perception?  What has changed to bring us to this point?  Readership, of course, usually changes with parenthood.  This is partially not because of the event itself or the topic but because less time to blog usually equals fewer connection.  If you post less frequently, people visit your blog less.  If you have less time to comment on people’s blogs, people comment less on yours.  Few keep up the same blog pace they had pre-kids while in their child’s babyhood.

If you want to host a salon but didn’t know how to kick off a conversation, there you go.  It’s the only question I had in mind to ask if I published my discussion post that may not come up on another person’s blog just because you might not know this if you haven’t been reading/writing blogs for several years.

Older bloggers — feel free to disagree with me.  That is my perception of the last six years, not absolute fact.

*******

A few people have written this week about Cyclesista being down.  Bea is looking into it — it’s most likely a hosting issue or a domain name renewal problem.  But no worries: it will be back up soon.

*******

And now the blogs… (what, you forgot at this point that this is actually a Roundup?  I read blogs before Monday and after Wednesday, but I’m way behind so forgive me if I missed some really good ones this week.  Counting on you to supply them).

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

• “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” (Movie)
• “March 2” (Between the Paper Sheets)
• “Narrowing Down the Longing” (First Time Twins)
• “I Came Out on my Public Blog” (Living Our Life in Cycles)
• “Who’s Your Daddy” (Bloggers for Hope)
• “Be Very, Very Nice” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)
• “Reminder” (Anabegins)
• “A Fold in the Universe” (Bloodsigns)
• “My Secret Stash” (Just Waiting for My Turn)

Okay, now my choices this week.

The Long Way Around has a post about what we’re owed by the universe after a loss.  The purchases we make to fill a void (I have to admit that I insanely once bought three hats after a failed cycle), that extra Frappuccino since truly, are we going to focus on denying ourselves small things like that when our heart is breaking?  It’s about giving yourself a hug, fulfilling a want because you can’t fulfill a need.  I loved this post.

An Engineer Becomes a Mom has a post about when shortsightedness leads to a person feeling excluded.  An announcement for a new parents meetup makes the assumption that all parents will have given birth to their children and will have breastfed them.  As a parent after adoption, she explains how she felt knowing she was certainly welcome to attend, but her situation wasn’t even considered by the planners.  It’s one of those must-read posts to help you see the world in a different way.

Something Remarkable has a post that made me smile about what a friend did for her.  A frustrating moment with her son’s napping schedule brings her to call her friend who pulls out something she has held onto for over a year.  I just loved the moment.

Writing for Life has an incredibly moving (and frankly beautiful) post about the loss of her son, Samuel.  His funeral is today, and I can’t think of a better tribute to him than this post which is filled with love.

Lastly, Search for the Missing Piece has a post about the fog lifting after her D&C.  It’s about the thoughts that consume her when she is at her rawest place; not everyday, but when the realizations strike.  I think I was struck by the post because it is both a small slice of someone’s life and the larger scope of infertility wrapped in one.

The roundup to the Roundup: An apology, a thank you, and explanation.  A request for people to host a discussion.  A unique discussion point for that conversation.  Cyclesista.  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 2nd and March 9th) 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.

Updated at the bottom.

I am back.  I needed to step back from blogging for a bit and reassess how I felt about being online as part of a community vs. existing as an individual blogger.  They really are two very different things.

It was echoed many times in the comment section that people hoped that this wouldn’t be damaging to the community, and while I can’t speak for the community, I can say without doubt that it was damaging for me.  It gave me great insight into the difference between words and actions, how carefully we hold a friend’s feelings, and the empathy of others.  I mean that in both a good and bad way.  But regardless, it changed the way I view community and the way I view people — again in a multitude of ways that offshoot in a multitude of directions.  Maybe damage isn’t the best word to describe it, but “change” doesn’t really sum up the way I view the experience.

People also said countless times that they didn’t know that PAIL would end up being divisive, and I believe that.  But then we find out that it is.  Now that we know that, what happens next?  I’m sure the decision will be different for each individual.  Again, I learned a lot about people from this.

People also pointed out that many smaller blogrolls and projects exist, and no other one is described as divisive, and perhaps that is because membership to those is based on situation vs. what you achieve.  What was done was take the prize we are all seeking and create a club for all who achieve it.  With talk about how supportive the new club is and wonderful… and you can join it too.  Just as soon as those treatments work or that adoption goes through.  People will hopefully become parents after infertility; that is the goal.  But I see a big difference in comportment between when your single friends become brides and remain committed to supporting you find your partner while simultaneously planning their wedding and being excited for that change in life vs. going onto a singles group to advertise a wedding expo for all the brides, a big fun event for everyone who has met their partner (amongst all the people who are seeking partners).

I’m sure PAIL is wonderful, in the same way that anything exclusive feels wonderful to its members.  And to those on the outside or those who do not like exclusivity, it doesn’t feel wonderful at all.  Not everyone will reach parenthood.  There will be those who are forced or choose to live childfree after infertility.  There will be those who give birth only to lose their child soon after.  Maybe that is why I found the creation of the group disheartening.  Because it’s a club that not everyone will be able to join.  Does that mean it shouldn’t exist?  No — it can certainly exist.  But it shouldn’t utilize something like the LFCA (which, like as in the analogy to a singles group, is read by both those still in the trenches and those on the other side, but everyone with the same situation at heart: they want to build their family and they can’t) in trying to build its membership.  When it does that, it becomes a divisive element.

I think the heart of this starts with a question: why a separate space.  Is it needed?  Some people say it is needed, they don’t feel welcome in the ALI community.  Some people say that it isn’t, that the creation of it is divisive inandof itself.  I can only speak to my personal experience as a blogger who technically fits the description of parenting after IF.  I do not need a separate space.  I have been able to blog about parenting after IF right here with this very diverse ALI community for the past six years.  Which leads to another question: how have I been able to write about parenting after IF and not feel ostracized as they describe?

The only answer I can come up with is that it’s not about what you are writing.  It’s about how and why you are writing.

*******

I am a firm believer in creating the world you wish to inhabit.  One of the thoughts echoed — one that has come up countless times in the six years I have been part of the ALI community — is that it’s hard to see parenting blogs when you are still in the trenches.  It is equally hard to have the community desert you once you are parenting.  I hear people when they say both these statements — both sides can come with their own emotional pitfalls, deep hurts.  Knowing this, I hope then that people are careful that they don’t do to others what they didn’t want done unto them once a situation changed.

For me, there is no before or after — there is simply acting the way you want to act regardless of where you are or what you get out of it.  Someone once wrote a gorgeous post about why they send thank you notes even if they don’t get them in return (was it you, Miss E’s Musings?).  Thank you notes are part of who she is, and that has always stuck with me.  I try hard to emulate that.  When I was in the trenches before the twins, I wanted support from those who came before me as well as those in the trenches with me.  Once I had the twins, I continued to do what felt right to do, reaching backwards to continue to support.  When we returned to treatments, I continued to be in this community.  And when we left treatments again, I continued to be in this community.  My situation has changed over and over again, but I guess I stay because of the Melissa who was back in the trenches in 2001 who just wanted her questions answered, for someone to tell her “me too” every once in a while.

I don’t know if I’ll always be here, but I needed a soft denouement vs. a hard drop-off in order to be true to who I am.  This is where I need to be.  Other people do not feel this way and this is not where they need to be.  And that is okay too.  I think the only problem is when people think they can have it all — the support without the giving, the straddling without really being a part of anything fully.  Some people needed to trade their support this week, and I can always support a trade even if I am sad with the goodbye on my end.

But it’s also clear that there needs to be a very honest discussion about those in the trenches vs. those parenting after IF.  There are clearly very hurt feelings, especially when people consider them not two parts of a continuous whole, but two separate entities.

*******

My six years of blogging has been about building bridges.  In fact, for those of you who have been around for a while, you know that we used to have a group blog called Bridges which brought together 20+ niches of the blogosphere.  Addiction bloggers mixed with ALI’ers.  Depression bloggers mixed with breast cancer bloggers.  We called ourselves the Consortium of Compassionate Bloggers; it was an idea that came about during an early BlogHer conference, when so many of us were first finding people outside of our niche.  I’ve always thought it important to read stories unlike my own to better understand another person’s world.

And maybe that is another divide: how I view blogging.  For me, blogging is about writing or images.  It isn’t about numbers or what opportunities I get.  Do I want people to read my words?  Of course, but I trust that people will read them if I put something worthwhile out there.  I also trust that if I set my words down and then exit my blog to travel to everyone else’s, by the time I return, there will be people who visited my offering.  I think of it a bit like leaving a bowl of candy outside for Halloween, trusting that everyone will get their sweets if we keep moving from house to house.  The alternative is to stand on my door step and scream at passerbys: “come to my house!  Come here right now!  I have candy!”

With that analogy, I not only stray from the natural way people move from house to house by forcing consumption, but I miss out on sweetness myself.

Blog reading is the other side of it, the candy collecting.  For me, the comments brought a lot of clarity as to why people read.  Some people complained that the blogroll contains blogs that haven’t been updated recently.  This was a purposeful decision to leave those blogs on the blogroll that came about five years ago or so.  After all, old books have just as much use as new books.  Defunct blogs have just as much use as current ones: they contain a person’s story and give you insight into a life you’re not living.

It suddenly dawned on me that a big reason why people don’t want to read defunct blogs is why they are reading blogs — it isn’t to learn another person’s story or find answers to your questions, it’s to get something back.  A person not blogging anymore isn’t going to interact and follow you back.  This comment is not a judgment or meant to make people squirm — if that is why you read blogs, it makes perfect sense.  It isn’t why I read blogs, so perhaps it’s a sentiment I never fully understood until now.

As I say in the letter each month, IComLeavWe is not about gaining new readers any more than NaBloPoMo is about gaining new readers, and if that is the sole reason you’re doing either project, you are bound to be disappointed.  In both cases, it is about honing your own writing skills — commentwise or postwise.  The idea of meeting people through the list is a bonus, and some people report making a lot of connections and some people report making none.  But once again, I believe that a lot of that goes back to creating the world you wish to inhabit.  The reason behind why you give.

I personally believe that we get back what we give, though it doesn’t always look exactly as we want it to look.  Until this week, I have never felt a lack of support from this community.  I’ve never seen a big readership drop even though my situation has changed countless times.  I didn’t see an uptick of people when I started treatments again, and I didn’t see a drop when I stopped treatments.  And perhaps that evenness is an accident, or perhaps it is part of creating a circle that has the space for ebb and flow.  Do I know exactly how I’ve done that, no.  If I did, I’d tell you so you can do it too if you wanted.  I think some of it is that I maintain balance in terms of topic, I attempt to be sensitive to what I discern to be a general reader while still remaining true to my own feelings, and I put a lot into the community.  And those three things have buffered me — I believe — from experiencing what other people describe as the surge and fall of readership depending on the situation in life.

Some people in the community have experienced surges and others have not, which again, raises another question: why the difference in experience?

*******

When I first read about the new blogroll when the creator submitted it to the LFCA, I was taken aback but didn’t feel much more than an eyebrow raise.  Certainly multiple blogrolls can and should exist, though this one went against things I believe in.  When I read a post the next morning about how the person was uncomfortable with the idea of this new blogroll and then read her comment section, I became cranky when I read that “nothing like this exists” — written by people who had added themselves to my blogroll.  Yes, something like this already existed, but my thoughts as I drove home from yoga were, “how can I pass along the upkeep of the blogroll or at least a section of the blogroll.”  I saw it as a possibility to get some help.

But when I read how one of the plans of this new group was to take my idea of IComLeavWe and create it solely for those parenting after IF, I was pissed.  It took something I hold sacred — community and bridge building — and turned it into the gate around a smaller group.  It was taking my ideas, something I am proud of, and using it in a way that is counter to its intent.  It would be hard to find a way to honour me less.

It would be like having the peace song I wrote taken and used in a car commercial.  It’s not that capitalism is diametrically opposed to peace marches, but certainly, there is discordance.  If someone had asked me if they could start their own IComLeavWe with my blessing, the answer would have been no because the whole point is to create bridges, not create individual, unconnected pools.  But I wasn’t asked, and beyond that, I can only express my feelings.  It’s up to other people to decide how they want to comport themselves once they hear my feelings.

The point of IComLeavWe is to build bridges; to read blogs you may not have found otherwise, to hone your commenting skills.  If you do it for those reasons, you are usually not disappointed.  But it sounds like a lot of people join that project not under the spirit with which it was created but to get something different; something that may or may not come from the project.  So while I hear your disappointment, I also think that the intentions you bring will either limit you or propel you.

Actually, if I had to boil down all the thoughts I had over the last few days, it would be that your intentions either limit you or propel you.  If you don’t have the forward motion you crave, check your intentions.

I needed this break to really cogitate on this idea that what you put out there can be taken and used in a way you find distasteful.  To wrap my mind around the idea that people can say they want cohesiveness and then participate in something divisive.  To think about all the individual selves that make up the greater whole of community, and how some will have their needs met and others will not, and why is that the case?  It can’t be a simple equation of blog changes equals support or lack of support or we would all feel this.  And some of us haven’t.

The only explanation I can come up with is that I live in the world I created.  I keep living here, despite any other life change.  And sometimes that means my world is comfortable and sometimes that means my world is uncomfortable for the time being in order to ensure that it is better later on.  But I keep living here, day after day after day.

That’s what I thought about while I stepped away from blog reading and blog writing (and frankly, email reading or responding too) in order to think.  I don’t have clear answers on where to go from here.  But I thought I’d still put down what I’ve been thinking about.

*******

I do want to take a moment to thank the people who did reach out to me with not only kind words or supportive words, but the sort of words that brought me back.  I am grateful to all of you, and I will be emailing back once I dig out from the hole.  I am grateful to the people who take my words or thoughts and bring them further.  Keiko is an example who comes to mind, but there are so many more of you out there.  I am always touched to not only have someone say, “I get you” but to see them run with an idea or a way of viewing the world and take it to new places.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered to help with the blogroll clean-up; one that will include pruning dead links and moving people into new categories, but will not include removing defunct blogs or those parenting after IF.  I — for one — am at peace knowing that people want the blogroll to remain whole.  For those who lent their thoughts to the discussion in the comment section — even the people who told me that I had it all wrong — thank you for speaking up.  I hope everyone left the discussion okay with living in the world they create, and if they are not okay, will take the steps to bring themselves peace of heart.

Updated:

I wholly agree that there needs to be a focused discussion.  There were hurt feelings all around.  Damage has been done, and the point is not to leave things in pieces, but to hopefully move to a place where people don’t feel as raw.  I’ve spent the morning combing through the comment section, looking for trends or questions that need answers; ideas that popped up multiple times.  I’ve constructed the points I heard people raising and will post them soon.  If you have a question to pose to the whole community, please email it to me directly so I can include it.  If you do send one, please let me know if you’re comfortable with me including that you’re the source of that particular question with a link to your blog when applicable.

Updated twice at the bottom.

I want to state first and foremost that the point of this post is not to be divisive.  There may be hurt feelings that come from this post or the comments, and I apologize for that, but I do think it’s a discussion we need to have.

Recently, a new blogroll was started specifically for those pregnant or parenting after infertility.  I posted about it last night in the LFCA even though I had misgivings.  I found the idea incredibly divisive, a Sneetches moment where bloggers were popping out of the machine with stars upon thars.  Instead of standing with the rest of community, they were now separating out.  I posted the blurb on the LFCA because I don’t believe I have the right to censor things on the list unless they don’t fit the guidelines of the LFCA.  My job is just to post.

We’ve always had a pregnancy and parenting section on the ALI blogroll because that need has always existed to find each other.  But it was simply a room in a larger house that is inhabited by all people experiencing infertility.  It is another stage vs. a separate existence.  Just to be clear, I found the creation of the new blogroll confusing because it was literally a replica of what already exists, with the same people on both lists.  I do not find it strange when someone creates, let’s say, an adoption blogroll that includes all members of the triad, since my blogroll only contains adoptive parents.  What we have then are two parallel blogrolls that different people might use.  What we have here are two identical blogrolls that the same people use.

The recreation of that room as a separate blogroll begs the question: should that room be removed from the ALI blogroll?  Should people be removed from the list once they become pregnant or are parenting?  It’s a lot of work to maintain the blogroll, and deleting people would be a simple solution.  We would lose knowledge and experience; people won’t be able to find and contact someone with their diagnosis who had been successful in order to ask their questions.  We would also need to lose categories such as secondary infertility.

But I’m getting a sense from the creation of a separate blogroll that this need exists.

Like the LFCA, I maintain the blogroll so I don’t believe this is a decision I can make on my own.  There are over 3000 blogs on the blogroll right now, though it’s at a point where once again it needs to be cleaned up — dead links culled, people moved to new categories.  I think we’re at the perfect time to make a decision on this.  We certainly don’t need two identical lists, and personally, I don’t want to maintain a list that I don’t need to maintain.  In other words, if I’m going to spend hours culling out dead links, I want it to be for a reason; because people want that section of the blogroll.

I am obviously biased — not only did I set up the blogroll six years ago to have parenting after IF be simply one option of many in the world of infertility, but I have always been wholly against anything that separates people.  It’s what has been described as my [annoying to some] kumbayaness.  But I also know that not everyone thinks like me.

I leave the decision up to you.  Should people be removed from the ALI blogroll once they become pregnant or are parenting?

Updated:

I’m jumping into the comment section with this post because I think it’s a public discussion (vs. emailing people directly).  So you can find more of my thoughts down there.

I think what it comes down to is not wanting to repeat work.  I volunteer at a library.  I’m happy to do so and get a lot out of it emotionally.  I would be very cranky if someone came in after me, took all the books I reshelved back out, and then set them in place again.  The librarians wouldn’t care because they see their need still fulfilled (getting the books back on the shelves).  But I care.  I care that I am volunteering my time, but it’s unnecessary.  I could step back and allow the second volunteer to take over the position and better use my time for a need that is not currently filled.  And I guess that is what I see here, from the point-of-view of the volunteer vs. the point-of-view of the blogroll user (the librarian).

Two businesses can certainly exist, selling the same products with overlapping clientele.  But this is volunteering — it’s using my time for others vs. using it for myself.  I enjoy doing it, just as I enjoy volunteering in the library, and I don’t have a desire to stop.  But I want to use my volunteering time well: for needs that aren’t filled vs. maintaining a list that is identical to another one out there.

Second Update:

Discussion in the comment section below has brought out another reason for the new blogroll, and frankly, I think I may need to step away from the Internet for awhile to collect my thoughts.  I left this comment below, but thought it important enough to move up here.  When it was just a blogroll, it felt like, “feh… this is double work.  How can I slip out so we’re not both doing the same thing, and I can take that time for something else.”  Learning the rest of the reason for the blogroll has now made me — frankly — angry.  To have my ideas used in this way.

Personally, hearing that one of the points of PAIL is to create a separate ICLW event makes it worse. Is the point to simply copy everything I’ve done to try to create community and make the inverse of it — something divisive? I have to admit that while I wasn’t hurt per se before this point, I am now angry to hear my ideas taken and twisted into something exclusive. This absolutely doesn’t have my support in the least if that is one of the reasons to create the list. And frankly, for the people who are supporting it, I don’t fully understand how people can talk about the desire for inclusivity, protection of ideas, supporting one another, and then jump into this project. I truly wish the creator of this list had come up with her own ideas for building community rather than taking my own and twisting them to form something I would be wholly against. My desire is to always build bridges, not to dig moats.