I read this great post last week due to BlogHer that ties together a plethora of topics: Trey Pennington’s suicide, everyone has emotional pain at some point in their life, what we post and what we don’t post, and most importantly, this impulse we have to be a shiny, happy blogger.

I think we all implicitly understand that what we see on a blog isn’t the whole story.  We are seeing a sliver of someone’s life.  Sometimes, it is the most important sliver, the emotional cloud that is threatening to rain out all else or the amusing moment that defines the whole day.  Other times, we eschew the most important parts of our emotional landscape in order to present the picture we wish to present: look at me, I’m a shiny, happy blogger.

I have the perfect house, and we eat three balanced nutritional meals each day.  I have a dog who’s just a little rascal.  I have the perfect husband who stands still for all of my photographs.  Have you seen my fourteen children, all cherubic and unnaturally clean?  Have you seen how I change all the decorations in my house to match the time of year?  Have you seen how all my furniture matches and there is no clutter at all and my friends stop by my house each night for creative cocktails and tapas?  Do you see us laughing in all these pictures?  Well, do you?  DO YOU?

It’s obviously not just blogs.  Some people have a Facebook feed that reads like a storybook.  They’re just so grateful for their great friends and their great family and their great big Christmas tree and their great vacation and their great great greatness.  Nothing ever mars their feed.  The kids never act up, no fights with the husband, dog never dies.

There are times when we edit the story because it’s not our story to tell.  Airing your marriage gripes doesn’t just affect you — it affects your partner too.  Talking about your child’s foibles can hurt them down the road whereas talking about that cute thing they said probably won’t.   But other times, we edit either because it’s the image we want to present to the world or we edit because it’s the message we’ve gotten from society.

I recently posted something that bothered me and why it bothered me.  Scattered amongst the people saying, “that bothered me too” or “funny, that didn’t bother me at all when I saw the same thing” were the people who wrote, “I find it absolutely pointless of every single one of you to sit here and wallow in self pity. How juvenile.”

I’m not the only person who has gotten a crappy comment telling them that they need to stop whining.  The Lotus Pad’s post starts out with a similar situation — she wrote about a physical ailment, one that frankly sounds scary and upsetting, and someone told her that, “I sounded like a hypochondriac and why was I ‘complaining’ so much in public, going so far as saying ‘all I had were headaches anyway’.”  She writes about how being told to shut-up after writing about her situation upon leaving the hospital affected how she wrote about future issues as well.

No one wants to be the complainer.  We don’t want to be the complainer so much that we swallow expressing our feelings in order to save ourselves from being labeled the complainer.  I’ve seen people mourning the death of their child apologize to readers that they’re still writing about their loss.  Since when does moving through the mourning process warrant giving an apology?  I want to tell those people rip your clothes, tear out your hair, cry your eyes out, and do what you need to do to get through this even if it’s just writing an “I miss her” blog post every single day for a year.  For five years.  For twenty years.

Writing your way through your emotions is more important than pleasing a reader.  Because at the end of the day, you shouldn’t care what I think.  You shouldn’t be catering to me — you should be catering to you and what you need to say because YOUR blog is YOUR space.

I’m not entirely sure what the purpose is of the Internet Shut-up*.  I mean, it is so much easier to click away than to stay and leave a comment.  You have to wonder about the people who would rather use up five minutes of their time telling you that you’re a whiner than using five seconds of their time to stop reading and click away.

The Lotus Pad asks a question that has been asked around the blogosphere a lot in these last few weeks after Pennington’s death: “How could someone with 111,301 followers not find the words to ask for help?”  I think part of that contains an assumption that we’d want our help to come from the online world.  I think different people use their various social media accounts for various reasons, and perhaps for Pennington, that social media world was never going to be the world he turned to for help.  It also contains an assumption that he could ask for help, that it was within his control.  My understanding of depression is that there is a lack of control.  The same tasks a well person might do to get help is out of the capabilities of someone mentally ill.

And while we know intuitively that having no one to talk to and no one to listen is lonely, it is also possible to feel alienated surrounded by 111,301 followers.  Having your blog read or your Twitter feed followed doesn’t make you immune to the very same emotions felt by those who do not have their blog read or their Twitter feed followed.

That said, I think there is a third point buried in there, one that needs to be examined thoroughly: if humans are going around, giving people an Internet Shut-up, can they understand the role they play when people stop talking?  Can they  understand how enormous that is to take away the comfort one feels in expressing themselves?  That they’re asking people to rethink the worthiness of their feelings — telling them that some people’s feelings are more okay than other people’s feelings.

Have you received an Internet Shut-up?  How did it affect you sharing your thoughts in the future on another topic?  Did it spill over into how you comport yourself in the face-to-face world?

* I’m defining the Internet Shut-up as that comment that is solely written to point out that you have no right to feel whatever you are feeling.  The one that tells you to stop writing about whatever you are writing about; not because what you are saying is particularly offensive, but because the reader wants you to know that they are bored/think you should move on/you have nothing to complain about.

This past weekend, Josh and I went to see Moneyball AND 50/50 on the same day.  Just to clarify my nerdiness, we bought the tickets to both shows at the same time, and I made a big deal of exiting the theater by one step, pivoting, and walking back in again so the ticket taker could tear our next tickets.  The only other time we saw two shows in one day was when we left Shrek 2 so incredibly pissed that we had wasted our time with the movie that we went in to see Mean Girls, which was fantastic… in comparison.  Perhaps if we had seen Mean Girls first, we would have left and seen Shrek 2 in anger.

I loved the writing in 50/50,* loved it to the point where I will probably buy the movie when it comes out on DVD**.  It was the sort of film where you wished you were watching it with the script in hand so you could highlight all of your favourite lines.  I guess that is what I look for the most in a movie or in a song — not the visuals or the sound, but the way the words form together.  What is said.

It’s a comedy… about cancer… based on the experience that writer Will Reiser had when he was diagnosed with spinal cancer.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a version of Will (now called Adam Lerner) and Seth Rogen — who is Will Reiser’s real life friend — plays a semi-fictional version of himself.  Somehow the movie works, pointing out the absurd in the same way that… let’s say… A Little Pregnant points out the absurdity in infertility.  Infertility and cancer are not funny, but in the hands of a gifted writer, we can have the release that comes from laughing while you’re crying.

The relationship that resonated the most with me is the one between Anjelica Huston (his mother) and the main character, Adam.  At one point, she turns to his therapist and says something along the lines of “I smothered him because I love him.”  It was one of those uncomfortable, gulp-worthy moments because… I am a smother mother.

It’s not something I particularly want to be nor is it something I don’t want to be, but I also don’t know how to control it AND remain true to myself.  I am an effusive person without infertility and pregnancy loss nudging me in the direction of extreme gratitude.  I am the type of person who tells Josh and the twins daily that I love them, and I don’t say it as a thoughtless toss-off ending to a conversation.  I mean that I tell them each in a mindful way every single day that I love them.  I think it’s one of my best traits — though it’s obviously an offshoot of my extreme anxiety, the one that brings to mind 1,000 terrible what ifs daily.  My “I love yous” in that sense are practically a vitamin.  I tell the person as well as the universe how much I love them in the hopes that it somehow protects them — protects both of us.  But it’s also that I never want people around me to wonder: if I love you, I’ll tell you.  I’ll hopefully also show it through my actions, but I like things spelled out for me, so I spell them out for others by telling them in no uncertain terms that I love them.

I don’t think I’m a helicopter parent because I’m quite willing to let my kids make mistakes and learn from them.  I’m not the type of person who is going to swoop in and fix things, though I’m happy to coach from the sidelines.  Sometimes that coaching is to put on their big girl or big boy underroos and speak up for themselves.  But still, I smother — and I know I smother — because that is who I am by my very nature.  I am a please-don’t-let-me-go sort of person.  I have already spent nights crying thinking about them leaving one day for college and they are only in first grade.  If Josh didn’t ground me, I could see myself moving to wherever they go to college, and yes, I already have made myself sick thinking of the idea that they could go to two vastly different areas.

The thing is, I live my life without regrets.  That is, I try to live my life without regrets because it is the only way I feel comfortable.  We have run up against a lot of other people’s desires for our children, and my life is a series of weighing them against my what ifs and making informed decisions.  We chose their school, their camp, their synagogue, their extracurricular activities all under this umbrella of where we can predict the least amount of possible negative outcomes.  Because it’s life and accidents happen, but if we’re already worried about car crashes, let’s say, with a particular person, I would have more regrets if I squelched my what ifs and put the twins in that car than if that very same crash occurred with another driver.  It’s about living with myself, about respecting my own intuition.  And yes, my intuition is sometimes wrong.  But it’s also sometimes right.  And the only way I can live without regrets is to follow that intuition.  Accept the consequences of following that intuition, knowing full well that it pisses off people along the way, but also knowing that anyone who really has my back also accepts my irrational what ifs; my strongly honed intuition.

Which all comes down to this fact: I am the opposite of a free-range parent (or, rather, I’m a free-range parent only within the confines of my intuition, which is based on past experience, gut reactions, reading between the lines, and interpreting behaviour).  I smother.  And I do so out of love.  Out of this intense love — the sort that builds when you think the person is never going to arrive.  But seeing Adam’s reaction to his mother’s behaviour on the screen made me gulp, made me squirm in my seat.  And it also made me ask myself where do I go from here: how do I deny this side of me which is such a deep part of my personality?  Which has a good side even though it has an annoying side as well?  How do I stay on the correct side of the smothering line?  Where it’s just enough and not too much?

At the end of the day, I don’t think there is a right way to parent.  I think there is only a right way to parent your particular children.  I am wary of parenting experts who tell you what you should or shouldn’t do because they are making those statements in a bubble, without knowing your circumstances or how your children react to your parenting techniques.

Therefore, I don’t think being a smother parent is solely a negative thing just as I don’t think that being a free-range parent is a positive thing.  I think there are a lot of crappy free-range parents and a lot of fantastic smothering parents.  I think there are people who use and who abuse attachment parenting, the family bed, baby-wearing and every other thing we have felt the need to slap a name on in the past decade.  The only thing I am against is people being a proponent of a particular parenting technique whether it’s bottle feeding or breastfeeding; Ferberizing or no-cry sleep training and saying it’s the right way, the best way.  Because it may be for one child, but it certainly can’t be for all children.

I gulped not because I think it’s a terrible thing to smother your child; but because I never want the twins to feel like it’s a chore to be with me.  I want them to grow up, and by default, that also means that they must grow away.  But I hope that I get to enjoy with them a relationship much as I have with my mother, which is one part friendship and one part mentor and one part I-will-always-be-your-mommy.  And yes, she always has told me that she loves me, made sure she looked into my eyes and kissed my head.  I know how that has made me feel over the years.  And I only want that for my children too, staying on just this side of the smother line.  Of not stepping over into Anjelica Huston’s character’s land.

Maybe that’s why I get uncomfortable when people tell me that I’m a good parent: because there is that smother line and I could always step over it.  Because I don’t necessarily see myself as a good parent but more as a work-in-progress.  By which I mean that I think I do a pretty good job as a working parent in the same way that I do a pretty good job as a working writer, and I’m basing that on the feedback I get from others as well as how I feel about myself at the end of the day.  But I don’t think of myself as the best parent in the world any more than I think of myself as one of the literary greats.  I just try to raise the kids to be mindful, kindhearted individuals, and I try to write books that transport you for a while away from your day (or maybe give you insight into something you’re trying to process in your life).  And that’s pretty much all I need to feel like I’m coming out ahead.

* I also loved Moneyball and recommend it, but I found the ending so profoundly sad.  There were the feel good moments — for instance, I bawled when Hatteberg hit his homerun — but the ending left me feeling so empty for Billy Beane.  This was perhaps not the feeling you were meant to leave the theater with since no one else seemed to be vacantly processing the way Billy Beane saw his life.  So maybe that was just me.

** Will Reiser, on the off-change that you’re reading this because you happened upon it in this day-and-age of Google alerts; I truly thought that it was some of the best writing I’ve heard/read in a long time, and I don’t use that compliment lightly.

There are ten days between Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur (a holiday of atonement) that Jews are supposed to use to reflect on the past year.  They are supposed to think about promises they made that they didn’t keep, as well as ways they’d like to do things better in the upcoming year.  One of the names for these ten days is Ya’meem Noraim, which literally translates into Days of Awe.

Nora (pronounced NO-rah) means awful or terrible, which is a word you have to step back from a bit in order to see.  It is a term that evokes disbelief — awful; full of awe — at the enormity of the situation, as if you can’t quite take it in.  Things that are awful fill you with an overwhelming mixture of fear and reverence.  Terrible is another word that you have to step back to see.  The “ible” suffix means “capable of.”  Something terrible is capable of evoking terror.  Perhaps because it is so important to you.

The term fits in this case — nora is the perfect word: ten days full of awe — because it’s an introspective period of time when you are supposed to reflect on what you’ve done as well as what you plan to do if given another year to live.  Many people use it as a time to apologize to people they may have hurt in the past year, either knowingly or unknowingly.

I’ve written about this before, but every year, before Al Cheit prayer during the Kol Nidre service, my rabbi recites his own personalized apology to the congregation.  As I’ve said in the past:

It is a way to reach out to those that you inadvertently hurt during the year but didn’t tell you. If a person tells me that something I wrote or said hurt her, I can address that apology directly. But I am sure I have scratched someone emotionally and have had no clue that my words or actions have done damage.

So, once again, I offer this apology to you, repentance in the Internet age, where our actions or non-actions online may affect someone just as much as the things we do in our face-to-face world.

• For the times it took me an enormous amount of time to return an email, and for the times when I didn’t return the email at all because so much time had passed that I was embarrassed to admit I was just getting to it now.
• For the times I missed a blog post that you took a lot of time to write.
• For the times when I didn’t comment, even knowing how much writers like feedback on their words.
• For the times when I missed your Facebook status and had no idea something enormous was happening in your life.
• Equally, for the times I missed your Tweet and had no idea what you were going through.
• For the times when you learned something through my blog or a social media site, but you’re close enough to me that you should have been told directly.
• For the times that you commented on my blog, and I didn’t comment on yours.
• For the times that I wrote posts that offended you or were just plain boring or too fucking long.
• For the times that I cursed if cursing offends you.

Part of an apology is this unspoken promise that in pointing out your foibles that it won’t happen again.  And yet, as I make these apologies, I know that all these things will happen again.  I will curse because I sometimes curse, and I will write things that will offend you this year because I have no idea that my words are offending someone until they are doing their damage.  I will not be able to return every comment, I will miss the vast majority of tweets and status updates because I don’t spend enough time on those social media sites to catch all the words.  I will continue to read blogs on a mobile device that makes it difficult to comment, and I will sometimes miss blog posts entirely when I have to skim to keep up.  There will be times that it still takes me a week to write you back.

Which I hope doesn’t make this apology empty.  I’ve realized by this point in life that apologizing for my foibles doesn’t make the foibles go away.  I am pointing out these things more as an acknowledgment to your possible experience with me.  I own that it happened, and I own my part in how I made you feel.  Hopefully, the good interactions help balance out the times when you want to slap me through the screen.

We need to own what we do online just as much as we need to own what we do in our face-to-face world; all actions have the potential to help or hurt whether they take place in virtual or actual space.

For these times and for the times I didn’t know enough to include, pardon me and forgive me.

We left our shul for a year to join a different one.  Before we went away, I liked our shul.  It had a great service and a great rabbi.  At the same time, it was far distance-wise and we didn’t have a ton of friends there, so it didn’t feel like a terrible idea to try a new place.  Except the new place was an awful fit; awful to the point where I stopped keeping Shabbat for a year.  I didn’t make a challah.  I didn’t light the candles.  I didn’t attend shul.  I didn’t feel Jewish.

Josh promised me last Yom Kippur that by this Rosh Hashanah, we’d be back at our usual place.  I can’t even tell you how much it felt like I was walking into a hug to re-enter the building.  To be in that service again.  To see the rabbi and his family.  I didn’t realize how much it went beyond “like” until I had to be away from it for a year.  And suddenly, I saw its worth.

This Rosh Hashanah, we took our seats near the Cullens (so named by us because this vampire family never seems to age.  We have sat next to them for six years and while our hair greys and our midsections get fuller, they remain forever locked in youth — from the grandmother down to the teenaged grandchildren — who have seemingly been high school students for all six years).  And I could feel my entire body relax.  It didn’t seem that long a distance to drive once you saw what was closer.  And it turns out that we do have a lot of friends there, ones I had sort of glossed over mentally when I was convincing myself that I’d be happy with the move.

It felt so good to be home.

*******

You may have noticed little social media buttons at the bottom of my posts.  I added it on Wednesday since I felt like it was time to join the 21st century (or 5772 — woohoo! a shout out to all my Jewish friends!)  Also, a friend wanted to share a post and mentioned how difficult it is to share posts sometimes when you don’t have those buttons.  So now I have those buttons if you’d like to use them.  And frankly, I’d love you to click if something I wrote moves you to tell others about it.

Go on, I know you’ve been itching to tell the world about how my hamster pees in a handstand.

Apparently, you can only see the buttons if you’re in the actual post vs. being on the main url for the blog and scrolling downward.  Fancy!

*******

I want to see both Moneyball and 50/50.  I am debating whether or not I have the attention span to see them back-to-back on the same day.

*******

And now the blogs…

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:

• “A Fond Farewell” (Waiting for Our Miracle)
• “I’m Scared” (Where Do We Go From Here?)
• “Fuck It (Pun Intended)” (Les Terres Fertiles)
• “Tweeting a Funeral” (BlogHer)
• “What I Sounded Like 17 Years Ago” (Hannah Wept, Sarah Laughed)
• “One Year Blogoversary” (Yolk)
• “One Day, Maybe My Mother Will Understand” (Trying Not to Scream)
• “Slowly Backing Away” (Whitney&Erick)
• “Feeling Restless” (Bodega Bliss)
• “Left Behind” (Mojo Working)
• “Let’s Do the Time Warp Again” (Four of a Kind)
• “This is My 66_th Post” (The Smartness)
• “My Toddler Bites” (Creating Motherhood)
• “What NOT to Say” (In Due Time)
• “I Couldn’t Bite My Tongue Completely” (Holy Crap! You Can’t Talk About Miscarriage)

Still Kicking Your Collective Ass: I am so proud of you again!  15 posts!  Keep up the good work: there is a whole world of blog posts out there worthy of a little extra attention.  This week, the dates are things written between September 23rd and the 30th.

Okay, now my choices this week.

Eggs in a Row has a post about how large numbers can loom in the mind.  While she rationally knows that 32 years old is not quite ancient, it also doesn’t mesh with what her heart knows about her desired timeline.  She admits: “Because honestly, in the scheme of things, I know that I need to just breathe.  Freaking out about my age (which I know isn’t that old whatsoever) is kind of like counting the hours of sleep I could get now, if I just fell asleep.”  This post resonated with me as a fellow clock-watcher/worrier.

Perfect Moment Mondays are back at Write Mind Open Heart, and I love Lori’s take on an adoption conference she attended.  She starts: “Now I know how Trekkies feel. Not during their “real” lives, but while at StarCon.”  It’s about spending time with your tribe, about meeting the people you’ve been conversing with online for years, as well as spending time with people who get it.

Geebaby has a post about processing the SA results and how it differed from her husband’s reaction.  The bad news brought for her relief and answers, parameters and boundaries.  For her husband, the results were life-changing, devastating.  Isn’t this a gorgeous description: “This week, we gave and received pain, rocking back and forth as our emotions allowed.  Two sides of the same coin.”

Lastly, Somewhere in the Middle has a post about sugar; about a churro that never appeared and cinnamon sugar chips that didn’t quite make her feel as good as she hoped.  In fact, they had the opposite effect.  The more she ate, the sicker she felt: physically and emotionally.  “I still felt so empty, so lost. and so angry.  And the more time that passed by, I started to feel worse about what I had done.  I can’t do that again. I can’t eat food to make myself feel better, that kind of thinking creates more problems than I’m willing to deal with. I have enough to be going on with, thank you very much.”

The roundup to the Roundup: I love being back at my old shul.  I have joined the 21st century and added social media buttons.  I want to see both Moneyball and 50/50.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between September 23rd and September 30th) 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.

Welcome back to IComLeavWe. It stands for International Comment Leaving Week, but if you say it aloud, doesn’t it sounds like “I come; [but] leave [as a] we”? And that’s sort of the point. Blogging is a conversation and comments should be honoured and encouraged. I like to say that comments are the new hug–a way of saying hello, giving comfort, leaving congratulations.

Here is the vital information, pure and simple (a more detailed set of rules follows below the list):

• The list opens the 1st of every month. It remains open until the 21st. You can add yourself at any point. The list is open to everyone in the blogosphere — blog writers and/or blog readers.
• Add yourself to the list by filling out this form: The October list is closed.  The November list will open on 10/30.
• Click here to cut-and-paste this bit of code to add to your sidebar (if you have the old code from another month, remove it and replace it with this one). You need to add the icon or a link to the current list on your blog (see below) and will not be added until it’s up.
• Commenting kicks off every month on the 21st. Please mark it somewhere (calendar, post-it note taped to your computer…), though I will be sending out an email reminder on the 20th. Commenting week runs from the 21st to the 28th. Every day, leave 5 comments and return 1 comment for a total of 6 comments. You are highly encouraged to choose the blogs you comment on from the participants list below, but this is not required.
• I will send a second email on the 28th to remind you to remove the icon from your blog.
• Read below if you want to find out about Iron Commenters.
• The commenting ends on the 28th. We catch our breath and the whole thing starts again the next month on the 1st. Drop in and out according to what is happening in your life between the 21st and the 28th.

1. Stirrup Queens (twins, books, writing)
2. The 2 Week Wait (infertility, TTC, pregnancy)
3. Eggs in a Row (PCOS, marriage, humor)
4. InDueTime (life, infertility, miscarriage)
5. Hiding Scars in my Yarn (loss bereavement hope)
6. Geebaby (mfi, planning, early)
7. Waiting for the Nugget (infertility, endometriosis, general life)
8. Created Family (TTC #1, unexplained infertility, social worker)
9. Becoming Parents (raging undiagnosed infertile)
10. Endoandbeyond (repeat miscarriage, trying to get pregnant, food)
11. My Lady of the Lantern (neonatal loss, grief, pregnant again)
12. Colours of Cattiz (ivf#2, male factor, uk)
13. One Day: Ill get my baby bump (miscarriage, now on Clomid, TTC #1)
14. Through the eyes of a stranger (infertility, adoption, random)
15. Feeling Beachie (life, humor, family)
16. Here We Go Again (parenting, random, babyloss)
17. Dragondreamer’s Lair (parenting, secondary infertility, crafts)
18. His & Her Infertility (Just Like The Matching Towels) (PCOS, azoo, international adoption)
19. Cablearms (art, life, miscarriages)
20. kate; uncensored (life after IF, relationships)
21. Donor Diva: Mother via Egg Donation (egg donation, parenting,TTC again)
22. Somewhere in the Middle (dia, waiting, grief/loss)
23. Not Just An Army Wife (infertility, military, iui)
24. Trying (pregnancy after IVF)
25. Mommy Odyssey (miscarriage, suspected ectopics, generally crazy)
26. Four of a Kind (parenting, secondary infertility, loss)
27. Bring on the Babies… (IVF, recurrent pregnancy loss, miscarriage)
28. Survive and Thrive (infertility, IVF, hope)
29. Write Mind Open Heart (open adoption, mindfulness, perfect moments)
30. BabyandtheGeeks (mif, ivf, rants)
31. It’s Him, Me, and Our One Day Baby (infertility, donor egg, love)
32. Living Our Miracle (infertility, embryo adoption, motherhood)
33. Where Do We Go From Here? (infertility, pcos, family)
34. An Engineer Becomes a Mom (adoption, infertility, stupid things people say)
35. Wistfulgirl’s World (adoption, ttc, parent death)
36. Creating A Rainbow (TTC, PCOS, miscarriage)
37. Tippy & Tidy’s Tumultuous Trip To Toddlers (TTC#1,unexplained, donor eggs)
38. CD1 Again (infertility, taking a break, life)
39. Taking the Long Way (rpl, third trimester, preterm labor problems)
40. Bohemian Transplant (infertility, pregnancy, life in general)
41. This Space for Rent (infertility, army, family)
42. Our New Normal (pregnancy loss, adoption, life)
43. Fearlessly Infertile (domestic adoption, adoptive breastfeeding, military)
44. Marriage 2.0 (infertility, adoption wait, life)
45. The Rocky Road to Motherhood (life after ivf)
46. Production, Not Reproduction (open transracial adoption)
47. Witty Infertility (anovulatory, age 30, 1 year ttc)
48. A Second Line (baby, infertility, stillbirth)
49. Creating a Family (infertility, adoption, adoptive parenting)
50. HimPlusMe (infertility miscarriage ttc)
51. Searching for Serendipity (ivf, faith, randomness)
52. The Days of Our Lives (adoption, homestudy, marriage)
53. BattleFish (life, fet/ivf, randomness)
54. Greetings from Nowhere, NM (hypothyroidism, varicocele, knitting)
55. Hapa Hopes (infertility, diagnosis, intercultural)
56. Lil Family Blog (motherhood, lesbians, adoption)
57. A Miracle in the Works (autoimmune issues, preparing for IVF#1)
58. Ambition: Motherhood (pregnant, MFI, dIUI)
59. Polycystic Inside (2nd cycle with RE, introspective, sometimes artsy)
60. Sybil and Alex (ivf#2, fet#1, 2ww)
61. Of Seeds and Thorns (college graduate, crafts, moving)
62. Notes From the Ninth Circle (insurance, frustration, stalled)
63. Flogging the Muse (art, painting, creativity)
64. Holly’s Narrative Dream (life, secondary infertility, writing)
65. Invisible Mother (reproductive immunology, food, miscarriage)
66. The Long Way Around (ttc, miscarriage, pcos)
67. Just Let Go (rpl, domestic adoption, life)
68. Legos & Jets (first-time mom, former IF, photography)
69. Going For It (beautiful adopted daughter)
70. The Stork Drop Zone (infertility, humor, life)
71. Hopefulicious (No Blog) (IVF, TTC, IF)
72. Every Day Is A Country Song (rpl, faith, possible use of sperm donor)
73. A Blog of Joy & (Dis)quiet (life, spirituality, inquiry)
74. Our Regularly Scheduled Program (parenting, food, life)
75. Not a Fertile Myrtle (azoo, PCOS, dIUI)
76. The One in Eight Couple (IF, IUI #1, hope)
77. Cradles and Graves (success post-IF & loss, contest, signing off)
78. As Good As It Gets? (infertility, parent, adoption)
79. Infertile Is the New Black (infertility, failed frozen cycle, what next?)
80. IFSerenityNow (pregnancy, if, life)
81. Getting There (adoption, parenting, life)
82. Where the Wright Day Takes You (infertility, jealousy, living child free)
83. Removing Roadblocks (adoption, faith, infertility)
84. Pink Lipgloss & Prenatal (ivf, miscarriage, amh)
85. Miss Conception (ivf, twins, infant loss)
86. Lessons From and Infertile Social Worker (adoption, infertility, family)
87. One Wheeler’s World (life, parenting, home)
88. A Writer in a Wheelchair (writing, disability, life)
89. Weathering the Storm (parenting after adoption, transracial adoption)
90. IUI to Roux-en-Y (weight loss, surgery, my journey)
91. Dreaming of babies (donor egg, ivf, pregnancy)
92. Our Life Journey (infertility, embryo adoption, faith)
93. believing in june (parenting, infertility, ttc #2)
94. Team Baby (IVF, hope, forty-three)
95. A Greater Yes (embryo adoption, parenting, infertility)
96. Life and Love in the Petri Dish (RPL, end-stage infertility, donor egg)
97. This Hampton Life of Mine (secondary infertility, PCOS, only child?)
98. We’re Making a Baby (raising twins, twin pregnancy, job loss)
99. Bio Girl (parenting, infertility, endometriosis)
100. Between the Paper Sheets (infertility, weight loss, marriage)
101. my dusty uterus (humor, anovulation, pregnancy)
102. Embracing the Rain (rpl, infertility, life)
103. The October list is closed.  The November list will open on 10/30.

Q: What if I miss a day?

A: Catch up the next day by doubling your comments – 12 comments instead of 6.

Q: What if I have two blogs? Can I sign up twice, listing both blogs?

A: Yes, but you also need to double your comments. If you have two blogs listed, you should be leaving 12 comments per day.

Q: What is an Iron Commenter?

A: Not for the faint-of-heart. People who wish to be an Iron Commenter and be entered on the Iron Commenter honour roll need to leave a comment on every blog on the participants list (exceptions are blogs that require you to have a special log-in, such as some LiveJournal accounts or other similar situations). You can spread out this commenting any way you wish over the whole week, but the final comment needs to be left by midnight on the 28th (EST). Reaching Iron Commenter status is done on an honour system. Please email me if you earn Iron Commenter status so I can add you to the wall of honour.

Q: Why do I have to add that bit of code to my sidebar?

A: The code is the latest icon (the icon changes colour every month so you know that you’re on the right list). This month, the icon is orange, the next month it will be yellow, etc. The reason is two-fold: (1) it enables more people to find out about IComLeavWe and (2) it gives you easy access to the current list once the commenting week actually begins and better ensures that you’ll use it. Too many times, people sign up and forget to actually do IComLeavWe and this icon gives you a daily reminder (with the dates on it) every time you open your own blog. The icon is linked back to the current list. On the 28th, remove the icon from your blog. A new one will be created for the next month.

Q: It’s the 23rd and I just saw this for the first time on my friend’s blog! I want to join the list–why can’t I?

A: Because IComLeavWe happens every month, once the list is closed, it’s closed. If you’re finding out about this on the 23rd, you can’t join the current month. But leave yourself a note to check back in a week on the 1st and you can sign up for the next month.

Q: You said the list closes on the 21st. Well, it’s still the 21st where I am. Why aren’t you moving my information onto the list?

A: All dates and times are U.S. Eastern Standard Time (UTC/GMT -5 hours). The list closes around 11 p.m. EST on the 21st.

Q: What if no one comments on my blog and I have no comments to return?

A: Well, that really doesn’t happen for the most part, but in that case, simply choose another blog and add an additional comment. The goal is to hit 6 comments daily as a minimum. Going over that is fantastic and encouraged.

Q: Mel, my question wasn’t covered at all. What do I do?

A: Email me; I’m quite friendly. It helps to place “IComLeavWe” in the subject line. You could also check this post which contains the history of IComLeavWe and see if you can glean anything there.

Looking for the comment section? It has been closed on this post. Use the form in the directions to add yourself to the list.