A few years ago, a blogger I will not name was supposed to move to my table as part of the BlogHer conference’s “speed dating” session.  I smiled at her and she turned to her friend and made this dismissive hand motion, and then WALKED BY MY TABLE.  She decided that it was not worth her time to sit and chit chat with eager, little old me.

Down the road, we met under other circumstances.  I was introduced as Melissa from Stirrup Queens and suddenly, she was as sweet as pie.  She just loved my blog and she had all sorts of ideas of how we could work together.

I am fairly sensitive to how I’m treated, and I believe we all deserve respect and attention regardless of what the other person gets out of the interaction.  I know the world isn’t perfect and usually doesn’t act this way, but I try my hardest to always keep this in mind with my interactions and I care about how I’m treated in various arenas.

Which is why when I was chosen for BlogHer’s REI program, I went to the store a week early to see how I’d be treated when no one there knew me or knew that I was writing about the store.  I was just a shopper, looking for a gift, and I walked around the store for an hour, jotting down notes about my experience.  I’ve shopped at REI dozens of other times, and I’ve never had a bad experience, but I wanted to make sure that I had tested this aspect of shopping before I put my name behind the brand.

I spent about an hour in the store, which was fairly crowded for a Friday morning. (Seriously, how were all of these people off of work?  They can’t all be writers who work out of their living room.)  Five different employees asked me if I needed any help.  When I held up my hand and said “no thanks,” they left me alone.  When I paused to ask some questions, they answered them politely.  One told me that REI is actually a co-op, much like my favourite bookstore, and people can become members, which makes them partial owners.  I liked hearing that, though I couldn’t put my finger on why.  It just made my little Commie heart happy.

I also walked around listening to how they spoke to other people.  How they treated women with children in tow.  How they treated men.  Probably my favourite interaction that I noted took place between two twenty-something men — one the employee and the other a German customer.  The customer was attempting to purchase a bicycle and wanted to give it a test ride, but he only wanted to test ride it inside the store.  I personally would have snapped at the customer and said, “you can’t freakin’ ride it in the store.”  But that’s why I don’t work in a store.  The employee patiently said over and over again, “I hear you, man, and I want you to test ride it, but you can’t do it in the store, man.  We can’t have you plowing down customers, man.  Let’s take this puppy outside.”  To which the German man would insist that he couldn’t understand why he couldn’t ride it inside the store and the whole exchange would patiently begin anew.

Undercover customer service investigation complete, I felt ready to actually participate in the program.

So far, so good.

*******

BlogHer and REI gave me $250 to spend at the store as well as a two-hour guided tour of the store so I could ask all my questions (see, this is why I wanted to go undercover first).  Which was a good thing because even though I’ve been camping numerous times, go geocaching with some regularity, go hiking fairly frequently, I felt like I knew next to nothing when it came to gear.

Though I did some self-assigned homework before I left for the store, using their online tutorials and guides to understand what I wanted and why.  Even so, I was quite relieved to be paired up with John who gave me some background about the store (and did his own homework reading my blog) and then led me from item to item that I was interested in knowing more about, telling me how one goes about making a decision.

For instance, I knew I wanted sleeping bags for the twins.  It’s something they covet.  I know we’re going on a camping trip next summer to a music festival so we’d have them for that.  Slumber parties, camp, power outage in the house. (You laugh, but we have about 8 major power outages per year in the DC area and when they’re in winter, the house gets cold!)  But I had no idea how one went about choosing a single sleeping bag that would fit these very diverse needs.  John walked me through the pros and cons of each one, finally leading me to two adult men’s bags. (See, you thought I was going to say a kids’ bag, but no, we actually realized that these two bags would fit our needs better.)

When I got home, I rolled them out in the living room so they could slip their little bodies inside and snuggle down.

I wanted to be part of this program because I wanted us to geocache better.  We have been doing it in the most ass-backwards way — sans GPS — and while we find a few caches, more often than not, our hike is for naught.  There are only so many times your husband will believe you and drive to the opening of the trail before he’s onto the fact that you can’t really go geocaching without a GPS.

I also wanted the GPS to be easy for a child to use; I wanted them to own the activity.  And John helped me find that too.

The non-gear thing that interested me most were the classes that REI holds ranging from how to use your new kayak to hiking in the woods.  Some of them were also free; most were relatively inexpensive.  I’m considering taking the GPS class with the kids to ensure that we’re using it correctly before we get frustrated in the woods.

To be honest, a large reason why I can put my name behind this review is because they are selling things that help you live longer, provided you use them correctly (have to put that caveat in because John scared me a bit while we were over at camping stoves with some propane stories).  If you go to some businesses that shall not be named and you use or consume what they’re selling, you probably will have a shorter life.  But REI is about getting you outside, getting you active, getting you to commune with nature, getting you to slow down and notice the world.

And beyond that, I liked that they didn’t feel their responsibility to me ended when the cashier rung up my purchase.  They have classes to teach me how to use the gear properly, how to do all the activities they propose safely.  John explained that it was obviously in REI’s best interests that you emerge from the woods in one piece so you’ll come back shopping again. (And they have an amazing return policy to keep customers happy and loyal.  I can call it amazing because I’ve also already tested it once.)  All businesses want to keep you alive so you’ll keep coming back, but REI is actually taking steps to ensure that you remain breathing.  It’s hard to find fault with a business that brings that level of responsibility to the game.

I have one more post coming about how we used the gear that I bought with the gift card.  But now here’s your chance to win a gift card from REI…

*******

From BlogHer:

What outdoor activity do you pledge to do with your family this summer and how would a $100 REI gift card help you get there? Take the REI Outdoor Pledge and submit your comment to be entered.

No duplicate comments.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment in response to the sweepstakes prompt on this post

b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older and runs from 8/17 – 9/20/11.

Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail.

You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

Head to the BlogHer round-up page for more chances to win.

As I was reading the comments on this last post about trusting those bringing help to the infertility community, the same thought kept popping up: we pay what we pay in America because we are willing to accept those price tags.  People pointed out the difference in cost between those insured and those uninsured who are using ART.  People pointed out the difference in cost between those doing IVF in another country and those doing IVF in America (same technology, same drugs, very different price tags).  People pointed out the difference in price tags on an IVF cycle out of a university hospital vs. a private clinic.  Though we focused on ART, I’m fairly certain that we could ask the same questions about adoption agencies, surrogacy agencies, and donor gamete agencies.  Our price tags are where they are because the general population is willing to pay it.

Wait, willing is the wrong term.  We blog about how we make gut-wrenching decisions based on the financial side of infertility.  There are those who are not cycling or pursing other paths to parenthood due to the cost.  There are those who are using up the time that is on their side because they need to save in order to cycle, wasting the years when they perhaps would be more successful.

But here’s the question — if the only way things would change would be for everyone to stay home from the clinics, would you?

If you could know without a doubt that everyone would stay home from the clinics and refuse to treat their infertility; that the waiting rooms of clinics would become barren wastelands with tumbleweed gauze blowing under the chairs; that the doctors would all be standing daily at the front desk, drumming their fingers, waiting for anyone to step through the doors: would you do it?

What if the boycott would need to be going on for a year or more in order to effectively lower the price so it is accessible to all Americans?  Would you forgo utilizing ART (or replace that with whatever area of family building assistance you’re utilizing) for a year?  Put off family building for an entire year?  Could you wait out a year if you knew without a doubt that family building assistance would be affordable to many more people if everyone participated?

Time means something with infertility — both in the physical sense of success rates and the emotional sense of peace of heart.  What is worth more — being mindful of time but spending more than you can afford, or sacrificing some time in order to make fertility treatments affordable?  And would you be willing to sacrifice your own time in order to ensure that someone else has access to ART?

I don’t have an answer.  I’d like to believe that we’d all collectively work together towards a common goal, but I also know the emotional side of infertility and how long a year is in infertility years.  Can we really ask that of one another?  My hert tells me that we’d be asking too much.  And at the same time, can we really passionately argue that we want a change if we’re not willing to make sacrifices in order to achieve it?  Boycotts are never easy.  Evoking change is never easy.  It is scary to take a leap of faith that your efforts will be rewarded.

The whole thing is just for shit.

Knowing from historical evidence that boycotts are often an effective tool to evoke change, would you participate in an ART boycott — why or why not?

This is a dark post.  I feel the need to say that because I think I usually see the good in people and write about the good I see in people, and I was fairly uncomfortable having these thoughts.

Long after I wrote the post about Theresa Erickson I was still thinking about the situation. The thoughts floating through my head formed into something akin to a strange film on my skin.  We were on holiday, walking through a supermarket to pick up chips for the beach. All I could think about was how those families were preyed upon, their situation exploited for someone else’s financial gain.

And once I saw it there, I started thinking about it everywhere.  She isn’t the first person who exploited other people.  She won’t be the last.  And what it comes down to is how to find your way back to trusting ground after entering a space where you doubt everyone’s intentions.

I think there is a very thin line between providing a service (and being compensated for fulfilling a need) and exploiting a need.  I was thinking about this in a supermarket and, after all, what is a supermarket except a store that is meant to exploit your need for sustenance.  Or wait, does it fulfill your need for sustenance?  Can you see where my thinking started to get grey and murky? Where does it cross the line from being compensation (something I wholeheartedly support) to being exploitation (something I wholeheartedly deplore)?

We need to eat, and we need assistance with our health, and sometimes we need professionals to help us build our families.  And I’d classify all these things as needs more than wants, though people could argue that the final one is a want more than a need.  But I’m not really looking for an argument — for me, in regards to my own sanity and therefore my own life, family building is a need.  For you, it may fall more as a want.

If there was one store selling food, you better believe they’d jack up the prices, knowing that humans are desperate for food to eat; we can’t live without it.  The only reason food prices are where they are is due to the abundance of food.  It’s a terrible side of human nature — that those with the means would hold it over the heads of those without.

And that is what Theresa Erickson did.

She knew the needs of the community.  She observed the community for years by working in the community and like a sibling who knows exactly how to push her sister’s buttons, Erickson knew exactly who would take her up on her offer for a child.  When a human has been beaten away from their need for so long, they are willing to pay the high price in the same way as if you were starving, you’d pay an enormous amount for food.

And I think that I have finally put my finger on why this bothers me so much; because if she can exploit our needs, then anyone can exploit our needs, especially one who remains in our community for a long time and observes how deep the need goes.

If he wanted to, my RE can hold my sanity over my head and put a disgustingly enormous price tag on helping me.  And who is to say that he doesn’t?  I have always taken the cost of ART to be the cost of ART: meaning; fertility treatments cost what they cost because you are not only paying for the supplies and the expertise, but you are paying for the research and the equipment.  That the price is enormous, but the cost of creating IVF is enormous.  And I’ve always trusted that, and I’m sure I’ll get back to a place where I do.

But how do I know?  This seed of doubt has been planted and it is eating away at what I’ve always felt comfortable with.

From what we know based on what she has admitted (and it is her choice to plead guilty and we can only base our understanding on what she states.  If we have the facts wrong, it is because she has provided the wrong facts) she has clearly crossed the line.   I’m not sure how anyone could twist this through a lens and make it look ethical.  But set aside for a moment (to mentally come back to later) the children at the heart of this, the families affected, the surrogates involved.  Set aside all of that.  At the heart of this is the fact that someone observed our needs for a long time and then started exploiting our needs in 2005.  And kept exploiting them until 2011.

That is too long a period of time for this to not be purposeful.

The unwritten social contract dictates that we request compensation for our expertise.  It’s the modern day barter that grows out of the olden days where I’d trade my surplus of apples for your surplus of tobacco and we’d all be happy (forgive me; Maryland history books seem to always use apples and tobacco as our two bartering items).  Therefore, when I pay my doctor to treat my illness, that money is covering the investment he made in his education.  It’s covering office costs and equipment costs.  I’m not sure how he adds up everything that needs covering and divides that by the average amount of patients, but I don’t begrudge doctors money and frankly, I can’t think too deeply about the fairness of the cost.  The job he does is worth a lot to me, and I wouldn’t begrudge him even more than what his education cost since my life has a high worth to me.

But the Erickson situation is like a doctor seeing someone with Stage 4 cancer and holding out a medication for an outrageous sum simply because he knows he can get the patient to pay the price because he is desperate to live.  This is like a doctor making the conscious choice to exploit that patient’s need for their own financial gain.

I have a lot of fears right now, and I’m finding it very difficult to return to that rosy, rational place where I was comfortable in my beliefs.  Where I knew that exploiters exist — does Madoff ring any bells? — and they may even cross my path, but the vast majority of people I surround myself with have my best interests at heart even if they want compensation for their work.  I know I will get back to that place because if that is your natural state, you always return to that place.  But right now, I’m waiting for this feeling to pass so I can return to a place of trust.  Because what else can I do when I have this need and I require others to help me fulfill it?

This needs to be my final thoughts on this because I find that in this particular situation, I need to vomit it out rather than take more in.  Though I want to hear your thoughts on this too to wrap it up.  And then we can go back to my usual musings on unicorns, rainbows, and sing kumbaya.

This week.

There is a lot to unpack and not a lot of time to unpack it.  I’m finding it very difficult to gather my thoughts into words.  At the current moment, they are forming more into grunts and screeches than they are into rational sentences.

Instead of unpacking something real, I instead bring you my thoughts that came at 2 am on Wednesday night.  How would you feel if you found out unequivocally that mermaids were real and living in various bodies of water that you visit?  Would you be excited, hoping to see one?  Would you feel sort of anxious, wondering if you had unknowingly swam with them?  Would you be totally jealous, wishing you too could be a mermaid?

Sometimes I think we spend so much time wishing that fantasy was real, that we don’t really consider the outcome of having our fantasies coming true.  Or, I think that often we feel the outcome of wishes come true and yet still forget when we start chasing the next wish.  Sometimes what seems like it would be the most fantastic thing in the world turns out in reality to be a nightmare.  And other times, what we hoped would be fantastic delivers exactly as planned.

Substitute the word “mermaid” for a whole host of other things.

I was thinking about that at 2 am instead of thinking about other things, but regardless, I was wishing that my brain had an off-switch and I could just get to sleep.

*******

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:

• “Trying to Find the Positive” (Whitney and Erick)
• “Finding My Sight” (Not a Fertile Myrtle)
• “Balance” (Smartness)
• “Bile” (Sideshow Barb)
• “The Power of Our Love” (Dragondreamer’s Lair)
• “Unexpected Fallout” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “XY with Several Chromosomal Abnormalities” (Fierce and Nerdy)
• “The Matrix” (Just Being)
• “Across the Universe” (Still Life with Circles) – read Esperenza’s comment

Okay, now my choices this week.

CD1 Again has a raw post about discovering her husband’s ex-wife is pregnant.  It is a tiny post that is a punch to the stomach, especially the timing of the announcement.  And I found that even after I left my comment, that I came back to read it again, as if I expected something else to be there.  A side note, it’s her birthday, so please be sure to wish her a happy birthday when you stop by.

The Kir Corner has a fantastic post about why she started blogging that resonated with me so absolutely. I love this: “I had no idea what I was doing.  I was not consumed with followers or page views.   I could barely hit publish.  My technique was poor and scattered, much like I was at the time.  Kir’s Corner was just a place I could set my troubles down on and leave them.”  I love her release of the label and the peace it brings.

Lastly, I am Vulnerable has a post about aging, a topic that is often on my mind.  I think it’s probably on many people’s mind in this community because infertility has a way of conjuring up mental hourglasses where the sand is dripping away at breakneck speed.  But this post is about what is lost and what is gained with aging.  And I have to admit that after I read it, I realized how much I didn’t miss aspects of those days that I’m nostalgic about.  Yes, I want parts of it, but you can’t take parts without taking the whole.

The roundup to the Roundup: How would you feel if you discovered mermaids were real?  Beyond that, lots of great blog posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 5th and August 12th) 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.

Important update for commenters at the bottom

I got the first email in the morning, asking me if I had seen the article.  I was off to the beach, certain by the keywords in the url that it was one of those stupid-ass stories that would make my blood boil, so I decided to not click over to read the article at the moment.  There would be time later to get myself good and angry.

I got the second email in the afternoon, asking me if I had seen the article.  But we were trying to think through dinner, and I wanted to get the kids fed before I read it.  Though I found it odd that two people sent me the same article.

And then the third email came and the fourth and I finally clicked over to discover that I had heard of the San Diego lawyer.  I sat down to read about how Theresa Erickson, otherwise known as the surrogacy lawyer, had pleaded guilty for her involvement in a baby selling ring.

And I wanted to throw up.

I had not expected to know the guilty party.  I recently did her radio show with Dina Roth Port and Barbara Collura from Resolve, and I’ve pointed people her way in the past when they had surrogacy questions.  I knew nothing about her actual work as a lawyer, but she was the only person I could think of beyond surrogates themselves who had any tie to surrogacy.  So I sent people her way when they asked me if I knew anyone who could answer their surrogacy questions.

Which is why I wanted to throw up.

It’s a small reproductive rights world.  I’m certain there are many of us that had the same sinking feeling when they read the names of the people in the article.  And frankly, I felt a bit shattered, beyond what I felt with something like April Rose.  Because Erickson was a very real person that I spoke with several times via email or on her radio show.  I trusted her because other major organizations seemed to trust her.  And why not — there was nothing that I could tell from our emails or the radio show that she would play into the very underbelly that people fear from reproductive sciences, setting back public perception on surrogacy yet again.

There are very real babies at the heart of this who will grow up to be very real adults who will have to contend with their feelings on how they came to be.  And there are very real parents at the heart of this, who built their families on Erickson’s lies.  And there are very real women who were used as surrogates without intended parents in mind; the babies they were producing meant to be sold.

Which is why I wanted to throw up.

There is a lot of trust one needs to have to engage in assisted family building.  There are so many people you need to trust along the way as well as trust the processes of building families in a non-traditional way.  And Erickson’s actions are so damaging because they don’t just affect the families involved.  They don’t just affect the surrogates or the babies or the parents.  Her actions affect public perception, they have created doubt, they have caused confusion in those of us who need to use assisted family building.

And I don’t know why, but I immediately started crying while writing this.  Because I am so fucking angry that I can’t build my family without assistance and because I need to depend on other people in order to form my family.  And I am so fucking angry that the majority of people in this world don’t have to navigate the ethical concerns that come with assisted family building.  They want a child, they have sex, and they raise said child.  And I am so fucking angry that I have to depend on others.

And I am so fucking angry because now I don’t fully trust even the people that this morning I trusted fully.  Just because she planted a small seed of doubt in my mind.  And I’m certain I will weed it out, that the trustworthy people in this world will tip the scales back.  But tonight, I’m just really sad for everyone who needs to reach out to others to build their families.  Because it pains me that anyone in the ALI community was taken advantage of by mere virtue of the fact that they need assistance.  And it makes me so fucking angry.

Update:

I was putting this in the comment section and then decided to move it up here to ensure that everyone saw it.  As I wrote literally days ago, I have a commenting policy on this site: “I’m all for disagreement, as long as it’s polite. I will remove any comments that I deem off-topic, rude, or mean-spirited.”  Anonymous started something that is walking a thin line.  What we know right now is that Theresa Erickson pleaded guilty, therefore, the next day in the court room will be for sentencing.  Without a trial for affected parties to voice their hurt, having their say online or offline within conversations is a way of keeping their voice.  My heart goes out to the people who have been directly affected, such as one commenter below.  My heart goes out to the people who used her services in other situations and now feel queasy.  My heart also goes out to those of us who were indirectly affected, which I’d counter is pretty much everyone in the ALI community.  I encourage those who feel passionately about Theresa Erickson to write their own blog post on the topic.  My comment section won’t be a place for fighting, but luckily there is plenty of space in the blogosphere for people to still voice their opinions elsewhere.