At the end of June, headed home from vacation, I bought some whitefish fillets and a trout steak at a smokehouse in northern Wisconsin, then ducked into the bathroom and peed on a plastic stick. It took maybe four seconds for the plus sign to pop up, bright, unshakeable blue.
I called my sister from the parking lot. “I’m totally pregnant. What the fuck?”
I’d spent the last ten days frantically checking my underpants for blood, scooting to the bathroom at the slightest hint of damp. I talked to my body.
“You’re not pregnant. You can’t possibly be pregnant. How could you be pregnant? Get real.”
Because, come on. Forty-four-year-old women don’t get pregnant by accident. Everybody knows that. It’s a statistical impossibility, right? If they do get knocked up it’s after years of anguished effort. After charting cycles and mucus and basal body temps. After Clomid, after hormones, after freezing their eggs.
I’d internalized all the fertility horror stories, all the despair and all the cats. So much so that, weeks earlier, when the condom disappeared and we looked at each other aghast, we talked about STDs, not babies.
“I think I’m too old to get pregnant,” I said. I may have laughed.
*
At first I was giddy. I was pregnant! What the hell? It was nuts, yes. But it was a fact and, to my great surprise, once I climbed over the boulder of the truth of that fact, I was happy.
I’ve never fantasized about marriage — about poofy dresses and gaudy rings — let alone about the maternity tops and nursery wallpaper that tend to follow. In my 20s and 30s my fantasy life tilted toward Pulitzers and exotic international travel. (It still does.) Kids were implausible, hypothetical at best, and if I ever tossed and turned over a ticking clock, I usually forgot about it by morning.
Instead I watched, curious but detached, as two-by-two my friends got married, bought condos, and multiplied. Since I’d managed to not have children so far, went the logic — if you can call it that — I must not want them, right? If and when I did, I would have them, when the time was right. Right?
But that time didn’t come.
“Why WOULDN’T you have a baby now?” said a friend, when I fessed up to what was up. “You’d be a great parent.”
That was nice. And I wanted it to be true. I also wanted to barf and I couldn’t stay awake past sunset, but I was so high on hormones that it didn’t matter. This unplanned, unexpected, preposterous potentiality felt like a strange gift — one with the power to lift me up out of the muck of midlife questions.
I wasn’t having a crisis, exactly – I had meaningful work, good friends, my health. I was just so tired of the same-old same. Past pursuits left me limp. I didn’t want to go to the bar, didn’t care about that new restaurant, this literary scandal, whatever next big thing. I had abandoned the dream of a four-star career, and from where I stood the prospect of a few years in babyland looked pretty good. Friends and family had braved that frontier already, had set up homesteads, paved the trails. I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but what was? Hit me again, life — give it your best shot. I could totally be a parent.
But as I marched on through the days that followed exhilaration snagged, as it does, on cold, rocky facts. Such as:
I am old, of “advanced maternal age” in the medical lingo of motherhood. When you’re over 40 pregnancy can be perilous – for mother and baby alike. Gestational diabetes, high blood pressure, preeclampsia, placenta previa – not to mention the skyrocketing risk that the child might be born with a chromosomal disorder (one in 66) or might not be born at all: as many as one in two pregnant women over 40 miscarry before 12 weeks – they have, in the lingo, a spontaneous abortion. And even assuming none of the above, what about being 60 with a teenager in the house? How, exactly, did that work?
I am poor, or close enough. In fact, I only recently re-acquired health insurance. I’m doing better than a few thin years back, but I’ve got just a slippery grip on the boho bottom rung of the middle class. I work from home and have a fair amount of freedom, but decent part-time child care would drain my savings within months. I was going to support a child … how?
And, yes, I am single. I’d presumably be all on my own, though of course I’d have to tell the guy – this man who I liked a lot but who was not my boyfriend, and wasn’t on track to be. Oh shit. How was I going to tell him? He was a good guy, but this was not what he signed up for when he took me out to dinner.*
*
At various times over the last ten years, I’ve been lectured by one friend or another about those annoying expiring eggs. If you’re a childless woman over 35, you probably have been, too.
“You need to start working on having a baby NOW,” scolded one, hijacking a perfectly pleasant dim sum with gruesome tales from her odyssey of fertility treatments.
“If you want to have kids, just find someone to get you pregnant asap,” directed another, sipping tea in a Park Slope cafe. “It doesn’t matter who,” she added, almost as an afterthought.
I listened and nodded and then forgot about it. Besides: How dare they presume to tell me what to do? I’ve got my own thing going on here. Don’t they know 40 is the new 30?
And yet, like spring tulips, or taxes, the babies kept coming, all around. I held them, soothed them, and sucked in the powdery smell of their soft baby heads. I chipped in to buy strollers and copies of Goodnight, Moon. I babysat and carried bags loaded with plastic buckets to the beach. One baby in particular may have saved my sanity, through her implacable babyness, as I cared for her through a bitter winter of crushing unemployment and romantic disappointment. And even as my friends’ complaints about nipple chafing and colic left me out in the cold, the cynic in the corner, ever-ready with an eyeroll to say, “Enough about your bloody boobs, let’s go smoke,” I did look at them, children and their mothers alike, with awe and with wonder.
And when too many of those same friends suffered, in turn, wrenching divorce, I thought, my God, how awful. And, also, “I’m lucky.” But the kids – if this is the price they paid for these kids, maybe it was worth it?
*
I went to the doctor.
“Congratulations!” she said. “This is exciting. There’s no reason this can’t be a normal, healthy pregnancy.” A pause. “You must be a bit overwhelmed.”
I was – and not just by the cells dividing south of my navel. Did you know that, currently, only 12 percent of individual health insurance policies offer coverage for basic maternity care? That such coverage is mandated by only eight states? I didn’t, until suddenly I did.
Carriers in states without a mandate may offer coverage in the form of a rider, a package of benefits above and beyond the basics. But in addition to being expensive, and often sorely limited in scope, these riders, it turns out, are not something you can opt into once you become, in fact, pregnant. Because, of course, at that point your pregnancy is a pre-existing condition.
To say I was distressed would be a civilized gloss. I was on fire with the white-hot fury of 100 suns after gleaning this information from the internet. Thankfully, a phone call to my own carrier, Aetna, informed me that it was a moot point. Because, not only does Aetna not offer maternity coverage as part of my carefully acquired insurance package, it does not offer any maternity coverage at all, even as a rider, on any individual benefits package.
Babies, it turns out, are not cost-effective for the insurance industry. Because, guess what? When women purchase maternity coverage, it’s a pretty good bet they plan to use it.**
The base cost of nine months of prenatal and three months of postpartum medical care for a routine pregnancy and delivery is estimated at $10,000. One office visit with the ob-gyn my GP had packed me off to was going to run $400, out of pocket – and even though Aetna wasn’t about to cover me, I make too much money to qualify for Medicaid.
I stood in front of the (very kind) receptionist, sweaty and humiliated. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thanks,” I said. “It’s my own fault. I should have checked.”
*
I was five years old when Roe v. Wade was decided. I grew up with choice, reproductive and other, as my birthright.
When I got pregnant at 20, in college, the choice was clear. There was the 45-minute drive to the closest clinic, the counselor, the oblivion, and then the groggy drive home, maxi-pad packed between my thighs. Afterward, there was pizza.
What I didn’t expect, what no one prepped me for, including the (very kind) counselor, was that the dust kicked up in the process of choosing one choice over another doesn’t drift away once the choice is made.
In the months that followed my abortion I flailed. I don’t remember much, but I do remember the crippling waves of panic. I couldn’t eat; couldn’t breathe. I landed in the emergency room a few times, hyperventilating, numb, convinced I was dying, and my boyfriend was stuck with the fun task of feeding me daily doses of Xanax as I crawled across the finish line of the semester. After that, I dropped out of school for a while.
That clear choice? I’m glad I made it, even though it sucked.
Now, two dozen years later, I’m not a scared student anymore. I live in a big blue city in a state that, so far, has resisted the pressure to play pinball with women’s health. I have citizenship and I have agency and I have options. I did the math, adding up the costs of health care, child care, education, better housing. I thought about the guy, still in the dark, though not for long — and I looked up the nearest Planned Parenthood.
*
How does this story end, this modern choose-your-own adventure? Does it end with a bouncing baby or cold, clinical regret? Is there something in between?
I’ve spent most of my professional life as an editor, shaping clear story arcs out of baggy narratives; helping writers craft coherent characters and identify conflict, nudging them to fill in missing facts and excise extraneous ones – the ones that don’t advance the story.
Despite this, or maybe because, I have a strangely hostile relationship to tidy endings and smooth story arcs. I long for messy stories that don’t end with an epiphany – confusing stories awkwardly told by unreliable narrators. I crave stories bold and weird enough to stay ugly and leave questions unanswered.
I hated the movie Knocked Up, for example, as much for its pat, redemptive ending as for its casual nonengagement with even the idea of abortion. “I don’t care if it’s fiction!” I railed at its fans. “That never, EVER happened!”
At some point most people – and by “people” I guess here I mean “women,” though I’d hope this could be extrapolated to include men, and filmmakers – learn, through more or less painful personal experience, the futility of magical thinking. You know what I mean: The passionate conviction that, against all factual evidence, the alcoholic will wake up sober. That the married man will leave his wife. That the New Yorker will come knocking. That positivity can cure cancer. That visualization can conjure wealth. That an accidental pregnancy can be a blessing in disguise.
All of this may or (more likely) may not happen. But whatever the outcome, it’s not thanks to the power of hope and faith. The world turns inexorably, no matter our most tightly held desires, and what change we do manage to effect is the product, most often, of grinding hard work. Fairy tales, in short, don’t come true – and the ability to envision realistic, sustainable fantasies – and execute them — is a hard-won key to adulthood.
I knew all of that. But I couldn’t shake it, this fairy tale of a crooked life path made straight and bright by a baby. I still wanted to believe.
*
“I mean, I’m sorry – but I just think that people who can’t afford to have kids, they shouldn’t.”
My friend was talking about some random pregnant cousin, but her words chilled. She didn’t know. How could she know I’d just been at a low-income clinic, asking about prenatal heath care?
Back when I had a full-time job and comprehensive health insurance, I worked 50, 60 hours a week. I didn’t have time to date, let alone have a baby. I loved my job, but I could barely take care of my cat. I could not have afforded a child, by the sheer economics of time. `
Then, when the bottom dropped out, I left that job. It was my choice, one I was lucky to be able to make. I could probably have gotten a job in advertising or communications. I hear about these jobs, jobs with summer hours and margarita nights and full-ride benefits, and I know that the corporate path is a choice many people make in the name of security. But I didn’t. Instead I chose to keep trying to patch something new together and call it a career.
Does the choice to hold tight to my independence and make my time my own make me less qualified to have a child? According to Anne-Marie Slaughter, this should be giving me a leg up in the game of work-family balance! Instead, parenthood was shaping up to be yet one more thing, like decent health insurance, or a writing career, that is now the exclusive province of the monied middle class. If I wanted a baby, should I have looked for a rich man to marry? Taken that job in PR?
Another friend tried to set me straight. “There’s no birthright to come into the world with a two-parent, prepared-in-every-way family with parents between the ages of 26-36,” she pointed out. “We both know enough people who on paper looked like the perfect family who have exploded in one way or another or several.”
*
I worked it over. And over again. I felt like a fool, but I wanted to go through with it, to at least see what happened next. Money? Paternity? I would figure that out. I was an educated adult with friends, loving family, at least a few resources.
But, wait, was I abdicating personal responsibility by feeling inclined to let nature take its course? Was I selfish? Was I secretly seeking the social legitimacy motherhood confers upon a woman, even if it’s motherhood of the illegitimate kind?
Was I prepared for the irreversible effect a child would have on my finances, my future, and, quite possibly, my health?
Or, but, wait, was I conflicted – was I considering an abortion — because I have internalized misogynist cultural messages that say that women should be seen and not heard, should sublimate her own desires to those of the patriarchy, should be a pliable, no-strings-attached fuck buddy? Should not, above all else, be inconvenient?
Like most people, my sexual life holds plenty of secrets, some painful and some just plain private. But pregnancy isn’t a secret you can keep for long. Was getting pregnant – or, really, staying pregnant – just a narcissistic bit of sexual exhibitionism?
Or was I just, still, unfathomably naïve?
“I think it’s a mistake,” he said, when I screwed up the nerve to get in touch. “It’s your choice, of course. I’ll support it, whatever you decide. But I think it’s a mistake. It just doesn’t make sense.”
He was right, of course, his voice alarmed, cracking in raspy patches across the bad connection. It didn’t make any sense at all.
*
When I saw the first blood I felt a wash of relief, which I quickly plugged with a sandbag of denial.
Perhaps the best-known fact about miscarriage is that no one talks about it. But what they really don’t talk about, when they’re not talking about it, is how much it can hurt. In your heart, yes, and also in your guts.
A few hours after the phone call with the would-be father, I started to spot, first a dull rusty clot, then the palest pink smear. As if my seven-week-old embryo had heard the fear in his voice, said, “OK, then,” and begun the 16-hour process of detaching itself from my uterine wall. As if by magic.
Mercury was in retrograde. It was, for crying out loud, Friday the 13th.
I tried to convince myself the spotting was normal. Happens all the time, right? At that point I was wrung out, and starving. I went to get a burger with a friend and ate half her bacon-blue cheese pizza as well. Then, on the way home, at the grocery store, came the hemorrhagic gush, the brightest clear red.
I went home, drank some wine. So, I thought. This is what a miscarriage is: A lot of blood and sadness, and these little pings of pain.
At 5 a.m. stabbing, crescendoing cramps kicked me up out of uneasy sleep to scream and clutch the pillow. Then came phone calls, to a nurse, to my sister, to a friend. My roommate begged me to go to the ER. And when, hours later, after one final pelvic-splitting contraction, it slid down my cervix with a pop, a 3-inch oyster of blood and tissue and the tiniest tiny fingers. I yelped, surprised. But that part? It didn’t hurt at all.
It plopped into the toilet and sat there till I scooped it out into an empty hummus container. I poked at it with the end of a plastic spoon. Turned it over. It was so small, this thing that loomed so large. I was too tired to be upset. I was just happy the pain had stopped.
*
I buried my seven-week-old embryo, my oyster, on the banks of the Iowa River. I didn’t mean to take it across state lines. In shock, a zombie really, I drove that night to Iowa City to give a book talk. I forgot it was in my bag; I’d taken it with me to the (heartbreakingly kind) doctor at the low-income clinic, who told it wasn’t my fault, these things just happen. But once I realized what I’d done, I had to work with it. So the next day, hormones leaching from my body after night sweats had soaked my sheets, I got some frozen yogurt and walked my hummus container down the University of Iowa campus to the water.
I crawled down onto a slab of concrete along the riverbank and dug a little hole in the sticky clay soil, then pried off the lid and splashed it all in – a rank stew of blood and urine and tissue that reeked with the tang of day-old death. As the liquid dribbled down the slope toward the water and soaked into the clay, what remained was revealed, bleached of color, a cold spoonful of pale membrane and mass. I covered it with soil and rocks, then mumbled something intended to make me strong and called my parents.
The next day it took six hours to cover the 250 miles between Iowa City and Chicago. I kept having to pull off the interstate and cry. I cried for blotchy days – in the car, in bed, at the clinic where I applied (fruitlessly) for retroactive Medicaid to cover the bills the pregnancy left behind.
And then, eventually, I stopped crying. And when my grief floated way, I was left with … nothing.
“Of course you feel ‘empty,’” said the therapist. “Something is missing. There was something there, and now it’s gone.”
*
“It’s for the best, obviously,” I said.
“No hard choices had to be made,” he said.
“My body just made the choice instead.”
But I felt cheated. I wanted my mind to have made the choice.
Being pregnant was overwhelming. I was confused and beyond stressed — but I can’t remember when, for such a brief window, I felt so empowered. If nothing else, I had thought, pregnancy takes time. I had time to sort it out, this idea that could maybe be a baby, or not.
But, it turned out, I didn’t. My time was up.
“Spare me the self-help bullshit,” I snarled at my sister while I sat, snot-nosed and gasping, behind a gas station off I-88 on my way home from Iowa. “Life isn’t Eat, Pray, Love. If you try to turn this into a teachable moment I will fucking scream.”
But, of course, narrative demands closure, so here it is:
It’s exhausting, day in, day out, making choices. Who hasn’t dreamed of a deus ex machina, a magic wand? It’s so much easier to let things slide, to be too stressed out, too busy, too tired or hungover.
But choice is power. It forces you to live in the active present tense, not the editorially lazy passive construction of this-happened-to-me. Make a choice and you can’t abdicate responsibility to the real or perceived will of others or the now of perpetual distraction. Make a choice and you confront the closed mystery of the choice not chosen. If ambivalence is a hallmark of denial, choice is an acceptance of time, mortality, limits.
There’s a lot of magical thinking about pregnancy going around these days. In the personal sphere it’s a waste of time; in the public sphere it is terrifying and destructive.
Contrary to the beliefs of conservative politicians, women’s choices about pregnancy are not a question of will, or luck, or magic vagina barricades. Getting pregnant is neither punishment nor reward. It is not a magical blessing or a curse — and it most definitely is not a silver bullet you can use to shoot yourself out of a rut. It is a plain biological fact that may or may not result in a healthy baby, that could immeasurably enhance or irreversibly damage your life prospects.
Women are raped and get pregnant. Women in loving monogamous relationships who want to get pregnant can’t. Women with five children are forced by circumstance or religion to have more. Lesbian women who long to be parents have their hopes squashed by red tape and bigotry. Single women who get pregnant by accident and suddenly have to re-evaluate their attitudes toward the whole question of whether they will ever raise children end up miscarrying.
In the world of women’s reproductive health, choice isn’t only a euphemism for safe, legal abortion. Choice — true choice — entails sex education and work-life balance and accessible, affordable prenatal medical care for all pregnant women, regardless of income or employment status. (For the record: If I’d waited two more years to get accidentally pregnant, such coverage would be mandated as part of an essential benefits package by the Affordable Care Act ).
Did you know that if you are pregnant and French, you get 16 weeks of mandatory paid maternity leave plus an optional three years of unpaid leave, no strings attached, plus low-cost day care, plus financial support for single parents? They’ll even send a nanny to your house once a week to help you clean up.
Of course, that’s France. What could true freedom of choice look like in this country? It would mean a social and political structure that looks out for the well-being of actual real-live children — and their mothers — rather than using their hypothetical lives as weapons in a neverending demagoguic death match. It would mean not having to reduce every game-changing life decision to a calculation of dollars and cents.
I was not raped or victimized. I am not 13, uneducated, or impoverished. I do not live in Kansas or Alabama or North Carolina or Arizona. I did have some excellent consensual sex without benefit of wedding ring or adequate health insurance. And then I got pregnant and the choices at my disposal threw me into a monthlong tailspin until, in a few painful hours, those choices vanished, through a very nonmagical physiological process.
No one has unlimited choices; that’s a fact. So what lingers after this long, hot, confusing summer is this: With so many forces legitimately outside our control – forces of biology, history, geography, age — why is every woman in the United States not running blue-faced onto the field to do battle with those who would take what choices she does have away?
* Just as I felt extremely conflicted about dragging a man into fatherhood, I am conflicted about dragging him into this essay. So for the most part I’m trying to leave him out, even though that means forfeiting the chance to dig into some other interesting questions about reproductive choice, gender, and society. You will also just have to take my word for it that he could not, for various reasons, be part of the big picture. Sorry!
**For some uplifting reading, go here to download the National Women’s Law Center’s 2009 report “Still Nowhere to Turn: Insurance Companies Treat Women Like a Pre-Existing Condition.”
92 responses
Thank you for writing this. Best wishes to you.
Wound up in the same boat — 47, accidentally pregnant (wtf?!), freelance, crap insurance. Very nice man who never wanted kids. I wanted kids, but not at 48, high-risk, probably looking at a month in the hospital, pre-eclampsia, premature birth etc … also, could not face the prospect of navigating toddler meltdowns in the grocery store in my 50s, putting someone through college in my late 60s. So, we didn’t have it. And it wasn’t a trauma. All I felt was enormous, enormous relief.
Only magical thinking part of it all was I had a chat with the jellybean beforehand, and told it to go find someone who really wanted a baby. A year later, a friend who’d been trying for 10 years had a healthy baby. Magically, I like to think the jellybean found a better address.
Martha, Thank you. I’ve never read such an articulate and painful and REAL essay on women’s health and what real choice look like. I wish you healing and peace.
What a difficult journey. Dump the man. He sounds like a jerk. I was hoping for a happier ending but life isn’t all that happy sometimes.
I’m a 76 year old woman who had 9 children before birth control became a viable option. I’ve been politically active on the issue of choice. After years of agonizing thought, I realize that there is no “good” choice, no “right” choice but each woman is entitled to pursue that painful “choice” for herself.
Really, really well done. I wish the best for you.
Thank you, Martha, for possessing the bravery to put these important moments and cyclones of emotion into words. I feel honored to have read this.
Wow. Just, wow. That is the most extraordinary, brilliant and gut-wrenchingly REAL piece of heartfelt writing I’ve seen in decades. You should be be one of the highest paid writers in this country. I hope this is circulated extensively.
Thank you.
Dear Martha,
This is a wonderful piece of writing, thank you for sharing this with an audience.
There are lots of potential talking points here – free healthcare for instance – ultimately the only thing that matters you’ve been through an awful experience and I hope your family and friends are taking good care of you.
Breathtaking. Thank you.
This is a brilliant and important essay, Martha. You said so much, so beautifully. Thank you.
Thank you for writing this terrific piece.
I stumbled into this post by accident when a friend RT’d your link on Twitter. I had absolutely no idea what to expect, for the RT gave no indication on the subject matter, but once I sank into the first paragraph, I knew I was in for the long haul.
As a woman who at 22 (on her 22nd birthday, no less) saw the terrifying pink plus sign while hiding in her bathroom from her boyfriend of only a few months, I was understandably drawn in to your tale. I devoured each sentence, remembering my terror at that young age and the uncertainty of my future…of our future. But for a moment I almost closed the window. When you said that surprise pregnancies can not lead to happy endings (or that is how I took it), I snarled at my computer screen, my blood boiled, and my fists clenched. “How DARE she speak for ALL women and ALL life experiences??” I was overwhelmed with the arrogance and finality.
But I read on. Because if I was going to be angry with you I wanted to at least have read the whole story. And then I saw the logic. And after I calmed myself I remembered that “happy endings” really aren’t an option for all women faced with an unexpected pregnancy.
When I became pregnant I was dating a guy with a promising career opening up before him. I owned my car, I had good credit, a great full time job, and an apartment. He and I loved each other, but beyond that we were compatible. And that realistic view of our compatibility AND fondness of each other gave us the answer we needed: we would keep this baby and we’d make a go of it.
5 years later I am infertile. I can not conceive again. My precious mistake baby is the only baby I will have. 5 years later I look at her father and I can not believe I married someone so dedicated to his role as a father and his role as my lover and best friend. 5 years later I’m working toward my happy ending.
But I am not the rule. I am the exception. And so I concede that you’re right: sticking out a pregnancy does not necessarily mean a happy ending. For many women, and men, choosing either an abortion or adoption is the very best thing they can do for each other and the child. In every fiber of my being I wish this weren’t so. But it is so. And because it is so, it is imperative that women and men have a choice.
I did not choose abortion. And I am so, so glad I didn’t. But had my circumstances been different, I would have wanted to have a choice.
I am a Christian, from Alabama, who chose life. But, I had a choice. All women should have a choice. And that’s just all there is to it.
I also miscarried on a Friday the 13th, six years ago. My story is not the same as yours, but I was also deeply conflicted about the pregnancy (I was married, but we had no money, I was still in grad coursework…). Your story is the first ‘miscarriage narrative’ that has ever spoken to my experience, as all of the others I have read have begun with someone who *wanted* to have a baby. I didn’t, and I don’t, but six years later, I still feel like I lost something important. Thank you for sharing this essay, which creates a space for the complicated feelings and messy realities that lay beneath the surface of “women’s health issues.”
How incredibly brave you are to write this, and what a terrible ordeal you suffered. I’m a 40+ guy, a facebook friend linked to this and I read it. Thanks for your amazing honesty.
Anon, you missed the point.
Thank you for writing this. Your open, honest, insightful, and well-written story is inspiring.
You have inspired me to write my story. That’s what great writing does. Inspires. Challenges. Dares. Thank you for this.
Thank you for writing this. It must have really hurt to write, but it’s wonderful.
Martha, thank you for writing such an insightful and articulate essay. I’m so glad Cheryl Strayed posted a link to this essay on facebook.
This was a brave and true piece of writing. I miscarried between weeks seven and eight, a pregnancy I wanted. Your description of the emotional and physical pain moved me to tears. I have not read anything quite so honest in describing the experience.
Along with you, I’m incredulous that more women aren’t screaming to be heard in our current political climate. I’m outraged on almost every level.
Thank you for writing this, and for sharing your story.
This is a really heavy to me, as a 40 year old woman in the middle of a prolonged miscarriage myself. I was happy to be pregnant at all, after a recent first miscarriage, but this kind of stuff is hard enough already to figure out and deal with– discreetly but emotionally, and trying to retain some shreds of personal dignity– without having to also deal with the burden of societal expectations in either direction. “You’re too old to have kids! Why don’t you have more kids! You’re running out of time! You’re far too late to even start”… I have a D&C scheduled for next weekend, because the end game is taking far too long to bear, but I feel strangely awkward and furtive about aborting babies even already long dead, the social baggage is so intense. And I’m an unapologetic feminist in the Bay Area from a liberal women’s college, so I can hardly even imagine how difficult these issues are for others. Thanks for an incredibly moving read.
What a powerful and honest essay. Thank you for sharing your journey. I too am 44. I have a stable job (in healthcare no less), insurance, my own home and money saved in the bank. Ive made choices and cried many tears over my lack of motherhood, but cannot see putting a child in daycare for 50 hours a week, and thinking about college visits in my 60’s.
Our stories may be different, but are also very similar. We need to work towards a government that allows women support for choice, healthcare to promote healthy newborns and psychiatric care when miscarriages happen. None of it’s easy.
Bravo Martha
Thank you so much for sharing this beautifully written and heart-wrenching story. This is a timely and chilling must-read for women who believe they have any semblance of “choice” when it comes to childbearing.
Really, “pro-choice” now means the choice to have a baby for free? Talk about privatizing profit and socializing risk. (Not that you don’t bring up valid points…but your points, they contradict)
I am a 25 year old man, and was deeply moved by your extraordinarily-written & heartfelt essay. The world desperately needs to hear of such experiences. We simply won’t have any success in advancing and protecting women’s health until the conversation matures beyond dogmatic shouting and magical thinking. Choice is about the infinite complexity of human experience, treating one another with respect and a sense of community, and empowering those whose choices have been limited by circumstance. Thank you for sharing your story so articulately and honestly. I wish you all the best.
Thank You. The only thing we speak less about than real sex are the real emotions and events that the threat of pregnancy bring. Almost every woman has scares, uncertainties, and disappointments, but since we never tell, most will experience them alone and scared. We can’t expect men to know what we face when we don’t talk, even to each other. Thank you for starting this conversation.
That was an amazing story. I, too, was hoping for a better ending, but I know that however it was to end, would have been the only way it could end. If that belief makes me a magical thinker, than I guess that’s what I am. Regardless, it was thought provoking, emotional and well written. Thank you.
In the world I would begin to want to live in, this is a central text used in education for young people about important choices and what aren’t choices as well as what growing up might mean. Because you wrote it, I will be able to share it with those for whom I care. I thank you, Martha Bayne
I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone here who has read and responded to my piece. It was difficult to write (I’m not a personal essayist by temperament, or track record) and the prospect of publishing it was terrifying. But the feedback I’ve received here and elsewhere, publicly and privately, has been very gratifying. Many thanks to the Rumpus and Gina Frangello for helping this personal story find its legs in the world. At the risk of baiting, I also want to say to Wilson, my points may be muddled, but “free”? Where does it say, “free”? I’d just like the chance to purchase health insurance that would cover prenatal care. And, to Cheryl, one thing that didn’t make the final draft was the magical moment when, a week after the miscarriage, a copy of “Tiny Beautiful Things” appeared on my doorstep, out of the blue (though I later tracked down the source). I devoured it.
Wow. Wow. Wow. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
I didn’t see it mentioned so far, but I’d like to thank you for bringing up the existence of 40-something freelancers! There are a lot of us out there whose choices bear little resemblance to Anne-Marie Slaughter’s.
Thanks for the insight. It is hard to attain that form of candidness and honesty in writing. I feel it is important to remember that each situation is different and there is no blanket solution or golden rule for all women. The significant things I feel our society needs to fight for are education to make informed choices, affordable care and support no matter the choice.
Wilson says –
“Really, “pro-choice†now means the choice to have a baby for free? Talk about privatizing profit and socializing risk.”
Not so much free, more already paid for. I can tell you, as a Brit I was shocked to read how much you Americans have to stump up for Pregnancy care. (Those without the 12% of healthcare policies that apparently cover it at any rate.)
The NHS may cost us a bomb in taxes, but it’s services are free at the point of delivery.
Oops – just finished writing my comment and realised that Martha has already addressed Wilson’s post. Martha – can I say your story moved me to tears. I recently became a father to a beautiful, healthy girl. My wife is of a similar age to you and I am, once again, reminded to count my blessings over and over.
Stunningly beautiful. Thank you for telling the truth about choice.
Having experienced miscarriage I was totally riveted by your story. You have immortalized this sad tale with your well used words. I felt your confusion and your hesitation and your disbelief concerning available “choices”. I feel for your loss, and I applaud your ability to put a voice to your emotions. Thank you for sharing this with us all.
Our bodies are hard enough to manage without Paul Ryan bursting into the room.
Vote Democratic. That’s all I have to say.
The irony is that the people who want fewer abortions to take place are also the same people who oppose sex education in schools, coverage for contraception , and the AMA (which mandates pre-natal care coverage, as you point out).
Martha, I don’t know you but I am rooting for you–what a thoughtful, insightful, heartfelt and galvanizing essay!
Martha,
My 27 year old son sent me your story. Thank you, Josh, for sending this to me. Thank you, Martha, for writing it. I am in awe of your courage and your wisdom.
Martha, thank you so much for sharing this with us.
Incredible story, Martha. Thanks.
Martha, you don’t know me, I don’t know you (got here by way of Lee Sandlin), but let me tell you, you lucked out, and hard.
It’s an ugly, ugly time to be a single mom without dough, let alone without dough and someone showing up for visitation and sending substantial child support. Let alone all that plus being 50 with a kindergartner. Let alone trying to help a kid through college when the kid’s wondering whether she should be helping you, feeling guilty and trying to drop out to help support you. And you’ll be looking at her, knowing you can’t help her, knowing the disadvantages and burdens she carries that others don’t. And no, disadvantages and burdens are not all equal; it’s not as simple as saying “everyone’s got problems.” Some people are objectively more fortunate than others.
Even when we talk about holes in social safety nets, there’s so much we don’t talk about. My neighborhood’s still good, but slipping, and if/when it goes bad, I’m stuck, and so’s my kid. I can’t get another mortgage at my income level, which means that even if I sell this place, I can’t buy another. You can’t homeschool when you’re the only breadwinner. The hard truth is that poor kids have not got the opportunities and support that rich kids have, and there’s less and less inbetween the two. Me, I’m ten years ahead of you kidwise, but I’m stealing time from myself on Labor Day — should be doing some telecommute piecework, slightly zombified from sleep deprivation (four hours last night, can’t remember the last time I saw a solid 7.5 or 8, months or years ago, I guess). My kid’s objectively wonderful but this is not a life to wander into accidentally.
Try competing with unfettered 28-year-olds in the job market when you’re 52 and have to be available for your kid, can’t work nights, weekends, can’t travel, look tired, are tired.
The reality, too, is that it’s hard socially as a single mother, harder as a solo mother, harder still as an older solo mother. Partnered women are uncomfortable having you at social gatherings. Your kidfree friends are annoyed by your constraints and, mysteriously, have more energy and money than you do. And other single moms are half your age, many of them being helped out by grandmas just a bit older than you.
In the end, the chromosomes was not in good shape. It wasn’t the phone call, it wasn’t fear. It was a 44-year-old egg. I won’t presume to say it’s a blessing but I’m glad you were spared 20 years of hardship.
And uh.. as an Iowa City resident whose water source is the Iowa River…please, do not dispose of 7-week-old fetuses or anything else coming out of bodies in the Iowa River.
back to work for me.
Martha, thank you so much for writing this. I am 42, and just had a miscarriage a few weeks ago of an accidental pregnancy. I have been in the midst of a lot of grief, and relief, and I don’t even know what. Reading your words helps and raises so many other issues for me to think about. Miscarriage a major event, but so swept under the rug. Thank you!!
Tremendous work: raw, honest, gut-wrenching, beautiful. Thank you for your amazing contributions to society, both in your writing and with, “Soup and Bread”. Look forward to commending you in person at the Hideout during the upcoming season.
Some mutual friends of ours (Stockfish, et al) were talking about this piece at a BBQ yesterday. They said it was fantastic and I trust their opinion, but I was still blown away by just how god-damned good this piece is. I’m a gay man in my late 40’s, so the odds of my ever being anywhere near this situation are very, very low, but the profound empathy you evoke is a testament to your skill. Thank you.
Or, imagine being 51, in peri, but mostly actual menopause, and you have non-protected sex because you’re stupid and think you can’t get pregnant anymore, and you have a miscarriage (thank you Universe and my body), and you tell the sex partner that you had never planned to tell him because you figured that nothing happened, and you’re in love with this guy, but he doesn’t love you, but you tell him you were pregnant anyway, – why? In the hopes that he’ll be someone he never was, nor will he be, and he looks at you and says that it makes no difference to him, and you nearly jump out of the speeding vehicle that you’re in with him because all your worthlessness is confirmed in that moment. Then you spend the next several months grieving the last chance you would ever have to have one more child – but even that was such a ridiculous fantasy because my 21 year old son would have been mortified, along with my friends, acquaintances, and society in general. Thank you for your article, as well as so many of the comments that helped me feel so much less of a freak.
Thank you for you heartfelt and beautiful essay. The choices women make in regard to their fertility are leaps of faith, complex in the moment and tempered by time. I hope that you find peace in knowing that your honest words have meant much to so many.
‘Really, “pro-choice†now means the choice to have a baby for free? Talk about privatizing profit and socializing risk.’
Even if that was what she said — and she didn’t — the idea that the “profit” of a healthy mother and child accrues solely to that mother is, at best, bizarre.
— MrJM
This is such an important story to share, though admittedly a difficult one. Thank you for having the courage to tell your tale and send a strong message to all of the women (and men) who may not yet understand why advocating for our bodies, our choices, and our rights is so important.
You are my hero.
My gosh, I am so sorry about you having to go through this whole thing! It is indeed terrifying and infuriating that the cost of childbirth is atrocious like that, among all the other things. Be well!
Sometimes telling the truth is the most powerful, profound thing one can do. Thank You. I am in awe.
I’m twenty-two, and a lesbian (accidental pregnancy, mercifully, is pretty much off the table), and I’ve always wanted children, so much of this beautiful and well-written essay did not apply to me. However, there is truth in it so universal and moving that none of those facts mattered. I am the result of an accidental pregnancy. My mother chose to keep me, and the fact of my accidental conception has had no bearing on my parents’ love for me, nor has it ever been kept secret from me. I support choice because these issues are complicated. I support choice because, as a woman, I am given so little.
As a human and a thinker, as a woman and an aspiring editor, I thank and salute you. This is a deeply personal experience, but you do not stand alone.
I am in awe! In places, you were writing about every woman.
I have been pregnant 9 times. I had 5 live births. My parents arranged an abortion to end my first pregnancy.
All of my life, I used birth control. Every method of birth control I used failed, INCLUDING having my tubes tied. While I had the 1 abortion, that devastated me, the other 3 were miscarriages. I was never allowed to “talk” about what I went through. It is difficult to put into words even 41 years later. You said everything I felt and more!
So many people say, if you can’t afford them, why do you keep having them? I tried to prevent them! And now they want to ban abortion AND birth control? Have they lost their minds?
I had my tubes tied. THEN I got pregnant with my last child. I called the Doctor who tied my tubes and told him I thought I was pregnant. The response? “You can’t POSSIBLY be pregnant. It MUST be an ovarian malfunction.” After my son was born, I sent him a picture with the caption, “This is the 10 lb 5 oz ovarian malfunction I just gave birth to.”
Republicans would say I am a slut. One man said, “You must REALLY like sex”
No, it means that in my almost 60 years, I have had sex at least 9 times.
I know a 13 year old girl who was raped. The fertilized egg migrated and embedded into her ovary. To leave it there would have killed the girl AND the fetus.
My oldest daughter has PCOS and couldn’t get pregnant if she tried, but has to take birth control to keep the cysts in her ovaries under control.
My daughter-in-law was pregnant. The fetus died, but did NOT spontaneously abort. Legislators in Georgia banned abortion in these cases because they don’t abort dead fetuses in cows and pigs. They just leave them in there.
Where are the people screaming about the rights of these women? Where are the people screaming that these legislators are practicing medicine without a license? Where are the people screaming about the misuse of legislative power? Where are the people screaming these are women and not animals?
Thank you for voicing what many of us were not allowed to talk about!
Me, too. http://lycanthropia.net/2012/05/18/corrigendum/
Thank you for writing (and publishing) this.
Martha, you are brave. Thank you.
A lovely, lovely piece of writing. Thank you for articulating this.
thank you.
Back to read your essay a second time after a friend posted last night. First, thanks for sharing the story of your miscarriage, I’m sorry that you have experienced this particular type of loss. After my third miscarriage my Mom insisted that something environmental was causing them because none of her friends ever had miscarriages – obviously not true, her friends – and many of my friends – just don’t talk about them. It’s heartbreaking and hormonal and painful and etches into your memory regardless of the circumstances of the pregnancy. Too many women feel wholly alone in their grief despite the fact the many of us have them.
When I was younger, I saw many friends through abortions. I volunteered for and went to Planned Parenthood for healthcare. I was one of those pro-choice people who assumed I would never or could never have an abortion. And then, I started trying to get pregnant and after three miscarriages and an adoption home-study found myself unexpectedly but happily pregnant a fourth time. Even more surprising, I seemed to sail through my ultrasounds. Until I didn’t and I found out at the 20 week scan that the baby had multiple anomalies – almost but not quite incompatible with life. After three more weeks of testing we chose to terminate in a hospital via labor and delivery, in part because my insurance would cover that, in part because I was too late for anything else and would have had to cross state lines. And because I had the luxury to choose that. If bills had passed in my old home-state, I wouldn’t have had the choice after 20 weeks, I wouldn’t have known about my son’s conditions before. Current legislation in my home-state will have the potential to close many clinics – especially those that are accessible and affordable to low-income women – as it requires them to meet the same medical and construction standards as outpatient surgical facilities. I’m not worried about abortion being outlawed, I’m increasingly worried that there will be nowhere left to provide abortions if we don’t pay close attention.
Finally, I’m now the mother to a beautiful baby boy. I’m forever grateful to my son’s first mother for trusting us to be his parents. I can’t imagine the grief behind carrying an infant to term and making an adoption plan – certainly not easy or simple or a clear alternative to abortion or parenting when not feeling prepared. I hope she had choices too. None of this is easy and all so deeply, deeply personal.
Thanks for your brilliant piece. It moved me to tears.
All choked up, and unsure why. Other than that you are writing with all of our voices, channeling so many of us. I am sharing with everyone I k know.
What a powerful piece! Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Timing is everything – Just yesterday I found out my 57-year-old colleague got pregnant four years ago. Surprise! Now this. I’m 53 and, as of today, never having sex again.
Thank you so much for sharing, very candidly, your personal story of choice. Too many people behave as if their stake in humanity begins and ends with numbers, that choices they have are available to everyone, and that pregnancy is mythological rather than biological. Writing brave and honest is not easy to do, this is a superb piece of work.
Courageous and exquistely true on so many levels. I too am wondering why aren’t all women fiercely fighting to keep all choices available, supporting a President who supports us. When I turned 18 in 1971, I was very aware how fortunate we were to see abortion become legal and how frightening the choices would be without it. Only 40 years later, it is heartbreakingly sad to see grown men like Akin and Ryan and state legislators and other politival terrorists argue so forcefully to deprive women, wives and daughters of decent health care and the choice to decide what shape their lives take. Thank you so much for speaking up and sharing your story in such a powerful way.
Thankyou Martha, for voicing the swept-under-the-carpet heartbreak, whirlwind of emotion and confusion that unplanned pregnancy and miscarriage/abortion brings. What angers me most in society is this view, myth that an abortion is the ‘easy’ way out for ‘selfish’ women. I had one at 22; it was the best thing I could ever have done for myself (and the man involved), but it was still a loss. Still heartbreaking, scary, still left me feeling empty and alone for months afterwards. Thankyou for giving a voice to what so many of us experience and don’t talk about. Thankyou also for stressing the importance of choice. I live in the UK, but I am angered everyday by what I read of the Republican’s plans to reform abortion and even contraception availability in America. None of the choices available to us when facing unplanned pregnancy are simple, or easy, or without consequence – but we should still HAVE those choices. When you are thrown by nature into that situation you didn’t choose, with no quick, painless fix -at the very least we should be able to choose the outcome of it, from a variety of safe, legal and affordable services. We should be able, in this “first world”, to be able to have or not have children without a load of legal and financial hurdles in our way whatever we choose. As someone above said – we are WOMEN, not animals.
Martha, thank you. I went through this process during my last year of graduate school–36, single, unwed, bohemian underclass– I was fortunate enough to have the graduate health insurance and so my baby rolls around on the floor a few feet away as I type this, but I was keenly aware throughout my own ambivalences that without such insurance, I would not have been able to afford the choice of keeping the kid. Thank you for explaining this dilemma with such clarity and courage, and for bringing these issues to light. I still have no idea how I’m going to pay for anything, but I feel so lucky that I was able to have him. I realize it was a total fluke. At any other point in my adult life I would not have been able to afford insurance or the costs incurred by pregnancy. It’s staggering.
An important story. Thank you for sharing it.
I am stunned at your unselfish and heartwrenching willingness to bare your pain and anguish. And your plainspoken eloquence is awe-inspiring. As a 67 year old man who has always felt that women have an unfair share of the weight to bear in relationships I can see that I truly didn’t understand the full impact at all. How did it happen that the rest of the industrialized world came into the 21st century while the USA hasn’t really made it out of the 19th? Somehow this must change.
I used to do abortion counseling at an OB/GYN’s office. The most useful thing I had in my array of tools with which I tried to convince my patients not to judge/blame/hate themselves for having become accidentally pregnant was specifically for the over-40 set: that I had read once that, in the United States, abortion rates were going down for all age groups EXCEPT over-40s, and that my own personal guess as to why that is, is that so many of us take so much to heart the OMG YOUR EGGS ARE BUSTED panic that the media and the culture start screaming at us somewhere between the ages of 30 and 35. The “I thought I was too old to get pregnant” pregnancy is all too common. I so hated seeing all these women who thought they alone were dumb enough to have made such a stupid mistake; I was so glad to be able to tell them that the stats prove they’re FAR from the only ones. But what I wish they had instead is a culture where they could talk about these things openly, to never come to the conclusion with the aid of silence and shame that no one else has ever had to go through it. Thank you for writing this essay: it brings our culture one step closer to that place of collective recognition, rather than individual self-castigation. I wish you peace, and joy, and love. Be well.
This is the kind of truth you don’t see very often in print. Congratulations on writing it. I hope it will be read by anyone who has a stake in the issue — which is everyone over 12!
Thanks for this wonderful, painful, excellent piece.
I just want to double down my thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read and comment here. I remain overwhelmed by the reaction to this piece, and only wish I could respond to every single thought expressed, because I’m moved by every single story. I don’t feel particularly “brave” but I think the collective truth of every individual experience expressed here is very powerful, and points to the possibility of a more honest and fearless world. I’m going to be thinking about it for a long time to come.
Just read this for the second time. Amazing.
On top of everything I learned from this essay and everything it made me feel, it’s just a wildly inspired, furiously honest piece of writing. Bless you.
Martha, thank you for this candid, moving, wrenching piece. I’ve never been pregnant (as far as I know) but I remember the week when I thought I might be, at 26, and going through so much of this wondering, and grief when I started my period again.
There’s one phrase in the essay that I want to comment on, even though it isn’t the center of what you’re saying, because it’s so common that we don’t even hear it and yet in some ways it frames the inequity in the way we see women and men in these moments. Early in the essay, you are talking about the man involved, and you say: “He was a good guy, but this was not what he signed up for when he took me out to dinner.” This is a pretty common way of dismissing a man’s responsibility when a woman gets pregnant–to imply that the consequence is something that he couldn’t have expected and thus doesn’t have any responsibility for, and often by associating the woman getting pregnant with something “harmless” like going out to dinner. No, he didn’t sign up for the chance that you would become pregnant when he took you out to dinner–but when the two of you had “excellent consensual sex,” he did. The act of men and women being sexual is when they both sign up for the possibility that the woman will end up pregnant–even if they don’t have intercourse, even if they take precautions, even if, even if . . .
I don’t mean in any way to denigrate him or you, just to point out the way we elide the moment of choice and responsibility for men, the way our language assumes that pregnancy as a possible consequence of sexuality is the woman’s responsibility. He signed up for the possibility, and he wasn’t expecting it–the same is true for you both.
I am grateful to have read your story, and I thank you for sharing it.
Thank you for a searching and honest piece of writing. It mirrors the tangled world we live in, rather than the shoot-the-duck gallery of clear moral choices we dream of.
Martha, what can I say? Thank you for sharing your thoughts and experiences — shared by so many — in such an amazing way.
Take care.
A lacerating, beautiful, and important piece. Thanks for writing it.
This journey speaks of the profound, private and very intimate relationship women have with their bodies. It cries out for outrage at the thought that any political party would have a right to be involved in this negotiation with our internal morals, dreams and health. Pregnancy, planned or unplanned is enough of a life event without letting a third party government claiming ownership of this decision. Stay strong, true to one’s self and VOTE!
This is a sharp and wrenching essay. I found it quite moving. Thank you for writing so beautifully about your experience.
My wife and I have gone through a number of “advanced maternal age” miscarriages, and they hurt. They also mock the magical ideal of choice. It’s not like you get to choose what’s going to happen to you, exactly. Things happen, and then you deal with it. Those things that you can do? Those are your choices. The fervor of the political fight against choice/abortion seems so weird and petty when contrasted with the gravity of any actual pregnancy, miscarriage, lack of pregnancy or actual child.
You have left my heart pounding, my throat tight. That is what powerful writing does — touches us physically. Thank you for your guts.
Many thanks for bravely sharing your story.
Thank you for sharing your story. You have mothered all of us who have suffered the pain of miscarriage. Bless you and the spirit of your little one.
Reading this essay has changed my life. Thank you, Martha Bayne. For me the key word is CHOICE. Making choices, living with them, fighting for them. The privilege of choice being offered to some, denied to those without resources. And choice involves so much more than access to safe and legal abortion. The other side looms large, in terms of the threat of crippling medical costs, and/or very possibly jeopardizing the stability of the job that offers the insurance to cover those costs. The decks are stacked either way, for the woman.
But not for the guy who only signed up for a dinner date.
I agree with the message of this article. Positive thinking has its place. It is essential to leading a good life. But sometimes it must be set aside while we consider that the problems we are dealing with are not 100% positive. We have to evaluate what is wrong, decide how to fight it, and then positively believe we can make a difference. Periodically we should review the negative to remember what we are positively fighting for.
Martha, I’m so glad you commented on my Motherlode story and showed me yours. We should get a drink.
Like others before me I found this absolutely stunning prose, a moving personal story, and a compelling political argument. Thank you for writing it all down. Every bit of it. For all of us.
Erin: Definitely.
And, world, Erin published an essay at the NYTs “Motherlode” blog last week (?) that works this all-too common ground from her own very different place in the world. It’s an excellent read; it’s here: http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/11/pregnant-at-49/
Dear Martha
I arrive here late to the party as usual, following your most recent article (FRESH AIR FAIL). I sit at work, surrounded by other staff, oblivious to my tightened throat and tear-stung eyes.
At the age of 34, I am infertile. I have the worst case of poly cycstic ovary syndrome that one could hope to have, and have known that children are not my path for a decade now. It’s been hard. When I was younger, no one thought to ask the question, “Why haven’t you had kids yet?” But now, I find it to be an almost weekly question. They don’t mean any harm by it, but they do seem to think that it is their god-given-right to ask such a question, not expecting the answer that I will always have to give. I can’t have kids. I never had a choice.
Although I have never been pregnant, I do know the feeling of a palm-sized blood clot breaking away from the uterine walls, and making its way (rapidly) outside my body. It’s painful, a sharp tearing feeling, that always makes me feel less than I am, missing something that never exisited, and a bit too much like a freak.
Your description of the ‘burial’ guts me. Its so raw and real. I get it. Thank you. Your story, although so very different, is also mine.
Much love, Claire
My heart broke for you as I read this post. I know it’s been a while since you wrote this (I found it because of your BlogHer nomination) but as a woman who has had a miscarriage, I know the feelings that go along with it don’t disappear overnight. Praying for your heart…
It has been a year since the events that inspired this piece, and I guess it says something about the process of “moving on” that I didn’t even know about the BlogHer nomination until I decided to come back and revisit the essay today and saw your comment. How cool. Thanks again, Erin, Claire, and everyone else who has responded to this oddly personal work in the intervening year. It means a lot.
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