Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
I link anyone who is nice enough to ask so don't worry about being too forward!
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
We've been picking Brett up from work some (one car family -- usually he rides his bike but not in ice and snow) and we go around to the back of his building to get him. His building looks like a generic suburban office building -- three or four floors, smoked windows, an entryway with desperate cubicle jockeys sucking on cigarettes. We've circled the building tightly in the past, coming around close around the front before parking in the back but we approach it from the back way.
So a couple of days ago we're off to visit a friend and we pass his building from the very busy (and somewhat distant) street that runs in front. Madison says, "Hey, there's daddy's work! That's where daddy is!"
Now how did she know that? The building looks totally different from far away and from the front.
When we first moved to our neighborhood she was just 18 months old, mind you, but she quickly figured out where the library was. If we took one of the back ways instead of the other, she'd cry when we turned down the street because it meant not passing the purple house she adores. But weirdly, the first time we drove past the front of the library she said, "Yibaye!" (Library in toddler Madison-speak.) Again, how does she recognize buildings from other directions?
Like I've said, she can spot cars, too and has since last summer. She'll point to an Elantra and say it's our car. She'll point to a Dodge Caravan and say it's Aunt Erica's. It's not the color -- it's the shape. And what's weirdest about it is that she can do it in different directions. She recognizes them from the front and back and side.
Here's another thing I thought was pretty smart for her age. On our way to that playdate (the one where we passed Brett's office building) she got worried that P's daddy would be there. P's daddy is a delight but the big kids like to play tickle monster with him so Madison finds him scary (even though he never ever ever plays tickle monster with kids who don't want to play tickled
"I hope P's Daddy isn't there," she said as we turned into their long, long, long gravel drive. (They live in the country.) Then she brightened. "I don't think he will be there because my daddy isn't home so probably he won't be home either."
(Sadly she was wrong because P's Daddy is on a sabbatical and she got hysterical when he came up the stairs because the big kids began to scream with fake terror. But she got over it because he really is a nice guy.)
That's my baby book smart Madison entry. I'm going to hound Paige (when she gets internet again) to tell me what kind of smartness she's displaying when she figures out cars and buildings. Maybe it means she'll be good at math!
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
The publication is an e-newsletter that goes out to listeners of adult contemporary radio stations -- primarily women 25 to 50. I'm looking for content that's the kind of thing you would see in the front of your average women's magazine. You know, those little fillers that show up three or four to a page and offer quick, useful tips and/or information. Topics would be similar, too: Health/Fitness, Finances, Work, Beauty, Parenting. I'm looking for copy that has a lot of personality and that's going to somehow benefit the reader.
Query me first -- I'm still figuring out topics and it's going to take me some time to nail the voice I'm looking for so I don't want you to take the time to write something if I likely can't use it. I'm willing to work with newer writers so don't let the stage-fright of writing a query stop you. Also my email is dawn.friedman@gmail.com -- just be sure to put "submission" in your subject line so I don't lose you in my overflowing inbox.
Pay is $25 per 500-700ish words, pays on publication and publication is usually pretty quick.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
For me, my infertility experiences brought back a lot of my teen-age shame about being a sexually active 15-year old who was trying to be responsible and getting lectured every time she put her heels in stirrups. That is a bigger irony in my mind -- chastising the teenage girl for keeping her pap smear appointment and paying for her own birth control. No wonder most of my friends didn't bother.
Anyway, I read Jenna's and Angela's recent entries in this mindset of my angry teenage self and it got me thinking.
There's this part of my history that I have never, ever, ever written on blog and I rarely talk about it because it's probably the thing that I feel most ashamed about and it's complicated and not something I've ever really figured out. But reading these entries made me feel like I knew what I wanted to say about it although I'm not sure how much I'm going to share. (I'll know when I've written it.)
When I was sixteen I hooked up with a guy who was twelve years older and had sex with him although I didn't want to. It wasn't date rape because I said yes but it left me feeling violated.
Part of the reason I allowed this to happen is that (as many of you have experienced for yourself), if you're a teenager and having sex then you're already a ruined kind of person and it seems unreasonable to say no to this guy since you have already said yes to that one. This is something huge I want to get across to my kids: You can say no even if you've said yes before. But in the teen world of the 80s (and one assumes in most other decades), once you're deflowered you kind of give up your right to play virgin. The best example of this I can think of is a male friend of mine who was a virgin and who said to me, "Why won't you have sex with me? What's the big deal when you've already done it?" And I thought, "Is he right? Should I just do it?" And this is really what happened with this guy who was 12 years older only his arguments were more complex and more flattering.
Afterwards, I felt like crap and I felt used and I was angry that I'd betrayed myself with this guy (and betrayed my friend who was dating that guy, which was a huge part of it all for me and profoundly changed my self-perception). But I also felt responsible and so I tried to pretend like it was ok and tried to pretend that maybe I even liked him and this was a further betrayal of myself. And it really wasn't until I met Brett and confessed all to him that I felt absolved because Brett helped me see that I was 16 and I was up against someone smarter and not very principled whether or not he realized how manipulative and underhanded his behavior was. I'm sure if I told this guy (if I could remember his last name because I've truly blocked it out) that I felt he took advantage of me that he would be totally surprised and that his version of events were that he met this randy little 16-year old and we enjoyed a fun evening together way back in the fall of '86.
Part of me really wanted to go with what was surely this guy's version and for a long, long time I tried to see it that way because the other option (to call myself a victim) seemed like a lie and also who wants to be a victim? But what I didn't see until my confession to Brett was that it was possible to find a middle-ground, which would acknowledge the complications of sexuality and personality and that this middle-ground also understood the limits of culpability.
There are many versions of truth. It's true that this man was much older than I was and that this gave him the upper-hand. It's also true that I pulled my tights off myself. It's true that I was responsible for my choices. It's also true that I was in over my head. (I'm trying to write this while Madison slurps mushy raisin bran and slams a metal car on the table next to me so I keep losing my train of thought.) These things are all true. I had to figure out how to reconcile truths that ran into each other and made a lot of confusion. How could I be responsible yet still feel so victimized? How could he be the bad guy when I walked willingly into that apartment with him? It seemed lose/lose. I couldn't figure out how to recognize his coercion unless I lied to myself. (He didn't hold me down or steal my clothes or force me to do anything.) But thinking about it made me want to throw up so surely something bad did happen?
That's how I managed to slip into shame and blame. It was my fault. I was a bad person. A bad slutty person, actually, so I may as well start wearing my skirts shorter and laugh it off, right? Only I wasn't laughing.
Jenny Garp fictionally wrote, "I wanted a job and I wanted to live alone. That made me a sexual suspect." She may as well had written, "I had a vagina. That made me a sexual suspect." The older I get the more I realize how complicated sexual roles are and how easily we fall into things and then twist ourselves up to make it all fit. I couldn't maintain the personal contortions it took to make sense of what had happened. When I told Brett (who somehow managed to see me inside the situation, unlike other boyfriends who couldn't see past the stereotypes anymore than I could) he helped me see that lots of things could be true; that I didn't have to succumb to any paradoxes.
I think of this when I think about first moms who don't know they have the right to grieve regardless of how complicit they were in their adoption decisions. Sometimes it seems like if we tell ourselves it's all right to cry, we have to give some of our power up first. But if we give that up in order to have the grieving privileges of being a "victim," we deny the truth of our experiences and then we can't find comfort.
I remember a friend of mine who had been raped when she was 13. The first time she told me about it, her story was that she'd been gang-raped and beat up. But as we became closer it turned out that what happened is that she was raped by her crush and that at first she was a willing participant. Why did she change her story? Because when she told people that she went with him, that she wanted him to kiss her, that she liked what was happening at first, who would care about what happened afterwards? The lie was her protection but it also betrayed her. It made her a liar and it made her a sneak and it made her feel guilty all of the time and it made her, ironically, feel more responsible and more complicit in the rape but what choice did she have? The world is not nice to women; she was already a sexual suspect just by showing up.
It's easy to get in so deep that we don't feel like we can turn around and go back. We have to learn how to forgive ourselves for making choices that lead us someplace we didn't want to go. Sometimes we say "yes" because we don't know how to say "maybe." And sometimes when we say "maybe" the world hears "yes" anyway. Sometimes we have no idea what we're getting ourselves into.
We don't have to accept the narrative that's thrust upon us because people assume a predictable trajectory. Saying yes to a man, saying yes to an agency, saying yes at the hospital or in a dark apartment doesn't mean we don't have a right to our regrets. We don't have to apologize to anyone (except perhaps -- lovingly -- to ourselves) for being too naive or too young or too ill-informed or too willing because we were doing the best we could.
Maybe that guy didn't victimize me but that doesn't mean that I knew what I was doing. He doesn't have to be a bad guy but I also don't have to be a slut. The truth is more complicated and ultimately it doesn't matter how the world sees it as long as I make sense of how I have to see it. I was in over my head. That's all there is to it. I wish it never happened but it did. No good things came out of it -- no great wisdom or great compassion or the kinds of things that make a trial worth it. Still, it happened. It's part of my story and I forgive myself for it. I acknowledge my responsibility but it doesn't take away from my acknowledgment that I was also an injured party. It's the big challenge, isn't it? To live with those paradoxes.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
One great thing about Brett getting laid off is that they're letting workers take home pieces of the dismantled office. This happened last time he went through a lay-off, too, and it's how we got all of our nice bookshelves. This time he's trying to get things to help with my home office. Our house came with this old metal cubicle with glass windows across the top. It looks like something you might see in, say, The Philadelphia Story. It's nifty but it's in our dingy basement and I hate going down there to work. I need to get re-organized since my freelancing is stepping up and even if I'm not working down there every day, I need it to be a decent place for all of my stuff to live. (If I could figure out the lighting and the ergonomics, I'd be down there more.)
Today we're meeting Jessica at Target so Madison can help pick out her birthday invitations. Jessica is really excited about planning the party and Madison is excited about the prospect of cake. To her, the birthday is all about cake. Well, really, the frosting on the cake.
She and Noah are really into Charlie Parker Played Be Bop. Noah will come into the room and say, "Madison! What did Charlie Parker play?"
And she'll shout back, "Bebop!"
"What else?"
"Saxophone!"
"What kind of saxophone?"
"Alto saxophone!"
"And never leave your cat...?"
"Alone!"
I don't own any Charlie Parker. I need to get some. I have other bebop but no Charlie Parker bebop. My favorite bebopper is Betty Carter and we like to dance fast to her singing "My Favorite Things." This paragraph is dedicated to Kim.Kim: Overshoes, overshoes, overshoes, o, Reeti-footi, reeti-footi, reeti-footi, ree.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
There might be orphans whose parents have died. There might be women who want to parent with people not genetically kin to their children. So sure, there would be adoption in that world. But there would not be such disparity of privilege--race, class, cultural and national privilege--that render some women adopters and some women first mothers automatically, almost as if stamped on their heads at birth.
And that's actually what's at the root of my (for lack of a better term) adoption-guilt (better term: feelings of humble responsibility). Whatever the reforms are, most times it's the haves taking babies from the have-nots and no matter how good an adoption is and how ethical it is, it's still based in social injustice however and wherever we're adopting. (American Family and I have talked a lot about this because obviously it's something she thinks about in her China adoption. But we both feel like there is so much overwhelming work to do and meanwhile there is this need for ethical adopters so NOT adopting doesn't really save any babies from the adoption machine, which is a topic I could go off on but need to get back to the entry at hand so I'll save it for another time.)
The things that make the smallest adoption reform changes so hard to get are the same things that make larger policy changes even harder. We don't like women who don't fit a specific mold, we don't like mothers who don't fit a specific mold, we don't like poor people of any kind and we really don't like poor women who are mothers. If women were valued -- if mothers were valued -- we would have universal health care and reproductive rights and decent, affordable child care. And one hopes that we also wouldn't have an adoption system that preys on women and treats them like breeder mares.
To me it's like the breastfeeding activism that was so important to me when Noah was small. The lack of support for breastfeeding (real support like reasonable maternity leave and time to pump at any job and not just the white collar ones) is at heart because we don't care about women and we don't care about kids.
As adopters I think, so where do we dive in? And I guess the answer is, wherever we can.
I think some of the small steps of adoption reform can help orient people to examine the bigger issues of social justice. To my eyes, whether it's the predatory practice of an adoption agency without ethics or welfare-to-work reforms that push women away from their babies, it's all about how we don't care about women and we don't care about mothers. To me, it's all part of the same beast.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
Shannon said:There might be orphans whose parents have died. There might be women who want to parent with people not genetically kin to their children. So sure, there would be adoption in that world. But there would not be such disparity of privilege--race, class, cultural and national privilege--that render some women adopters and some women first mothers automatically, almost as if stamped on their heads at birth.
And that's actually what's at the root of my (for lack of a better term) adoption-guilt (better term: feelings of humble responsibility). Whatever the reforms are, most times it's the haves taking babies from the have-nots and no matter how good an adoption is and how ethical it is, it's still based in social injustice however and wherever we're adopting. (American Family and I have talked a lot about this because obviously it's something she thinks about in her China adoption. But we both feel like there is so much overwhelming work to do and meanwhile there is this need for ethical adopters so NOT adopting doesn't really save any babies from the adoption machine, which is a topic I could go off on but need to get back to the entry at hand so I'll save it for another time.)
The things that make the smallest adoption reform changes so hard to get are the same things that make larger policy changes even harder. We don't like women who don't fit a specific mold, we don't like mothers who don't fit a specific mold, we don't like poor people of any kind and we really don't like poor women who are mothers. If women were valued -- if mothers were valued -- we would have universal health care and reproductive rights and decent, affordable child care. And one hopes that we also wouldn't have an adoption system that preys on women and treats them like breeder mares.
To me it's like the breastfeeding activism that was so important to me when Noah was small. The lack of support for breastfeeding (real support like reasonable maternity leave and time to pump at any job and not just the white collar ones) is at heart because we don't care about women and we don't care about kids.
As adopters I think, so where do we dive in? And I guess the answer is, wherever we can.
I think some of the small steps of adoption reform can help orient people to examine the bigger issues of social justice. To my eyes, whether it's the predatory practice of an adoption agency without ethics or welfare-to-work reforms that push women away from their babies, it's all about how we don't care about women and we don't care about mothers. To me, it's all part of the same beast.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
- 1 dozen button snaps (in white with pastel rhinestones inside);
- 3 dozen pastel flower (#8);
- 3 dozen pastel flowers in iridescent;
- 1 dozen hearts with clear jewels (#16 only in white)
- 2 dozen 2-sided color flower (#12)
- 1 dozen 2-sided color flower in iridescent.
The rest aren't on the site but are:
- 2 dozen chunky pastel butterflies;
- 1 dozen white flowers with rhinestones;
- 1 dozen clear flowers with rhinestones;
- 1 dozen frosted flowers in shades of blue;
- 2 dozen clovers in gold and silver with rhinestones;
- 1 dozen tortoiseshell flowers;
- 1 dozen chunky black and white butterflies;
- Some weird balls with springs in the middle (we have some of these with flowers and I have no idea how they work.
By my calculations, this is around $36 for $1.80. Now I'm kinda wishing I'd grabbed the bigger bags but they were $1.91 so I left them there. (If any of you are near the Ohio Thrift by Cleveland and 161, they were in the aisle just past the books. Just so you know. And there were about six bags of $1.91 snaps.) edited to add: The snaps are in sealed plastic bags, never used. I'm thinking that some hair salon donated their supply.
Originally published at this woman's work. You can comment here or there.
- 1 dozen button snaps (in white with pastel rhinestones inside);
- 3 dozen pastel flower (#8);
- 3 dozen pastel flowers in iridescent;
- 1 dozen hearts with clear jewels (#16 only in white)
- 2 dozen 2-sided color flower (#12)
- 1 dozen 2-sided color flower in iridescent.
The rest aren't on the site but are:
- 2 dozen chunky pastel butterflies;
- 1 dozen white flowers with rhinestones;
- 1 dozen clear flowers with rhinestones;
- 1 dozen frosted flowers in shades of blue;
- 2 dozen clovers in gold and silver with rhinestones;
- 1 dozen tortoiseshell flowers;
- 1 dozen chunky black and white butterflies;
- Some weird balls with springs in the middle (we have some of these with flowers and I have no idea how they work.
By my calculations, this is around $36 for $1.80. Now I'm kinda wishing I'd grabbed the bigger bags but they were $1.91 so I left them there. (If any of you are near the Ohio Thrift by Cleveland and 161, they were in the aisle just past the books. Just so you know. And there were about six bags of $1.91 snaps.)
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