NYMPHE: Childless, Childfree, Parent, Stepmom.

VOTE: what should happen to this blog now that things have changed?

"I think you’re great.  Don’t stop blogging.  Please."

A reader named Renée just sent me that, and dang, was it nice to read. "In my search to find some sort of familiar voice online… I found nothing close," she said. And some other readers said similar: that I'd hit a weird niche that they couldn't find elsewhere, online or off.

I feel gratified that my torturous, whiny grieving-and-deciding process was useful to anybody. Really freakin' gratified. Now I just wonder what to do next. So you tell me: A, B, or C?

A) TOMBSTONE SITE
Should I stop posting to Nymphe and leave it here as a "tombstone" website? The point of that: some of these posts are linked from a lot of places, and people seeking information and balm for their wounds, they find 'em, they email me, they comment. So if the site stayed up, those posts would still be visible. And if that particular grieving person nosed around on the site, they would not be confronted by a bunch of new posts featuring Me the Pregnant Lady or Me the One with a Kid... which could be traumatic.

B) I-CHANGED-MY-MIND SITE
Leave Nymphe here. Leave the old posts. Leave the resources. But just keep telling my story as it unfolds. The new posts might sometimes refer to the eternal battle between defensive moms, defensive childless, and defensive childfrees, but they might also be about how I make the transition from my "No I won't give in to the biological clock" stance to the "Oh please I give up, can I have a baby now?" part of my life.

C) NUKE!
End the site, close it down, move on with my life. Main advantage to this is that I pay for my hosting on this site.

Any suggestions? Comment here, comment on Facebook, or email me at magdalen23 at le Gmail.

GIVEAWAY: "TWO IS ENOUGH" BY LAURA S. SCOTT

I just discovered that I'd pre-ordered a copy of the book "Two is Enough: A Couple's Guide to Living Childless by Choice" last fall, before receiving a review copy. That means a brand-spankin'-new copy goes to one of you! Email me one paragraph about the role of intentionally childless people in the culture or subculture you occupy,and you might be a winner. Woo! Send to magdalen23 at gmail.

"Two is Enough" (Seal Press, 2009) features interviews with intentionally childless/childfree couples, including one couple who changed their minds along the way. Most examples tend to shore up the choice to remain childfree, and author Laura S. Scott seems particularly interested in "early articulators" who decided while young that they didn't want to have children, and stuck to that decision later in life.

If you are or have been childless by choice, you'll recognize the social problems faced by these couples, the incredible cluelessness—both benign and aggressive—that the majority of people, those who do or will later reproduce, heap upon the minority, those who don't ever reproduce. Interviewees voice their frustrations and the solutions they've come up with. For example, when Scott asked Jason and Tamara if there were any downsides to their decision not to breed, "the only one they could think of was having to deal with other people's perceptions of them."

Another interviewee, Mario, takes on the bizarre, antiquated belief by the parenting majority that childfree folks are somehow selfish. "The most unfair, I think," he says, "is [the accusation] that we are selfish. Furthermore, in Mexican culture, motherhood is almost a veneration and fatherhood is a must to be considered an adult, so people will not easily accept the childfree status as truth. Instead they will assume there is a fertility problem, or that you are a freaky child hater."

It's a good read, but "Two is Enough" does have its tragic flaw: too much focus on the Childless by Choice Project survey conducted online by the author. The survey consists of 171 self-identifying respondents, many recruited through the organization No Kidding! I took the survey myself, and accidentally ended up taking it twice (Scott had posted a link to it on multiple blogs, and only later did I realize I'd done the exact same survey twice). The questions tended to be leading, and I felt that there wasn't much room in them for my feelings of ambiguity and confusion.

If Scott simply listed the results of the survey and left it at that, it would've been a nice accompaniment to the rest of her book. As it is, she refers to it frequently throughout the text, as though the survey provided hardcore scientific evidence supporting various claims about what childless and childfree people think and feel. With such a small pool of respondents, I believe the survey might not hold up to much scrutiny, and less weight should have been placed on it.

Like most books I've read about this subject, "Two is Enough" is biased and subjective. Scott's point of view is clearly pro-childfree but contains no anti-child or anti-parent hate speech. By exploring how couples can be fulfilled families without a screaming baby on board, she's filled a particular niche in the growing body of childless/childfree literature. I'd recommend "Two is Enough" to childless couples who want more advice and shared stories about dealing with a pro-natalist, parent-oriented world; to childfree people who want to be reassured that they've made the right choice; and to open-minded friends and family members who don't understand why their loved ones aren't popping out grandchildren and nephews for them to play with.

I hope to hear from you and send out a free copy of this book soon.

MOURNING WITH MARGARET

 Do you not know how bleeding
 Leaves your mind and guts unheeding?
 Bleed; you are not like man, you
 With your ripe pear contracting, are you?
 Hm. As the end grows nearer
 You may come to hold it dearer;
 Rich within, your secret din
 Sits muffled by your heart of tin;
 And yet you will take it on the chin.
 Now no matter, lady, the course.
 A pear can ride a horse.
 For this autumn you sent; it came
 in gusts ghosting, no name:
 It is the blight woman is torn for;
 It is the seed you mourn for.

        ---moi, miss tiffany lee brown
    (written in 120 seconds, part of my Two-Minute Poem of the Day series)

TO BREED OR NOT TO BREED... in Marie Claire

Laura Scott interviewed me & lots of other childless by choice people for her book Two is Enough. And some of her conclusions appear on the website of Marie Claire, archived from the October edition of the print magazine.

The article, entitled "To Breed or Not to Breed?" and written by Abigail Pesta, busts some typical cultural myths about childfree people (while perpetuating one myth that bugs the hell out of me). Here they are, and here are my own musings on 'em...

For some other myths, coming from the opposite direction, check out this interview with Christina Gombar.

having grief in one area of life doesn't snuff out all fulfillment in other areas of life.

A childfree by choice woman named May just posted some cool comments and questions on an older post, and got me off & running again about the childless/childfree/motherhood/fulfillment tangle. Read her post and my absurdly lengthly replies right here on yr local Nymphe blog.

a few highlights: maybe we become some kind of yogi-type spiritual warriors by denying our bodily desires to such an extent, like monks. who knows.

i don't imagine this (level of daily grief) will be a permanent feeling.  (it's already been changing and getting better...)

in terms of grief, it's very different to other griefs i've experienced and/or watched others go through.

i do live a fulfilling life, always have. but i am not fulfilling what my body, my dna, and my hormones believe to be my Biological Destiny. that's a huge struggle.

it's like talking to someone who believes in angels or that God wants them to wear a veil all the time or that aliens are controlling them despite the tin-foil-lined hat they're wearing: fascinating but utterly, well, alien to me. UNTIL i experienced it.

i was probably worst off around age 37-38. if that hadn't improved somewhat, and if i hadn't found ways to manage the grief and connect with others going through similar grief, well, i'm not sure i'd be here today.

imagine you're on a chain, in a river, like the Greeks' Tantalus. you're starving and you're thirsty. somehow, your body keeps going despite the fact that you never get food or water. every time you bend to drink, the chain stops you. there's a fragrant orange tree right overhead. you can't reach the orange, however many times you try. maybe someone upriver is BBQing a steak. for infertile people, the chain may seem irrevocable. but many of us fall somewhere along a wide spectrum of childlessness/childfree life. we DECIDE not to drink the water or eat the orange, for the sake of the child, our marriages, our health, the planet, or other reasons. can you imagine that? standing in a river, your body insisting that you are dying of thirst, and not drinking? well, that's what this feels like.

part of why i want to tell my story is that i think younger women should be aware that however solid they are in their childfree decision, they may get their asses completely kicked by the bioclock later on. (yes, i'm willing to get dogpiled, as i have on other forums, for daring to say this.)

on childless women not being womanly: is Lauren Hutton unwomanly: Oprah? Simone de Beauvoir, Frida Kahlo? Ella Fitzgerald? Julia Child? yeah, didn't think so.

nature is another matter altogether. there are some animals and plants out there who replicate without breeding, but not generally a cuddly bunch. going through this, i suddenly felt alienated from nature itself.

to comment -= please read the original thread right here on yr local Nymphe blog and add your comment there.

PARTICIPATE: ART, WRITING, & PERFORMANCE INSPIRED BY THE CHILDLESS EXPERIENCE

  

TIFFANY LEE BROWN: 
THE EASTER ISLAND PROJECT

We are compelled to create—to make, write, act, and give birth. How do we manifest this deep desire? How do our creations—novels, babies, and atom bombs—affect our lives, our culture, and our planet?

The Easter Island Project invites audiences to explore the questions through the act of creation itself with Plazm editor and 2GQ director Tiffany Lee Brown, as she prepares for an interdisciplinary art expedition to Easter Island in the South Pacific. 

Inspired by Tiffany's investigation into biological childlessness in contemporary American culture, the Easter Island Project is an ongoing participatory art and performance work. Participants and audience members "seed" the project by generously contributing their own creativity in person, online, and through the mail.  

Want to participate, or come to a live event? Please email easterislandproject@gmail.com . Details will be updated throughout the year at 2GQ.org.

UPCOMING EVENTS: Seattle, Portland, Arizona, San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Rapa Nui, Chile.

THANK YOU.

Since starting the Nymphe blog, performing "House Bound," and writing "The Bubble of Silence: Are some topics, such as childlessness, unfit for polite conversation?" for Oregon Humanities magazine, I've begun to receive support and feedback from women in my situation and from many others as well. Thank you.

As a lot of you know, dealing with the grief of childlessness can make us feel horribly alone and misunderstood, sometimes obsessed with feelings and intense desires that other people seem to find abstract, odd, or perhaps selfish. And as some of you also know, being an artist or a writer or a blogger can feel similar, like we're spewing our souls into a vast, oxygenless galaxy, hoping another astronaut might drift by and wave hello. Thank you.

So I'm grateful. I'm grateful for the cards you've sent to me c/o the Plazm and 2GQ post office box. Grateful for the many emails and Facebook messages. Grateful, too, when you choose to speak up and post comments to this blog. For such a socially uncomfortable issue, childlessness apparently affects a heckuva lot of people. We know one thing, at least: we are not alone.

Thank you.

"THE BUBBLE OF SILENCE" in OREGON HUMANITIES MAGAZINE

"The Bubble of Silence" addresses how difficult it is to discuss the grief of childlessness in everyday life, and explains a little of what we go through as grieving childless women, whether due to infertility or other issues.

the article appears in the new issue of Oregon Humanities magazine, the civility issue. i believe that sample issues are available free via oregonhumanities.org - click on "publications."

CHILDLESS/CHILDFREE BOOKS REVIEWED

I've written up mini-reviews of various books on childlessness, childfree living, and infertility. Check them out here.

MADELYN CAIN: THE CHILDLESS REVOLUTION

If you're looking for the standard-issue indignant stance on childfree living, you won't find it here. Nor will you find the sorrow of infertility slowly beaten like a dead horse, surrounded by solemn images of blurry, gauzy women. It's not an upbeat, feel-good book about how cool we childfree women are, replete with comics and putdowns of moms. Nor is it a staunch defense of parenting and childrearing.

from my review of Madelyn Cain's "The Childless Revolution" on Amazon, a book which generated a flurry of surprisingly harsh comments.