How would I know anything about myself (or knitting or China) without One Long Yarn? Today, I was scrolling back through the archives and I discovered what type of coffee I am. Actually, my first “type” was so off that I redid the quiz with my alternate set of answers (you know, the ones that you discarded for the one that seemed to fit you better at the time). When I read it aloud, my husband was like, “oh, yes, that’s the little nut job I know and love.”

I am normally not a big fan of the general advice column. I mean, how can one person offer advice on such a diverse range of issues—from relationships to divorce to fighting with in-laws to infertility? I know that while I could probably dole out some advice when it comes to certain areas of infertility (treatments–but not adoption or third party reproduction), raising twins, or just being a fantabulous woman-about-town (by the way–that’s how fantastic and fabulous I am–the words just merge when they describe me), most other issues in life are just a guess. I don’t know for certain how to help someone through a divorce because I have never experienced divorce. My fallback is just to sit and listen. But that’s not really…advice.

But I was pleasantly impressed with Ms. Hax this morning and her recent Tell Me About It column.

TELL ME ABOUT IT
By Carolyn Hax
Washington Post Staff WriterFriday, October 20, 2006; Page C02

Dear Carolyn:
My wife had a string of first-trimester miscarriages over the past two years. Devastated us both. Now she’s five months pregnant, gorgeous, glowing, healthy (according to a new doctor we both trust). I am overwhelmed with my excitement; she is numb with fear. She hasn’t told anyone but me, and won’t even let me be happy for us. I know our baby will be okay and I feel like we’re missing out on being the happiest we’ve ever been. What should I do now that it turns out my excitement isn’t as contagious as I thought it was?

Carolyn’s Answer: Consider your wife, whose fear hasn’t been as contagious as she had probably hoped. This is not a gratuitous downer, it’s the truth: You don’t “know” your baby will be okay. Nobody does. Most babies are okay but some aren’t.

And, someone who has internalized bad news, especially recently, won’t buy into a mood that’s built on a belief that bad news won’t happen. Not only does it directly contradict what she has felt in her own body, it minimizes it. It’s like you’re saying, “Okay, the fetus is healthy, we’re all better now!”

You don’t mean to do this, you mean well, I think that’s clear. But you’re essentially denying her grief, which is no doubt still fresh. In fact, the joy of a healthy pregnancy can actually exacerbate grief by underscoring what she lost in those first babies.

It can also make the specter of loss loom even larger: If she feels she barely made it through those early miscarriages, how will she endure a loss now, or, unthinkably, later on, when the love for her baby grows with each passing day?

This probably sounds like a primer for how you don’t want to think right now. But I’m willing to guarantee she’s thinking it already, so nothing you say will be persuasive until it sounds like the truth and not just wishful thinking. She might even benefit from talking to others who have been through similar losses, so she can work these things out at her own pace; your obstetrician should have a ready supply of resources.

I think your optimism will help, too — once she hears that you get it. You get the risks, and you’re excited and unafraid to love your baby anyway. Maybe because you’re not denying life is tenuous, you’re accepting it — and so you take your joy where you can.

Not sure if Carolyn ever experienced a pregnancy loss or pregnancy after infertility/loss, but I was duly impressed with her advice.

What’s your take?

Knew I could count on you guys to find out what happened on Grey’s. Have to say that I’m not that impressed with the “secret.” First of all, I feel like we already knew that from another episode. Second of all…well, there is no second of all, but it feels like there should be a “second of all” because that was a really lame secret.

My whole house smells like vegetarian chicken soup. What? Vegetarian chicken soup? I’m so glad you asked. I’ve been trying to create a soup stock that tastes like chicken soup but is completely vegetarian (without using any of those premade veggie bases that taste like chemicals). And I think I’m getting closer. We’re putting this batch to the test tonight with a pot of pho ga (Vietnamese chicken soup). Email me (thetowncriers@gmail.com) if you want the recipe for my “no chicken” soup. You can use it in place of chicken stock in any recipe. The only catch is that if you make it, you need to write back and tell me what you think so I can keep tweaking the recipe.

And what is the best thing to do while you wait the hour and a half for the pot of soup to cook down into golden goodness? Read blogs.

A huge congratulations to Ella at Nothing But Lemons. It’s still quite early, but she just learned that she’s pregnant. Woohoo!

Southern Comfortable posted a 100 things list this week. I’ve been meaning to do one of these for a while. Perhaps I will get to it this weekend. Top of that list: I’ve been trying to create a recipe for non-chicken chicken soup. I think my favourite part of Soco’s post was about leaving for her cruise: “I’ve had at least three people tell me that I’ll get pregnant on the cruise. Aha! The solution to our infertility was there all along! A vacation– silly me for not thinking of it earlier! Gah. Luckily, I knew all three well enough to explain that, no, we won’t be getting pregnant on the cruise, considering that I won’t be ovulating during the cruise. I also think that, somehow, a cruise was unlikely to be the solution to my blocked tube. I know these people all meant well, but good grief.” I love this image of her explaining how ovulation works. Right…so the answer is that you need to time the relaxing with when you’re ovulating. Silly, Soco, don’t you know that you should have scheduled your cruise around your cycle? Hope you have a good trip and post pictures when you return.

Makariya at Two in the Infertility Boat has a gorgeous post on why she’s not out to her parents (specifically her mother). Unlike Grey’s Anatomy, the end of this post was a total surprise. And I think it’s such an interesting twist on how we choose who to tell.

Those Pommie girls at Pomegranate have declared their blog a celebrity-free zone. At least it’s a celebrity-bashing-free zone. After the brouhaha with Madonna’s adoption this week, they posted an entry on the fact that Angelina Jolie, Meg Ryan, and now Madonna are adoptive parents–regardless of what they do. Their adoption aren’t more unique and interesting and wonderful. They’re just adoptive parents trying to create their families. The Pomegranate ladies ask: “At Pomegranate, can adoptive parents (all of us reading and also beyond) be just that: adoptive parents? Women? Men? People? With good intentions and insecurities and hopes and shortcomings?” The gist of this entry is that we shouldn’t judge each other’s decisions–and we shouldn’t do it just because the person is famous and the story is out there in the news.

Serenity has done it again with a gorgeous post about infertility and marriage. The stress of infertility has caused many a divorce, but it can also have the opposite effect–working together day after day under duress can strengthen a marriage as well. Which is what it has done for Serenity. But she came to that understanding over time. It’s not that they’ve been without their fights, but realizing that you’re standing on the same side of the river with someone who wants to cross it just as much as you do is a huge moment in a relationship. And one that carries you over to the other side and life beyond.

Being the good wife, I waited until my husband came home at 8:30 p.m. to eat dinner last night. No problem–I’ll just tape Grey’s Anatomy. EXCEPT THE VCR BROKE! We only discovered this at 9:45–too late to discover Mark and Addison’s deep dark secret. If you watched, what happened last night?

I swear, knowing the indiscretions of Addison Shepherd will help me get the Friday Blog Roundup out sooner.

Apparently, it starts back around age two.

Two days ago, I’m looking out the window. It’s dark and damp and threatening to rain. When I comment that I don’t think we’ll be able to play outside today, my daughter glances outside and says, “it’s not dark out; it’s nice out. Not dark. It’s nice. It’s nice, Mommy. Okay, Mommy? It’s not dark; it’s nice.”

Really?

Last week, I sat down on the kitchen floor and started crying. My daughter came up and stared at me. Finally, after a minute of watching me cry, she tells me: “Mommy is happy! So happy!”

I know one thing that drives another person to minimize your pain or provide a new story about your emotions: when someone loves you, they don’t want to see you hurt. Rather than allowing the couple to mourn after a loss, they’re immediately told stories that are either comparative in nature (do you remember our neighbour back at the old house? Well, her daughter miscarried at 14 weeks) or minimizing in nature (at least it happened early. It’s not as bad as it could have been). You’re told to be thankful for what happened vs. what could have been. People want you to get through the mourning process as quickly as possible and seem surprised if you’re still speaking about the loss long after the fact.

I know another reason why we do it. Mourning is uncomfortable: not just for the couple experiencing the loss but for the people who need to comfort them. Msfitza had a post this week about seeing a woman she knows at Costco. The woman, who knew about her loss, did an I-can’t-see-you maneuver where she suddenly became deeply interested in a stack of books when their oversized shopping carts passed one another. I like to call this move the you-just-suffered-a-terrible-loss-and-I-don’t-know-what-to-say-so-I’ll-pretend-that-I-don’t-see-you (or a YJSATLAIDKWTSSIPTIDSY. Which shouldn’t be confused with the LBWWMTDASADFFIHAOTAC).

And it’s not just pregnancy loss–we do this to each other over anything that falls into a sad-inducing category. Divorce, break-ups, job loss, bankruptcy, death. There’s always someone there in your life who tries to convince you that it’s not that bad. That it could be worse. That you shouldn’t be feeling sad right now; or, if you have to feel sad, you shouldn’t feel that sad. Or if you have to feel that sad, you shouldn’t feel it for too long. Think back to any time in the past six months that you’ve been having a crappy day for no reason. I’m sure if you expressed that idea to someone, they gave you a sympathetic, “I’m so sorry” and then immediately changed the topic with the hope of changing your mood.

Because people don’t like to see other people sad. Sadness is just one of those emotions that needs fixing. Like anger. If you’re angry, you need to fix it. You need to get out of that emotion. And if you’re sad, you need to fix it. It seems like the only emotion that doesn’t need fixing is happy. No one tries to get you to stop being happy. Which would lead one to believe that we need to be happy 100% of the time or as close as we can get to that emotion in order for other people to be comfortable. People understand if you’re sad for a period of time after a loss, as long as they also know that you’re going to be working yourself back to that happy place. People who don’t work themselves back to that happy place tend to be shunned in our society.

There just isn’t a revered spot on the guest list for the party of life for the widow who has been in mourning for three years or the infertile woman who is miserable or the middle-aged man who suffers from depression. They’re invited to the party because they have to be invited to the party. But secretly, most of the other guests are hoping that they snap out of it. That they don’t bring them down. Because it’s an uphill battle, fighting to be happy all the time. Fixing all of those emotions to only read happy. And it’s hard to be around a person who still wants you to be mourning with them. Or who needs not to be cheered up, but be allowed to experience what they’re experiencing. It’s not that they don’t want to move away from mourning–but not everyone finds that door out of hell.

Which leads to my question–if we know how crappy it feels when someone is trying to change our emotions for us (through stories, through goading–I mean, what is it with people telling those who have just suffered a pregnancy loss that they need to try again?), why do we do it to other people? Why does this phenomenon exist at all if we truly understand that golden rule: do unto others as you would want done unto you?

Hmmm…sorry that I can’t muse on this any longer. I need to go convince some people that their feelings aren’t valid and they should just be happy by now…