782nd Friday Blog Roundup

I haven’t run BlogHerAds on my blog all year, but I finally got around to removing the code this week. I’ve been part of the network since 2007. It was my last tie (beyond human beings) to the old BlogHer site. So I kept moving it over on my to-do list until I got sick of recopying the task.

I never really thought about the ads––they asked if I wanted to put them on, I said sure, and I rarely thought about it again. But taking off the ad code, deleting that last tie to the site, made me super sad. It wasn’t like losing the conference or the articles or the community, but because it turned out to be the final snip, it took on a great weight.

For me, that was truly the end of the era.

Luckily, the relationships to the individuals I met through the community live on. So there’s that. And I still have the Hermoticon, which currently leads to nowhere, on the right sidebar. And all the memories and emails and such. But no more BlogHerAds.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “#MicroblogMondays: Never Mind” (The Road Less Travelled)
• “Currently Reading: Midnight in Chernobyl and The Radium Girls” (Inconceivable!)
• “Complex Legacies” (Hopelessly Infertile and Surrounded by Fertiles)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Again, I don’t usually feature articles from mainstream media, but I found The Atlantic’s coverage of Todd Hochberg’s work with parents after a loss incredibly moving. He comes to the hospital after a stillbirth to give parents photographs of their child. The pictures are beautiful.

Fighting Infertility pops in for a quick update. Despite a bunch of canceled cycles, she’s upbeat and feels like she’s already in such a good space that she isn’t getting down about the situation. Even though the post doesn’t contain happy news, it made me smile for her. It’s a good mental space to be in.

Waiting for Baby Bird has a post about the day she sets aside on the calendar each month to reflect on their family building experience, specifically that day each February, when her father sends her a rose to mark the occasion. It’s a religious post, and as someone outside her religion, I found it moving and fascinating. She writes, “I’ll be honest, I dreaded receiving the rose for this year and secretly prayed it would slip his mind. It’s been five years since his tradition started, but nearly eight years of contending for a miracle and waiting to see if it would come to pass.” It’s about keeping your faith during a long journey.

Finally, Lavender Luz has a guest post from an adoptee unpacking a moment when she yelled at her mother. She writes, “But I wish my mother had paused to realize the inherent compliment I was giving her when I mentioned finding my ‘real mom.’ I felt safe enough with her to lash out in anger. But more importantly, secure enough in her love to reveal my inner, deep, usually very private feelings.” It’s an incredible piece on why it is so important to allow someone else to speak their heart.

The roundup to the Roundup: No more BlogHerAds. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between February 14 – 21) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.