Harriet the Spy

I joined the Barren Bitches Book Tour for the second time to revisit the fabulous “Harriet the Spy,” a book I absolutely loved as a kid. I had read it again as an adult, but it had been a few years, and it’s always a different experience to read something for a book club than it is just to read. At least that’s how it is for me – when I’m just reading, I just do it for the pleasure of it, especially when it’s a story I know so well. When I’m doing it for a group, I definitely approach it much more critically, looking for themes and paying closer attention to the language. I noticed the language especially this time around – what a fabulous book! So much wit and cleverness, with brilliant characters, mercilessly skewered and tenderly portrayed. I consciously appreciated this for the first time as I re-read this book for the BBBT.

1. When you read it, do you read it as an adult reading a child’s book or do you forget that you’re grown-up and think of it in the part of your mind that is still 12?

As I said above, to me it’s very different reading this book now. Of course it brings back a lot of memories of feeling at odds with the world and the times I was shunned by my peers for reasons I didn’t understand. But I understood a lot more clearly this time why I liked the book so much (see the question below). I think part of this comes from reading the book as part of a group, and part of it comes from just where I am in my life right at the moment, feeling a bit raw and unprepared for being a grown-up, and wishing sometimes to go back to the innocence and intimacy of childhood. Perhaps this desire is a slightly twisted expression of my wishes for my own child. Hmm.

2. This book was written in 1964, when gender roles & stereotypes were much more rigid than they are today. In Chapter 4, Harriet & Janie feel the pressure to conform, to go to dancing school and be steered away from “unfeminine pursuits” — while later in the book, Marion, Rachel, Laura & Carrie imitate their mothers by playing bridge & drinking tea in the clubhouse. I was reminded of Carol Gilligan’s work on how girls’ “voices” change as they become adolescents. What do you think happened to Harriet & Janie as they became teenagers?  Do you think young girls today still feel similar pressures to conform?

I think young girls today do feel similar pressures to conform, and perhaps the pressure is even more insidious because the message is so mixed. Beauty, sexuality, body shape, and what for lack of a better term I’ll call “femininity”  are at least as important as they ever were, but added to the mix now is the idea that it’s the inside that counts, that appearance shouldn’t matter, that our worth as women should be based on what we do and who we are. That has been confusing for me, and I can only imagine how confusing it is for girls who have grown up playing with hyper-sexualized dolls and wearing clothes t-shirts that say “flirt” or “pornstar” and are told at the same time that they can be anything and anyone they want to be. That is a horrendous mind-fuck if ever there was one.

3. For some reason, although I’ve read Harriet the Spy literally dozens of times over the years, this is the first time that I realized why I love it so much. It’s because, to me, this is a story of the pain of growing up. The pain of being in between childhood, with the deep, intimate connectedness that entails, and adulthood, with the separation and independence and freedom and responsibility that come with it. Re-reading this book now reminds me that although I had thought as a child that someday I would be done the work of growing up, I don’t feel like I am done, and I wonder if I ever will be. So the question is this: what is the experience of growing up like for you? And is it something that you think is ever complete?

This was my question, and I really felt deeply about this reading the book this time around. When Ole Golly left, and Harriet felt so alone – it just brought all that pain to the surface for me. The fear that comes with being alone to deal with life when it gets difficult and we don’t understand why it’s difficult and we don’t know what to do – I’m feeling all of this so keenly right at the moment. There is something so wearying about all of this, feeling like the work of being who I am is never complete, but at the same time it is beautiful when I realize that everything is an opportunity to grow or change or blossom. That’s what spoke to me in this story this time – that tension between uncertainty and peace, and how we move constantly between them.

Sorry it took me so long to get this up – this week my work suddenly got busy, and I’m finally feeling better from the nasty virus I had, only to find that it was only a diversion from a bit of depression about the whole baby situation and the looming holidays. But all that is a matter for another post, which I promise to get to soon. Love to you all for your thoughts and comments and wishes for a speedy recovery from my fortnight of yuck. It wasn’t speedy, but your wishes have finally come true, and I am most grateful.

Barren Bitches Book Tour: Eat, Pray, Love

Welcome one and all, strangers and friends,  to my very first excursion on the Barren Bitches Book Tour. When I heard the book for this tour was Eat, Pray, Love, I jumped at the chance to participate. I’d already read the book and loved it, and was dying to find out what others thought and what questions they might come up with. And of course I have not been disappointed with my blogo-sisters’ brilliance. What follows are a few of the questions asked by my fellow barren bitches, and my responses. If you’d like to read others’ thoughts on this amazing book, check out the main list at Stirrup Queens. While you’re there, you can also sign up for the next book on this online book club: Baby Trail  by Sinead Moriarty (with author participation.)

While I don’t believe infertility can be cured by positive thinking, do you think the impact it has on our life could be minimized if we learned to control our thoughts like she talks about in chapter 58?

I know it can, cause I try to do this, and my life is much better for it. And not just in terms of infertility, but in terms of all the places in my life where I feel less than whole. I think, though, that it’s necessary to make an important distinction between thoughts and emotions. I don’t believe we can choose emotions – I believe emotions visit us, and we don’t get to decide who visits when. I do try to treat my emotions with compassion and forgiveness, though, the same as I do my thoughts. I try to remember that my emotions don’t mean anything about me; that is, that there is no need to have judging or unkind thoughts about myself just cause I happen to have emotions that I might not enjoy, or I might not feel are conveniently timed, or I just wish were different. Emotions tend to come and go pretty quickly, if I’m really paying attention, and they really don’t wear patterns in my mind the same way the thoughts can. But the thoughts, well, they’re another thing entirely. They can stick around, wearing grooves in my mind, refusing to let me go. Thoughts can take over, they can wear out their welcome, and often, they are most unhelpful. Thoughts like “I’m not good enough,” or “I need to figure this all out to be ok,” or “What the hell is wrong with me?”  These kinds of thoughts (and I have a lot of them) are ways I learned to cope with life when I was a little girl. They come from woundedness I inherited from my family, who in turn inherited their own woundedness from their families, and back and back we can go. Those thoughts are part of what made me a perfectionistic, scared, uptight, driven child, who grew up to be a perfectionistic, scared, uptight, driven adult. But in the past 4 years or so, I’ve started to learn how to release some of this stuff, how to forgive myself for not being perfect, how to experience joy, how to heal. One of the things I loved about this book was how honest Elizabeth Gilbert is about how difficult it is to change our minds and to find our spiritual paths. It’s really hard, and it takes a lot of work, a lot of effort, and a lot of awareness. But for me, anyway, living right now as I do with a hugely different mind than I had 4 years ago, I know that the work is worth it, and that it has meant real change in my life, especially in how I’m dealing with our infertility. As I said to Manny yesterday morning over coffee, I’m so proud of myself for learning how to stick up for myself, as I related in my last post. A few years ago, I would have taken all that on. I would have let that woman make me feel stupid, I would have accepted her word as the truth, and not only that, but I would have blown it all up into something that it never was in the first place, namely that my body was screwed up, and I was a failure, and I would probably never have a baby, and there must be something else wrong with me. And now, well – those thoughts still try to come, but I basically tell them to fuck off. So I’m sticking up for myself to other people, but also to my mind, whose habits are hard to break.

All this to give the following answer to the question you left behind so very long ago: yes.

In Chapter 60, the plumber/poet from New Zealand gives Liz some Instructions for Freedom. #7: “Let your intention be freedom from useless suffering. Then, let go.” To what extent has any suffering you’ve experienced in response to your own struggles (such as infertility, loss, illness) been inevitable? Natural but unhelpful? Useless? Does the suffering serve any purpose for you? Is that purpose enough to justify ongoing suffering?

This is such a great question. I do believe that a lot of suffering – maybe even most of it – is useless and avoidable. But I don’t think all suffering is either one. A lot of suffering can wake us up to the realities in our own lives, or can open our hearts to compassion for ourselves and others. So it’s clearly not useless. It’s just that we can lay such incredible trips on ourselves and compound the suffering that is natural and useful and unavoidable. A lot of the suffering I’ve experienced in dealing with infertility has been useless – it’s been about things that haven’t even happened yet, like “what if this never works and I never have a baby?” or “what if my child hates me for using donor sperm?” or “what will I do if people pick on my kid for being donor-conceived?” These thoughts have tortured me, and I’m sure similar ones will continue to torture me. But what do I gain from this kind of suffering? Nothing really. Maybe I get to think through certain scenarios in advance, so I might be more prepared if they actually happen. But really, they have not happened, and they might never happen. So why should I be living through them and feeling pain? I can’t really think of a good reason. And I don’t think anything really justifies dragging out this kind of suffering – it only tortures me and doesn’t really help change me or make me a more loving, kinder person.

There is, however, a lot of ongoing suffering with IF that I think is inevitable. I feel sadness because I don’t have a baby, and I’m going to feel that sadness until I have a baby. I’m angry at the whole situation, and I feel it’s unfair, and I doubt I’ll be able to fully let that go unless I have a baby, although I’ve made a lot of peace with my situation, so maybe it’s possible. But this is the kind of suffering that I think is useful – it’s the suffering that makes me part of our blogging community, that has made me take on the work of starting a support group in my city where none currently exists, it’s the suffering that helps me to see that nobody gets a free pass in this life, and we all have our struggles, and life is so much better when we can reach out to each other with gentleness and understanding. But although this suffering can serve a purpose, I don’t think we need to feed it, or try to dwell in it, or draw it out. As long as we allow ourselves to feel the pain of our own unique situations, and open our hearts to the truth that we are not alone in our suffering, it is redundant to really wallow in it.

Although I don’t always let that stop me.

As Elizabeth Gilbert is writing her letter to G-d about divorce, she begins saying names of individuals who ’signed it’. She says, “I became filled with a grand sense of protection surrounded by the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls.” As you blog about IF, parenting, life, and love; in what ways do you feel protected? How in your journey has ‘the collective goodwill of so many mighty souls’ guided you? Who are those mighty souls?

Beautiful question with an easy answer. If you’re reading this, you’re probably one of those mighty souls. And if you’re not reading this, you might be one of those mighty souls, too. When I first found the blogosphere, I felt like I’d found a place I could belong, and I dove in, with much enthusiasm and relief. Just being heard was tremendous, and having access to stories in which I could recognize myself was like a balm on my desparately lonely soul. The first time I got comments, I actually cried – it was so beautiful. There really is something magical about putting my experience out there and knowing that someone has read and listened to what I’ve wrote. But I don’t think I’d experienced something like these mighty souls until recently. I recounted a while back that I was having a rough time waiting for a morning appointment in my clinic, and was feeling very much alone. And for the first time, being nowhere near my computer or my blog or my daily tally of comments, I suddenly knew I was not alone. I knew that there were at least a dozen women I could list off the top of my head, and likely more than that, who wish me well, who want me to be happy, who understand me, who pray for me – and that they do that now outside of the blogs, maybe when they’re on their way to work, or they’re on hold with their clinic, or maybe when they’re feeling their baby kick for the first time. I deeply understood that I’ve managed, somehow, to worm my way off the screen into their hearts, as they have managed to worm their way into mine. And that there is a bond there that has nothing to do with how I write, or whether I tell a funny story, or what kind of crisis I find myself in. It’s bigger than that, it’s stronger than that, and it reaches far beyond that.

So you mighty souls, pat yourselves on the back and give yourselves a smooch and sing yourselves a song. You’re a bunch of fucking geniuses, the way you shape-shift like that.

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I could go on and on, and try to answer a lot more of these awesome questions, but it’s getting on time for me to pick my Grandma to go see Mamma Mia! and chow down on some popcorn in lieu of supper. Hurrah!