Reflections on independence

This flag, reflected in the window of the Marriott San Diego when I was at Camp Widow last year, shows a little bit of how flags REALLY work: their symbolism might seem to be written in stone, but a flag at every moment, to every person, looks different. Linear, elemental, in primary colors, a flag symbolizes a foundation, but any real flag changes constantly, responding to wind and water. This one appears here to be cut off and wavy, and it was alone on just one tier of many mirrored levels of the hotel facade.

And I really hate Monday holidays (pretty sure I posted this last year too), which is a reflection of how crappy I am as a single parent.

Peace online: one comment

I could write scores of pages on why I hate the whole "fight cancer with hope" thing, but it's still a trigger for me, and I know the vitriol which calls those words from me isn't natural — or at least, I don't want to make it a permanent part of me. So I have avoided blogging about it, and for the most part, I've stopped baiting Lance Armstrong on Twitter.

Cancer burnt Gavin and me, but lying about it and pretending he wasn't mortal were what broke our marriage apart as I prepared to lose him, alone, while he dreamed of miracles.

Musical Monday: Hanging by a Moment, or, Somatic Identification Part 1

"Hanging by a Moment" by Lifehouse is the song of my experience of my husband’s last few months. I’m talking about the period during which he dissolved: after the back surgery, before the shingles.

The song is aggressive and male and unlike all the other music I like, but it was on the radio all the time. The lyrics are final: “there’s nothing else to lose,” and stubborn: “I’m standing here until you make me move,” and all about extremes, but what got me glued to it was the refrain:

“I’m falling even more in love with you.” I sang it to myself over and over, every time I got in the car, every time I went somewhere on my own, taking the few moves I could make with any honesty and directness, a few trips with any direction at all, however mundane.

"More in love?" WHAT? Was I trying to convince myself that cancer brought “gifts?” Gavin was falling away, down to 100 lbs and shrinking as I watched, as I tried to move forward. Did he know he wasn’t part of the plan any more? Or was I not making any plans? Was it a mantra, nonsense, something in the chords that hit me? Or just the sense of uncertainty, that you can be strong and whatever but you have no idea what's next? Isn't that part of what the young blond dude (so young!) is saying?

It sounds, to me, like some truth. My body was inextricably stuck to his as it broke, our lives were shared and splitting silently down the middle. It’s called somatic identification, and it marks the last bit of grief that I have left to shed.

"Falling, hanging, desperate." The truth of my life as he was dying. There's a metallic drone in the song under the whine of the bass: and a beautiful buzz that makes me wonder if Lifehouse is a faith-driven act (despite the lyrics) or just your average white band.

I listen to this song, over and over, to recapture what I felt, the fact that I WAS feeling though it doesn’t seem like it when I look back. I’m convinced now I need to do this, though I’ve heard the advice over and over, this time it came from peers, not from Freud. This time, I was listening.

My peer Matt Logelin, author of “Two Kisses for Maddy,” said, “it was only by remembering and writing down those last moments when I saw Liz -- the smells, the sounds, that I became free to live again, and eventually, to love again.” (I paraphrase; he was more direct and less corny).

My peer Jennifer Silvera, author of “Believe,” said, “I had written. ‘We were in the ambulance, it took him to the hospital, but he was already dead.’ My agent pushed and pushed, insisting the story was more than those 3 phrases, but I didn’t see it, and when I did, it was ten pages of moments.” (I totally paraphrase and probably have important details wrong). (Matt and Jennifer were speaking at the author’s panel at Camp Widow). And you know what? I believe them. I’ve started posts on this topic a dozen times and quit.

I’m going to listen to this macho anthem over and over again until I get it right this time. Or wrong, but either way – DOWN. I'll get my own words down and let go of these.

I Heart Camp Widow

Of course I had to redo my Powerpoint at the last minute. Friday evening
in the hotel bar I told Andrea how I derived the name "Supa Dupa Fresh"
and she nearly fell asleep. "Fine, we'll say I took that name
because 'I like soup,'" I conceded. And so, a legend was killed.

Camp Widow, a weekend of events in San Diego hosted by the Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation, was the highlight of my year. I spent many months preparing my presentation on widows in social media, “Grief? There’s No App for That!,” and helping promote the event to my widowed friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook. I relished the chance to meet in person many folks who’ve become close friends online over the past few years. And I was honored (and totally shocked) to receive an award from SSLF for connecting so many people with resources with each other.

Even though I started with a serious lead, I can’t make this into a comprehensive article about this outstanding weekend. There are so many other perspectives – Candice has listed most of the blog posts, and others are here and here (and more here, here, here, here, here and here -- Holy crap this list is getting ridiculous!), along with two articles in USA Today, including one in which I was quoted.

Instead I’d like to share a few observations. First, the connections are so wonderful to see. If you are widowed, you already know the tremendous power of meeting others who’ve “been there,” how liberating it is to not have to explain yourself, to find those who understand your dark jokes. For many of the 200 attendees this was their first time close enough to hug someone their own age who’d lived with loss. Before Camp, I'd already met scores of my peers in person, and hundreds online, and I know I’ve been exceptionally lucky. This kinship is so validating, such a source of encouragement and conviction – I was a little envious of those discovering this place in themselves, this feeling of not being alone. I was moved to say something new agey: “All these hearts opening up – it’s lighting up the room.” (And then, strangely enough, there were actual fireworks over the harbor.)

And then, through the weekend, I felt a little distant. While I’m still in transition in my life, my emotional needs are much simpler, much less urgent, and not so much about grieving. As my friend Ellen Gerst said, this is a good sign for the rest of you. The weekend was not without pangs: it’s shocking to me, though I know so many of them online, to see in person widowed parents younger than me, some MUCH younger (one with a baby in attendance). And I was inspired by the courage of those who showed up in a strange place, knowing not a soul, in the early days after their loss – many with “0-6 months” on their nametags (each guest selected their own).

Second, the role of social media in making the connections. I loved witnessing the rich and dense web of friendships that had started online, many through my own Facebook activity. One woman told me, “when you friended me you were the only widow I knew other than my great aunt, and now half of my friends list is people like us.” Others toasted (with mashed-potato cocktails) the real faces of people they’d grown to love as sisters from tiny avatars.

Aside from a posse from Widows Wear Stilettos, the largest contingency (23 people) was definitely bloggers: not just the seven from SSLF’s flagship Widow’s Voice, who appeared on stage in a group, but also Candice, Abby, Matt, Andrea, Sarah, Chelsea, Mel, Dan, Boo, Deb, Wendy, Jennifer, WnS, my dear sister Hyla, and the hilarious, stunning Carol, who had the second-most beautiful shoes in the room.

My presentation on social media went “fine” (as we perfectionists say). It had to, given the number of cocktails I passed up throughout the weekend in order to “finish it.” I was trying to be analytical and high-level when people were looking for support and laughs: which you can get online, but perhaps not talk about.

Like so many other aspects of the weekend, the proof was in the pudding: I could see evidence of social media’s value in the connections all around me (and in the award and the attention of USA Today reporter Sharon Jayson), so the Powerpoint was almost beside the point.

Third, the ordinariness of our group: how, when you take away the “drama” the rest of the world invests our “stories” with (to paraphrase Matt, that’s no story, that’s my life!), when you remove yourself from the people Alicia calls “civilians,” the sadness and surprise of our youth and existence and laughter – all the reactions – we’re free. Black or white, fresh or seasoned, young or old, gay or straight, widowed people look like any other group of people: some shy, some giggling with roommates, most with a deep bond to at least one other here, all learning. As I walked back to the elevator after the gala, the “fresh widow” label on my wool shawl invisible as it protected my lucite award, I looked at the gaggles of conversation groups on square beige couches in the hotel lobby: it wasn’t easy to tell who was with our group, and I might have fit in to any of them, too.

I didn’t have a scarlet "W" on my forehead, after all. The role I play was put into relief: I have been widowed, and I can offer hope and share with those in the depths of it, but as a sister and an advocate I’m a handhold* for others.

* To understand this reference and also to be human and delighted you must read or preferably listen to Michele Neff Hernandez’s keynote.


* * * Please connect! I love comments! * * *

Local man rests in peace: Harvey Pekar, grandfather of blogging, dies at 70

He died. What more is there to say about Harvey Pekar’s death yesterday, at age 70?

You could say that Cleveland has lost its bard, blogging’s grandfather has slipped off, and the muse of diaristic comix artists like Seth, Joe Matt, and Chester Brown had moved off to the happy hunting ground, and you’d capture a little bit of his cultural importance and some of the people he touched. Course, to really do that, you have to include all the people who loved American Splendor, his annual, diaristic comic book drawn by other artists, genius all around, or who saw the major motion picture of the same name, starring Paul Giamatti, which wasn’t terrible. On a bad day, he might argue that you’d also need to include all the veterans whose medical files he handled in his day job at the Cleveland VA hospital, none of whom were aware of his labor on their behalf.

Pekar’s work elevated one man’s ordinary days – “the 99 percent of life that nobody ever writes about” -- to the point of either a story worth listening to (and looking at, using the pens of talented cartoonists from R. Crumb to Josh Neufeld) or possibly a part of history. Books, after all, used to be evidence that you mattered. Now, who knows?

Or you could think of the space this loss leaves for Joyce Brabner, his wife, who he met after she wrote to him looking for a copy of one of his books. She’s one of those, I suppose, who’s grateful there aren’t so many cool independent bookstores like the one I used to run, where I first encountered American Splendor and the cohort of folks my own age who worshipped, but couldn’t entirely “get,” Pekar: we understood his genius but to really respect the voice, I think you have to get beat down a few times by middle-class life, which didn’t happen to most of us till at least our thirties.

R. Crumb called Pekar’s subject matter “so staggeringly mundane it verges on the exotic.” I’ve always loved that intersection of real life and art, the making holy of the ordinary act, the Virgin in the pancake. So Pekar was a big influence on me, though I first identified my adoration of this stream in Fluxus and later, in my own living. The confessional comix, especially by the Canadians who followed in his autobiographical footsteps (though they did their own spectacular drawing), the ordinary heroics and dramatics of people bottled for reality television, the combination of artistry and self-sacrifice and voice exercise that we know as blogging: none of these would be the same without Harvey Pekar, and they all move me.

Pekar was more than all this, and less: a regular cranky middle-aged guy, a pugilistic guest on Letterman, an aficionado of antique Jazz, a writer and speaker and someone who lived among us. I thought of him as a better “Local Man” than the one featured in the Onion headlines: but Local Man was a fiction disgused as something real and boring, and Pekar showed the real and boring as epic and valuable.

Each of his stories was an anticlimax: his work with Brabner, “Our Cancer Year,” served not to inspire Gavin and I through our battle, but to validate that our fight was as ordinary as the year before or after, only with more vomit. It wasn't true for us, but every cancer is different and every person is different: witness still helps you get through.

In the end, he just died. My eulogy: Harvey, we hardly knew ye; rest in peace, old stranger, old friend.


(Photo of Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner at Hallwalls, Buffalo, N.Y. Oct. 4, 1985. Courtesy of Hallwalls' archive. Used under Creative Commons licensing.)

* * * Please connect! I love comments! * * *

Miscellaneous.

(About the image: This is a sign telling the mosquitoes not to come in our house. “Can the mosquitoes read the sign?” I ask. “That’s why I made it a PICTURE,” she says with confidence.)

This morning as I rearranged my closet in the new house for the hundredth time, just to find a pair of socks, I spilled a box. Boxes in my house are interesting because they usually contain all the things that can’t be filed somewhere, that don’t seem to fit in an easy place – sometimes they bear a label that attempts to bind them up as if they belonged somewhere. I box them because I want to understand them, or at least, get them out of the way without learning more from them.

This box that broke open on my foot let go some of its usual, box-like insufficiently described complexity, remnants of life, odd ends too good to throw out, including home medical supplies. A pillbox with 28 compartments that was expensive. Gauze pads, plain and backed, two sizes, two different types of medical tape. Tiny alcohol swabs to clean injection sites for follistim or IL-2 (or umbilical cord stumps).

Four years after death, 5 years after IL-2, 6 years after cleaning her tiny stump, 7 years after fertility treatment. Am I ready to throw it out yet?

How many other topics are resting, sort of labeled, sort of shelved in my computer and in my other brain, the meat one?

My anniversary season ends tomorrow with the fourth birthday after Gavin’s death, one month after the fourth anniversary of his death. It’s as good a time to clean house as any and there are fireflies all around that house, reminding me that random flickering can be gorgeous. (Why can’t they sneak inside instead of mosquitoes?)

Here are some of the balls of string and broken clocks I haven’t wanted to talk about:
• Gavin’s ashes and their disposition.
• My daughter’s current attitude about our loss.
• All the observations I make of my child at the same age I once was.
• Bloggy content about TV shows, movies, and celebrity mortality and morbidity.
• Philosophies of life, learning, and faith.
• What I’ve done wrong and who I’ve hurt.
• My many non-blog projects.
• My paying work.
• All the really smart, brilliant, wonderful people around me doing the good work.
• Insights about working with social media for maximum bang and buck and deepest connections.
• My delays, my procrastinations, my pains.
• Stories about how different we are or how I’m alone.
• The day we went back to get Shortie an X-ray at the same place where Gavin got his scans (including the ones that were bad, the ones that were misread, the ones that gave us hope).
• How I’ve developed a health issue with every part of the body that matches Gavin’s faults, piece by piece and system by system.

There are others that I will fix up to show you:
• My hopes for the world, my fears for my body.
• Stories that you have asked me to tell about dating, about parenting, about rising back up.
• My big ideas about grief and my keys to change the world so we can fit better in it.
• Your brilliance and your shining light and how I’ve watched you learn from each other, how bravely you’ve shared (I’ll never use anything without your permission).
• Introductions to some people I have loved, dearly and deeply.
• Surprises from my child, and what I’ve learned, and what I look forward to.
• And it is only fun, I think, if once in a while I can preach, pretend I have the answers, and act like I think I’m smarter than other people. I’m sure those are the times I fool no one, but some of the ideas are gems, and some of what I’ve learned in life so far is true, and I know I’ve helped a few people, on some odd days, to find their lights.

Writing is, at its best, like opening a vein. Having an audience gives you better odds of responding with the right tone, the right story, but it has its own dynamic. Before the internet most writers wrote their first work alone and only met the audience and its crippling desires and pulls afterwards. Strangely enough most authors only make money after the first book, if they have proved to even have an audience.

Blogging is different, much faster, much less finished. Writing on computer makes it easy to collect and lose ideas and notes if you want to, if you aren’t sure what you’re doing. A lot of blogging is about stretching your ideas out for as long as possible to create the most impressions. I’m not sure I’m cut out for that.

Writing for you is hard work (work I’ve chosen and which I love). My voice turns ponderous so often, and sometimes people respond to the stuff that’s the heaviest at the time when I don’t want to let it out, and sometimes you laugh at my jokes when I’m succeeding at distracting you or myself.

Sometimes I’m contradictory. Occasionally I have incredible focus and a great idea.

But that box's contents are all over my foot. I have to throw some things out. The deadline is tomorrow. Which means, what, I start then, right?


* * * Please connect! I love comments! * * *

Why I write an anonymous blog

It was a no-brainer, when I started this blog, to use a pseudonym. I was a single mother with a young child, living alone. I was angry, and expected that I could use the forum to say nasty things about everyone in my life: my dysfunctional family, Gavin's family, my nemeses in the neighborhood association, local politicians, George Bush, my lawyers, and even my friends. It’s not that I hold my punches in person, but I know myself well enough – and as a Mom, I’m prudent – to know I’d have more fun with a mask on. It would be prudent to shield my real life friends and associates from my deepest everythings.

Perhaps it would have been more mature to simply respect about my friends' feelings, or solve problems offline before blogging about them. I am -- demonstrably -- more capable, better with people, than I thought that dark night as I opened my Blogger account. But why take the chance and lose what seemed like the last shreds of the world that cared for me?

At 40, I accept that I have a chronic problem with honesty, I’m direct to the point of bluntness sometimes, with tendencies toward oversharing and occasional exhibitionism. Also, I was volunteering for an advocacy organization while working for a company that prohibited employees from lobbying: it made sense to keep two different worlds separate.

If you want to be really honest online, it helps to lie about who you are. At BlogHer09, I heard a particularly ugly testimony from a woman whose husband encouraged her to write a blog, and then used what she wrote there as evidence against her having custody a few years later, when they ended up in divorce court.

My stage of life dictated staying quiet, too. I was planning to date and talk about reentering the world of single people at 40, with a kid and a loss and my usual attitude. What if someone found my account of a date and changed their mind about how it went? Would it be better to lie to them about having a blog at all?

As it turned out, I have never really been mean here – there’s been more than enough else to talk about. I got remarried, and don’t feel as vulnerable any more. And when I was dating, I didn’t have any excess energy to write about the experience. If I had a bad date, I had to go home, grab a beer, and start window-shopping on Match.com right away; if I had a good date… well, I’d be too busy to write. I wrote those dates up two years later and I doubt most of those guys would even recognize themselves.

Being a widow is about not fitting in any more, and even though I wasn’t probably ever in real harmony, anywhere, it was still convenient to be Dr. Jekyll in public and morph into Mr. Hyde after dark, or online, or in another universe.

Anyway, having a little secret and then not keeping it very secret was a terrific way to act out my passive-aggression. I loved being able to tell people in social settings, “Oh yeah – I have an anonymous blog.” (Poor suckers didn’t know whether or not to ask how to find it.) If I was feeling punchy, I’d let them walk away wondering which big deal on the Internet was me. If I was feeling polite, I’d follow up with, “Sure, I could give you the URL – but I’d have to kill your partner first. Ha, ha. No, seriously, I only write about death and dying so you probably wouldn’t like it.”

Being anonymous is more provocative on Facebook, where I often friend my readers, who mostly use the channel for their real-life friends.

But this fake identity was growing to become the one that was making an impact on the world. The Fresh Widow was helping people, generating her own ideas, and building up a little community. To do anything in the real world, I needed the credibility and connections I’d built up online. As this avocation turned into a hobby and then something like a professional pursuit – as I was accepted to speak at a national conference – I am at the stage now where, slowly, I am “coming out” and connecting this persona to my real name.

There’s still one reason I’m holding out, a little: I have this awesome story about my boss’s vagina. And there’s no way in hell I’m going to be Googleable until after that story gets told and fades.



* * * Please connect! I love comments! * * *

The Diary of Anne Frank Killed Me

I was a depressed child, easy to discourage.

In the 7th grade I had a wonderful bond with my English teacher. Students were required to turn in a "journal" (kind of like a blog?) of one page or more. In my journal folder I expressed my wishes and creativity to florid feedback (kind of like blog comments?) every week. For a brief spell I had a mentor, a rare source of encouragement outside my confusing, hopeless, fighting household.

We were assigned an oral report book review, and I was excited to choose the grand, important, real Diary of Anne Frank.

It was bad enough to be in front of the blackboard, the only one standing, lips trembling. Acne. The cool kids.

Within my first sentence the whole thing went horribly wrong: "Anne Frank's diary was discovered in a garret after the Nazis captured ..." The teacher's face must have indicated it was okay for the class to get disorderly because the "ooooooo"'s rose like a mess of pigeons from the desks. Someone was in trouble. 

Would you believe that my introduction to a book report of Anne Frank counted as a spoiler? I was dinged for "giving away the ending." I tried to argue: Frank's death was not the point of the book, wasn't included IN the book, and everyone knew she was dead by the time they picked up the book. In fact, her death was alluded to on the back cover. Can you even imagine a meaningful way to tell her story without disclosing her capture?

This, my only bad grade until that point, marked the moment I gave up on writing. My own refuge had been violated, my psyche smashed in that way I would have expected from my classmates but didn't think was even possible of this particular teacher. Years of observations were confirmed: you can't trust grown ups.

(I wonder, if I'd known that I was Jewish then [whole nother post] would this story have a different ending?)


* * * Comments * * *

National Day of Listening

This may not work.

But I am going to try to talk to my damn mother for the Story Corps project, the National Day of Listening, on Friday. Maybe you can do it, too. It's a great legacy to leave, to include in the history of our real country, and a fantastic opportunity to connect with a loved one in a different way. The website offers tips as well as starting questions for your "interview."

There are a million ways and reasons I love what storytelling has become: a significant method that we use to frame our lives and our history. I never thought I'd see the day that ordinary people were recognized for their experiences and perspectives. I always thought that was the job of the Great American Novel, not reality TV, not computer networks, but things have changed. Thank God.

I love that I spent an hour on Monday selling a corporate client on how we'd help put faces to their "story," which they already value as a central part of their brand. I love that I have a chance to sell without lying, and use my skills to accomplish something rewarding while getting paid.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The day after Thanksgiving, if I follow through on my National Day of Listening pledge, I'm supposed to listen to my mother for a full hour. We have a difficult relationship, but she is here for the holiday anyway.

Why don't I turn away when opportunity knocks like this? Maybe I'm strong enough to plunge right in to a challenging learning experience, perhaps flowers will pour from her mouth in a surprise fit of something-or-other. Could be that this process is just part of some rebellion I'm having against being healed, maybe this is my way to insist on banging my head against a familiar wall one more time.

I know part of my mother's annoying behavior is caused by illness, but after 43 years I still have trouble being around it and making room for my real live self.

Around her I feel like the child I was, the one who was constantly asked to be different; at other times I'm in the shoes of her parent, whose job it was to take care. The one who failed so miserably. If I saw my mother as a child who needed only love and empathy, I'd probably accept her and feel more sad than angry.

The sadness is like a well. I don't want to shine a light down there.

But an hour? With my ears? I'll try. Wish me luck.

* * * Comments * * *

Widows' Index

One of my many Big Ideas is a site that puts all the widow bloggers’ content together through an index.

It started after I left support group and started reading the huge variety of blogs produced by widows and widowers, especially the young ones. Despite our diversity, we share many of the same experiences so there tend to be common topics:
-- When they removed their wedding ring.
-- Their feelings at having to check “widowed” on a form, or God forbid, “divorced.”
-- When they sent their spouse’s belongings to the Goodwill (on my blog, this very casual post that is among my most visited).
-- And of course, the ever-popular, impossible-to-beat, post about First sex after death.

And then Michele Neff Hernandez told me about her project of interviewing many widows, asking the same set of questions, some of which were similar. See, that’s how I can tell she’s a genius. (Too.)

An index that connects our entries by the topics widowed people are looking for would generate traffic and share the commonalities more easily. For those of us writing blogs, it would be a great way to continue the conversations we all have informally, non-linearly, without interrupting our own narratives.

And it feeds into my other hypothesis: that young bereaved people are an underserved group, socially, economically, with certain needs that could be identified and dealt with. But that’s a Big Idea for another day.

I’ve started a list of the topics that might be included in a “widow index” of blogs – a “W-Index,” if you’ll forgive me. (No one ever does.)

I won’t bore folks with the logistics or technical details. The project could be self-building or we could each index other blogs as we wish.

This is probably too many topics, but what do you think?
Advice
Anger
Anniversaries
Anti-depressants
Art
Being single
Birthdays
Blogs and bloggers
Career and job
Church
Communities
Dating stories
Dating, online
Death
Depression
Divorce
Faith
Finances
Friends and friendships
Grief counseling
Grief, anticipatory
Grief, competiveness
Grief, complicated
Grieving Kids: age 0 to 3
Grieving Kids: age 4 to 5
Grieving Kids: Grown children
Grieving Kids: high schoolers
Grieving Kids: K-5 gr
Grieving Kids: middle schoolers
Grieving Kids: over 18
Home
Loneliness
Losses during bereavement
Loss of a child
Loss of a parent
Love
Marital status on forms
Meals
Mental Health other than depression
Milestones
Movies
Moving house
Music
Neighbors and neighborhoods
Other culture
Parents, yours
Parents-in-law
Peers
Practical advice
Religion
Remarriage
Sadness
School, your children
School, yourself
Sex
Siblings
Siblings-in-law
Skin hunger
Step parenting
Stuff, spouse’s
Support groups
Survivor guilt
Therapy
Time management
Triggers to grief
Wedding ring
Writing
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6+

* * * Comments * * *

The "Grief" Category: Ruminations on BlogHer09

I finally figured out what was getting me about the BlogHer conference back in July. Why I went in expecting to feel different from everyone else, and came out disappointed that the only thing different about me was that I had hoped to be left out, but no one would play along.

(I’ll leave the psychoanalysis aside for a moment and just talk about grief in blogging.)

I went to BlogHer expecting grief in blogs to be like grief in real life: a difficult issue that no one is willing to talk about. I often found myself frustrated that there was no real category for me in the indexes (BlogHer, Bloglines, Blogopedia, Technorati, AllTop, Blogarama, Scribnia… ). I’d list my blog under “family life” or “parenting” even though those choices cut me off from single widows, with whom I generally feel great comradeship.

Checking the wrong box left me feeling misunderstood. After all every widow has a story about the first time she has to check “widowed” on a form, and another about some clueless organization that expects her to select among “single,” “married,” or “divorced.”

When I was at this conference with 1300 other people, mostly women, largely Moms, who write for different publics, I found that grief in blogs really is like grief in real life: a deep vein that shows bright if you scratch the surface. A stone a lot of people are carrying in an inner pocket. You can’t see it, but they might even be fondling it while they talk to you. Grief is so common and such a part of life that it doesn’t make sense to put all those people off in a separate room.

(Leaving aside for a moment, again, that a grieving bloggers conference would be TEH AWESOME). (See. I learned blogger lingo. I’m a pro now.)

We all hope to be lucky enough to write only occasionally about our loss and adaptation. Then we could talk about other subjects: recipes, cute things our kids did, politics... the whole world. Of which grief is, yes, an important part.

Maybe we grief bloggers are just stuck. I’m sure that’s what it looks like from the outside.

Or in some HEY LOOK AT ME phase of tearing hair and rending garment. I suppose it’s a good thing that we might move on to something else.

Blogs that serve only one need for the author do tend to die out. There are abandoned grief blogs all over the place.

But my demands are often unreasonable. Maybe topical categorization is less useful for subjects that span our serious, lumpy, camouflaged, ever-changing emotional lives. Seems we bereaved people do a fairly decent job at finding one another online using the same vehicles we do in real life: through friends (and their blogrolls).

What’s so wonderful about blogs is that they are as in-between as we are. A fresh source of rich, personal information and perspectives that shows humans in all our color and glory (leaving aside, for now, the skew towards people with internet access).

If this diverse democratic distribution of words and images favors the creative, the trouble makers, those who don't fit neatly into one category, who am I to complain?


* * * Comments * * *

(Fragments) Intro, Widows in Social Media (Etc.)

Bitchin’ great weather this summer, until now. My reluctance to quit eating gluten, dairy, and peaches. Or the fact that I have to Mom full time for the two weeks between preschool and K. Whatever is causing my problem, I have a ton of ideas and can’t pull them together.

Maybe it’s also the nature of the subject. I’ve been taking notes on widows in social media for months but nothing coherent or post-like has come together. Given the ADD inherent in Twitter (where I am spending an unfortunate number of little bits of time most days) it might make sense to just take it on the way it is. To post frankly and fast. To inhibit overthinking, for once. To share my (OH GOD) thought process (PRAY).

How about we just pretend that I’ve applied the punkrock ethos of “don’t bother learning your instrument, just get up and play” to writing?

Forthwith, a series of short posts that may or may not fit together.


* * * Comments * * *

My First BlogHer Conference

This was my first BlogHer conference. I was able to attend only because I won a ticket through Snickollet and my time is, temporarily, my own. I don’t fit in as a Mommyblogger and I’m sure mine was one of the smallest and least-connected blogs represented there. My goal was to have fun, make some new connections, and smell the campfire of this movement and its people to figure out if blogging is deep and engaged enough to suck up more time in the future.

Ten highlights of my BlogHer 09 experience
1. The Weinermobile: Oh joy! It was even pointing straight at my head. “Beep! Beep! Beep!”
2. My mourning shawl/“supa”hero cape and new perfume rocked the house.
3. I was recognized: My quote about “what blogging has done for me” was used in the opening keynote.
4. People laughed at my special edition Widow Cards (see the next post).
5. Super humans: My widow blogger twin, Gretch, wasn’t able to attend but we had dinner on Friday night. It was the first time we’ve met IRL and she’s even better in person (I hope that's not a mean thing to say of a blogger?). At the humor lunch I had the privilege of sitting next to hilarious, whipsmart Sara. And I met a lot of people I’d like to work with in the future, especially Anissa, Jenni, Allie, Melissa and Amy. I found a ton of gals who live near me, including one who shops with my eyeglasses guru. The 20 bloggers who spoke at the Community Keynote displayed the breadth and talent of the group. And at the last moment before running to the airport, I met an acquaintance from college who’s more of a sister than I ever knew, and (ta da!) another widowed blogger, Judi.
6. Celebrities who are real: I exchanged cards or more with Black Hockey Jesus, Jenny the Bloggess, Neilochka, Jessica Gottlieb, Jessica Bern, Wendi Aarons, and Jessica Smith, among many others. All were lovely, energetic, gentle, supportive, and smart, and helped me feel welcome.
7. Serious topics: It’s easy for me to feel isolated and generalize that Mommybloggers spend their words comparing paper towels for money. But there was no shortage of people who’ve been transformed or made a difference in the world. In particular, I was moved by hearing and meeting Susan of Mothers with Cancer, a gaggle of patient bloggers including several with diabetes, and by Kelly, Kate, and Daniela, by Annie, Cristina, Pilirani, and Toyin. I was grateful to engage several experienced folks about whether “grieving blogs” deserve their own category or better indexing (I plan to blog about that soon, it’s a topic I’ve been ruminating on for a while).
8. BlogHer founders: Lisa Stone and Elisa Camahort Page, the two who I met, were genuine and responsive.
9. New knowledge: First on my list to do: use more numbered lists. And there are more other lessons and details and sharings than I can download from notes at this stage.
10. Points for good behavior: I was able to listen more than I talked. For some people, this might be easy in a group of 1300, but I will still take credit for not making a total fool of myself. And despite a back injury, I was able to stay up and around the whole time.

Five lowlights of my BlogHer 09 experience
1. I missed hearing my quote in the keynote, and the entire “newbie breakfast,” because I was in the line for registration for well over an hour.
2. Some of the sessions, particularly the one on publishing, were so unstructured as to be useless (although they all had very cute names). Many sessions took place in inappropriately small rooms, perhaps based on some hierarchy that insiders could grok. We were packed like sardines into “humor” and “men bloggers.”
3. I felt grossly unprepared and at least part of that is due to muddy communication materials, which affect the BlogHer website as a whole. I’ve written a detailed letter to the leadership explaining my observations, because I also think this lack of boundaries was one of the things that inflamed other bloggers about the visibility of event sponsors. A better designer and a harder line on some sponsor demands (such as publicizing a scholarship before the application site is live) would help. Perhaps part of this is that to some degree BlogHer is a community, not just an organization, but it’s mature enough now to better define the outlines of its brand.
4. Hearing “Mommyblogger” used over and over as if it defined the entire community.
5. Skipping the parties. This was my choice -- I had other people to see and a back injury -- but I still wish I’d had more kickback time with the warm, smart, energetic, and real bloggers who shared their experiences.

I am flush with ideas and looking forward to BlogHer ’10 (no way will I miss parties this time!).

* * * Comments * * *

BlogHer Swag Without Controversy

Maybe in the end, the swag you take is equal to.... the swag... you make?

(Nah!)

What I Gave
Here are the special edition Widow Cards (view or download the original set of 'em here) I had printed up for networking at BlogHer. The first two are the two different card "fronts" I presented; the third is the verso used on both cards. (For some reason, I couldn't get these pix into the post above.)





What I Received
There's been a lot of talk in the BlogHer community about marketing through building relationships. We're expected to "have a relationship with the brand." Well, leave it to my kid to figure out the relationships between the products themselves. Did you know Mr. Potatohead is the grandpa of the Kiwi stamper?



Last I checked, they were having a pretty good conversation with some crayons.


* * * Comments * * *

Dating Episode 8.0 [Fall 2007]: How I Edited Myself

Picked last for dodgeball, I was the tallest girl and the only kid outside special ed with glasses. I was lucky to always have a few close friends, but it was clear I was below average on the popular scale. I gained confidence as a talented nerd in high school. Arriving in college I blossomed among the flock, relieved to find a true home at last, city and country, hippie and punk side by side, caring deeply about Philosophy 100: Socrates to Kant.

I’d never dated much, but I had learned that my assets included a ready smile, a ridiculous sense of humor, and smarts. Fifteen years of a happy relationship were enough to build fair confidence among men. Having a child taught me I could learn things like patience and generosity even late in life, and that there is no end of love in the world. And not to be too flip, but watching my husband die made me feel a wee bit bulletproof. What’s a little rejection from a guy to me now?

At 40, I was no longer thin and strong, and I would never be the pretty one in the room. I still had trouble with grooming and lived in fear of a close girlfriend confronting my always-in-transition hairdo with “And what is going on with this?”

Was I cute? Could I compete? “It’s not me versus Gisele Bundchen. It’s me versus a divorced woman who talks to her four cats,” I’d say to explain my unrealistic level of confidence. After all, my husband didn’t want to leave. My only “issue” with men my age was that they were mortal. Yeah, that sucks, but it wasn’t really avoidable.

My first ad tested the waters: “Wiseass brainiac widow, 41, with one kid, seeks coffee and conversation.” At least it would screen out dullards and cowards.

Books, career, interests… as I started to fill out all the little checkboxes, I saw it was possible to select “brainiacs” and “boldness/assertiveness” among “turn-ons.” As I searched the database, these boxes had been checked by men who met my other criteria. There was no stopping me. I had a niche.

I relished this forum that allowed me to rewrite and edit constantly, to learn how I was perceived, and above all, to pretend all the men in my shopping cart were options. And as I describe in earlier episodes of this saga, I got hungrier and more energetic with each pass.

After many iterations, a bunch of dates, and feedback from prospects and friends, here was my last "personal branding statement:"

Smoldering smartypants
Let's talk late into the night over a nice red from my cellar... er, broom closet. About art, necessity, produce (this week, still pears!). Things we've read, things we've seen, things we've felt. Monty Python, Sophocles, the New Urbanism. How disillusioned we are with cotton and vegetarianism. How to balance responsibility and sheer joy, and whether one is useful without the other.

Brainy, silly and sarcastic, I'm committed to growth and supremely interested in having fun. No one thinks I'm boring and I am not fat [full disclosure: size 10/12: is that fat?]. My kid insists that I'm silly, although most people don't get my jokes.

I'm looking for someone to hang with who's worth getting a babysitter for. Please tell me that you read real books and aren't into smoking or drugs. You should be able to hold up your end of the conversation, tolerate my interruptions, and be willing if not able to dance.

I am fun enough to make time together worth it -- and wise enough to know time is all we have. My latest wisdom [stolen]: We all come with baggage -- the question is whether yours can be stowed neatly under the seat in front of you.


Can you believe that ad drew Mr. Wonderful?

* Read the next installment in this series! *

* * * Comments * * *