Tried, But Could Not Stop Myself

Long post warning. And for some of you, this may be tmi, so if you're uncomfortable with womens' issues, you might not want to read to the end. But I hope you will.

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you're used to the smorgasbord of topics that you'll find here. No matter what, it always comes back to food, but I certainly don't stay in the food only niche. Try as I may.

Last weekend, I was on the treadmill for hours and watching PBS kept me from getting too bored. I watched Daniel Pink's program, Living on the Right Side of the Brain. It was a great special, that I highly recommend. I'd like to read the book too.

One of the things that Pink talks about is the art of storytelling. He used the example of Six-Word Memoirs. I've heard of them before. Read a few on blogs and heard a piece on NPR. I tried to write one, but there was nothing. Couldn't do it.

A few minutes into his special, I found my six-word memoir. "Tried, but could not stop myself."

I don't know if that's good or bad, but I find that with every big step that I've taken in my life, especially when I was really afraid, this was the impetus behind my getting over the fear. Tried, but could not stop myself.

That's why I quit a very good full-time job with great benefits {*sigh*} in order to go to law school. Tried, but could not stop myself.

It's why I started blogging. It's why I traveled alone on a vacation to Paris. Tried, but could not stop myself. It's why I wrote a fired-up blog post when Governor Patrick was running for election.

And it's why I'm writing this blog post right now. Tried, but could not stop myself.

I don't have children. From when I was a little girl, I always thought that I would. I figured I'd have a biological one and would adopt one. I've always thought about the children in the world that needed families and from a young age knew that I was blessed to grow up with my parents.

In the future I know that I could still adopt a child, but I can never have a biological one. Remember the surgery that I had a few months ago? After a decade long battle with fibroids, and already undergoing surgery to correct it, I decided to end the struggle and had a hysterectomy. My overall health was becoming an issue. So why after months of thinking about whether or not to write anything am I writing now?

Yesterday, I read a blog post called "Not A Woman" where a blogger most eloquently discusses her response to a statement in a video by a "mommy blogger." Below is an excerpt.

But then there was this bit that I found so irritating. So grating. So belittling towards people who have not had children because we will never understand anything ever in life until we have children. See also: Your life is unfulfilled until you have a child. You don’t know what love is until you have a child. You don’t know how to be self-less until you have a child. I also hear that chocolate tastes better, all brownies have pot in them and it rains whiskey. But ONLY if you have had children.

One of the moms - Mindy Roberts - said something that made everything inside of me sink because my God, why can’t women just be women and stop comparing and trying to make other women feel small. Or at least that’s how it felt to me when she said, “…what you were before you had a baby? You were a girl. And now you’re a woman”. And ooh, just suck me in the gut with another implication of how much more new and improved a female becomes once she has given birth. So screw you childless people whether it by choice, circumstance or general inability to get pregnant. Also you chicks who adopted because you felt it was the right thing to do? FAIL. NOT A WOMAN. But if by the grace of Mother Nature you are blessed with giving birth naturally then I hearby dub you an actual woman with super human powers.

She said so many of the things that I've felt, but was afraid to write. So much of popular culture makes us feel like failures as women, because we have not had the experience of childbirth. Why is that? I'll never have children, but I'm still a woman. Sojourner Truth put the silly notion to rest that only certain females are women.

Then some mothers break down motherhood even further by criticizing whether they work or not. Why do we do this to ourselves? Life is hard enough.

On this blog, I know that I might sometimes come off as all rainbows and cupcakes. Mostly, I do it to try and stay positive myself. Writing this blog uplifts me first, and hopefully it uplifts those of you who read it too. My legacy on this earth will not be children, so any lasting impact has to come from my actions. Maybe it will be something that I've written. I don't know. But let me try to end this post on a positive note.

I wrote a post about how I loved the book Eat, Pray, Love. The writer, Elizabeth Gilbert, doesn't have children and has spoken about the pressure on women to be mothers.

I like her terms, "the Auntie Brigade" and "sparent" for spare parent, when she talks about the consistent 10-20% of females in any human settlement who don't have children. Below is an excerpt.

"She says when you examine any human settlement in any culture, any time, you’ll find a very consistent 10 to 20 percent of females who don’t have children. It’s so consistent, that she has concluded that it’s a genetic necessity to have a cadre of adult, caring, compassionate women who do not have their own children. She calls it the “Auntie Brigade,” and she likes to think of herself as a “sparent” — a spare parent."

So let's acknowledge the true and deep love given and received, value, and worth of all of us in the world, whether we are parents or not. And if this post was too long for you. I really wanted it to be shorter. Tried, but could not stop myself.

{Updated March 6, 2009} Mindy Roberts, the "mommy blogger" mentioned above, has apologized to the original blogger {Heather B} in an apology post of her own, to me in the comments section of this post here, and she has been making blog rounds apologizing to other bloggers who were offended by her statement. I accept her apology, but do feel that this issue is bigger than just her statement and still needs to be discussed, even though she has retracted it.

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