Tokenism Takes a New Form
Tokenism is an awkward thing to experience. I never fully understood how prevalent it is for childless women, but the penny dropped a few weeks ago. So, it started when a Random House marketing manager sent a ham-handed email. She asked if I’d like to read and share The Trying Game as part of October’s […]
From Ordinary to Extraordinary: Adaptation Is Our Superpower
Adaptation goes hand in hand with moving forward. This thought came to mind as I sat down in late August to write the following blog post for the final day of World Childless Week 2020. I had hoped to log in and participate in some of the WCW live events, but this week overlapped with […]
World Childless Week Gives Voice to the Growing Childless Community
World Childless Week is almost upon us. It originated in 2017 to support and build awareness for the childless not by choice community. In its initial week, September 2017, Twitter analytics documented 1.2 million tweets of #worldchildlessweek. In 2018 World Childless Week reached 85 countries. Readers may recall I was one of those who shared […]
Kamala! Finally A Politician Who Sees Us
Kamala Harris won my heart for many reasons. Her Vice President acceptance speech, however, really resonated. Politicians (or their wives), for years, have harped on and on about their traditional families. Women politicians who have birthed a child, in particular, preface most of their speeches with “as a mother” or “as a mom.” It’s as […]
IVF Industry Can’t Have it Both Ways
IVF industry messaging is a hot mess. That’s the conclusion I came to after seeing yet another study this week come from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). Yes, you read that headline correctly. Patients overestimate success in IVF. The implication is that we arrived at this conclusion independently. As my colleague […]
Social Media and ‘Sharenting’ Revisited
Social media, more often than not these days, tests our patience and our sensibilities. Let’s face it, we’ve all had to decide what is and isn’t cool to post. Trial and error hasn’t always proven pretty. For instance, those early days of social media were downright goofy as we all tried to discern what, exactly, […]
Mother Is Also a Verb
Mother is a word typically associated with an individual. This gets hammered hard particularly toward the second week in May as greeting card companies and consumer marketing teams get busy. But, let’s remember mother is also a verb (and an adjective for that matter). Mother Of All Change We’ve had to rethink many things during […]
1970s: Schlafly or RBG’s World?
1970s America The women’s movement galvanized attention. As a child in 1971 I felt the tension. I sat at the top of the stairs one night and overheard a rap session in our living room. The women’s conversation didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but their passion left an impression. So, that 1970s […]
Stuck? Seems We’ve Been Here Before
Stuck? Spinning your wheels? Same here. The world feels akin to Contagion, Ground Hog’s Day and Lost in Translation — combined. And so, no surprise, I identify these days as mostly stuck. Some days I feel caught, somehow, as if in amber. Worries and fears abound in the news and seize my attention. Even downtime […]
Living the Life Unexpected Takes on New Meaning
Living the life unexpected has become all too startlingly familiar, hasn’t it? Who among us has not felt jolted by the sudden onset of this out-of-nowhere, insidious coronavirus threat to what had been our mostly well-ordered lives and sense of agency? But, from my personally Cloroxed plane seat amid the current pandemic yesterday a spectacular […]