Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Are You an Emotional Gladiator?

After a tearful therapy session today, my psychiatrist told me I’m an emotional gladiator. We were discussing the vast topic of loss – not just death, but failed relationships and the loss of much of my independence due to physical and cognitive issues over the past year. I’ve been mourning the loss of my ability to do all of the things I used to be able to do – like working full time or walking without a cane – but he told me, after reading my 4,000+ word essay on loss I wrote for him, that he admires how strong of a fight I’m putting up to do anything. He re-framed it for me, that I could have given up, given in to my ailments, told my clients I’m closing up shop and applied for Social Security Disability. (I would qualify if I wasn’t lucky enough to have my freelance clients.) But even though it’s hard, and I feel like giving up sometimes, I’m still in the fight.

I get why Katherine Stone calls all of us in her Postpartum Progress community warrior moms. We fight depression and other mental health issues. We fight stigma. We fight being judged for every little decision we make. We fight our own thoughts of guilt, worthlessness, and doubt.

We fight.

I’m in the arena, and I’ve taken a lot of hits. But I’m not done yet. There’s been no thumbs down signaling it’s over. I’ll fight even when I’m too weak to stand. I’ll fight even when I’m sure I’m doomed. I’ll fight even though I’m sick and tired of fighting. Because the alternative is unacceptable to me.

What’s your fight?

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

On Death and Loss

My therapist asked me to do a homework assignment for him before my next appointment, which is tomorrow. So of course, I left it until today. The subject is loss, which is hard for me to talk about because I get choked up on my tears. So I write, and then we discuss. I’ve spent a great deal of emotion on this essay I’ve been writing, so I decided to share part of it with you. My memories of past events may not be entirely accurate, but this is how I remember things.

Death

I was 11 years old when my paternal grandfather died. It was February school vacation time when my dad got a call saying his dad had had a stroke and it wasn’t looking good. The cost of flying him down to Florida alone was prohibitive, so my parents decided to pack the three kids in the car and drive down together. When we got to his hospital room, we thought we had the wrong room. The man in the bed looked nothing like the grandpa I knew. I burst into tears when we learned it really was him. He was so gaunt and sickly, and he had these terrible, loud hiccups that shook his entire body. If he hadn’t been in a coma, they would have been so painful. I refused to visit him again the entire week we were there because it upset me so much. When it was time to leave for home, I did say goodbye to him.

We stopped at a hotel that first night, and my dad had to go to the lobby to use the pay phone to check in with my grandma. I’ll never forget how he looked when he opened the door to the hotel room with his face all red and his eyes streaming with tears. Grandpa had held on until we said goodbye, and then he let go. We all cried and piled onto each other in a hug.

I was sad about it, but I didn’t grieve for an extended period of time. I’d never been particularly close with my grandpa – my dad’s side of the family has never been particularly emotionally available – and I felt awkward when I went back to school and ended up in grief counseling with a girl in my class who had lost her father to cancer. My loss was nothing like hers. I think I only went to 3 or 4 of those sessions before they decided I didn’t need to go.

There were other deaths in my family over the years, but none of people I’d met more than a few times when they came for short visits. Cancer took a handful of my aunts and uncles, great-aunts and great-uncles. None of those deaths touched me personally, though. I wasn’t even old enough to regret not getting a chance to know them most of the time.

Then, out of nowhere, my maternal grandfather died in 2006, a month before TJ’s first birthday. A phone call from my mom woke me up early on July 11. Grandpa had had a heart attack, and the ambulance was taking him to the hospital. She was going to Ellis, but I shouldn’t go; I could go down to the house (hers) if I wanted to. She would call when she got there and knew more. Turns out that he was already dead when help arrived, but the first responders knew my grandparents, and they tried to revive him through CPR the whole way to Ellis so he could be pronounced dead there and there wouldn’t have to be an autopsy.

I was working from home with an infant at the time. I called Kitty and asked if she could take TJ so I could head down to my parents’ house. She was in shock when I told her what was going on, and she babbled something about having a hair appointment, so she’d have to call me back. I was frantic when I hung up, but she called back shortly after and said to bring him over. She apologized for not just saying that in the first place, that she wasn’t thinking.

I dropped TJ off with her and drove down to my parents’ house. Joe and Meghan were there already, as was Josh. No one knew anything yet. Meghan answered the call when it came.

I honestly don’t remember what happened when I heard the news. I do remember that I thought I was being stoic at the time, and I wasn’t crying. I called Tom to update him. He asked me if I need him, and I don’t remember what I said, but even if I said no, he still left work and came down to be with me. Joe decided to go to the store and get stuff for either burgers or sandwiches – I don’t remember which – because he knew the house would be packed soon, and people would want lunch. Meghan and I got the table set and tried to make sure everything would be ready for when everyone got there.

People piled in with lots of crying and hugging. I remember hugging my mom so tightly. My grandma… she was completely lost. The last words he said were, “Betty, I’m dying. I love you.”

When lunch was ready, I was out in the kitchen getting food, and my mom told me she didn’t expect I would be the one to take it the hardest. (Though I spent a lot of time at my grandparents’ house as a kid, I didn’t visit them nearly enough when I got older. Josh visited them multiple times a week throughout high school; he was Grandpa’s “buddy.”) I didn’t know what she was talking about, because I wasn’t hysterical or anything, but I guess she could see on my face what I hadn’t realized yet.

The funeral was hard. We’d picked out some flowers on a little pillow – a flower for each great-grandkid at the time – but we weren’t allowed to put it in the coffin because the flowers would rot underground, and we’d intended for it to be buried with him. I cried a lot at the funeral home. But I’d learned so many stories about my grandparents I’d never heard before at the wake, like how Grandma had flushed another woman’s head in the toilet for flirting with Grandpa in front of her. The worst part was the end of the funeral when Grandma was the last one up at the coffin to say goodbye, and I’d never heard such heartbreaking wailing in my life. They had to pry her away so we could get to the cemetery.

Out of all of it, Grandma’s grief hit me harder than anything. They’d been married for over 50 years, and now she was alone. I can’t imagine how she does it. I don’t know if I could do it – something I just don’t want to think about.

I may not have cried much at first, but I cried a lot in the following weeks and months. My family got in the habit of going out to eat together practically every day. We were coming together for Grandma, who kept telling everyone she was ready to die, that she didn’t want to go on without him because it was too hard. I had lost all of my pregnancy weight before this, but I gained a lot of it back from dining out every day. It was expensive and unhealthy for my body, but I needed to be with my family. It was too hard being alone with TJ all day while Tom was at work.

I don’t know when we stopped going out every day, but it happened eventually.

I don’t generally get too upset about Grandpa’s death during the year unless I’m with my mom or grandma when they are having a hard time. If they start crying, I lose it, too. Except for July. Every year since then has been terrible. It’s like my body knows there’s a significant date coming up, and I’m flattened by depression despite anything else that might be going well in my life.

My paternal grandma died May 13, 2010. She’d had a series of mini strokes that February, and she’d been in and out of the hospital since then. In the end, she was begging to die, but she saw an angel sitting in the chair next to her hospital bed who told her it wasn’t time to go yet. And then it was.

I’d never been close to her – she was very “aloof” when she spent time in NY instead of Florida. But I was old enough now to understand the loss of never getting to know her, never getting to understand her.

And Tom’s grandma died the same week.

Thankfully, I was already in therapy at this time. My emotional train wreck could have been a lot less subtle than it turned out to be. But July came early that year, and my depression just got worse and worse as time crept on. I was hurting, and I was destructive.

And the rest of this is between me and my therapist. The photo here was taken in 2006 when my paternal grandma made one of her last visits up to New York to see everyone here. I remember thinking that it was important to get a picture of her with TJ in case she didn’t make it up for another visit. Ironically, this photo was taken three days before my maternal grandpa died…and I never got a picture of him with TJ.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Roleplaying in World of Warcraft as a Creative Writing Outlet: Meet Carisse Dawnfire

I make no secret about the fact that I’m a gamer geek who loves to play World of Warcraft. It’s an outlet for many things, including a place to go when coping with my depression, anxiety, or the mental and physical symptoms of a CFS flareup. But it’s also great for my creativity as a writer; my favorite fiction genre is fantasy, and that’s what World of Warcraft is. There’s an aspect of gameplay in World of Warcraft that has very little to do with the game’s mechanics and everything to do with the world-building the creators have done. Roleplaying is completely optional, but there are entire servers (called “realms”) that specialize in roleplay, and players on these servers can really get into their characters.

I’d like you to meet my main character, Carisse Dawnfire.

Carisse (kuh-REESE) is a Blood Elf mage. Back before the Catacylsm, and back before the Third War, she was Magistrix Carisse Dawnstar of Silvermoon City. But after the attack on the Sunwell that robbed her of her father and her sister, Carisse didn’t have the heart for politics anymore, and she took to traveling for a few years. Though she had a knack for it, the mercenary life was not for her. But that was how she met Elynxdria k’Shinar, known to friends as “Lynx,” and the two had remained friends even after leaving the merc company.

The decision to wander the newly discovered continent of Pandaria was an easy one for Carisse. Garrosh Hellscream was spilling the blood of his people like water, as if dead fighters were of no more consequence than insects squashed under foot. Maybe that was the military way of thinking, but he had burned through enlisted soldiers long ago and was now forcibly conscripting any member of the Horde he could get his hands on. Lor’themar Theron saw Garrosh for what he was, and setting up his own campaign in Pandaria while under the guise of working with the bloodthristy Warchief was a brilliant stroke. Carisse had been able to help Lor’themar’s cause while exploring on her own and learning all she could about this “new world.” These Pandaren were fascinating, with such a rich history. She was learning all she could, now, and thought she might be able to make her new home here.

Maybe. Mage gifted as she was, she could easily keep apartments in many cities in different parts of the world, choosing where to spend her time differently on a daily basis. But had she been moving around too much? Silvermoon had been her home for over a century. Could she really stay away? Her estranged mother was still there, true, but so were the graves of her father and her sister.

This was not the time to decide. This was the time for discovery.

World of Warcraft and its universe belong to Blizzard Entertainment. They are very supportive of fan-created works, and as a fan, I am grateful for the opportunity to immerse myself in their world. Carisse (me) and Lynx (Tom) play on the US-Emerald Dream server. Our guild is called Sapere Aude. If you are interested in starting a new World of Warcraft account, please leave a comment on this post, and I will send you a Recruit-a-Friend code for the free starter version of WoW.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

What Does Mental Illness Look Like?

Mental illness looks very different not only from person to person, but day to day for each person. When you see me out and about, you most likely see me on my healthiest days, when I’m not overwrought by anxiety or depression. But I can’t always hide at home when mental illness strikes me, and then you’ll see my Brave Face, which is a mask that looks much like my Good Day face. So you may not know how much pain I’m hiding, or how much of a struggle it is to make sure the smile reaches my eyes.

Unless you read my blog, of course. I’ve been trying to be more authentic with even the ugly parts of my life. It can be therapeutic for me, and the grateful and supportive comments I get from others show me that I can help other people by sharing my own story. Let people know they aren’t alone.

So for the American Psychological Association’s Mental Health Blog Day, I want to show you what a bad day looks like for me. When both anxiety and depression rear their ugly heads at me.

It might start out just fine. I get up, have some breakfast, check my email, mess around on Facebook for a little while, and try to get some work done.

Only, for the life of me, I can’t focus. I’m distracted. I stare at the blank WordPress page with only the title field filled in, or I open up the Word document one of my writers finished up so I can edit it for a client… but I keep reading the same line over and over again. I get a little bit done, but it’s clear to me that nothing is going to get finished right this moment. I go back to Facebook, or I check out Reddit, or I try to do some yoga on the Wii Fit, or I start up World of Warcraft and promise myself it’s only for an hour so I can shake this…whatever it is. It could be “brain fog,” a symptom of my CFS, but it might not be.

I alt-tab back to my work. I stare at it for a while longer, maybe hitting a few keys now and then. I’m still not feeling it. Now I’m getting irritable, mad at myself for not being productive. If it’s a post for my blog, I’ll probably alt-tab away again and try to blow off more steam on WoW or /r/depression. If it’s client work, I’ll try to power through, but I’m always worried that I miss things that should have been rewritten when I’m not at the top of my game. (A client has never actually come back and told me something was crap after one of these episodes, so these fears are a combination of my anxiety-related perfectionism and my depression telling me I’m worthless.)

Let’s assume I have no more client work now, but I still have that mostly empty blog post staring me in the face. I do another quick set of yoga exercises (4-12 minutes) and play some more WoW. I can’t even read reddit or Facebook at this point because I’m so agitated with my inability to produce words on a page, so I mash buttons playing my game. Or I watch All My Children on Hulu.

All of a sudden, the door opens, and TJ runs in the door. Somehow, it’s 3:00 already, and he’s home from school. I’ve wasted the afternoon, and I still don’t find myself any closer to being able to write anything.

I ask TJ how his day was, and I get his afterschool snack for him. I make a halfhearted suggestion that he get his homework done and out of the way now, but I don’t have the mental energy to protest when he declares he wants to relax and watch PBS Kids first. Curious George’s voice starts driving me crazy less than five minutes into the show, and I finally give up on finishing the blog post today. I’ll work on it tomorrow, I promise myself. (This is how I end up with only one blog post per week sometimes. “Tomorrow” brings another promise of “tomorrow…”)

So I go back to playing WoW while TJ watches TV. Maybe he comes over and asks to sit on my lap for a few minutes while I do a pet battle. I have to ask him to get down when it starts to hurt me. He’s getting so big, and my muscles are just really weak. I feel guilty about this, especially when he makes a comment about how maybe I’ll feel better tomorrow.

Sometime around 4:00, I mention his homework again, and he says he’ll do it after Arthur. This may or may not happen, and I get irritated if I have to keep nagging him about homework. DW’s voice on the TV makes me want to stab things. (Just to be clear, I’ve never stabbed anything, except for my dinner. With a fork.)

By the time Tom comes home from work after 5:00, I’m on edge, and it feels like I’m just waiting for that one last straw. He asks me what I want for dinner. I tell him I don’t know. He gets frustrated because he doesn’t mind cooking as long as he doesn’t have to stress over what to cook, but he can also tell by the look on my face that I’m not doing well, so there’s tension in the air. But dinner gets made, and I thank him and compliment his cooking. I try not to snap at TJ when he gives us a hard time about eating.

6:30 rolls around, and TJ watches Pokemon. Maybe it’s the incessant wailing of high-pitched voices, or maybe it’s something I’m reading online that sets me off, but I can’t take it anymore. My chest is tight; my heart is racing. Any second now, I’m going to burst into tears or break out into a full-fledged panic attack…or both. I get up from my chair unceremoniously and head upstairs.  I don’t grab my phone, which is how Tom knows I’m not going up to use the bathroom. (I like to play Words With Friends while I’m up there, okay?)

I go into my room, close the door behind me, climb into bed, pull the covers over my head, and cry my eyes out into the pillow. I feel like I’ll never be okay again, even though I know in my head that I’ll likely feel better in an hour. After 5-10 minutes, Tom comes upstairs and sits on the bed next to me. If my head is still under the covers, he’ll ask me to come out. It might take a little while, but I do.

He asks me what’s wrong. I tell him that nothing’s actually wrong. And that’s the worst part. Nothing horrible happened to cause this. The physical symptoms came on and manifested the psychological ones – slowly, insidiously throughout the day. I’m probably still sobbing, so Tom hands me a drink and one of my anti-anxiety pills so I can nix the physical symptoms and pull myself together mentally. I don’t like taking those pills unless I have to. Numbness feels better than pain, but it’s not a comfortable feeling either. And I wouldn’t have taken one before Tom came home from work to stave this off in case something came up and I needed to drive somewhere. I’d never drive under the influence of these pills; it would be as bad as drinking and driving.

Calmness comes. I stop crying, but it takes a while to completely dry my tears, which occasionally leak out despite my assurance that I feel better now. My eyes are red and sore for the rest of the night, and exhaustion sinks into my bones – both mental and physical. TJ comes upstairs and asks why we’re up here, because he misses us and wants us back downstairs with him. I tell him that Mommy wasn’t feeling well, and Daddy came up to check on me, but I’m feeling better now, so I’ll be down in a minute. TJ tromps back downstairs because he doesn’t want to miss anymore of Pokemon, and Tom gives me a big teddy bear hug before we go back downstairs.

I apologize to Tom several times throughout the evening after TJ goes to bed. He asks, “What for?” I respond, “For you always having to take care of me like this when I fall apart.” And, like always, he says, “That’s what I’m here for.” Despite his reassurances, I still worry that, one day, he won’t want to deal with this anymore, that he’ll resent me for being so needy. He says it will never happen, but what if it does? I’m a terrible burden. He does so much for me, and I feel like I don’t give nearly as much as I take. He says he loves me, and I know he does, but what if that’s not enough after years and years of always taking care of me and I’m rarely in the position to reciprocate?

That’s probably the depression talking, and it does get worse from there. The doubts, the fears, the self-loathing. I don’t understand why he loves me. I don’t know what I would ever do without him. I know it would be bad.

We watch a movie or something on TV to take my mind off things, but all of the thoughts circle back in my head at bedtime. Despite taking several medications to help me sleep, it still takes two hours or more until sleep finally comes.

And the next day…it starts all over again. I won’t know if it’s a good day or a bad day until I’m part way through it, and the cards are stacked against me due to lack of sleep. Welcome to my life.

As if to prove part of my point, it took me over 12 hours to finish writing this post the day before publishing. It’s always harder when there’s a tough subject to write about. There was much Reddit, yoga, Facebook, WoW, TV, and even a jigsaw puzzle interspersed with writing. If you got this far, thank you for reading. My good days do outnumber my bad, but it doesn’t always seem that way to me.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Kidz ZonePerfect Bars Make Tasty Lunch Treats You Don’t Have to Feel Guilty About (Review)

There are some companies I never turn down when they approach me about reviewing their products, and ZonePerfect is one of them. So when they asked me if they could send me some Kidz ZonePerfect bars to check out and post about on here, I was excited. Why? Because with flavors like Caramel Crunch, Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip, and Vanilla Cupcake – I had no intention of sharing with TJ because I wanted to try them all myself! Yep, that’s right. I ate them all myself and didn’t share…although I did later buy some for TJ to have. (Psst… if you want to try them for yourself, the Kidz ZonePerfect site has a $1.00 off coupon.)

For me, ZonePerfect bars are a great way to have a nutritious breakfast without breaking the calorie bank. I know I don’t eat right, so if there’s a tasty way to cram some vitamins and minerals into my body, I’m going to do it! TJ has gotten better about eating a wider variety of foods, including trying new fruits and veggies when he buys lunch at school, but I know we could still do better at getting him all the things his growing body needs. For a second grader, he’s a bottomless pit, so we know he’s growing like crazy! He’s always asking for a snack or a dessert, and anything under the generic heading of “granola bar” falls under one of those two headings in his mind as well as ours…so Kidz ZonePerfect bars help me get some more nutritious snacks into his body.

Here’s the fun pack that ZonePerfect sent us:

I snapped the photo before TJ came home from school, then hid the samples. That explains why I didn’t get a chance to take a less blurry picture with my phone. As soon as he came home, he claimed the bag and zipper packs for his own, insisted his drink be poured into the water bottle, and began doing the activity book.

I have to say I enjoyed all three flavors of the KidzZone Perfect nutrition bars. The Vanilla Cupcake bar was a little too sweet for my adult palette, but I don’t think kids would have any problem with it. I honestly can’t decide if the Chocolate Peanut Butter or the Caramel Crunch was my favorite. I do know that TJ asked for the Caramel Crunch when we later went to the store and I bought some for him to enjoy. He’s a bit of a caramel fiend these days, thanks to the Easter Bunny.

Kidz ZonePerfect Bars as Part of a Nutritional Lunch

So ZonePerfect asked me to create a nutritional lunch featuring Kidz ZonePerfect bars as part of a contest that could win TJ’s whole class some Kidz ZonePerfect goodies. Not one to pass up an opportunity like this – and partially explains why I had to buy another box of Kidz ZonePerfect bars for TJ – I rose to the challenge and came up with a lunch box full of nutritional goodness that I would even eat, given the chance. (I’m pickier than my son in many ways!)

What you see here, from left to right, is a grilled chicken wrap, a Kidz ZonePerfect Caramel Crunch bar, two giant strawberries, and a Fruitables juice box. (And you can’t tell from the picture, but it’s an insulated Toy Story 3 lunch bag.

The grilled chicken wrap is made with leftover grilled chicken breast, a Cedar’s Whole Wheat Wrap (only 80 calories!), Romaine lettuce, and reduced fat shredded sharp cheddar made with 2% milk. The Caramel Crunch bar contains 5g protein, 3g fiber, and 23 vitamins & minerals…all for only 140 calories. Strawberries are strawberries, and quite self-explanatory. The Fruitables juice box contains a full combined serving of fruits and vegetables, and the only reason it isn’t 100% juice is because they add water to keep the total calories to 40. The whole lunch is about 500 calories, which is close to the 550-650 calorie range recommended by the USDA for elementary students under the new school lunch program. I could probably toss a piece of reduced fat string cheese in there, too, if I wasn’t worried about its temperature by lunch time. (Not to worry, though. TJ’s standard snacks when he comes home from school include unsweetened applesauce and a piece of string cheese.)

And the best part is, TJ thinks the nutrition bar is just a treat! Isn’t that fabulous?

Thanks to ZonePerfect for introducing their new kids nutrition bars to me. It’s always fun to review a product you end up buying more of later on.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Being Yourself in Blogging – An Object Lesson from Reddit

As you may have noticed, I don’t pigeonhole myself into any particular niche here on my blog. I write about the things that are relevant to me, because I know there are plenty of people like me out there. I write a lot about Asperger’s Syndrome, depression, anxiety, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and trying to get healthier… but I also write a lot about food, parenting anecdotes, social media, and even World of Warcraft.

Who knew that writing about the game I love so much could be good for business? Take a look at my traffic graph, a snapshot I took of my Site Stats within the WordPress JetPack plugin:

I included May 2-4 as a reference point for my average traffic levels without getting into the actual numbers. Last night – May 5 – I shared a link on Reddit to a post I wrote a few months ago about a particular assortment of World of Warcraft quests for the Darkmoon Faire, an in-game event. I had 300 pageviews for that post within the first two hours after sharing on Reddit. And it’s just been climbing since then. It’s only midday on May 6 as I type this up, and I’ve already broken my record for pageviews in a single day. Ever. In the history of my blog. Because I wrote about something I enjoy playing and shared it with other people who like playing.

If you aren’t familiar with Reddit, it’s a social bookmarking website that trades on “upvotes.” There are thousands of different niches, called subreddits, about pretty much any topic imaginable. (And many topics you’d prefer not to imagine.) Redditors are self-policing and very intolerant of self-promoters. The rule of thumb is to share only 1 personal link for every 10 links you share. But if you already enjoy talking about a certain topic and finding interesting information online, you can talk about it to your heart’s content within the appropriate subreddit.

Above is a tiny, barely legible snapshot of the WoW subreddit. I only have 24 upvotes as of this writing – and you can see that other posts have 67 and 423 upvotes – but the traffic I’ve received is exponentially higher than the votes would suggest. If I were to post something that ends up even more popular? The potential numbers are a bit dizzying.

All from what I considered a “throwaway post” because it was quick to write.

I’ve been a Reddit member for 5 years, but I only started actually using my account a few weeks ago. I’m talking to people about gaming, about mental illness, about CFS, and just random things – like asking for help figuring out which TV show featured a character singing “Yes, I’m Ready.”

Yes, it’s another social network, but it’s more like becoming a part of a community I’d want to be associated with even if I didn’t have my own blog posts to share. My most popular posts so far (as measured by upvotes) have been sharing other people’s content about WoW and depression. And it makes me feel good to help people out…all while not trying to fit a picture of what other people think I should be talking about.

You may see me posting more about my gaming here in the future. And generally just being myself. Because I’m actually finding ROI for being me.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Pinteresting: Fun with Misheard Lyrics on Facebook

My brother and husband and I had fun with this one… I mean, seriously? Who can understand the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ lyrics to “Scar Tissue” without looking them up?

© 2013 Christina Gleason, All right reserved. If you do want to share this pic, you MUST link back to this page.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Mom Bloggers Literally Turned into Caricatures Again, This Time by the WSJ

I got all fired up in an angry sort of way when a handful of my friends colleagues shared a link on Facebook to this puff piece in the Wall Street Journal entitled, condescendingly enough, The Mommy Business Trip. I knew there was going to be more of a problem when the lead sentence was this:

Katherine Stone, a 43-year-old mother and wife from Atlanta, wants to leave her husband and children.

You see, Katherine Stone is almost single-handedly responsible for creating and maintaining the largest online resource for women with postpartum depression, and other maternal mental health issues, Postpartum Progress. Her blog on Babble is called Something Fierce, because she always harnesses her ferocity to tackle things that matter. She is the original warrior mom… but the WSJ article makes her sound like a desperate housewife.

The entire article focuses on Mom 2.0 – and by extension, any women’s blogging conference – as an escape from the responsibilities of home and family. It focuses on the parties, the mini-bars, the swag brands woo us with… and completely ignores the education and actual work that gets done while we’re there. The “journalist” who wrote the piece clearly doesn’t see blogging as “work,” although I think she needs to take a good look in the mirror. Even the session titles picked out for the article grossly misrepresent the whole of the conference: ”How to Keep Blogging After It’s All Been Blogged” and “Help! My 9 Year Old Wants to Be on Instagram!”

On her trip, she will listen to panels addressing issues of concern to mothers, network with other bloggers, and stay in a hotel room that someone else will keep tidy…Event planners, networking organizations, travel agents and consumer-goods marketers are targeting these women by sponsoring conferences and conventions. They have figured out a simple way to make them happy: Give them a reason to go on a business trip.

Yes, the only reason I go to a conference is to stay in a room where I don’t have to clean up after myself, sip mint juleps, and let brands throw swag at me. ::eyeroll:: It has nothing to do with the fact that I want to stay current with the important advances in my industry, or the value of face time with colleagues you only to get to communicate virtually with for the rest of the year. It has nothing to do with my self-imposed duty of sharing what I learn with the people who could not attend, or recap for those who didn’t retain everything from every session they attended, in the form of liveblogging. I run myself more ragged during a conference than I do on a normal work day, and I know many other bloggers do exactly the same thing.

Somehow, no one seems to write this sort of article about NMX or SXSW and all of the men who attend simply to escape the demands of work and family. Why not give equal coverage? Surely, the men who go to Las Vegas for NMX are only there for the alcohol, the gambling, and the booth babes, right?

Did you catch the horribly drawn graphic that goes along with the article? Here’s a tiny version to give you the general idea:

There’s a mom sleeping in, moms dancing, moms taking selfies, a mom watching TV in her hotel room, and a mom raiding the mini-bar. Where’s the conference room full of moms attending speaker panels? Where are the moms exchanging business cards? Where are the moms on laptops learning during a hands-on tech session? Oh right. We’re just moms. It’s so cute that we think what we do is work. Never mind that our work actually gets us featured on national television or radio, or gets us invited to speak privately with the President or members of Congress in Washington, D.C.

“Traditional media” needs to stop painting female bloggers who happen to be moms as silly caricatures meant to belittle us and dismiss us as unimportant except for our pocketbooks.

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

Would You Enjoy a Mrs. Fields Cookie Basket for Mother’s Day?

I’ve just been enjoying my monthly reviews for the Shari’s Berries family so much this year. Last month, it was a Sock Monkey Easter Basket for TJ. This month, it’s a basket of Mrs. Fields cookies and brownies from Shari’s Berries! And my family does love cookies.

Ordering from the Shari’s Berries Website

For my review, I was given a gift card code and asked to shop from the Mother’s Day gift baskets at Shari’s Berries. This was the first time I exercised my freedom to order from a different page than the holiday special for these brands, because although the Mrs. Fields basket with the cookies and the muffins looked good, I wanted to order something with cookies and brownies. So after about 20 minutes of browsing my options, I found the Mrs. Fields Birthday Basket. Tom’s birthday was on April 4, so I scheduled the delivery easily on the site for April 3.

Because I’d previously ordered from Shari’s Berries, they had all of my shipping information with my login, so this was easy. They have a whole page of Shari’s Berries Coupon Codes to show you what the current discounts and promotions are that they are running. If I hadn’t been using their special gift code to order, this would have been my first stop!

When My Cookie Basket Arrived

It took everything within me not to open the basket and start eating cookies, but these were meant to be a present for my husband. So I refrained. This is what the basket looks like on the website:

And this is what it looks like when it’s shipped, and wrapped in obligatory plastic packaging for safety and freshness:

All in all, while it doesn’t look as pretty as it does on the website, that doesn’t detract from the taste at ALL. Tom and I ripped into the white hand-frosted cookies first. They were amazing. A little bit cinnamony. with perfectly sweet frosting. It’s a shame there were only four, and these are the things I would miss most if ordering one of the Mother’s Day baskets that comes with the mini muffins instead. (Pro tip: you can order the birthday basket for someone else, have it shipped to you, and take the birthday ribbon off before you deliver the gift yourself for a non-birthday occasion!) The basket is really nice, and I need to figure out what I’m going to use it for, because I’m definitely keeping it.

The hardest part of the review was deciding which cookies to eat, because they were all different flavors! I can say that I didn’t find a cookie I didn’t like, and neither did Tom. Since I am counting my calories, though, it was a little disappointing to know that one package of six cookies counted as two servings. (Who eats half a package? No one! Unless you’re sharing, I suppose.) A whole package of cookies weighs in at roughly 320 calories, and the brownies aren’t far off, so these are things to keep in mind if you want to give a cookie basket to a mom who is trying to watch what she eats. (Offer to share! It’s the right thing to do!)

P.S. If you’re looking for Mother’s Day gifts that include at least one of those frosted sugar cookies, you can find them in the Mrs. Fields Mother’s Day Bite Box and the Mrs. Fields MOM Flower Box.  No basket with either of those, but the cookies are worth it!

Post from: WELL, in THIS House... A Mom Blog

The Sad Case of Sicker-Than-Thou Syndrome

I am very open about the various illnesses I struggle with, as well as my Asperger’s Syndrome, which is not an illness. I share my experiences in an effort to educate the unafflicted and to find camaraderie from those who know firsthand what I’m talking about. I usually get good feedback from these posts, and private messages thanking me for sharing my story when others don’t feel comfortable going public with theirs.

You Don’t Deserve That Diagnosis

Last night, my referrer log led me to the first discussion thread I ever found created specifically to bash me. It hurt. I suppose I’m lucky to have come this far without encountering this previously, but I didn’t expect people with the same diagnosis to be so judgmental.

Apparently I rubbed some people the wrong way with my Getting Up on Time post. Why? Because I’m not sick enough for them and they were offended that I dare to claim I have CFS. Here’s the thing about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: it doesn’t affect everyone the same way. Many of the people on this ME/CFS forum are severely disabled, spending most of their lives bedridden. This is my greatest fear…that my CFS will progress to that level. But being completely disabled is not a requirement for a CFS diagnosis.

As a matter of fact, the CDC points out:

People with CFS function at a significantly lower level of activity than they were capable of before they became ill. The illness results in a substantial reduction in work-related, personal, social, and educational activities.

My life was much different before CFS crept up on me, and the symptoms seem to be getting progressively worse as I get older. There are a lot of things I have to say no to. But there are things I can still do, too, as long as the timing is right. As the CDC also mentions:

CFS often affects patients in cycles: Patients will have periods of illness followed by periods of relative well-being. For some patients, symptoms may diminish or even go into complete remission; however, they often recur at a later point in time. This pattern of remission and relapse makes CFS especially hard for patients to manage. Patients who are in remission may be tempted to overdo activities when they’re feeling better, but this overexertion may actually contribute to a relapse.

But the fact that I can have some semblance of a normal life led some people to feel justified in questioning my diagnosis, calling me (essentially) an attention-whore who is giving CFS a bad name. I was accused of perpetuating the misconception that CFS is a psychological or behavioral issue and not a physical illness; I guess they don’t understand that some people have co-morbid psychiatric and neurological disorders that complicate a singular diagnosis. Depression can trigger my CFS, and CFS can trigger my depression. And being on the autism spectrum complicates all of that. I can’t separate one disorder from the others because they are intertwined aspects of my health and well-being. (In that little chart up there, I’m in the little overlapping wedge above the blue line.)

Look at What I Put Up With

Listen, I know I’m “lucky” I’m not as sick as other people with my diagnosis. But you don’t see cancer patients picking on someone else whose tumor isn’t as big or who “only” has to have chemo instead of the triple threat of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. So why do people with chronic illnesses feel the need to participate in negativity in the form of oneupmanship? I know it’s not just CFS. It happens in communities for patients with fibromyalgia, mood disorders, cystic fibrosis, multiple sclerosis…

I get that chronic illness sucks. TRUST ME. I get that. And if you have something more debilitating than I have, you have my sympathies. But that doesn’t mean I’m suffering with my limitations any less than you are, and what I’ve lost means as much to me as what you’ve lost means to you, even if you’ve lost more than I have. A loss is still a loss, and suffering is still suffering. Nothing about this is fair, and all we every really know is our own personal experience. Anything else is guesswork, with empathy for another person’s situation or without.

Let Me Tell You About MY Pain

Maybe it’s a carryover from having “normal” non-chronically ill people try to express empathy by sharing their [relatively trivial, to us] physical complaints. I remember how tired I felt after staying up all night doing stupid things in college, and it cannot compare to the bone-deep fatigue of CFS. And even though I suffer both muscle pain and joint pain at varying levels of severity, I know that my pain episodes cannot compare to what my friends with fibromyalgia suffer through every single minute of every day without relief. That’s the biggest difference between chronic illness sufferers and everyone else. You experience a thing far differently if the symptom is periodic versus having no relief from it ever. I’m lucky that I have medication to help with my quality of sleep now, but I remember how it felt when I went almost 10 years without a single good night’s sleep. I think I cried with relief the next morning after I started taking the medication. I still feel fatigued all the time, but at least there is a noticeable difference in how I feel when I wake up versus how I felt before I went to bed. It used to feel like I hadn’t slept at all.

And maybe those who got the short end of the stick on the severity scale do begrudge those who can still fake some semblance of normality the way I begrudge people when they say, “Oh yeah, I get so tired all the time, too!” It’s cloying. I know it’s not malicious, though, so I get over it and don’t attack the character of the person making the comment.

But it’s not fair to judge people unworthy of identifying with “your” illness simply because their experience isn’t as bad as yours. This isn’t a competition. Acknowledging someone else’s illness in no way diminishes your own. You don’t have to tear someone else apart because they happen to have it a little “easier” than you. You probably know as well as they do, anyways, that the disease can progress at any time. So why be horrible to a person now when they may be just as disabled as you are, given enough time? Since apparently that matters.

We all deal with enough crap in our lives, chronic illness or not. Don’t play the “sicker than thou” card with me. I’m sick of it.