Lawyer Mama

Senator Reid, a gay servicemember and Lady Gaga walk into a bar....

If you start out talking about Senator Reid, a gay military service member, and Lady Gaga it does sound like the beginning of a bad joke, doesn't it?  Luckily, the end of Don't Ask Don't Tell isn't a joke, but it did involve Lady Gaga and Harry Reid. 

Read my two cents on BlogHer.com

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Ruled Unconstitutional: Big Surprise

I wrote this post for BlogHer a couple of weeks ago, but my overworked/slacker self didn't post it here until now!

The Department of Defense has not handled Don't Ask, Don't Tell well.

In case you've been living under a rock, DADT is the official military policy on gays and lesbians in the military. Under federal law, gays are prohibited from openly disclosing their sexual orientation while serving in the U.S. armed forces. Make no mistake. Gays are definitely serving in the military right now. They just have to lie to everyone about a fundamental part of their lives to do it.

That's wrong. Even top brass in the military agree that DADT is wrong.

The House and Senate were poised to legislatively end DADT this year, but Secretary Gates asked them to give the Department of Defense time to study the issue. Now, I'm a huge fan of research, but I don't see why a mammoth study is necessary to do the right thing. I understand that issues will arise, but I don't necessarily think that they'll be quite as complicated as the DoD thinks.

As part of the DADT study, the DoD surveyed service members about their feelings. Yes, their feelings! It's almost as if the DoD seems to think that repealing DADT will result in gay pride parades on bases across the U.S. and soldiers sashaying across the battlefield. That gives the term “battle buddy” a whole new meaning, doesn't it? But seriously, it's not like military uniform regulations will be changed to allow pink feather boas and sparkly tiaras with BDUs. Nor will love pats on the rears of fellow service members or shower love play suddenly become OK. In actuality, nothing much about military culture is likely to change.

In an effort to make sure everyone has a chance to air their views, the DoD also surveyed military spouses about DADT and gays in the military. You read that right. They surveyed the spouses! Never before has the military consulted spouses about DoD policy in this manner and the questions were ridiculous, nearly equating being homosexual with having typhoid or leprosy. I'm just waiting for the survey of our pets' feelings on Sgt. Gus and his partner Bob being allowed to bring their poodle to the base dog park.

Read the rest of this post on BlogHer.com.

Welcome to the New Normal: Military Life in 2010

So I wrote this post for BlogHer.... I seem to be writing that a lot lately!  Well, this one was inspired by all that I see and hear from military families (including my own) about the struggles of military life in 2010. This is not our fathers' military. The OPTEMPO is punishing, families are stressed, and only a small portion of the country serves in our volunteer military. Too many people are completely removed from what's happening to military families.

I'll get down off of my soap box now and let you read....

I grew up in the military. My father was a career Air Force officer, so I've never known a life without uniforms, parental absences or jet noise. For me, a jet flying overhead is not a source of fear (think post-9/11 in DC or New York), but one of overwhelming pride. Our country is far from perfect, but it takes a special person to agree to defend it with your life. And it takes a special person to love someone you know can never put family before country.

The military life is not an easy one. Growing up, we moved frequently; my father was often gone. The birthdays and holidays that stick out in my head are those where he was present because, you see, that was not the norm. We could usually count on him to be gone. That was our normal and we were used to it.

I was born in 1972. Consequently, my father's wartime deployments were before my memories (or life) began. I've heard stories about how my mother lived with my grandparents for a year; how my father was part of the very last B-52 squadron to leave Thailand at the end of Vietnam; how terrified my mother was because the routine bombing runs across Southeast Asia were predictable and, consequently, sometimes fatal to people in my father's job. But I experience these memories now only through photos and the shadows that cross my mother's face.

Read the rest of this post on BlogHer.com....

Burning Books is Never a Good Idea

So, I wrote this post for BlogHer about Terry Jones. You know, the wackadoo who claims to be a "pastor" and a "Christian" and plans to burn some Qurans to say...?

I'm not sure. Maybe Jones is trying to say that he doesn't care if he endangers the lives of American soldiers. Maybe he's trying to say that he doesn't care about the actual teachings of Jesus. Maybe he's trying to say that he thinks the Nazis were really on to something with that whole book burning thing.

I don't know.

But you can read my thoughts on the matter over at BlogHer. I even refrained from using profanity since I was incredibly flattered they asked me to write the post.

Defending Intolerance: Terry Jones and the Quran

How to Make People Instantly Uncomfortable: Tell Them You're Infertile!

Last weekend, at the BogHer 2010 in conference in New York, I had the chance to attend a panel about blogging grief, loss and tragedy on the internet. One of the panelists was Cecily Kellogg, who blogs as Uppercase Woman and is a noted infertility blogger. Cecily was on the panel to share her experiences after she developed preeclampsia and was forced to terminate her twin pregnancy at 23.5 weeks to save her own life. The stories of all of the panelists, including Cecily’s, were heartbreaking, but they were hopeful as well.

Many people are uncomfortable hearing or even reading about someone’s grief. As people undergoing infertility treatments or with the infertility diagnosis, we are all acutely aware of this. We’ve all suffered through those uncomfortable moments where well meaning family and friends joke about how you’re not getting any younger and you’d better think about having kids before your ovaries shrivel up. If you explain that you’ve been trying for several years and start mentioning ovarian reserve testing and male factor infertility, people just don’t know how to react.

Despite the inability of onlookers to process open grief, everyone on the panel indicated that blogging and the online community they’d found, saved them in many ways. Listening to the women on the panel discuss their grief and loss openly was refreshing. You see, when my husband and I were struggling to have our first child, I wasn’t blogging yet. I kept a diary and it helped to write about it, but we weren’t really sharing our experiences with anyone we knew. The very first time I got pregnant, we told everyone. After I lost the baby, we decided we weren’t going to be in that position again, openly grieving in front of everyone.

Read the rest of this post on the Attain Fertility blog....

Just a reminder to everyone (and to make the FTC happy), I'm a paid outside consultant and Community Manager for Attain Fertility. But I did not attend BlogHer on their dime.

The Wish Tree: Please, Happiness

We’ve all tossed a penny into a fountain or blown out our birthday candles with a wish.  If you’re like me, you’ve done that and you’ve wished on a shooting star, kissed the blarney stone and blown eyelashes all over the place; every time hoping for a baby.

These days, I’ve stopped wishing for a baby because it seems too hard and too certain to disappoint me.  Instead, I wish for happiness and inner peace with my life as it is.  Happiness is a big goal, but somehow it seems smaller than a baby and, after so many disappointments, more attainable.

One way that I try to keep myself peaceful and happy is by writing about my life, my experiences and my feelings about infertility; but not just writing, blogging.  You see blogging gives me a community of people like me.  You may not look like me, act like me or think like me, but you get me.  We have one very important common experience – infertility.

This weekend I attended the BlogHer conference in New York. It’s the largest conference for blogging women in the world and a great source of inspiration for me.  This year was no exception.  During the conference, I attended an event at the Museum of Modern Art and saw Yoko Ono’s Wish Tree in the Sculpture Garden.

I was struck by the tree, not just because its poor branches were weighted almost to capacity with tags, but because of the large number of people who were waiting to add their wishes.  As I watched, hundreds of people waited, wrote and tied their deepest desires to the tree for everyone to see.

It was amazing.  And it reminded me so much of what infertility bloggers do every day.

Infertility has taken me to some dark places.  I was depressed, scared and felt alone, despite the friends and family surrounding me. And while my quest for my first child happened before I began blogging on Lawyer Mama in 2006, the legacy of my depression still lingers.

Read the rest of this post on the Attain Fertility blog....

Just a little reminder to everyone that I am a paid consultant and Community Manager for Attain Fertility.

Adorable Retro Shoes for BlogHer 2010

I got some new shoes that are so adorable, I had to share them.

 

This photo made possible by the wonder of my life that is the iPhone.

What are you wearing to BlogHer?

I'll be speaking on a panel on Friday afternoon, Creating Tangible Social Change: How to Move People to Action. It's at 1:15pm, so don't miss it!  I'll be the one in the really cute shoes.

BlogHer Interviews Secretary Kathleen Sebelius

This morning, BlogHer's Morra Aarons Mele interviewed Health and Human Service Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about health care reform.  BlogHer landed the interview late last week and then had to get the word out in the middle of Snowpocalypse 2009.  I'm really impressed that Secretary Sebelius kept the scheduled interview at 9:30am, even though the federal government was officially closed today because of the Winter storm.

You can see all of the questions posed by BlogHer members on the BlogHer website, including my own question regarding restricting access to abortion.  If you scroll down a bit after my comment, check out the comment by Cyn.  I think she asked the question far more thoroughly, and more coherently, than I did!

Secretary Sebelius answers my question, in part, at about 3:20.

Here is my question/comment in full:

I'm concerned about the possibility that several states will pass mini-Stupak amendments, severely restricting abortion access for many women.

It seems that the media, and even most politicians, have focused solely on the affect Stupak (on the national or state level) would have on optional abortions.  What seems to be missing from this debate is any knoweldge about medically necessary abortions - otherwise known as a D&C.  D&C's are frequently performed when a natural miscarriage is incomplete to prevent hemorhagging and infection.  

Perhaps I'm hyper aware of this because of my own struggles to have a child and the 2 medically necessary d&c procedures I've endured - both covered by insurance. But I am absolutely infuriated that a woman's health and future fertility could be put at risk by such an amendment.  I fail to see how this is any different from restricting access to medical treatment for any other condition.

Is the administration aware of this?  What will the administration do to ensure that women (and this does solely affect *women*) aren't put at risk by the willingness of politicians to serve up abortion rights as "compromise."  The reproductive health of so many women could be at stake.

For those of you who aren't aware, Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE) negotiated an amendment to the Senate version of the health care bill that would permit states to place further restrictions on funds used for abortion.  This will allow states to create their own mini-Stupak amendments.  The Stupak-Pitts amendment from the House version of the bill, restricted federal funds used for abortions in plans on the exchange, except in cases of incest, rape or the where the life of the mother is in danger.  There is no exception for procedures that are medically necessary to protect the future fertility of the mother if it doesn't rise to the level of risk of death.

Secretary Sebelius didn't address the more specific concerns that I mentioned in my question, but to be fair, the whole question wasn't asked. I understand why the more general question was asked.  Morra had a set amount of time and it's nearly impossible to ask someone in Secretary Sebelius's position to comment on individual situations.  I should have crafted my question more broadly to specifically address how restrictions will impact medically necessary abortion procedures.  

Don't get me wrong, even if the bill had been drafted more precisely, I'd still be annoyed.  Abortion is a legal procedure.  And it definitely needs to be.  A good friend, and fellow local progressive, became a nurse before abortion was legal.  She still shudders when she talks about what happened to some women forced to seek back alley or do-it-yourself abortions.

Unfortunately I think the concerns many women have about restricting abortion access are simply being ignored.  My fear is that restricting optional abortion access will lead to restrictions of medically necessary abortions, ensuring that only women of means will be able to obtain an abortion, whether optional or medically necessary. The idea that a legal procedure, one that is frequently necessary to preserve the future fertility of women, will be restricted, is infuriating to me. I don't see why the Nelson amendment couldn't have been crafted more creatively and specifically to prevent this.  Unfortunately, Congress is using an axe and a sledgehammer when they should have used a surgical knife to carefully carve out restrictions to a legal medical procedure.

Mommy Blogging and BlogHer '08

Don't worry, my peeps.  I'll write a "who went where and did what with whom" post about BlogHer eventually.  Probably a week after everyone else and no one will care anymore.  Heh.  I just have all these thoughts swirling around in my head that I need to get out there first.

Last year's BlogHer was all about connecting with other bloggers for me.  I went to most of the mommy blogging sessions, a writing session, and 1 political session.  I wasn't all that impressed.

The mommy session I enjoyed most last year was the one discussing whether Mommy Blogging was a radical act.  We covered a lot of ground, but we didn't really get into the meat of some interesting topics that came up: race, inclusion and exclusion, and using your blog platform to do something more.  Anyway, the consensus last year seemed to be that putting yourself out there with all your warts and wrinkles was a radical act.  In ripping the rose colored glasses off of motherhood, we were helping other moms and building a community of women who understood that it was OK to be less than perfect.

At the time, that was just what I needed to hear.  It helped me to admit that I had a problem.  I was depressed and I needed help.

Since I came back from my "mental health holiday" I've been a bit detached from the Momosphere.  I read the blogs of my friends in batches.  I read all of MOM-101's monthly posts one day.  Three days later I hit The Bloggess.  Two days later I read Mamma Loves or my lovely AD.  A week later I read Jess's posts and spend an hour afterward giggling to myself.  Gone are the days when I spent an hour every morning before the kids got up reading as many posts as I could in Bloglines.  Gone are the days when I went net surfing for new and fun blogs.  Hell, I'm lucky to just visit the blogs of those who comment on my blog.

The thing is, I know that Liz, Amie, Jenny, Jess, Jen, Tanis, Julie, Joanne (look at all those J's), Kyla, Bon, Sarah, Casey, Celeste, Gwen, Christine, Deb, Kari, Jenn, and all the rest of you, you know who you are, are my community.  If I need them, they will be there and I will be there for them.  Whether or not we've hung on each other's every written word for the last 3 months will be irrelevant.  We'll be there.

This year, I did not attend any of the mommy blogging sessions.  Nor did I attend the session titled "Is Mommy Blogging Still A Radical Act?"  I didn't attend because I know that I can answer that question for myself.  After 2 years of blogging, I've realized that I don't need to constantly talk about the highs and lows of parenting.  I've realized something and it's not going to be popular:

Mommy blogging is not a radical act.

Just writing about the good and the bad of being a parent is not in itself a radical act.  I'm sorry, but it's true.  It's simply not radical for me anymore.  Bad is the new good and everyone's bad in the way everyone used to be good perfect.

So just what is radical if simply writing about the bad isn't?

Stepping out from behind the anonymity of the computer and telling 1,000 women how you feel.

Writing, not just about the bad, but about hope.  Spreading that hope to others.  Writing to change yourself, or the world, or society's views, or change social policy.  Then, stepping away from your computer and doing something about it.

Acting.  Now that's radical.

This year I spent all of my time in the political sessions and I attended the lone photography session as well.  This year, I feel like I got much more out of the BlogHer sessions.  That's not to say that anyone who attended the other sessions was shallow or somehow less worthy, it's just that I've finally figured out where I belong. 

It's not necessarily with the Mommy Bloggers, where I figured I always fit best. Writing for MOMocrats this year, becoming active in politics both locally and nationally, has changed me.  It has elementally changed me.  I'll never be able to go back to being passive and uninvolved again.

I'll keep writing at Lawyer Mama.  I'll keep writing about my children and my joys and frustrations in life.  I'll keep calling this a Mommy Blog, because it is.  But writing here isn't a radical act.

I'll save my radical acts for the real world.

Why You Shouldn't Freak Out About BlogHer...

...or BlogHer Survival Skills 101.

I'll admit I was pretty worried heading into BlogHer last year.  I'm an introvert.  Although people who met me last year or who've now met me many times at happy hours are now thinking, "Yeah, right. And introverts dance on top of tables....?"  (OK, I didn't really dance on any tables.  But I do like to put away the martinis when I get a chance to let my hair down.)  I'm not shy, but it takes a lot of energy for me to be so "on" all the time.  But if you're an introvert too, don't worry.  There are lots of us blogging.  I wouldn't be surprised if we outnumber all those extroverts out there.

I promise that it will only be like high school if you let it be.  Try to remember that a lot of us are introverts.  As such, we tend to look for people we already know or know super well on the Internet.  And we clump together in little protective groupings.  If this is your first BlogHer, break into the clump.  Go up to the bloggers you read and introduce yourself.  Say, hello.  Trust me, everyone you talk to will be thrilled to hear that you've read their blog and actually didn't run in the other direction.

I had one of those panicky "OhmygodIdon'tknowanyoneI'llhavetositbymyself" moments at lunch the second day.  I spotted a table full of much more experienced bloggers that I read and worshiped, but the table was pretty full.  So after combing the room for what felt like half an hour, I finally sucked it up, walked over to the full table, and asked if I could join them.  Everyone was so gracious and friendly!  I ended up having a fantastic political conversation with Liz and her mother.  (Liz's mom is FANTASTIC, by the way. Liz warned us that we would adore her and she was right.)

You can read my posts going into and coming out of BlogHer '07 here.  But here's my favorite one about all this angst we have about social situations like this:

Alone In A Crowded Room

Here's my post from last year telling everyone a little bit about me before the big meet up.  And here are my photos from BlogHer '07.

When you're there and you're hiding in the ladies room in the stall next to Jenny until your meds kick in and freaking out because of all the people out there in little circles that seem to exclude you, try to get a grip.  Writers and bloggers are geeks.  A very few of us are cool and extroverted and all that, but most of us are social misfits.  We may have been faking it very nicely in the real world for 30-40 years or so, but deep down we're really just nerds and geeks.  (Some of us with nicer shoes.  See tag line above!) We aren't trying to exclude anyone and we aren't talking about you or making fun of your shoes/weight/top/bleach job. We're too busy worrying if anyone has noticed we've packed on 15 pounds since liast year.

Along those lines ... as a social misfit myself, I cannot always remember the names and URL's of the 232 blogs that are in my Bloglines.  So please forgive me if you tell me you read and comment on my blog and I give you a blank stare.  I'm looking at your name tag, frantically trying to picture your blog header in my mind.  Oh and I have cool SWAG to give away, so ask me about it!  Last year I kept forgetting about those magnets in my purse.

If you'd like to find me, I'll be at the People's Party on Thursday night.  Please come say "HI!"  I can't wait to meet you.