Update on miscarriage

Two weeks ago my lovely wife and I had a miscarriage. At the time, I thought I was fine with it, that it wouldn't affect me much if at all, etc.

I should have known better. One of the things I've noticed about myself in the past is that somehow these things gradually catch up with me, and affect me in big ways, but that it can take a bit. Maybe it's emotional stupidity. =) Like my emotions just take longer to get it.

So the thing I've noticed more than anything else over the past 2 weeks has been a rather steep decline in mental function. It's like my brain got switched over to half speed. I read papers--the whole paper, and as I'm reading I have this sense that the words and the sentences and the paragraphs make sense. But then when I'm done reading, I have NO idea what I've read.

I used to be able to complete a 1500 words essay in maybe 8 hours. Now it takes more like 20.

It's weird. Is this what all those undergrad students who got lower grades than me and seemed to be struggling while everything seemed so easy for me had to deal with?

It's weird just NOT being good at something I've always been good at. I've realized that I leaned on the fact that I had that particular sort of intelligence. I felt good about it--I felt good about myself because of it, plus it made a lot of things easier.

Maybe this is a brilliant experience for me. Maybe it will help me be gracious to people who are struggling. I hope so--it would be a nice benefit to counter the frustration I'm experiencing.

Memories of Grace Seattle

From the age of ~8 until the age of ~31, I generally went to Sunday Morning Church® gatherings every single week, at least 45 weeks per year. The very last church I was ever involved with in this manner was Grace Seattle. Grace was the place where I nearly finished my journey out of Christianity and into Pastafarianism. I was thinking of Grace today. Here's a couple memories I have:

There was a truly charismatic and delightful fellow by the name of Dave Sellers who was interim pastor at Grace when we started attending there. They had lost their founding pastor due to some scandal about which no one would talk. Dave had been the associate pastor at the time of the scandal, and had stepped in as interim pastor while the pastoral search committee looked for someone new. He had also applied for the position, but the committee didn't choose to hire him. His response to my and Megs' perhaps-not-always-so-gentle negativity towards what we saw as bullshit was delightfully non-defensive and open and inviting. He told us that he was really glad we were at Grace because he felt the church had a lot to learn from us. I'm glad for his sake that the church decided not to hire him as permanent senior pastor.

My memory of the pastor they did end up hiring, John Haralson, revolves around two episodes. The first was one Sunday morning in the foyer of the church. John was clearly angry at me because I would write perhaps-not-always-completely-gentle-and-politically-correct notes on the response cards which everyone was invited to fill out. One Sunday morning I guess he'd had enough, because he came into the foyer, noticed my response card in the basket of response cards, picked it up, walked swiftly over to me, standing very much inside my personal bubble (perhaps within 6 inches), and in a perhaps-not-entirely-soft-and-gentle-voice demanded to know why I continued to write such things despite previous warnings. It's kind of funny, looking back, 'cause I was SO frightened of him, and he was clearly at least somewhat frightened of me. Sigh. Frightened leaders and frightened parishioners do not the most brilliant combination make.

My other memory of him is a conversation I had with him when I had decided to no longer be involved with the church. He was, again, quite frightened for my future prospects--not so much about leaving Grace, but more about the fact that I was deciding not to be involved in church at all anymore. He was fearful for the temporal and eternal consequences of that decision and the accompanying deconversion with which he rightly understood it to correlate. He tried to warn me off. I guess he was doing his duty as watcher on the walls, so he didn't end up with blood on his hands (there's a little Biblical language for you, with apologies to the uninitiated).

One other memory sticks out for me. When we were looking to get involved with a small group at Grace, early on, we had rather a lot of trouble. The first group we investigated said their group was closed for a while because some members were having some sort of intense difficulty. The second group we investigated shared with us that the group didn't have any other small children, and that they wouldn't feel comfortable with Megan breastfeeding our infant daughter in the group, although they'd be glad to set up a separate room in the house where she could take her daughter to breastfed her in private. Sigh. So very American, that. All hail our Puritan fathers.

ABA, spanking, gender identity, and suicide

Came across this rather fascinating story today.

Ole Ivar Lovaas was a Norwegian born psychologist and researcher who was arguably the father and chief early proponent of Applied Behavior Analysis (hereafter ABA). ABA is at the time of this writing considered to be the only evidence based treatment for children with autism, and is by far the most extensively used and best funded treatment protocol for helping children with autism.

In 1974, Lovaas, along with his colleague George Rekers, published a paper in the journal of Applied Behavior Analysis in which they describe their experimental and apparently highly successful treatment of a 5 year old boy in California named "Kraig". Kraig's parents, specifically his mother, were concerned about Kraig's excessively feminine gender-identity and behavior--things like playing with dolls, preferring to play with girls rather than boys, and exhibiting "mother-like nurture" rather than "male aggression". In cooperation with his parents, Lovaas and Rekers designed and carried out an ABA intervention which involved reinforcing Kraig's "masculine" play and attributes, while punishing his "feminine" play and attributes. Kraig was beaten by his father for "feminine" behavior as part of this intervention. The result of the intervention was that Kraig became a typical boy's boy, indistinguishable from other little boys in terms of gender-identity and gender-related behaviors at 26 months post treatment.

In 2003, the person who had been given the pseudonym "Kraig", Kirk Murphy, then 38 years of age, committed suicide.

Miscarriage

Over the weekend, my lovely partner, lover, and spouse was hospitalized with excruciating abdominal pain. Urine test suggested pregnancy, which we did not know about. She's been bleeding for a week or so, and we thought it was her period. Ultrasound found no signs of pregnancy. bHCG blood levels confirmed pregnancy, and bHCG levels 24 hours later confirmed loss of pregnancy.

Megs asked all of us for names, and so we named the fetus Ronan Elrond Samwise Isabella Pippen Ady =). Me thinks perhaps we would never saddle a living child with such a name =).

Fascinatingly, Saturday (October 15th) was Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. There's a lovely International Wave of Light in which folks light a candle on that day at 7PM in their own time zone in remembrance of lost pregnancies or lost infants. I think it shall be lovely in future years to participate in this in memory of Samwise =)

I've been reading and pondering a bit on what it all means. Following are some notes on things I've learned.

Apparently upwards of 20% of known-about pregnancies and up to 50% of all conceptions end in early spontaneous abortion (i.e. miscarriage). Apparently calling spontaneous abortion by that name is odious to some because the term is associate with induced abortion, about which lots of people have judgments.

The concensus reality seems to indicate that sadness an/or psychological distress is called for. The NIH says "many mothers and their partners feel very sad. Seemingly helpful advice like “you can try again,” or “it was for the best” can make it harder for mothers and fathers to recover because their sadness has been denied."

Here's a fascinating paper from the Journal of Clinical Nursing entitled "The experience of early miscarriage from a male perspective." The author says "there is a taboo in Western cultures surrounding sex, reproduction and death. Miscarriage embraces all three of these areas and is potentially a very difficult issue to research."

I've decided to believe that the miscarriage is perfect. I love babies and children, and I would be super delighted for Megs to be pregnant and for us to have another baby. And this recent miscarriage is exactly the perfect thing for us right now, a gift from a benevolent universe. I feel completely awesome about it.

Having said that, I don't want to invalidate the experience of Megs, nor of any of you, lovely readers. In fact, I'd love to hear about your experiences of miscarriage, if any. Whatever your emotional experience, I believe that it is or was exactly the right emotional experience for you, and I'd love to hear about it if you're willing to share.

I'm especially curious to hear about the experiences of other men whose partner has experienced miscarriage. The literature seems to suggest that some men feel both grief and confusion about their role, as well as possibly a need to deny their own grief so they can 'be strong' in helping their grieving partner. Not that this necessarily matches any particular person's experience. What was yours?

Autism: ISM-ing and joining

For those of you who don't know, one of my very favorite things to do in the world is to spend time playing with very amazingly beautiful children who are on the autism spectrum. Over the last 2 and a half years I've had the privilege of spending hundreds and hundreds of hours playing one on one with a number of these delightful little ones--children whose parents have chosen to use the SONRISE program to try to help their little ones learn to connect with themselves and other people.

My very favourite thing about the SONRISE program is it's unique perspective on the exclusive repetitious behaviors in which many children on the autism spectrum engage. In the wider autism community, these behaviours are often referred to as "stims", and inside the SONRISE community, we like to refer to them as "isms". My belief is that everyone, including neurotypical people, have isms--behaviors which we like to do more or less alone, that we do over and over again, because for whatever reason we find them comforting, or relaxing, or centering, or what have you. Like nail biting. Or zoning out on the internet (teehee).

The perspective that the SONRISE program takes on isms is very different from the perspective that many autism professionals as well as many families of those with autism take. We engage in something called joining. It means that when the child with autism is isming, we do the activity with them. We don't just mimic, however. We really get into it with them--whatever they are doing, we really try to understand it, and really do it with them, exactly as they are doing it, with the same real delight and enthusiasm and concentration with which they are doing the activity. It's our way of saying "We love you, and we think you ROCK, and we think whatever you do ROCKS, and in fact we feel that way so strongly that we want to do it with you.". It's also my belief and observation that when I really join a child with autism in their exclusive repetitious behaviour, I can in a sense almost make that behaviour more effective for them--so that whatever they are trying to get from that behaviour, for themselves, they actually somehow get more of it, faster. The end result is that they do the behaviour less. Many SONRISE mums and dads will bear witness to this--that when they started joining their children, their children's amount of isming went down. Of course there are no guarantees, but this makes a lot of sense to me. I'm much more willing and able to engage socially with others when my sensation is that they totally accept me and are totally stokishly happy to do whatever I want to do.

Anyway, today I was playing with a beautiful little boy on the spectrum, and he was doing this awesome ism for about 15 minutes, and I so enjoyed joining him that I wanted to share with you my experience:

N was standing on one side of the little wooden table, holding a shirt. He stayed standing, but he gently shifted position occasionally, as if to find the optimal position for what he wanted to do. So he'd move back from the table a little, and then move toward it a little. He'd move a bit to the right, and then a bit to the left. All the time during this he was deeply engaged in two things. Firstly he was deeply engaged in the tabletop. He was studying it like perhaps a master antique wooden table expert might study it, or perhaps a master lifelong carpenter who only ever built tables. Secondly, he was deeply engaged in the shirt he was holding, studying its texture, its edges, its shape and color and just deeply fascinated by it. It was as if he was looking for the perfect way and place to hold it in order to use it to engage with the table JUST SO. Then he would swing it in these perfect little circular swings against the table. Also during the entire time, he was vocalizing these beautiful vocalisms--kind of a fascinating vowel somewhere between "eee" and "aaaa". These vocalizations would go up and down in pitch and in loudness.

So I joined him in all these wondrous delightful things. I got a pink sari to use as he was using a shirt, and I got on my knees so I was about the same height as him from the table, and I became deeply absorbed by the patterns of the wood grain on the table top, and by the strange sweet music N and I were making, and by the shape and feel and colour and texture of my sari, and by how the shadows on the tabletop changed as I shifted, back and forth, left and right. Obviously I don't totally understand exactly what N is getting for himself from this exclusive activity, but I can say this--it feels deeply centering. I always feel somehow like I'm the lucky one, when N chooses to ISM while I'm the room with him--like he's sharing this profoundly beautiful experience he creates with me.

A dialogue

I'm choosing to feel really angry.

How come?

Cause this person asked me a question that appeared to be sincere, and as soon as I answered it they attacked my answer and me personally.

And given that they asked you a question and then attacked you and your answer--how come you feel angry?

Cause it felt like a setup--like ... I felt excited that they were engaging me as a human being, that they wanted to know about my beliefs and experiences, and then when I shared myself, they said my answer was clearly wrong, and accused me of unkindness toward my wife.

So which part do you want to talk about--the statement that your answer was wrong, or the accusation of unkindness toward your wife?

Both, really--it was more the whole setup. I feel like I fell for it--like I should have ... been aware that this person wasn't a safe person, and thus I shouldn't have shared myself. I feel like I set myself up for being vulnerable to being attacked.

Given that you knew that this person wasn't a safe person, why did you make yourself vulnerable like that, Benjamin?

I feel like I was sucked in by the question. I had shared something about myself, and the question they asked about it was just so inviting--as if they really wanted to understand me.

Okay--so given that you saw the question and felt really invited to share, and then this person attacked you after you shared--how come you feel angry?

It doesn't feel so much like anger anymore--it feels more like a feeling of not being safe.

What do you mean by not being safe?

I mean ... it feels like there are just these people out there who are going to ask questions that look really inviting and curious and non-judgmental, and then when you stupidly go for the invitation, they attack you. It feels like this nasty setup like a clever fisherman making a really alluring lure, I feel angry that this person would treat me like that--pretend with the pretty lure and then take out a knife and gut and scale me.

So how come you're seeing this person's response that they believe you're wrong, and that they believe you're unkind to your wife--how come that bugs you so much?

It's 'cause I grew up in this system (haha--that's funny 'cause 3 weeks ago I decided to stop believing in systems). Anyway I was gonna say that I grew up in a system where I was treated like this a lot--there was this superficial niceness, but it was contingent on agreeing with the consensus belief framework. So ... I felt like I had to really fight to get out of that system(haha--there's that word again)/community, and now somehow that makes me vulnerable to this sort of thing.

What do you mean by "vulnerable"?

I mean that I feel like I'm a bit of a sucker for this sort of thing.

What do you mean by "sucker"?

I mean that I set myself up for the fall on these things. It happened last week too with another unsafe person. I open up a little bit and be authentic with people who are pretty clearly unsafe--the sort of people who just attack other people's beliefs and opinions willy nilly, and they inevitably respond by attacking me.

Why do you do that, Benjamin?

I don't know.

Take a guess.

I do it because I'm hoping/longing for genuine connection. I want to give people the benefit of the doubt. ... I want to change them. WOW. there's a huge insight. Yep. I feel like somehow giving these people an opportunity to interact with me--a person who is self aware and safe, will help them come to understand what fucks they are, and thus enable them to become less of a fuck and more of a self aware safe person like me.

Why do you choose to feel unsafe around certain people?

It's the element of nasty surprise. Oh my God. I totally do that to my kids--that nasty surprise thing. Like everything will be going along hunky-dory, and then I'll see that they've caused some shocking mess somewhere, and I'll use anger to motivate myself and to get them to do what I want.

Why do you believe that this person saying they believe you're wrong and accusing you of unkindness toward your wife is nasty?

Because it's not what I expected. I wanted them to respond by either saying that my answer made sense to them, or else saying that it didn't make sense to them, but then follow that with another question. Or at the very least to respond by talking about their own experience. I massively dislike it when people talk about my experience in a judgmental way. Why can't they just shut their face?

Why did you dislike it and feel angry when this person talked about your experience in a judgmental way?

Because ... I think I disliked my own sort of instant response--it felt very sympathetic nervous system. You know that fellow who is the cello teacher in Boston, he talks about how his students when they make a mistake they have this judgement about it, and they can then freeze up and get all tight--like a rat gets when it's scared--that frozen, curl in on yourself thing. He makes his students who do that put down their cello and stand up and throw their arms out in the air and shout with exuberance "HOW FASCINATING!". He makes them do it every time, 'til it's habit. Wait a moment. What if I chose to have that response instead today to this person attacking me. I'm gonna try it--one second.

Wow that felt really good. I'm gonna imagine that I just had that experience where this person attacked me, and I'm gonna do that response immediately. Hold on.

OK. Hot damn that feels so good and so much better than my original response. In future, whenever someone verbally attacks me, I'm gonna do that right then and there. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT!

Do you feel finished with that?

Yep! Thank you! =)

Mostly on facebook now

Just a note. I'm mostly posting on facebook now. I might write here again more often eventually, but I see it's been a month and a half. You're welcome to friend/follow me at facebook.com/oxymoron