Fabric Scraps and Old Wounds

What Joni Hilton’s “Are You a Liberal Mormon?” meant to me

On Saturday, sequestered by November’s first snowfall, the kids and I decided to clean out the closets, donating bags of clothes that don’t fit, old toys we no longer play with, and my fabric stash.

Parting with the last of my fabric was harder than I thought it would be—much harder, in fact, than selling the few pieces of gold jewelry my ex-husband gave me during our 13 years of marriage. I’ve shed fabric a few pieces at a time in the six years since The Divorce (the children still refer to it in capital letters, acknowledging the post-apocalyptic wasteland that remained in the aftermath of our temple marriage’s sudden and unexpected dissolution).

These last three bins represented my most cherished finds—colorful satin brocades, plush, luxurious Minky, quirky calico prints, and finally, the pink chenille I once lined with toile flannel and made into a couture outfit for my much-wanted and much-loved baby girl.

How I loved to sew in those days of young Mormon motherhood! I made train quilts and book bags and matching pajamas for the boys, documenting everything in carefully planned scrapbooks. But having a daughter took my sewing to a whole new level. I dreamed up outfits for her in my sleep, bought a serger, and spent many happy afternoons creating my masterpieces.

After The Divorce, I had no time for sewing. But I kept the fabric because of what it represented, a life I had lost but still sometimes longed for.

Last summer, my little pink chenille-robed pixie turned eight, and I pulled out the sewing machine once more, to fulfill a promise I made to her and to myself. We went to the fabric store where she picked out a pattern, white satin, and gold-leafed chenille for her baptism dress.

I was out of practice, and the dress, with its slippery fabric, gave me fits. Unable to put the zipper in, I conceded partial defeat and modified the design for buttons. I cut myself more than once and bled spots of bright red blood onto the white fabric.

And I cried as I stitched the seams together. Because the truth is this: I did not want my daughter to get baptized in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While I still consider myself culturally Mormon, I no longer identify with the church’s teachings, and I fear that they can be especially toxic for bright young girls.

But baptism is what my daughter wanted (and no eight year-old should face the sort of social stigma she would endure if she didn’t).

Many brilliant Mormon and post-Mormon bloggers have done a better job than I could of articulating my own existential angst at the thought of my daughter’s baptismal covenants. Sitting behind her (I was not permitted to sit beside her) was one of the most agonizing moments of my entire life. Talk about NOT feeling the Spirit! Still, I smiled through the ceremony, shook hands, and got through the day. Because that’s just what you do, and it wasn’t about me anyway.

But I didn’t realize how truly bothered I was by the whole baptism pageant until I read Joni Hilton’s essay, “Are You a Liberal Mormon?” I know it’s so two weeks ago, but Ms. Hilton is still on my mind, because you know what? She is exactly like many of the Mormons I know—smug, self-righteous, and “perfect.”

If not staggering out of bars at 2:00 a.m. makes you perfect. Because that is apparently what “liberal Mormons” do (?????). Ms. Hilton’s essay was quickly taken down, probably because even the editors of Meridian Magazine had to realize how toxic it was. In case you somehow missed it, you can read Mormon Stories’ excellent coverage of the debacle here. 

This quote really stood out for me: “Liberal Mormons have forgotten that Christ runs this church, not mortals. God’s laws are uncheangeable [sic] and eternal, not somebody’s notions that sway in the breeze and adapt to each new social trend.”

Except they aren’t. Many Mormons I know manage the dizzying act of being both relativists and absolutists simultaneously. Blacks and women can’t hold the Priesthood, only now blacks can because in 1978, God changed his mind. Gay people can’t get married because God said they can’t, but God also used to say it was okay to have several wives, and now that’s just not okay.

These are not unique insights, by the way—these are glaringly evident examples of God changing his mind gleaned straight from sanitized LDS church history.  

One of the attractions of Mormonism has been the image and lifestyle that people like Ms. Hilton represent—clean-living, wholesome, nuclear families with hard-working, shirt-and-tie fathers, even harder working stay-at-home mothers, and a slew of bright, polite, successful children. I want to make it very clear that I am not criticizing that lifestyle. It works well for many people.

What I am criticizing is something I used to do myself as a temple going, faithful Mormon mother: Mormons have got to stop judging the latte drinkers.

You know what I mean. Jesus, if there is a Jesus, does not give a damn about whether somebody drinks coffee or not. He just doesn’t. This is a God whose first miracle was to change water to wine. When I was in Mormon Sunday School, the lesson focused obsessively on explaining that the “wine” in question was actually nonalcoholic grape juice. Now that I’ve enjoyed a glass or two of cabernet sauvignon for myself, I have to say that I very much doubt this. No one would be impressed by a god who changed water to grape juice.

Closet cleaning accomplished, my Saturday turned to a much anticipated interfaith choir concert hosted by my parish and organized by a local LDS stake music director. I had the opportunity to catch up with many of my LDS friends as we shared worship music. The concert featured several local church groups, with a finale sung by a 100-member chorus. My friends embraced me; we caught up on their children’s missions and college plans. I felt loved and included and best of all, not judged.

The LDS church is at a crossroads. Its branded lifestyle, the so-called traditional family as described in the Church’s document The Family: A Proclamation tothe World, is increasingly rare, for a variety of reasons. Yet people like Ms. Hilton cling to their own notions of righteousness, categories that exclude and hurt people both within (the “Liberal Mormons”) and outside of their faith.

I’m not sure about many things, but I am pretty sure that’s not what Jesus would do. Jesus would have an interfaith choir concert followed by a community potluck every single night of the week. And all—Mormons, Christians, Atheists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, and Pastafarians—would be welcome at the table.

P.S. If you live in the Boise area and want some pretty awesome fabric, I donated my stash to the Goodwill on State Street. I hope your daughter looks as fabulous in your creation as my daughter did in mine.

Write Your Truth

How to make your blog go viral in three easy steps

A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to do something I had secretly wanted to do for a long time. No, I’m not talking about skinny dipping at a secret Idaho hot spring (though it’s possible I did that too). I was invited to speak to an audience of talented writers at Elaine Ambrose’s annual “Write by the River” retreat in Garden Valley, an event which has previously hosted literary luminaries Alan Heathcock, Tony Doerr, Jennifer Basye Sanders (one of my short stories appears in her Miracle under the Christmas Tree collection), A.K. Turner, Gretchen Anderson, Stacy Dymalski,  Doug Copsey,and of course, the inimitable author of Midlife Cabernet, Ms. Ambrose herself.

I’m sure I’m missing someone here, and please forgive me. Boise has a lot of world-class writers on first-name bases. We’re kind of like Iowa, only our writers’ workshops are supportive and polite in the “constructive feedback” process. Also, we have lots of brew pubs.

The lineup for this season’s blogging-themed retreat was intimidating. Stephanie Worrell, PR maven and founder of Red Sky, kicked off the show with a 42 page comprehensive guide to writing, producing, and starring in Your Blog. Stephanie was followed by writer Ken Rodgers, who independently produced (with his talented wife Betty) a moving documentary about the siege of Khe Sanh called Bravo: Common Men, Uncommon Valor. Then there was The Anarchist Soccer Mom. I described how to get yourself a publicist and hide under a rock when your blog about a controversial topic—your son who has mental illness, for example—goes viral.

I can’t really tell you how to make your blog go viral, by the way. As for handling the media, well, let’s just say that I didn’t even know who Anderson Cooper was until my friends told me. I haven’t had commercially broadcast television since 2002. But I learned this: stick to your message. You don’t have to defend yourself for saying something that needed to be said!

I can tell you this: we live in an age, as former Vice President Al Gore has said, when a single blogger can influence the course of a national conversation.

What does that mean for you? It means that you had better write your truth as well as you can, each and every time you Tweet, post on Facebook, or compose something for your blog. Because you just never know when something you say will change the world.

Blogger Arlee Bird has been exploring the topic of blogs as an essential part of every writer’s platform in a recent series of posts on  Tossing It Out. He had this to say about “making” a blog go viral: “In answer to the question "Did your blog post go viral?", the answer is no.  Nor did I expect my Monday post to go viral.  The content for virality wasn't there [emphasis added].”

I don’t personally think any one of us has the power to “make” a blog go viral. But Arlee has hit on the writer’s main job: provide meaningful content. As I learned with my viral essay about my son with mental illness, which was picked up by The Blue Review and Huffington Post under the title “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother,” one of the most meaningful consequences of sharing our truths, even when our stories are painful, is that we can actually change the world. I mean, I spoke at a TEDx event in San Antonio last week with some of the coolest people I will ever meet in my life! I never could have imagined that kind of platform for my mental health advocacy. But it happened (and yet just days later, so did another tragic school shooting). 

So with this post, I’m officially adding my name to my blog. Yes, I’m THAT mom, the one who shared a story that made some of you wince and many of you cry. I started blogging in 2008. I’m a lazy blogger, posting whenever I feel like it—no content schedules for me. And I write about whatever I want to, from yoga to kids to grammar lessons to thrift store wedding dresses (Little White Dress, a collection of essays and poems I edited, was conceived from that 2011 blog post). 

Arlee interviewed me recently about my viral blog post and its effect on me as a writer. You can read my answers to Arlee’s interview questions about viral blogs here.  The advice I gave both to Arlee and to the would-be viral bloggers at Elaine’s retreat was simple: “Write your truth. Write it well. And accept the consequences.”

It’s that simple. And it's that hard.

It's Not Rocket Science

Why single mothers don’t have to be fathers

It’s Father’s Day again. Last year on the third Sunday of June, I posted this snarky comment on Facebook: “Since I’m a single mother, does that mean my kids have to make me a cake on Father’s Day?” Lots of people—especially other single moms—thought that sentiment was soooo cute.

This year, I made my sons pancakes.

Here’s the deal. Single mothers cannot be fathers. I’m not just talking about biology. I’m a single mom, raising two teenage boys full time by myself, and in a life of bars set high, it’s bar-none the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. But I’m not both their father and their mother, and I don’t want to be.

Here are ten things single moms can do just as well as fathers:

1. Make pancakes for your sons on Father’s Day.
2. Work hard and make barely enough money to pay for the 6.7 gallons of milk your teenage boys drink each week.
3.  Watch Battlestar Gallactica with your sons.
4.  Don’t complain when the boys transform the kitchen into a model rocket factory at 1:00 in the morning.  
5. Say, “No, I will not buy you potassium nitrate at the garden store. I do not believe you when you say that you plan to make sugar with the potassium nitrate. I believe that you plan to use the potassium as rocket fuel accelerant.”
6. Have that extremely awkward “This is a banana, and this is a condom” talk—early and often.
7. Make your kids work. You work all day—they can do the dishes and fold the laundry. They can even iron their own shirts.
8. Don’t buy them every single thing they ask for, and don’t feel guilty about it.
9. Teach your sons to respect everyone, but especially women. If they respect women, maybe the next generation of children won’t be raised by single mothers.
10. Love your sons. No matter what.

And here’s one thing single moms can never do just as well as fathers: be your kid’s father.

So stop trying.

Very few (sane) women sign up to be single mothers voluntarily (see #6 above). I certainly was not one of them. I never expected to be celebrating Father’s Day with my sons without their father. This is why the one piece of indispensable knowledge I want to impress on my sons is that if and when they decide to become fathers, they must understand and embrace the life-altering nature of that commitment.  

Children need their fathers. Even when the fathers stop needing—or loving—their partners, fathers should never abandon their children, not for any reason.  As long as single mothers continue to denigrate their vital role as co-parents (the horrible “sperm donor” moniker comes to mind), fathers will have less incentive to take the responsibility that is theirs.

So single-mom girlfriends, you can’t be your children’s father and mother, and you should stop trying to be. But you can be—and you are—their mother. On Father’s Day, let’s celebrate the men we know who have made a difference in their children’s lives, and in our children’s lives as well. I’m thinking of the scoutmaster who patiently worked with my son who has developmental disabilities, or the father of my oldest son’s best friend who takes him along on ski and biking trips, or my partner, who has no children of his own but has graciously made space for my children in his life.

What should a single mother do on Father’s Day? Do something that makes you feel good, of course. Myself, I went for a pedicure with hot pink nail polish. Then I took my boys to see a sci fi movie we all loved. It’s good to be a mother on Father’s Day.

My Jenny McCarthy Moment

Do little white pills cause autism spectrum disorders?

Wanting simple answers to complex problems

On a sunny Sunday morning, as I tried to ignore the sad news of the latest mass shooting in Santa Monica (near my former home), I tunneled through the perpendicular worlds of scholar.google.com (peer-reviewed, fact-based) and google.com (popular, fear-based). I was researching a drug called terbutaline, also known as brethine, an asthma medication that has long been used off-label to stop contractions in pre-term pregnant women.

In 1999, I was one of those women. And until a few days ago, I had never given terbutaline another thought. But while speaking with another mom of a son with developmental disabilities and mood disorders, my spine chilled and my ears started to ring when she said, “I was hospitalized for pre-term labor and given terbutaline.”

My contractions started after a long hike in my 29^th week of Michael’s pregnancy. At first I thought they were just strong Braxton-Hicks, but when they wouldn’t stop, I ended up in the emergency room. I was given an injection, hospitalized for a few days, and sent home on bed rest with a bottle of little white pills.

What I remember most about the pills was the breathtakingly awful headaches and painful tremors they caused. I also remember feeling resentment toward the baby in my body, for making me endure so much pain. In the end, he was born on his due date—and he was the happiest, sweetest baby a mother could ask for.

And now, 13 years later, Michael is still happy and sweet—except when he isn’t. He can’t tie his shoes or remember to brush his teeth. He walks with an awkward gait and has serious sensory integration issues. His most recent diagnoses include PDD-NOS and juvenile bipolar disorder.

Which is where Ms. McCarthy comes in. I have a great deal of sympathy for Jenny McCarthy. Any parent whose child is diagnosed with a life-changing condition, whether it’s cancer or juvenile diabetes or autism, wants to know why. What happened to cause this? Why did this happen to my child?

After her son was diagnosed with autism in 2005, McCarthy famously latched on to a 1998 Lancet study that incorrectly linked autism to vaccinations. That controversial study, which followed 12 children diagnosed with developmental disabilities, has now been retracted; there is no sound scientific evidence linking vaccinations, even those containing thimerosol, to autism.

   

Even though I have sympathy for McCarthy, I routinely assign the autism/vaccination controversy to my students as a critical thinking exercise in learning how easy it is to latch on to an “easy” but often wrong answer. As that wit H.L.Mencken famously said, “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem — neat, plausible, and wrong.” 

So as I scour Google Scholar for recent articles about terbutaline and autism, I have to ask myself: am I pulling a McCarthy? Do I want this one thing to be the answer, to the exclusion of all other possible things? Do I need an easy answer?

To be fair, the FDA has taken recent studies linking terbutaline to possible developmental delays seriously, issuing a Black Box warning for the drug in 2011: “Terbutaline should not be used to stop or prevent premature labor in pregnant women, especially in women who are not in a hospital. Terbutaline has caused serious side effects in newborns whose mothers took the medication to stop or prevent labor.”

I find myself inevitably drawn to comparisons with Thalidomide, the infamous 1960s drug prescribed off-label for morning sickness that caused thousands of teratogenic birth defects worldwide. Thalidomide was one of the first drugs to provide solid, irrefutable evidence that substances ingested by the mother can cross the placenta and cause harm to the developing fetus. 

If the link between terbutaline and autism is substantiated, then the comparison to thalidomide is an apt one.

In today’s paper, the front page story (right below the Santa Monica shooting) featured a young man headed off to UCLA at the age of 14—a bright, promising chess player with true gifts in math and science.  My son Michael attended the same exclusive magnet school until he was asked to leave because his behavioral problems were too distracting to the other students.

Would that story have been about my son, if only I had refused to take terbutaline?

Simple answers are usually wrong. In the end, the question comes down to a philosophical one: free will or determinism.  Genes, environment, nutrition, medication—all these must certainly play a role in developmental disorders. But they don’t determine the outcome of our lives. Michael still has choices, and good options, which will only improve with ongoing research and changes in society’s current understanding of mental illness and mental disorders.

Thalidomide babies were often born without limbs, or with phocomelia (“Seal limbs”). But that very visible disability didn’t stop Mat Fraser from becoming a drummer, or Tony Melendez from playing the guitar (with his feet), or Thomas Quasthoff from singing his heart out.

Michael’s disability is less visible, but no more deterministic. He too can be what he wants to be. The path just might be longer and more roundabout than I expected that summer morning, when my hike triggered early contractions that set my son’s life—and my life—on this path.

The Conformist Football Dad

Why can fathers tell it like it is when mothers can’t?

I miss my anonymous blog. It used to be this fun space where I could vent about the challenges (and occasional joys) of raising four kids as a single mother, juggling(and sometimes dropping) work, school, and mommy balls. When I complained to a friend that I could no longer write whatever I wanted, he suggested I start another anonymous blog and call it (tongue in cheek) “The Conformist Football Dad.”

But I realized something yesterday, when I read Steve Wein’s funny and honest take on parenting small children. If I started a daddy blog, I would not need to keep it anonymous. Because Dads get carte blanche to say pretty much whatever is on their minds. Things like, “You are not a terrible parent if the sound of their voices sometimes makes you want to drink and never stop.” Or “You are not a terrible parent if you'd rather be at work” (There are lots of times I would rather be at work. And look where admitting that got Sheryl Sandberg!).

Instead of the blogosphere ripping Dads up for writing books like Go the Fuck to Sleep, everyone smiles and nods and says, “Isn’t that cute?” (well, a few people were offended, but they probably weren’t parents).

Confession: I wish I had written that book (and I thought of it, while inserting my own occasionally colorful commentary into Goodnight Moon during the roughly 4,745 times I read it in desperation to my own sleep-challenged progeny).

I also wish that I had written Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I’m not a big Jane Austen fan—I recommend her work to anyone who has difficulty falling asleep at night. The only one of her books that I ever managed to finish was Mansfield Park, and that’s just because it was the only English language paperback in the bookcase of the Sorrento pensione where I finished out my junior year spring term study abroad. As one of my philosophy professors once said (in jesting reference to the Mormon prophet David O. McKay), “No excess can compensate for failure to go to Rome.”

What McKay actually said was this: “No success can compensate for failure in the home.” No pressure there! And for Mormon mothers, the church’s position on gender roles is clear: “Mothers are primarily responsible for the nurture of their children.” 

Yup. And 40 percent of mothers (myself included) are also solely or primarily responsible for putting food on the table.  Which is why it's weird that we keep attacking each other.

I finally got around to reading some of the criticism that followed my December 14, 2012 blog post telling my family’s story about having a child with mental illness. Sarah Kendzior, for example, had a field day mining four years of pretty standard (and anonymous) mommy blog material to create a picture of me as a narcissistic monster who wanted to strangle her kids all the time (Not true. Only when I venture upstairs into the oozing mold pit that is my teenage sons’ bathroom).

But it was one of my favorite slate.com writers, End of Men author Hanna Rosin, who really put the mommy boxing gloves on. In her essay, “Don’t Compare your Son to Adam Lanza,”  she suggested, among other things, that I was the one who really had mental problems (I think Ms. Rosin is just envious of my mad writing skillz).  

For the record, I did not compare my son to Adam Lanza. I compared myself to his mother. My point was, and still is, that we as parents of children with mental illness and mental disorders need to speak up.

And it seems like it’s okay to talk about your child with mental illness, or even your own struggles—as long as you are the father and not the mother. David Sheff’s brave and eloquent book about his son’s addiction, for example, or Pete Earley’s Crazy.  But if you write Drunk Mom  watch out!

I’ve gotten more than a few queries from reporters who want to “expose the truth” about what I wrote. They couch their requests for interviews in vaguely threatening terms about “fact-checking” and “privacy.” All of them, interestingly enough, are women.

Hey, girlfriends! Privacy is just another word for stigma.

To be honest, I’m grateful for the backlash. It helped me to clarify my own position and realize the importance of advocacy. That my first attempt to tell my painful truth happened to go viral was something beyond my control. But it has provided me opportunities to meet people, to share stories, and to campaign for change.

So don’t look for the Conformist Football Dad. I’m the Anarchist Soccer Mom, and I’ll keep talking—and acting—to help my son. You can speak up too. And if the other mommies start to beat you up, come out swinging. None of us—dads or moms—are perfect parents. But we all want the same thing: happy, healthy, productive children. Let’s help each other get there.

Lest We Forget

Already we are planning memorials for the fallen.
Past memorials have included:

168emptystonechairsonabaregreenfield(19smallones)
58267namesetchedonablackgashofcollectiveangst
(2977+6)namesonbronzesneartwosquarereflectingpools
And the World War II Birthday Cake Extravaganza
(who can deny the Holocaust?).

Already (again) we are planning memorials for those
who fell,
who have fallen
who are falling
who will fall.

This is my fifth year of writing a poem a day in April.

How a Bill Doesn’t Become a Law

A Parent’s Response to Idaho’s S1114

This morning, I gave my first public testimony to the Health and Welfare committee of the Idaho House of Representatives about S1114, a bill that would consolidate currently fragmented mental health services into regional health boards with increased local authority. 

This sounds like a good thing, and it is, as a 2008 WICHE report demonstrated. 

So why was I there to oppose the bill in its current form?

Like all issues related to mental health and public services, it’s complicated. My primary reason for opposing the measure was its source of funding for those regional health boards. Rather than seek new appropriations, Idaho Behavioral Health Director Ross Edmunds proposed shifting funds from a Children’s Mental Health surplus.

Wait, hold on. Children’s Mental Health has a surplus?!?

The problem (and no one disagrees with me) is this: currently, the only way for children in Idaho to get access to mental health services is to be on Medicaid or to commit a crime. Yep, you heard me. If your kid needs resources, you have to charge him or her with a crime.

The criminalization of mental illness, especially in children, is just flat out wrong. It's bad public policy, and it ends up being costly and dangerous.

Here’s my direct testimony to the committee:

When my 13-year old son was admitted to Intermountain in December 2012, he screamed at the police officer who was trying to help him, “I wish I had a knife so I could run at you and you would have to shoot me.” I will never forget the look of horror in that brave officer’s eyes.

Later that week, my son’s social worker called and recommended that I press charges against him to “get him back in the court system so he can get the services he needs.” I am fortunate to have a good job with health benefits, but many of the services my son needs, like PSR and Occupational Therapy, are not covered by my insurance.

In “off the record” conversations over my many years of interactions with the Department of Health and Welfare, well-meaning social workers have suggested that it might be better for my son if I were a so-called “welfare mom” because I could get better access to services.

I realize that the focus of SB1114 is on adult mental health. But the lack of community support for parents of children with mental health concerns means hours of missed work, unpredictable schedules, the constant fear of a telephone call from the school, thousands of dollars in medical bills for services that aren’t covered. My family suffers. My other children suffer. And my son will be an adult all too soon.

We need a system that is proactive rather than reactive.  The bill in its current form is still crisis-based and does not really address the needs of children with mental illness in Idaho—in fact, it actually takes money from Children’s Mental Health to pay for reorganization of regional health boards, at a time when many parents, like me, are told that the only way they can access help is through the courts. But I believe that by focusing our efforts on early diagnosis, intervention, and ongoing treatment for our children, we can save money and lives.

After hearing my testimony and the testimony of a NAMI representative and mother Kathy Merce; Howard Belodoff, the lawyer who has been prosecuting Idaho’s landmark children’s mental health case Jeff D.  for 33 years, and Jim Baugh, Disability Rights Idaho Executive Director, the committee voted to send the bill to General Orders for further review.

And here’s why it’s complicated. In drafting this bill, Ross Edmunds has done an incredible job with limited resources. S1114 is a baby step, to be sure. But it’s a baby step in the right direction, creating greater efficiency, providing more regional control, and improving access to resources for people with mental illness in crisis. Sending the bill to General Orders rather than approving it as it stands runs the very real risk of allowing this important legislation to die on the House floor.

So I left the House today feeling both glad and anxious. I’m glad that my voice could be heard and that I could share my very personal concerns with the way we treat mentally ill children in Idaho. But I’m anxious that because I spoke, in the end, nothing will happen.

Welcome to democracy.