Their Bad Mother

I wrote this post a few months back, when I was in Africa. It’s worth reposting today, on World Aids Day, because I think that the reminder is an important one: that those of who have a voice – whether those voices are carried virtually, or otherwise – have a responsibility to use our voices for those who don’t. And the mothers and the children and the families that I met in Africa don’t have voices. I lend them mine.

I’m writing this post from a hotel room in Maseru, Lesotho. Lesotho,
in case you didn’t know, is deep in the southern-most part of Africa,
land-locked by South Africa. It is, you might think, an unlikely place
for a blogger to be. After all, what do bloggers have to do with aid in
Africa? But you’d be wrong. A blogger can have a lot to do with aid in
Africa, or any other kind of social good. I’m here for some very good
social media reasons.

I’m here because I’m visiting some on-the-ground projects that are funded by Born HIV Free, a program of the Global Fund, and I’m visiting these projects because Born HIV Free and the Global Fund want to raise awareness,
and who better to raise awareness than bloggers? Who better than
bloggers to take the real stories of what such projects look like, of
what they mean to real people, and not just the posters and soundbites
and late-night infomercials with Sally Struthers, and become part of
those stories and tell them in real voices? Who better than
storytellers, personal storytellers, coming at the story with their
hearts and telling and showing their communities what it all looks like
and sounds like and feels like?

Social media — this is an awkward and ugly term, of course, but one
that describes that mass of us, bloggers and publishers and twitterers
and Flickrers and others, and what we do — can make a difference in
cases such as this, such as the one that I am in right now, because
social media is conversation, it’s discourse. It’s all of us, talking,
telling stories and sharing stories and keeping stories going because
we’re invested in the stories that we tell and that we hear because we are a narrative community, and for any issue or problem that might be helped by getting its story told, we are the people to do it. So it was for me with Tutus For Tanner, so it has been for Heather Spohr and her work on behalf of Maddie, so it was for so many BlogHers after the earthquake in Haiti, so it is for too many bloggers to count here. We’re making a difference by telling these stories.

So it is that I am here, in Lesotho,
meeting mothers who are HIV positive but who have, with the help of
PMTCT (Preventing Mother To Child Transmission) treatment and support,
children who are HIV-free, and meeting women who are pregnant and
undergoing such treatment and meeting children who have lost their
parents to HIV/AIDS and also meeting children, some children, who are
not HIV-free. And I’m talking to you about here, now, and I’ve been
talking about it on my blog and right here
at BlogHer and I will keep talking about it, I will keep telling
stories, because there are so, so many stories here to tell. There are
all the personal stories to tell, of course — such as those about these children and their mothers — and my story in relation to these (because we always bring these narratives back to us, don’t we? I have complicated feelings abut this, which is another story altogether),
but there are also the bigger stories, such as how maternal health care
really works in countries such as Lesotho (especially in the furthest,
most rural reaches of these countries), and about how breastfeeding
debates really are different under these sorts of circumstances, ditto
debates about depression and mental illness and anxiety and maternal
shame and maternal fear and all those things. I’ll tell these stories,
and hope that they make a little bit of difference, if only by getting
other people to talk about them, and think about them, and maybe,
maybe, do something if they get the chance.

This Thursday, tomorrow, is Social Media For Social Good Day,
and it aims to celebrate exactly that — our power to make a difference
through the collective power of this new medium. It’s hosted by
Mashable and (RED), and what they have in mind is this:

We’re interested in unleashing fresh thinking about how
social media can raise awareness and create solutions for social issues
around the world. It starts with each community coming together and
contributing ideas and, more importantly, solutions. Whatever community
you’ll be participating in we want to know, “What’s your solution?” Let the world hear your ideas through social media!

You can find out more about participating in this at Mashable.
But you can also celebrate social media for social good in your own
way, simply by reflecting on the kind of change, or the cause, or the
hope that matters to you, and writing about it or tweeting about it or
uploading photos that capture it, or whatever expression of social
media speaks to you.

I’ll be celebrating by writing more about what I’m doing here in
Africa, and how and why social media matters to this work. But my cause
is not necessarily your cause, and although I’d love it if you spread my Lesotho/BornHIVFree story (and please, feel free to do so if it speaks to you) (or, you know, if these children speak to you)
(look, nobody said we had to play fair on the Internet), I’m more
interested in seeing you get inspired by the idea of using this medium
for social good and acting on that inspiration in your own way. Write
or photograph or vlog whatever change it is that you’d like to see in
the world, and leave the link here so that we can all share it. Because
that’s what this is all about. Sharing, and inspiring through sharing,
and making change through inspiring.

Let’s go be inspiring.

(Originally posted at BlogHer.com)

It’s Emilia’s birthday this weekend. Her dad made homemade birthday party invitations for her, and they kind of break my heart:

I’d have invited you, but, you know, Emilia will only share so much cake. Also, I need to not have too many witnesses when I break down over the fact that OH SWEET HEAVEN MY BABY IS GROWING UP TOO FAST WAAAAAHHHH!!!

So. Demi Lovato has, apparently, checked herself into rehab to address “emotional and physical issues.” The media, of course, is all over this: another young female celebrity, crushed under the weight of the pressure of being a young female celebrity. Oh, the tragedy! Oh, the inevitability! Oh, the legacy of Lohan! OH THE DISNEY CURSE!

I think, however, that we need to look beyond the obvious press-ready,lo-the-zeitgeist elements of the story. Sure, Demi Lovato is a young performer, presumably on the rise (she’s not on my five-year-old’s radar, so I don’t know all that much about her), presumably groomed to rise. Sure, it’s tempting to look at her case and lament the high cost of fame and murmur earnestly about how the Hollywood mill pulls in innocent young women and grinds them to pulp. Sure, one has to struggle to not ask, where were her parents? How could they let this happen? But there are deeper issues at stake, and we do Demi Lovato — and young women — a disservice if we overlook those issues because we’re distracted by the flickering lights of the True Hollywood Story.

Demi Lovato was, according to reports, admitted to rehab to address issues that relate in some part to eating disorders, and to cutting, and it’s been suggested that these issues might have some relationship to her having been bullied when she was younger. These are psychological issues — and in the case of bullying, a social issue — that too many teenagers face, regardless of whether or not they have contracts with Disney. By framing this almost entirely as a situation that is unique to young celebrities, we close off the opportunity to talk about how these issues affect the young people around us, and what we can do to support them in fighting those issues. Because girls develop eating disorders even if they’ve never been up for a Teen Choice Award (I know this too well) and girls can start cutting themselves even if they’ve never dated Joe Jonas and everyone, everyone, is vulnerable to bullying.

The fact that Demi Lovato took action to help herself is important. It’s far, far less important that she’s a celebrity — except inasmuch as her celebrity opens up the possibility for discussion about how even the girls who seem to have it all are vulnerable to emotional and psychological upheavals; that even the girls that the media deem “cute” and “skinny” can find themselves huddled over toilets, fingers down throats; that even the girls who you’d never expect could have ever drawn the attention of a bully, might have been bullied; that psychological hurt and emotional pain can hit anyone, regardless of wealth or looks; that when that hurt and pain hit, the thing to do is act, to seek help, to do whatever it takes to survive and to thrive.

We need to seize the opportunity offered here, and have those discussions; we need to sit down with our daughters and any and all young women we know and say, “look, this isn’t about Disney or celebrity or Hollywood. This is about the challenges that so many young women face.” Or, “this is about how hard it can be to grow up in a world of mixed messages about body and sex and maturity.” Or, “this is about mental illness, and that’s okay, and we should talk about it.” Or, “this is about what it was like for me, and maybe is for you, and certainly is for somebody that you know.” And: “this about needing to do something if this is about you, or about somebody that you love, because when it comes to this kind of stuff, it will NOT just ‘get better,’ not on its own.”

We need to talk about this. We need to stop focusing on how extraordinary Demi
Lovato’s story is, and instead talk about how ordinary it is.

We have to take this opportunity to say: “it can only get better if you take steps to get to better.

If you ask someone to help you take those steps.

If you do what Demi Lovato did.”

Cross-posted at BlogHer.com

I was recently asked in an interview about my favorite family
vacation. My impulse was to answer, what family vacation? but then I
remembered that late this summer the husband and I took the kids to Blue Mountain for four days. Which, yes, I suppose was a vacation, but as Blue Mountain is only a two hour drive from our home it didn’t really feel vacation-y, you know?

Anyway. I do have a dream family vacation.

It’s nothing fancy. Sure, I’d love to take my kids on safari in
Kenya, or go snorkeling in Cozumel, but my ultimate, dreamed-of,
really-really-would-so-love-to-do-it family vacation? A road trip.
Well, one very specific road trip.

When I was seven years old, my parents loaded my sister and I into a
camper and we drove from Vancouver, BC, to Disneyland. We wove our way
down the Pacific coast, periodically veering inland to visit points of
interest that my parents had plotted on a tattered map. The Grand
Coulee Dam, the Petrified Forest, Hearst Castle (San Simeon), countless
KOA Kampgrounds with amusement features like paddle boats and
waterslides… we stopped frequently and we stopped long, taking, if I
recall correctly, a few weeks to wind our way down and back, with an
extra few days set aside, of course, for our primary destination, our
Emerald City… Disneyland.

My family did a lot of road trips while I was growing up, and we did
a lot of camping, but this particular trip stands out among the other
memories, in part, I think, because it was such a long trip, and we saw
so much, but also because it was just so perfectly familial in
a way that was almost indulgent. We stopped at every playground and
amusement park we saw, we bought silly souvenirs, we had dessert with
every meal… it was a vacation of play, an adventure of
play, and my parents threw themselves into it as wholeheartedly as my
sister and I did. It’s one of my very fondest memories of them, of us,
of my childhood. And I would love, LOVE, to do it again.

My dream family vacation, then, would be to retrace the route of
that road trip with my own family. Stop at all the same stops, see all
the same things (to the extent that that’s still possible), be silly in
the same way. Maybe not camping – I doubt that all those KOA’s are
still there, although who knows – or maybe in an RV a little bigger
than our cramped 70′s camper, but still: the same road trip, more or
less, over the same route, with the same destination: Disneyland. A
nostalgic journey for me; a memory-creating journey for my children.
(We would totally detour to Palm Springs, though. I fell madly in love with Palm Springs when California Tourism invited me there this past spring. LOVE. And there is no better place for silly souvenirs, so. That’ll be a must-stop.)

It’s not going to happen anytime soon – we don’t live in Vancouver
anymore, and we don’t have an RV, and taking three week’s vacation
isn’t easy – but I’ve got my fingers crossed that someday, while my
children are still very young, we’ll do this.

I can dream, can’t I?

Cheerios® is giving you the chance to win a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity, your ultimate family vacation. As part of a paid promotion
for their “Do What You Love” Sweepstakes, Cheerios® is sponsoring my post today about what my ultimate family vacation would be. Read mine and Enter the Sweepstakes for a chance to actually win your own fantasy family trip or one of a bunch of other great prizes.

Cross-posted at The Bad Moms Club.