Writers: know your comment-bully

A writer-friend of mine recently published an essay in a well known parenting forum. In it, she considered the challenges her non-competitive child might face in the big wide world as he faces off with kids who have been groomed to "win."

I'll come back to that. But first, a word of support for parents of all children, new or grown:

Nothing makes parents fret like the big, wide world.

Our tiny people come into our little worlds and we fret. We fret about fretting. We fret about not fretting.We fret about projecting our fret. 

Then, they go to the elementary school world and we contain our fret. Maybe we stop fretting altogether. 

Then, they go to the high school world and we fret anew. Nails get bitten, faces get lined, tempers get tried, a good night's sleep is so elusive, we talk about it when it happens. 

But then...

Remember how masterfully you coped with labor, and how you felt when it was over and you discovered that in fact, you hadn't split in half? So too, will your children leave for the big wide college world and handle it so deftly you won't know if you fretted them into their successful transition or just fretted them away from disaster. Either way, you won't care because you'll be sleeping again and your face will look better. 

In the meantime, we have online parenting communities.

As published writers hope will happen, my writer-friend's thoughtful piece generated discussion, up and down.

And then... 

One called her a "navel-gazer," referred to her concerns as "comical" and  promised she'd screw up her child for life with her constant insecurity.  Another called her article a "fake mommy fail column" full of paragraphs of "meta-parenting self-righteousness." 

Not all comment-bullies are angry morons with limited vocabularies.  

The first time I was called out  by commenters like these, I had just published an agreeable little piece called "It's their nest too," discussing the differences in how men and women react to a last child's exit. It was not a divisive, provocative piece. It was as controversial as a weather report.

And then... 

In a couple of impressively worded, perfectly punctuated comments, I was accused of overstating the difficulty of the empty nest transition on purpose – for attention. It was suggested that I probably wasn't sensitive to my husband's experience at all, but resented him for not joining me in my "phony suffering." And, I was accused of wrongly speaking for the universe.That part was true.

Snarky as they were, these comments were polite compared to what many parent-writers experience. 

But these days, when it's not horrifying, I find the comment-think in these threads intriguing. I don't mean among  readers who disagree with a point,  or even those who get kind of hot when they make their own.  And I don't mean trolls who misspell their insults (which, trolls, game over). 

I mean the same, chronically fed-up readers who  appear in the same space, every day, as if by bus, who seem geographically mixed but advanced intellectually, and who revel in taking swings at the pinata-writer.

What do they want, I wonder, these articulate, often informed and mean-spirited people?  They don't want  normal intellectual discourse because they don't engage, they alienate. They aren't civil, they're hostile. They aren't  angry morons with the limited vocabularies, but they are troll-esque in their penchant for lobbing insults from behind obscure online identities that  in a million years, they wouldn't say to another parent IRL.

Some writers have learned not to take comments personally ( if they ever did), but it's counter-intuitive because they're meant to be personal.  And telling a writer, whose wish is to stimulate discussion, not to read the comments or be stung by a well-phrased insult is like telling a cook who has produced a grand meal not to be hurt when one guest says to another, "Well, that  really sucked."

Discussion is discussion. You want to be worth arguing with, even. But it's tiring to tease comment-bullies from the earnest, thoughtful ones. Much the way it was tiring to remember that your mother thought you were lovely when the mean kids were telling you that you were actually, well, other things. I feel for parent-writers in particular who are new to a national forum. They're harder on themselves than anyone and it's easier to believe wrong things before we choose not to.

Parent-writer friends, newly or oft-published, I offer this: when you get nicked, remember that we write because we have to and always will.  Comment-bullies don't care if we do or don't write, and never will.  They may not even read all the way through. What they want is a chance to push you from the swing, while their friends watch.

As my own comment-bully might suggest, they do it for attention. 

But whatever they do, and whatever you do, do not abandon that swing. Get right back on.

And then...stay in the write. 

Wearing jeans to the symphony and other ways to live out loud.

No, I don't lay out my clothes like this
every day. I just didn't feel like buying a
graphic and Gus wouldn't pose. 

I once received a card from my sister-in-law Christine which praised me for "living out loud."  It was special to be regarded that way, but it was also special because Oprah Winfrey hadn't yet started using the phrase every time she spoke, nor had it started to appear on every other cover of O Magazine.

I do live out loud. I lived out loud in particular two years ago, when I trailed a stranger in Boston to get the name of her perfume. She wrote it down for me on the back of a restaurant tab. I went home, looked it up, gasped at the cost, and half-seriously (half), put it on my Christmas list. When I received it I almost dropped and shattered  it in my half-shock. 

It's light and beautiful like a fragrant cloud and when I wear it I remember rich things I encountered before I discovered it, and those I have encountered since. I wouldn't trail a stranger for less. Once, I wouldn't have trailed a stranger for any reason but at some point, it was worth appearing odd to have that perfume. 

Which brings me back to living out loud. I am a person who has always dressed up for the symphony:  black dress pants, black heels, nice top, nice jewelry and of course, more recently, expensive perfume. 

A while back I would nudged my husband at the sight of someone in jeans and boots at the symphony and  said, "Nobody dresses up anymore. Nothing is special." 

A while back, I would have responded to the phrase of "living out loud" with, "As opposed to what, living in silence?" Because, years before I chased that stranger, I was that person - kind of jaded, kind of cynical,  kind of dumb and kind of smart. All dressed up and greeting the truth of simple, honest living with a snide response. 

I can't believe that I once behaved this way and still expected to attract friends, but anyway.

Along the way, enough to have earned that card, I've thought about this living out loud business, what it means and what it doesn't. Living out loud, is not about dressing appropriately for an experience meant for the senses.  It is about trading drama for grace and allowing hard truths to pass, while greeting and urging the gentle ones to stay.  It isn't about hiding behind correct formalities, but letting formalities cook off  so that the essence of experience can reach the senses. With others, it is about showing your belly, because any connection lacking the trust to do that isn't, as my father would say, "the real deal." 

It is about honesty. 

And so, I'm wearing jeans and boots to the symphony tonight. I'll add the nice jewelry and perfume, but I'm wearing jeans to the symphony. I'm going to listen to Brahms in my warm sweater and silky scarf. I will hear Don Quixote in flat soles and soft jeans. I will not be aware of the temperature while wearing uncomfortable clothes, or my correct posture in a too-small seat, and most of all, I will not be aware of whether or not I've won the approval of complete strangers. 

Living out loud is about remembering the best experiences with more heart than mind because your heart has perfect vision while your buzzkill mind is a keeper of information.

And, of course, it is about finding a delicious fragrance to bring it all back on demand. 

The magic of first babies

Magical Courtney

Twenty-nine years ago, our daughter Courtney Elizabeth Bonifant arrived and was handed to me swaddled and shell-shocked after a journey of nearly twenty four hours. I had two unique and unforgettable realizations: First, that this is what "complete" feels like. And, that I knew nothing.

Here was our tiny sweet creature, and here were our new lives changed with meaning I can't describe, and with fulfillment that was overpowering. Here we were, fumbling new parents fierce with the drive to provide and protect, weepy to know our unique importance to the life of another starting NOW. I realized I knew nothing, I realized I knew everything I needed to, for the love of Courtney.

Twenty-nine years later, our baby Courtney is a young woman who knows her mind and how to use it, knows her heart and how to honor it. She has found meaning in teaching others to bring music to the world, as she brought to ours, always and forever, the second we looked into those navy blue eyes.

For guiding us into loving like we never have, for showing us the meaning of parenting by heart, for helping us greet our instincts, and for showing us that what we needed to know, we knew before we met you, I have two words for you, Courtney Dollface, and they aren't Happy Birthday.

They are, thank you.