What a great Christmas gift to us all!

In my morning cruise around blogland, I stopped by Hallie’s site and she introduced me to a beautiful young lady named Laura.  

Laura is keeping a blog on her efforts to make a difference each day leading to Christmas, and honestly, I can’t think of a better Advent calendar than that.  [Although Abby wanted me to say that, while Laura's Advent calendar is more in keeping with the season, her puppy Advent calendar is tastier.]

Please go check out Laura’s site and leave her an encouraging comment, not just to recognize her efforts, but to encourage yourself to look for ways you can make a difference each day.

Good work, Laura.  Good work.

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Here’s something new…

Okay, I’m strange, and maybe a bit conflicted. I admit it.

If you’ve been reading my blog at all, you realize that sometimes, I talk about gardening. Sometimes, I talk about the rest of my life. And sometimes, I talk about infertility. This is kind of a problem for me, because I don’t want to define myself by my infertility, I don’t want my life to be about infertility, and yet it’s always there. And I have a lot of friends who, frankly, don’t want to read about my infertility. They have lived through the worst of it with me, and they are ready to move on.

And not only do I not want my life to be about infertility, I don’t want my blog to be all about infertility either. See that tag cloud to the right of the page? I’ve worked really hard to try to get the other tags to be larger than “infertility” and yet I can’t seem to manage it.

But when I do post about my dealings with infertility, I get a lot of responses from readers, sometimes very personal, and always very anguished, comments from other women who are going through their own struggles. And because infertility is very isolating, I really do feel that we need each other. Infertile women are the only people who really understand what it’s like to be an infertile woman and all that entails.

So I did the only thing I could think to do. I started a new blog, just for discussing infertility issues. For discussing life issues. For discussing hope issues.

blessedarethebarren.wordpress.com

It’s a strange name. It’s a strange thing to even consider that, as infertile women, we can feel blessed. Stranger still, we can be blessed. It’s the hope I cling to, that there’s meaning in my suffering, and blessings for my life.

You’re welcome to visit, to stop in, to converse if you want to. Occassionally I will still post something here about my feelings as they relate to infertility. Afterall, it’s still a part of my life. Sometimes I’ll cross-post, because although I don’t want my life to be about infertility, infertility can’t be pigeonholed into just one area of my life.

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Dear anonymous visitor…

I saw where you visited my blog today. 

I saw where you searched on the terms “infertile women no children christmas“, and my heart broke for you. 

I know where your heart is right now – the Christmas holidays are coming up, and you’re wondering how on earth you’re going to live through them without breaking into a million jagged pieces.  How will you face your extended family and your cousin with the new baby?  So you started searching the internet for advice, for help, for the reassurance to know you’re not alone.

You’re not alone.  I’ve been there.  Every woman who has ever struggled with infertility has been there.

We’re all here together, but the shame and pain of infertility even keep us from reaching out to those who might actually understand how we can be afraid of Christmas, or Thanksgiving, or family reunions, and maybe even tomorrow.

If you visit here again,  please leave me a comment or send me an email.  I wanted to reach out to you, to see if I could help in some way, but you went away leaving only that faint trace of your visit. 

In empathy,

Trish

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The trip of a million blog postings

Well, maybe not a million, but certainly many.  While I was travelling to San Antonio for the annual ACTFL meeting to present on my academic activities, it seems that my non-professional mind was hard at work cooking up blog posts.  Potential titles include

• The Dichotomy of Drought
• From Ships of the Sea to Movers of the Earth
• Thanks for the aluminum jungle gym and the headache
• Las entradas de la fe

and I’m sure there were others that may have been obliterated by margaritas.  Any votes on which to tackle first?

All in all, the conference was wonderful.  Harried as usual, but really energizing.  On Friday morning, I played hooky for a few hours and drove out to see the Missions on the San Antonio Mission trail.  I took an opportunty to take both tourist photos, and artsy photos while I concentrated on the the architectural details and remains of the three missions I visited, Mission Concepcion, Mission San Jose, and Mission Espada.  What a beautiful step back in time that was for me and a great way to tap into my artistic and imanginative side.  The Spanish colonial architecture drew me in, as it always does, to a place deep inside my childhood imagination, where conquistadors and pirates populate an imagination as fertile as the rainforest and as vast as the desert.

Once back in conference central, I spend the rest of the time networking with other language professionals and attending conference sessions related to my interest in technology for language teaching and learning.  I also fell in with the other members of IALLT who were in attendance, which made the whole experience a kind of portfolio-expanding pub-crawl. The final margarita count was 9, a new record! 

But I’m glad to be home now, and coming up on the Thanksgiving holidays.  It will give me time to both catch my breath, catch up with my thoughts, and catch a few extra hours with those who are most important to me. 

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Emilie is a better blogger than me.

Okay, so I set up a blog for my best girlfriend Emilie (blogservations.wordpress.com) and SHE’S GREAT! Of course, I knew she would be, because everything about her is great, but especially her creative use of the English language. It’s so nice to check in with her once and awhile and see what’s happening in her life, and in her mind.

We have such different lives! She is a hard-working stay-at-home mom, shuttling between the grocery store, the playgroup, church meetings, and family events. And she finds a few minutes every day to collect her thougths, and blog. It’s amazing to me.

I shuttle myself physically between work and home, church and the family farm, and mentally between high-tech gadgets and language learning theory, to “what needs to happen this week in the garden”, and in between all this, the only time I seem to be able to woolgather is when I’m commuting or working in the garden. Either way, I’m nowhere near a computer. I always say to myself, “You’ve got to remember to write this thought/idea/feeling/observation down when you get a chance”, but I rarely seem to find the chance.

So, that’s why my personal blog sucks. ;- )

However, in order to share information with my family regarding the formation of our nonprofit foundation, I HAVE created an additional blog for the foundation, wgcarter.wordpress.com. Interestingly, I seem to update that blog everyday, adding information and photos of the garden and the land.

Maybe I just can’t get interested in myself. Maybe my self is wrapped up in other things right now. I don’t know.

I do know that, when I want a glimpse at a life full of interest, challenges, wit, and love, I can check into Emilie’s blog, and enjoy her world and her virtual company.

Love you, Emilie!

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