You can’t manage your work life if you can’t talk about it
Recently I ran the following twitter:
“I’m in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.”
Why the uproar over this twitter?
Not only have bloggers written whole posts about the disgustingness of it, but 70 people unfollowed me, and people actually came to my blog and wrote complaints about the twitter on random, unrelated posts.
So, to all of you who think the twitter was outrageous, think about this:
Most miscarriages happen at work. Twenty-five percent of pregnancies end in miscarriage. Seventy-five percent of women who are of child-bearing age are working. Most miscarriages run their course over weeks. Even if you are someone who wanted the baby and are devastated by the loss, you’re not going to sit in bed for weeks. You are going to pick up your life and get back to it, which includes going back to work.
This means that there are thousands of miscarriages in progress, at work, on any given day. That we don’t acknowledge this is absurd. That it is such a common occurrence and no one thinks it’s okay to talk about is terrible for women.
Throughout history, the way women have gained control of the female experience is to talk about what is happening, and what it’s like. We see that women’s lives are more enjoyable, more full, and women are more able to summon resilience when women talk openly about their lives.
To all of you who said a miscarriage is gross: Are you unaware that the same blood you expel from a miscarriage is what you expel during menstruation? Are you aware that many people are having sex during menstruation and getting it on the sheets? Are you aware that many women actually like period sex? Wait. Here is a link I love, at askmen.com, telling men that women like it so much that men need to be aware of this preference.
To all of you who are aghast that I let myself get pregnant: having sex is playing with odds. There are no 100% sure methods of birth control. I am 42 years old. The likelihood of someone my age getting pregnant even with fertility treatment is less than 5%. The likelihood that a pregnancy in someone my age ends in a miscarriage is almost 75%. This means that even if I had done nothing for birth control it would have been as effective as a 25-year-old using a condom. So everyone who is complaining that I’m an idiot for getting pregnant should go buy a calculator.
To all of you who said I should not be happy about having a miscarriage: You are the ones short on empathy. Any woman who is pregnant but wishes she weren’t would of course be grateful when she has a miscarriage. Yes, there are many women who want the baby and have a miscarriage. I was one of them. I cried for days. I get it.
But if you have ever had an abortion, which I have, you would know that a miscarriage is preferable to an abortion. Even the Pope would agree with that.
And what is up with the fact that just one, single person commented about how Wisconsin has a three-week waiting period for abortions? It is absolutely outrageous how difficult it was going to be for me to get an abortion, and it’s outrageous that no one is outraged.
Wisconsin is one of twelve states that have 24-hour waiting periods. This puts a huge burden on an overworked system. These are also the states where there are few ways to get an abortion. For example, in Wisconsin, the only place to get abortion that is covered by insurance is at a Planned Parenthood clinic. There are 3 of them in all of Wisconsin. In Chicago, you can get an abortion at Planned Parenthood with less than 24 hours notice. In Wisconsin, there is a week and a half wait to get the first meeting and a week and half wait to get the abortion.
A digression: I’m linking to Planned Parenthood so everyone can make a donation. This organization is enabling women to have the right to abortion. Planned Parenthood seems to be the only effective, community-level force against states that are attempting to legislate the choice into oblivion.
To all of you who think this has nothing to do with work:
I think what really upsets people is the topic. We are not used to talking about the female experience, and especially not in the context of work. But so what? We can start now. The female experience is part of work. What we talk about when we talk about work defines how we integrate work into our lives. If work is going to support our lives, then we need to talk about how our lives interact with work. We need to be honest about the interaction if we hope to be honest about our work.
I just wanted to say I totally agree with you Penelope. I too have aspergers and tell it like it is and people don’t like that. One example is I tell the truth about childbirth. It is a horrific experience of your privates being ripped open. Yet people try to tell me how can I think it’s horrific? Well I been through it 3 times and I am not fluffing the experience up with, “Oh it’s so beautiful” IT’S NOT!! It’s HORRIFIC and traumatizing to the female body.
I just reread this post. You are such a reasonable person. Thank you for that.
I found your blog while sitting here feeling miserable about my lack of social skills at work and just could not stop reading. This post is really powerful. I don’t know what else to say. I used to be good with words and somehow I’m not anymore, so all I can tell you is this resonates.
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No matter what u say it dosent change anything it´s still horrible… abortion is a terrible thing but to anounce it in such a public place and in such a vulgar way like what a releave my baby died :( u are a disgrace and only want to get attention no matter what it takes! if u were my mom i would not hesitate for a second to stop all contact to you hey I guess the right thing would be to abort you!
I had a miscarriage recently. I don’t have any problem with the fact that you spoke about your miscarriage- what I think people are reacting to is your callous attitude. You are contributing to the notion that a miscarriage is not a loss. As someone who has suffered the loss of my very anticipated first child, I find the way you just flippantly tweet this incident as if it’s no big deal offensive. Attitudes like yours are why people treat us like we should just “get over it” when we lose our babies.
Let me get this straight; you are angry because her feelings about her miscarriage don’t mirror your feeling about your miscarriage. You think that your feelings are correct and her feelings are wrong. Oh, but wait, you are also angry because the world at large does not share your feeling about your miscarriage, which would imply that your feeling are wrong and hers are correct. So I guess, even though you have had more or less the same experience, everyone should feel the same way about miscarriages that you do because you are entitled to your feelings, but nobody should feel the same way that she does because she is not entitled to her feelings. Oh, okay, I get it….
Let me get this straight; you are angry because her feelings about her miscarriage don’t mirror your feeling about your miscarriage. You think that your feelings are correct and her feelings are wrong. Oh, but wait, you are also angry because the world at large does not share your feeling about your miscarriage, which would imply that your feeling are wrong and hers are correct. So I guess, even though you have had more or less the same experience, everyone should feel the same way about miscarriages that you do because you are entitled to your feelings, but nobody should feel the same way that she does because she is not entitled to her feelings. Oh, okay, I get it….
Well done Penelope for raising awareness and for speaking your mind in an articulate way on what many consider a touchy subject.
A 3 week wait is a joke.
I’m glad I’m in Australia where debate on this topic is not as hate filled and myopic.
I’ve never understood why people don’t share that they are pregnant for 3 months in case they miscarry. Its such a common thing, as you point out, you end up denying yourself your support network should it happen….
Wow, you’ve killed your own baby and STILL don’t get it? That’s sick.
Well, it’s good to write about the miscarriage, but the tone trivializes what for many people is an experience that is very heavy or at least meaningful. Tweeting about it isn’t so much brave and groundbreaking as it is juvenile and unbefitting a forty two year old woman. Also–and this is stating the obvious but it has to be said–the three week wait for an abortion may very well reflect community values in Wisconsin more accurately then the Illinois rules. Pro-choice arguments that abortion is a strictly private and individual matter have never convinced many people, and this is why the controversy goes on and is far from settled either politically or in terms of policy. The pro and anti positions are irreconcilable on this point. A waiting period, however, is a reasonable compromise, as it allows abortion opponents to have a reasonable hope that in some women will reconsider within that time. Ultimately individual choice still prevails, with society merely insisting upon a reflection period. Frankly, these are the kinds of compromises that come out of tough ideological battles in a democracy–when the system works well. When it doesn’t, one faction takes all, leaving the others resentful and perhaps radicalized. At the end of the day, ambiguous compromises are often more sustainable than the alternatives.
I have to apologize. Didn’t realize you have Asperger’s. Not at all sure that you ‘trivialized’ the miscarriage by tweeting about it. Still, I’m not surprised a lot of people got worked up about it.
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The best way to cover up something is bringing to the public. Be true to yourself, not your evidences or arguments.
I think it’s hilarious that people think they can judge you for your lack of sadness at your miscarriage. I remember reading about this in the Guardian when the media frenzy around your tweet happened and I thinking then how weird it was that people seemed to feel a need to either attack you for what you had said or find a reason for it.
Well done on speaking out on a topic that no-one talks about.
What an important post. Thank you for sharing this. I agree with you that the waiting period is terrible. That puts an additional amount of pressure on anyone facing this choice.
wow…I just know your place and stay here for a while fooling around post, but this is serious.
No, I’m not talking about your miscarriage. Yes, it happens.
Not even about the decision of abortion.
It was funny reading you with your ‘F# Off’ this and ‘F#d up’ that.
But not now anymore. I’m out of here. This is deep sh!t when someone has not respect on serious stuff.
“Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin”
….wow
is that your pregnancy situation a f#cking curse?
Could you feel or even think about your mother saying that to you when you were a kid, if she would ‘force’ herself to have you, because she doesn’t have another option????
“Thank goodness, because there’s a fucked-up 3-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin”
I hope those words echo in your brain as long, and as deep enough, to learn something pure, a pure clean emotion like love, out of your life.
Seriously. I really believe you are a good person, but this is so deep mierda you are spreading to the world, don’t be one more of those.
Change for good.
you fucking idiot, it is called a TWEET not a TWITTER.
glad your child died
Hi,
A new research stated that the growth of an embryo during the early stages of pregnancy is linked to its risk of miscarriage.77.8% of single embryo pregnancies that miscarried were growth restricted, while 98.1% of single embryo pregnancies that did not miscarry were not growth restricted. Authors were said that there were other factors to consider when looking at miscarriage risk.(Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16441820)
Greetings,
Murat
http://www.kulakburunbogaz.info
I can see this post is two years old but the more something changes the more it stays the same.
I’m booked in for a termination next Saturday. Why a Saturday? Because I daren’t tell my hateful, child-free, sex-free, power-hungry female boss about it and ask for time off.
If only I could miscarry before then. But then I’d need time off work. God forbid! I could never do that.
Don’t bother lecturing me on safe sex, killing children (it’s a bundle of cells the size of a bean), or any other clap trap. I’m not sharing how this situation came about with you so don’t bother sharing your thoughts with me.
The point is that we still work in an environment which is constructed to exclude women in so many ways. Something’s got to change!
Thanks , I have just been looking for information about this topic for ages and yours is the best I have came upon so far. But, what about the bottom line? Are you positive in regards to the source?|What i don’t realize is in reality how you are no longer really much more smartly-appreciated than you might be right now. You’re so intelligent.
Penelope, I’m sure the experience of being pregnant and losing a child, while a relief for you, was also a trauma. I just read your article about the heartache of almost selling the family goat. I know you connect emotionally to the earth, and things of the earth, and that you love your family more than anything in the world. So, yes, I can also know this miscarriage was a very difficult experience.
Human life is in a category all its own, and raises moral issues unique to that status. Human life is in the image of God, or “Imago Dei.” A human bears all the necessary unique DNA of being “human” at conception. Despite Roe v. Wade, I believe it is our duty as a society to acknowledge that the unborn are “persons” accorded the fundamental constitutional protection of the “right to life” and “equal protection of the laws.”
Yes, “women’s rights” are important, and deserve protection, but they are secondary to a more fundamental “human right” of life itself. The state of Wisconsin, working within set Constitutional limits, has required a “waiting period” in an effort to shift the balance of interests to protect the unborn child. That is entirely moral and reasonable.
so…. the longer you wait, the more developed the human being that can die?
if you REALLY want to stop abortions, you need to look at better access to birth control, and male attitudes towards that birth control.
When birth control works, abortions don’t happen.
I had an abortion. I grew up in an extremely southern-baptist household.
My dad pickets Planned Parenthood.
Growing up, I was told condoms were evil.
There’s statistics about people like me. Kids that come from evangelical ‘abstinence education’ households do **not** have less sex. we just use less birth control.
Also, maybe, just maybe, if I was not living in a society crafted to send single pregnant women to the welfare line, I could have afforded to not abort.
Read up on the stats, the cost of childcare. Then there’s the dirty looks from people like you once I do start to show. A texas teacher was fired for being pregnant outside the lock of wed.
In this culture, getting pregnant is a poverty sentence. Fix that, and you fix abortion.
Focus on the standard of living for post-born babies, and you’ll increase the likelihood of living for the pre-born.
thank you so much for this posting.
very well said, and I am officially in love with you.
Had the abortion. thank you for being so open about it, for those of use who cannot.
very brave for you to be so open.
I found this web site after googling “having miscarriage at work” because I was going through that exact experience and felt alone. Thank you for being outspoken and brave. Why are women so divisive on these topics? We can’t complain about healthcare and women’s rights surrounding our own bodies if we continue to be silent and uncomfortable about these topics.
I love you! Your words are incredibly empowering. I am so glad I stumbled upon your blog tonight, and I am so excited to forward this article along with your blog to all the women in my life who will surely feel empowered too. Thank you for being so magnificent!
Ofcourse it is provoking to you when someone says or does something that you consider being wrong. But that does not mean that they should cease their actions in order to please you.
One should look at a situation in a way as objective as possible and remove any errors from one’s reasoning.
I think the objections to this post come from two sources basically:
Empathy, natural reproductive instincts and religious motivation
If we would follow our reproductive instincts all the time massive amounts of children would be created resulting in overpopulation and global poverty and starvation. So if you argue for these you are arguing for a world of misery.
If we would believe the religious dogma’s we would also have to believe in all the other religious statements that are clearly nonsense, like believing in a flat 6000 year old earth, stoning homosexuals or circumcision.
So we are left with empathy. We are able to assess the feelings of another being and evaluate them as being our own feelings. This causes a tendency to avoid causing pain to other beings and to increase their happiness.
But, when we look at the anatomy of an unborn baby, does it feel? Is it aware of itself?
It appears that the central nervous system only starts developing in the fourth week, so Penelope’s baby should not have been able to feel any pain.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080503145054AAeMqu9
As a side note, there are about 1 billion people who are deprived of food and water on a daily basis. These are real people. Maybe we should help them first.
I stopped listening and respecting Ms. Trunk when I read this post.
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Heya this is kind of of off topic but I was
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I’m starting a blog soon but have no coding skills so I wanted to get advice from someone with experience. Any help would be enormously appreciated!
I had just found your blog and just subscribed on the basis of career advice and blogging tips but this post is leading me to unsubscribe within an hour of subscribing! Miscarriage is a tragedy, abortion is murder and you are a mess of both. I cannot imagine how apathetic you have had to train yourself to become to be ok with both. I would need counseling after experiencing a miscarriage and many/most women do. I cannot imagine how you could experience a miscarriage of a child, especially when you admit to wanting one, and still concede to abort another and promote abortion in general! I agree with the last comment, you should seek some mental help.
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The aspects that impact the chances of maternity have been clearly described by you.
Very nice. Thanks a ton.
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Thanks for the post.
I don’t get it. You say in this post that you have been able to tell when you ovulate up to the hour since the time you were twenty-four. And yet, you have had three unintentional pregnancies. (Seemingly this one was without contraception, so your cycle should not have been disturbed.) With that claim to know so accurately when you’re fertile, how can you say, “everyone who is complaining that I’m an idiot for getting pregnant should go buy a calculator.” I wouldn’t say you’re an idiot, but you must not have been paying attention.
It’s difficult to find experienced people for this subject, but you seem like you know what you’re talking about!
Thanks
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Some people are not traumatized by abortions or miscarriages. And they don’t have to be. Especially, as much as you would like them to be. Just because you think that is the correct way to feel or how you might feel does not make it that way for others. It is actually very much a learned emotion created by histories and power structures. Abortions (as as miscarriages) are legal, it is an event that is not deplorable, not disgusting and nothing to be ashamed of. Congrats to Penelope for showing that her responses and emotions are her responses and emotions, so others who might have similar experiences and emotions know they are not alone ! :)
Hi Penelope —
I had an abortion in my early 20s. It ended up being a botched abortion and I had to go to a real hospital later for an overnight stay and another procedure. It is all so blurry in my head – I can’t even remember all details.
Fast forward 20 years, I am now a mother of a small daughter and hope to God she will never fall prey on the the lies of women’s reproductive rights all in the name of “sexual freedom.” She will be my only child because of my mistakes in the past and her biggest wish in life is to have a brother or sister.
I want to empower my daughter. Abortion rights do not empower women. Instead they merely enable men to use women without responsibility or consequence and in turn leaves women vulnerable to disease, pregnancy, and emotional heartache.
The best way I can empower my daughter is to teach her to say “No,” to set boundaries, and protect herself by understanding that God beautifully designed women differently than men. Women are simply more vulnerable than men in areas of sexual health.
There is no such thing as ‘sexual freedom’ as Planned Parenthood would like us to believe.
“This is not sexist. It’s biology” –Dr Miriam Grossman
I recommend Dr Miriam Grossman’s frank talks about Planned Parenthood ad how their agenda is destroying the health of our young girls and women, leaving them more vulnerable than ever and less empowered.
Grossman also wrote, ‘You’re Teaching My Child What?” and “Unprotected.” She can be watched on her website, You Tube and has a podcast interview somewhere as well. In addition, she also has a free .pdf to download from her website called, “The College Girl’s Guide to Real Protection In A Hooked Up World.”
Dear Penelope, I urge you to please think twice about your support for Planned Parenthood. They do not work in the best interest of women.
In Peace,
This is one of my favorite verses I need to remind myself of nearly everyday: “Isaiah 55:8-9 For my thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not your ways, say the Lord. As heavens are higher than above the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Also, Psalm 34:8 The Lord is good. Taste and see that the Lord is good, blessed is one who trusts in him.
— He is the only one who has our best interests at heart —
I’m not sure how I feel about any of this. Is Twitter necessarily the most appropriate place to discuss a miscarriage. I don’t know. I would call that a “miscarriage” of tact. The subject is unquestionably fascinating and needs to be discussed. I do not believe 1st Amendment rights should be exercised at all times in every sphere at random times of the day. Speaking one’s truth, while one’ right, is still a responsibility that should be used wisely. Not sure if very flippantly referencing a miscarriage on Twitter was entirely wise.
This is still an interesting article, I can follow you. You sure can put it on the edge :-) hooo. Like to read your stuff.
If she is a woman, she gets it. If he is a man, he has had a mother, or a sister, or perhaps a wife or daughters. No matter…they get it without speaking about it.
Well done Penelope, for putting out into the public forum what many women are going through. I, myself, have never experienced a miscarriage (I am a man afterall) but my wife has; we are, in fact, heading to the hospital today for a D&C to clean up her second.
What I have learnt through this experience is that there are plenty of people out there that would rather keep miscarriage a “dirty little secret”. This is something my wife and I both disagree with very much and believe it is about time the world (men mainly) pulled their heads out of their a#$e and realised that a miscarriage is not only extremely common, but is also extremely normal.
I applaud you for using twitter, all those years ago, to matter-of-factly tell the world you are normal.
I applaud you for giving voice to the many women who do actually suffer in silence.
And I applaud you for managing to get a discussion going.
Thank you.
There is a ton of information on the internet relating to this subject that it can actually turn into a real nightmare sorting out the facts from the fiction. Especially if you’re one of those who hide behind religion or some other dogmatic custom. Appreciate you making the effort to put this resource together.