© Kathy Duncan, 2017
Or--I Was Deleted by Bonnie Hunter Today.
Not sure which would make the best title.
Today I'm going to break my own rule about not posting from my personal life. This is supposed to be a blog about quilts and dolls. It's supposed to be about getting my quilting mojo back after I lost it seven years ago when my husband had his cardiac catastrophe (of which the stroke was just a small part).
A little over seven years ago, life was humming along. Things were good. Positive. Upbeat even. Blessed. I was making plans for the summer. I had been to a friend's house to purchase civil war reproduction fabric from her stash. I was participating in Jo's Little Women at my favorite quilt shop. My husband was excited about his daylilies, which were on the verge of blooming. He was looking forward to a good bloom season. It turned out to be a spectacular bloom season, but we both missed it. On April 7, 2010, he experienced an aortic dissecting aneurysm with accompanying stroke. He spent the next four months in the hospital. His resulting health issues and complications dramatically changed our lives. I miss our old life. Everyday.
That sort of brings me to today. This morning started out "normally" enough. Then I read Bonnie Hunter's
post and just felt compelled to respond. Sometimes I just can't stop myself. My reaction was to her statements about hard work resulting in abundance and blessings. Suddenly, I just had to comment. Keep in mind that one of Bonnie's hard and fast rules is that she deletes the comments of people who are negative.
I wrote my comment after three previous comments had auto-posted, so I was about number four. I left that tab open and checked emails. When I drifted back a few minutes later, there were seven comments, and mine was gone. Deleted. That surprised me for two reasons. One, I was surprised that she found my comment "negative." Two, I was surprised that she was so fast. I don't know how she could get so much sewing done today and monitor her blog so closely.
It's too bad that I did not screen shot my comment - provided I could have done it fast enough. My comment was to the effect that the ability to "work hard" is a blessing that the ill and disabled don't have. Their caregivers work hard, and some care givers work even harder to hold down jobs that provide health insurance while also being caregivers. Not many blessings rain down on these folks. Despite their hard work, they don't receive an abundance of much unless you count an abundance of medical bills, an abundance of doctor's appointments, an abundance of time spent in pharmacy lines, an abundance of hours spent on the phone with insurance companies and health care providers. Life is not at clear cut as many would like. That's it. That is basically what was deleted.
Too negative or too real?
I refrained from saying that hard work does not always equal abundant blessings unless you think in terms of the type of "blessings" that Job received. I did not mention the abundance of grief and the abundance of worry because that would be....well.....negative.
My experience today is indicative of the experience of too many of our nation's ill and disabled. They are ignored and marginalized because bad health is unpleasant. It's negative. People look through them or away from them. They are left feeling invisible. Talking about their plight or their feelings of frustration is just not upbeat. Not relentlessly positive. They and their families are metaphorically deleted.
Usually, the frustrations of caregivers are greeted with platitudes about making time for themselves. No one ever exactly explains how that is supposed to happen. How do I find the time to quilt when there are so many medical tasks, so much laundry, so much yard work, so many research papers to grade, and that pesky job I have to go to next week? How do I find the energy? Please don't tell me that people find the time for the things that are important to them. That just makes me want to scream. It's right up there with saying that people are as happy as they choose to be. Maybe I should find it refreshing just to be coldly deleted. It may be brutal, but at least it's honest. Stripped of all mindless platitudes.
Of course, once I thought about it, I realized that I should not be surprised by Hunter's reaction. Go back and read earlier in that same blog post, and you will find Bonnie making fun of a mentally ill woman, who walked naked through an airport.
I will be the first to say that Bonnie Hunter obviously works very hard and keeps up an exhausting pace of activity. She generously shares patterns with her fans. She deserves to enjoy everything that she has accomplished. However, it is important to remember that Bonnie Hunter is a brand. Brands protect themselves with positive images and energy as much as possible.
As an adult, I need to remind myself that often the people we admire are flawed. In fact, we might not even like them if we knew them.
Will I continue to read her blog? I don't know. Would I take one of her classes? I don't know. I do know that I can't always limit myself to being silent or a stranger's relentlessly upbeat cheerleader.
I blog for a few reasons. My genealogy blog exists to share my research with other family researchers who have not been researching for as long as I have and who have not had access to the same sources that I have. I blog here to try to push myself to get back to quilting...even a little.
It is important for bloggers to remember that their readers are often people who are "shut in" because of health issues or care giving. Blogs often take the place of a shrinking social life. I became a much heavier blog reader after my husband came home from the hospital. Quilt and doll artist blogs, in particular, gave me great joy during those long months when I could no longer attend my quilt group's meetings or go to a quilt store. In fact, my favorite store closed during that time, and I did not know it until six months later. I was that cut off from my previous life.
On a more positive note, this spring our irises had more color and vibrancy than ever. I did not get a single picture of them because life got away from me. I will just have to content myself with sharing pictures from last year. Once again, I am looking forward to summer when a little quilting might happen. Or not.
Monday, May 1, 2017 evening update:
Watching Jimmy Kimmel tonight was emotional. My heart goes out to him and his family. Their experience with their newborn son has been wrenching. As a family member, I've been right there with all the doctors and nurses in a cardiac unit (for a month), and I could completely empathize with him. I know what it is like to live in that hospital world that is like an alternate, twilight universe (for four straight months), where time elongates, and every day is about a week long, where every decision seems to be a choice between life and death. I know what it is like to feel intensely grateful and indebted to the medical staff. I know what it is like to have emotions that are so raw and so on the surface. I could not watch Grey's Anatomy for over a year afterward because the sound of the alarms on the monitors would put me right back into that experience, and Grey's had been one of my favorite television. Once on Code Black, a character said something like, "An aortic dissection. That's something you never want to see on a CT."
Yup, that's right. Positive thoughts going out to the Kimmel family.
