Cruelty

This post is going to contain some foul language.  Ugly, foul language.  But I'm addressing an ugly, foul subject.  I won't apologize for using words that appropriately convey the emotions.

I frequent a message board visited by women in all stages of their childbearing and childrearing years.  We have a lot of good discussions, both relevant and irreverent.  We laugh together, and we cry together.  We snark.  We bitch.  And, as you can imagine happens with that many hormones in one place, sometimes tempers flare.  But we are there for one another to celebrate life's events: pregnancies, new babies, new milestones.  And we rally together to mourn the hardships: pregnancy loss, child loss, and infertility.


Infertility.

Ask any parent how having a child has changed their lives.  Except to the most calloused soul, having a child is universally the most life-changing, wonderful, amazing, incredible thing.  I can't stuff that sentence with enough cliches to appropriately convey the feeling.  I've been a mom for just five months, and I will swear to you that these five months have been incomparable.  Glorious.  The Best Time of My Life. Amen.

Now imagine if, through no fault of my own, I was denied the privilege of being called "mother."  Imagine if, month after month, I had to go through the heartbreak of wondering why.  Wondering what was wrong with me.  Wondering why I couldn't have what everyone else seems to have and cherish.  My heart aches at the very thought, yet I don't have to live that nightmare.  So many women, and their partners, do.

Today I saw a discussion turn downright cruel when one mother mocked another woman's well-known battle with infertility.  My brain can't wrap itself around the absolute human bankruptcy required to do say the words she said.  It was shocking.  It was uncalled for.  It was fucking heartless.


Strong willed women will fight the battles of the ages over and over again: breastfeeding vs. formula, circumcised vs. intact, to vaccinnate or not, and so on.  Brilliant, well-spoken women line each side of each issue, and even when the discussions get heated, there is still decency among all involved. I've never seen one woman attack another with the depravity I witnessed in that exchange.

The truly frustrating part is that the aggressor can hide behind the anonymity of the Internet.  She can reinvent herself with a new screen name and slide into our discussions undetected.  If karma is just a manmade design, I hope at the very least she feels some remorse for her cruel words.