Mondays on the Margins: Growing a Rainbow by Lesley Donaldson-Reid

I met Lesley briefly at Blissdom 2013 - I apologized for getting between her and someone taking her picture at the outside party and she hollered at me to get in the picture with her. Afterwards, we became Twitter friends and I started reading her blog, Real Women Drive Stick (so according to Lesley I'm a fake woman, but it's okay, I'm coping). When I learned some of the details of her son's birth, I was sort of struck by the strangeness of the fact that people can endure the most cataclysmic of events and walk around without the effects permanently stamped on their faces.

Lesley is an emergency nurse and special-needs parent, and Blissdom completely lit an author fire under her, leading her to reduce her nursing hours and write and self-publish a book about her son Torran, who was a micro-preemie, born at just 26 weeks and 6 days gestation, due to oligohydramnios, a lack of amniotic fluid. Lesley and her husband Bruce were asked on more than one occasion if they wished to withdraw life support for their son.

I've known two or three people who had babies born prematurely, even extremely prematurely, but I only met them when the children were safely out of the woods, and none of these children's conditions were as grave as Torran's. Lesley's account felt incredibly raw and real and much of it was hard to read - I can't imagine how hard it must have been to live. The number of life-threatening conditions and taxing medical interventions would be heartwrenching if a full-grown adult was involved; imagining it happening to a two-pound baby, tiny and unimaginably thin-skinned and fragile, who should rightfully still be safely tucked in his mother's womb, is horrifying. The tubes he needs to breathe and eat wear away the skin of his face. At one point a doctor says that he needs new sutures in his head, but worries that the tissue is too macerated to even hold them.

Much of Lesley's account feels almost shockingly intimate - confessions of guilt and hopelessness, the inevitable toll taken on her relationship with her husband, and feelings of resentment directed at the rest of the world, particularly people taking home healthy babies. At times when she holds Torran and his oxygen levels drop, it feels like her love is doing actual harm to him. There are also flashes of spiky humour, revolving around the physical indignities of breast-pumping and baby poop, and moments of rare beauty, such as the first time she gets to hold her son, swaddled and then skin to skin, and (this one made me tear up) the moment when she gives a mother's day card to the nurse who has been as ardent an advocate and caregiver for her son as his own parents. I also love her letter at the end of the book, addressed to other preemie parents, with love, empathy and permission to rage and grieve and hope.

Growing a Rainbow is available through the website Growing a Rainbow, and a portion of the proceeds will support the Canadian Premature Babies Foundation.

Torran came home five months after his birth, and is now a monster-hunting six-year-old who likes roller coasters and Mike Wazowski (I heartily approve). He is not without his challenges.

Some time between my first Blissdom and my second, I read Lesley's story Line of Sacrifice. I thought it was an amazing rendering of a mother's selfless love for a child. I feel like I know more now about why Lesley understands that so well.

Blissando

I freely admit that I attended Blissdom under somewhat fraudulent circumstances. I did the same thing with BlogHer last summer, because Marilyn said it was legit to just go to hang out with your girlfriends in New York AND she offered to room with me, but I thought that would be my first and last blogging conference. I went to Blissdom because when were Nicole and Hannah ever going to scoot their little butts from Calgary and Halifax, respectively, to Toronto at the same time ever again? When you have a chance to catch lightning in a jar - or awesomeness on a hotel room couch - you take it, right?

My preciouses

I had thought that my biggest takeaway from BlogHer (along with the fact that I kind of hate the term 'takeaway' and yet I'm still using it, WHY?) was that I am a personal blogger and that 'branding' or 'monetizing' my blog just wasn't going to happen. I tried one giveaway when I was sent a product that I did really like, and it went over with a resounding thump. What I'm comfortable with is reviewing books and sharing my snark-skewed view of life, the universe and goddamned baseball. 

But here's the thing - I am a slow learner with retrograde amnesia when it comes to lessons in life and blogging. And the thing I learned at BlogHer and then learned again this week-end is that everyone will probably get different things out of something like this, and that's okay. It's also okay if I'm one of those people that only gets one to three things out of it, and not a person that goes home to write a new Manifesto containing Seventy-Six Articles of Faith.

When someone like Eric Alper says something like "you can do ANYTHING you put your mind to", I looked around and saw a bunch of people nodding. Personally, I was thinking "what if I put my mind to jumping off the CN Tower and trying to fly by flapping my arms? Eric, you're cute, but you're tripping." But when Schmutzie says "you are you, and your success won't look like anyone else's", suddenly this wellspring of recognition and gratitude overflowed out of my eyes and I knew if I learned (re-learned) nothing else that week-end that this would still be enough. And who knows? Someone else was probably all over the Eric Alper thing and saying fuck you Schmutzie, I am SO William Faulkner (oh relax, I'm exaggerating for effect, NO ONE SAYS FUCK YOU SCHMUTZIE). And then I hung around her like a stalker trying to think of something really good to say even though I try never to meet my heroes because I know I'll just go all mushy-minded fan-girl stuttering "you're just....so awesome and I just....awesome" and I did, I really did. Whatever, I got hugged by Schmutzie (even if it WAS out of pity), I'm good. 

Schmutzilicious

So I could list all the stuff I liked  - okay fine, I'll list the stuff I liked: the blog to book session with Julie van Rosendaal, who is SO nice and funny and sweet and generous with her knowledge; the power hour which gave me the conference experience I never expect to have, where for one moment I shed my cynical snarkskin and feel completely engaged and transported; floating in the hot tub and solving the world's problems with Nicole and Hannah (I touched their HAIR. I know what their VOICES sound like.) The Bigstorming creative session with Marilyn Barefoot, which I suspected might be cheesy and 'motivational' in a fake way, but turned out to be surprisingly (only because I'm a bit of a douche) practical and helpful, and I LOVED our group (Organic Vomit Party for the win!); Jully Black at the Outdoor party - wow. Just wow; the lentil lunch by Canadian Lentils - I have never shoveled that may lentils into my gob in such a short time. My meal plan for the next two weeks consists of lentil main dishes, lentil side dishes and lentil desserts; and the pajama dance party on the last night - most brilliant idea ever. 

What did I not like? Well, I actually don't want to talk bums, unless we're discussing Nicole's fabulous ass.

I know, sweetie. If I had one like that I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off it either.

(Kidding. She's playing heads or tails trying to win one of Julie's cookbooks)

Also, I regret that I didn't get a picture of Nicole with both her legs behind her head on the hotel room hallway floor.

I DID get Hannah in bed, though. 

What I learned (again) I think, is that it's pretty much impossible to come to this sort of thing and NOT get splattered with a little inspiration, enthusiasm and positive energy, even if you ARE a grumpy, depressive malcontent with relentlessly low self-esteem.