In which Melissa Jackson, editor of MomsMichiana.com, blogs about all things parenting-related.
When Melissa Murawski sat down to check Facebook last week, she found herself becoming emotional as she scanned her friends? status updates.
The cause?
A new Facebook meme in which participants use their birth date to fill in the status: ?I am (#) weeks and I am craving ___? (the former is your birth month and the latter is determined by consulting a list of junk foods that are associated with each day of the month).
But the meme, purported to be a joke with the goal of promoting breast cancer awareness, struck a chord with Murawski and others like her who are struggling with infertility issues.
?When I initially saw it, it really hurt,? says Murawski, a South Bend resident whose quest for motherhood began eight years ago. ?I actually got teared up.?
Yes, she understands it is a joke. But seeing others make light of something that she and her husband have desired for so long, stung deeply.
On Friday, Murawski says, someone who heard how bothered she was by the joke advised her to ?just shake it off.?
This bothered, her, too.
?My infertility is a 24/7 deal. It?s not something I can just shake off,? she says.
And she wonders exactly how a Facebook status that teases your friends into believing that you are expecting will advance the cause of breast cancer awareness. No money is being raised for research; no helpful prevention information is being communicated and, let?s face it, how many of us are unaware of breast cancer?
She also wonders how these and other supposed breast cancer awareness memes are perceived by many breast cancer survivors.
Murawski points out that breast cancer treatments can affect a women?s ability to bear children.
It seems clear that silly Facebook status games won?t bring about any significant change in the breast cancer statistics among Facebook users. But judging from the backlash that is brewing around this latest meme, I?d guess that it is, at the very least, bringing about more awareness about the emotional toll of infertility.
I deeply doubt that anyone who participated in this flippant meme did so with the malicious intent to hurt a friend who is dealing with fertility problems or perhaps is quietly grieving an unannounced miscarriage.
But I would hope that those who did post it would think long and hard about deleting that status. It won?t change the struggles your friends face, but it will be a quiet way to show that you support THEM in their quest for parenthood and that you are more aware of the pain that their journey entails.
Source: http://wordpress.sbtinfo.com/?p=1677
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