A Jew, a Search Engine, and an Infertility Blog Walk into a Bar...

What does Yom Kippur, a search engine, and a bunch of posts about infertility have in common? I'm not entirely sure myself, but these things always sort themselves out by the end of the post. So stay with me for the inevitable punchline.

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Today is Yom Kippur, a day of atonement in Judaism. I have already said my apologies on my main blog:

And I apologize too--to you--for any times that I have inadvertently hurt you this year. For any times I have not been there for you. For any times you wrote and received no answer. For any times I was sloppy in my wording. For any times that you read a post and walked away with your heart hurting--I had a lot of fears about that with this particular post. For any times that you felt overlooked. For any times that I couldn't give what you needed.

For all these things.

I believe in apologizing. Even when apologies were given in the moment, this is a time of year for Jews to reflect on everything that has happened in the past as well as look forward to the future year. Apologizing with a full heart, close attention paid to the words. Meaning them. It is good to examine your own past so you don't repeat the same trends in the future.

So much of infertility involves apologies. The sympathetic nurse who tells you she's sorry that your beta is negative. The woman who turns to her partner and apologizes for her body. The man with azoospermia who feels responsible that his wife needs to do IVF even though the infertility is male factor.

When we apologize to each other in those situations, we know there was no wrong-doing. What we're saying is that our heart hurts--either for ourselves or for another person--and instead of describing that, we lean on apologizing. We obviously need a new set of words.

A lesser known side of Yom Kippur is that part of the Kol Nidre service--the service that comes on the eve of Yom Kippur--is a pardoning of all religious vows we may make in the future year (sorry--it has nothing to do with the promises we make another person). Kol Nidre (which means "all vows") isn't really a prayer. It's a recitation of a paragraph of legal statements. It may be the most gorgeous, breath-holding moment of the evening, but essentially, it is excusing the human inability to attain perfection.

Kol Nidre was very important during the Inquisition. People who had been forced to convert hadn't really converted because Kol Nidre absolved them from promises made. But why is this statement still important right now--why do Jews who normally saunter into shul midway through the Torah service (cough...Jews like myself...) race to finish dinner quickly before a fast so they can get there to hear the opening words of this first part to the service?

Because we bargain. We all do it, regardless of religion or lack thereof. If we're not bargaining with G-d, we're bargaining with the universe, with the unknown, with another person. We are promising everything we can think of in order to be released from pain or obtain better health or--in the case of my world--become a parent. When we are down, we are willing to give anything to get out of that space.

It is incredibly humbling to reflect on all the broken vows from the past year while the rabbi chants Kol Nidre.

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When I'm writing a post, I often like to link to other people's thoughts to support my own. An old habit from graduate school papers? I usually enter each post with a single post or two in mind and then go hunting for more on the same topic. Google blog search was fine, though time-consuming. It brought up plenty of links that had nothing to do with my search terms.

The BlogHer search engine through Lijit was a lot better, but it still contained blogs on all topics. If I searched for a post, let's say, on living child-free, it brought up blogs from people who had never intended to have children or who wanted children, but had never tried to have one or who had resolved their infertility through this path.

In the end, I built my own, entering all 1500 or so blogs from my blogroll (it is on the top right sidebar of my blog if you would like to use it too). This custom search engine only scans infertility/adoption/loss blogs. It is interesting that I chose to create this during a month that is a time of great reflection for Jews. Between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, Jews are asked to look back at the past year, apologize for wrong-doing, and resolve to live better in the upcoming year.

Scanning through the search engine is sort of like attending reunion or flipping through a yearbook. I type in random terms and posts float to the surface like fish eagerly snapping at my line. I have reeled in so many good thoughts that I would have forgotten about without the search engine's reminder. It is hard to keep an entire year much less 1500 blogs inside someone's head.

Looking backwards is about examining how your world changed. It is emotional to read an old post from someone who was in tremendous pain as they wrote it and know that they're now parenting a six-month-old child. It is equally painful to read someone's lighthearted anecdote about a sonogram and know they lost the child a few weeks later. And somewhere, nestled inside all of those posts are the ones that changed the way you viewed the world.

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This week alone, there were dozens of posts that slightly shifted the way I saw things. Everyday Stranger compared decision-making to near-drowning underwater. She reminds the reader: "You need to have your say. The choice needs to be your choice." I Think I Hear Your Mother Calling wrote about each person's individual need for their own "cornfield," an analogy that comes from a story about alone time.

Southern Infertility wrote a gorgeous post about how she feels being pregnant after infertility and states: "Perhaps another reason that I feel like sharing my infertility history is because I want people to know where I'm coming from. I've been surprised myself by the profound sense of loss I continue to feel over the failed cycles. Just thinking about my lost embryos can bring tears to my eyes. I don't want to dwell in the past, but it's there." The Road Less Travelled touched me tremendously with a post about a Walk to Remember and sights at the cemetery.

All of these posts and so many others keep turning my world, making me reconsider decision-making, alone time, why we do the things we do, how we mourn the things we lose. The huge issues in life and at the same time, the meanest details. Isn't that why we read blogs; to connect with others; to consider the alternate point-of-view? Because we want a changed world in the future.

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I knew it was in here somewhere. The connection. This post is about looking back in order to look forward. Or, if not to look forward then to change forward so that it is slightly different from the past. It is an enormous emotional burden to reflect on your year, throw out the things that you don't wish to take with you into the future months. Apologize as you realize how you have affected another person and at the same time, keep crashing into one another so our two worlds can be changed.

I think it is also interesting that this holiday, which for me as a child was always tied to death due to a small portion of the service on Yom Kippur Day called Yizkor--a public and collective mourning ("yizkor" comes from the word for remember)--comes one week before Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day, which falls every year on the 15th of October.

Antigone Lost has organized a call to action around this day, giving concrete ways people can reflect backwards on loss while moving forward with change. I cannot think of a more perfect time of year for this project and I hope many will get involved regardless of their own personal experience with loss.

Melissa is the author of the infertility and pregnancy loss blog, Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters. She keeps a categorized blogroll of almost 1500 infertility blogs and writes the daily Lost and Found and Connections Abound, a news source for the infertility blogosphere. Her infertility book, The Land of If, is forthcoming from Seal Press in Spring 2009. She is also an editor at Bridges, the awareness consortium and the keeper of the list for IComLeavWe (International Comment Leaving Week), which is now open for October. Join along because who doesn't love comments?