Surprisingly, I have taken to Twitter like a duck to water, considering my former nose-in-the-air attitude toward it as a somewhat juvenile time-waster. Back in February or March, I was fortunate to be on a tiny Mastermind teleseminar generously provided by Sandra de Freitas (techchoach), and learned a bit on why/how this type of social networking could help widen my exposure in the coaching world. I cautiously dipped my toes in the water and within a month I was diving straight in. I have to admit that I have found it a fantastic tool to connect with people of similar interests, people with immense humour who brighten my day, knowledge of how other people are helping those suffering from infertility and pregnancy loss, news items from different countries I may never have discovered, and good exposure of my article-writing, phone coaching and aspirations to be a leader in the fertility-support field.
Do you use Twitter? You may know a bit about associated programs like Twilert, which sends me a daily digest of the tweets that mention various terms of interest to me, such as miscarriage, fertility, infertility, etc... The advantage is that I know what people are doing, thinking and talking about in those areas. The disadvantage is that, on a daily basis, I confront ignorant and even malicious usage of all those words; but, particularly about miscarriage. Without giving their authors credit, which may actually amuse and excite them, I will give you an example of them here, cutting out any particularly nasty words.
- "Oh, what a surprise,she now claims she had a miscarriage..hmmm, sympathy vote tactics me thinks."
- "lies i had a miscarriage...girl stop...you had an abortion."
- "Explosive diarrhea: The closest thing man will ever know to a painful miscarriage."
- is watching Kitty have a missed miscarriage. Gross."
- "You're a miscarriage gone wrong"
- "you had a miscarriage. God knows better than to allow life to be born to a crack whore like you"
These might not seem too bad to some of you. Others will be horrified by the usage of words that carry with them emotional memories of a traumatic event in their lives.
Not only does one person tweet this kind of rubbish, but others will then re-Tweet (RT) it, causing it to appear on page after page of Twitter and Twilert digests. As a professional in this area, I need to put some distance between me and them. My eye skips over the offensive words and the connotations that immediately spring to mind. When there are so many of them, I am sometimes forced to allow them in, automatically wondering who this foul-mouthed person is who thinks and speaks this way.
I assume that there are women out there, who have created a Twilert for miscarriage for the purpose of receiving information, tips, support and a place to find others who are suffering the same loss. Instead, they might find something that devastates them emotionally. Can they employ mental filters to ignore the junk and welcome the useful insights? Here are some tips:
- If you do sign up for Twilerts, try a more specific term, such as miscarriage support (miscarriage + support)
- Once you do discover other women (or men) who are dealing with the same circumstances as you, follow them & get them to follow you. Then you can both get their tweets direct to your home page, but also direct message (DM) them, so all of Twitter doesn't get in on your action.
- If someone's mean and nasty tweets really bother you, you can block them from appearing in your tweets (but not a twilert) or sending you a spam DM.
- If you do useTwilert for words that evoke an emotional response, skip quickly over the offensive material to the one you want to rea. Get involved quickly in replying to that person, following them, sending them a DM or looking at their website. This will provide distraction.
- Finally, you can employ a purely mental filter that makes you feel sorry for the authors of this work, imagining them to be uneducated, mean people with whom you don't want any connection. Consider them time-wasters; people who bring you down, rather than lift you up
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