They skipped an important part of the story between these two steps, but there's more about it in the previous article from last year: [...] [...] So apparently it's true that the abortion ban was...
The closest clinic that could see her was in New Mexico, a 13-hour drive away.
She gave birth to Kendall and Olivia six months later.
The Pregnancy Center of the Coastal Bend, which advertises itself as the “#1 Source of Abortion Information” in the region, is one of thousands of crisis pregnancy centers across the United States, antiabortion organizations that are often religiously affiliated.
When Brooke showed up with her mom for her appointment, she had no idea she’d walked into a facility designed to dissuade people from getting abortions. She also didn’t know how much significance her form held for the staff: By signaling that she wanted an abortion, she became their first “AM” of the Texas Heartbeat Act.
Brooke heard about the center from her mom’s friend, who knew she needed an ultrasound. This place offered them free.
[...]
When she found out Brooke was pregnant, Terri Thomas [her mother] told her daughter to get an abortion. While she was a devout Christian, going to church a few times a week and twice on Sundays, she had her own views on this particular issue.
[...]
The technician gasped.
It was twins. And they were 12 weeks along.
“Are you sure?” Brooke said.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Thomas [her mother] recalled saying as she jumped up and down. “This is a miracle from the Lord. We are having these babies.”
Brooke felt like she was floating above herself, watching the scene below. Her mom was calling the twins “my babies,” promising Brooke she would take care of everything, as the ultrasound technician told her how much she loved being a twin.
If she really tried, Brooke thought she could make it to New Mexico. Her older brother would probably lend her the money to get there. But she couldn’t stop staring at the pulsing yellow line on the ultrasound screen.
She wondered: If her babies had heartbeats, as these women said they did, was aborting them murder? Eventually, Arnholt [the advocate assigned to her case] turned to Brooke and asked whether she’d be keeping them.
Brooke heard herself saying “yes.”
So apparently it's true that the abortion ban was a cause of her having kids. It also seems true that she was persuaded to do it, with some high-pressure sales tactics like you'd see in a car dealership? When the anti-abortion advocates convinced her mother to switch sides, that seems like a turning point. But it also seems true that she was aware she had options and it was her own decision, sort of.
It's hard to generalize from one case, but maybe one way to think of it is that the abortion ban makes it considerably easier for nearby anti-abortion advocates to convince pregnant women who can be swayed. The "free ultrasound" pitch might not work on other women, though?
If that's your impression you should read up on fake abortion clinics. They will dress up in the trappings of a medical facility and lure women in with a promise of help. Then they'll lie about...
Exemplary
light persuasion
If that's your impression you should read up on fake abortion clinics. They will dress up in the trappings of a medical facility and lure women in with a promise of help. Then they'll lie about the amount of women who regret abortions, the pain the baby will feel, the health consequences for the mother. They'll show fake images about development at that age. They'll outnumber a panicked woman and promise her there are better options like adoption or dismiss concerns that the parents/partner won't be supportive. They'll passive aggressively invoke religious sentiments like it being a gift, a miracle, and if that doesn't work they may get cruel and talk about what your parents, partner, God, or community are going to think about you. If that still doesn't work and you ask for what you actually went there for they'll delay, or say they need to talk to your parents/partner. They may try to get you to delay past a point abortion becomes inconvenient.
They are well-funded organizations that outnumber legitimate clinics >3:1 that exist and are polished solely to subvert the choice of vulnerable women.
How far are we willing to go to divorce people’s responsibility and just simply blame anti-choice activists.
When their choice without the fruits of those anti-choice activists would have been different. You get that picture from a quick comparison of anti-choice strongholds and other areas.
Shocker, psychology exists, and a teenage mom isn't the best candidate for the mythical rational human. Amazon has made billions on a 1-Click buy patent. People save for retirement if you use nudges. Organ donation preference flips if you make it "opt-in" instead of "opt-out".
Same deal with black people in areas that reduced to a single polling stations. If they didn't vote because they don't want to stand in a 2 hour line that is the fault of the people intentionally creating that situation.
I’ll take a 13 hour drive over losing my life for 18+ years
Will you take a 13 hour drive which requires you to get a loan from your brother? Miss work, or lose your job if that isn't an option? Do you want to be forced to explain your situation to multiple parties, knowing how your town treated the last woman "sleeping with some deadbeat and thinking she was safe to go raw"? Go without anyone able to accompany you as emotional support?
Or are you going to choose that option an hour away that has some negative reviews but that's promising free ultrasounds and get shunted to a fake clinic?
I’m sure she had lackluster sex education though and that’s always a shame
My mother's Catholic education left women believing a middle finger is how you get pregnant. They had years of being told about eternal hellfire, the miracle of childbirth, and the iniquities of prophylactics.
You sound like you have your own issues going on with your acquaintance. As someone that cares about fixing some of this on a societal level I think blaming an individual is pointless. It's not just a shame, its causal. As a cohort society failed women that made it to 19 believing those things, or not having options like convenient birth control.
Just adding on to your thorough comment, where you quoted this: Getting an abortion also is being responsible. Making a decision to correct a potentially life-threatening medical risk and to not...
Just adding on to your thorough comment, where you quoted this:
How far are we willing to go to divorce people’s responsibility
Getting an abortion also is being responsible. Making a decision to correct a potentially life-threatening medical risk and to not give birth when you can't reasonably support a child, and society refuses to reasonably support the potential child, is the responsible action.
Being anti-choice is socially irresponsible. Not demanding subsidized, widely accessible birth control is socially irresponsible. Actively working to force births, like agents of those fake clinics, is entirely antisocial.
I think it's important to remember that the woman was under the age of 25 and so her brain may not have been fully developed for rational decision making. Plus she was at a life stage of having...
I think it's important to remember that the woman was under the age of 25 and so her brain may not have been fully developed for rational decision making. Plus she was at a life stage of having never lived outside her parents' household.
I think with both of these factors she may have had less ability to make a rational decision (and the article makes it seem her decision was emotional) and that her mother would have had a stronger influence. E.g., it seems like she wanted an abortion until her mother decided that she'd rather have grand-twins.
I posted about this because I was curious about how much agency she had. Pro-choice rhetoric often skips over that, treating women as primarily victims. But even when the law is against you, there...
I posted about this because I was curious about how much agency she had. Pro-choice rhetoric often skips over that, treating women as primarily victims. But even when the law is against you, there are still choices.
I think you might have an excessively binary understanding of how people make decisions? Sales tactics work, sometimes. People make decisions they later regret. Also, fraud is all about tricking people into doing things, not forcing them. That’s why informed consent is the usual standard, not “was she bound and gagged.”
We also typically think of decisions as being made by individuals and sometimes it’s better thought of as a group decision. In this case, I don’t think it quite amounts to fraud, but it seems like it was a family decision as much as an individual one, heavily influenced by religion / ideology.
Understanding how people make decisions seems more interesting than deciding on a single person to blame. In legal cases there is a “but for” test about what caused an accident and I see a lot of causes in this case that meet that standard, things that could have gone differently.
It’s also true that people make dumb mistakes all the time. It’s the nature of things that the consequences are often nothing (you get away with it) but sometimes randomly severe, even fatal. This is good reason to be careful and to encourage others to be careful, but life-altering consequences of having some fun are not justice. We don’t have to like it and if there’s a way to change that, we should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NNpkv3Us1I Link for the lazy, allow John Oliver to describe just how insidious these places are. I recall a sign for one directly across from one of the exits of...
Link for the lazy, allow John Oliver to describe just how insidious these places are. I recall a sign for one directly across from one of the exits of my old community college years ago. I regret not tearing it down.
One of my podcasts had an episode about them a while back. Apparently one of their newer tactics is to rent or buy a building next to a clinic that offers abortions, put out a big sign with a name...
One of my podcasts had an episode about them a while back.
Apparently one of their newer tactics is to rent or buy a building next to a clinic that offers abortions, put out a big sign with a name that is nearly the same as that clinic, and basically just pretend to be that clinic so people who are coming in for their appointment will wander in there instead.
In that Last Week Tonight episode, it shows something like that and the abortion clinic paints the walkway in front yellow. One can only assume the CPC then painted their front walkway yellow...
In that Last Week Tonight episode, it shows something like that and the abortion clinic paints the walkway in front yellow. One can only assume the CPC then painted their front walkway yellow after that, and then probably uses lines like "oh yeah they painted their walkway yellow to confuse pregnant women and try to trick them into coming into their abortion hellfire clinic, but it's a good thing you found us".
I think the abortion discussion here pretty much speaks for itself. But this like just pisses me off. God this is infuriating. It seems to me like she had to grow up and become a woman the second...
I think the abortion discussion here pretty much speaks for itself. But this like just pisses me off.
“Look, boys are boys,” [Brooke's brother] would tell her. “Give him time to be a man.”
God this is infuriating. It seems to me like she had to grow up and become a woman the second she found out she was pregnant and she never looked back. She clearly has some self-esteem and trust issues, but generally speaking it seems like she's doing a good job despite the situation they're in. But he got to keep on being a dumb little boy and continues to be a man-child, only stepping up for the fun (ie, easy) parts of being a dad.
I sincerely hope the time in the military and the couples counseling they're doing helps put him on the right track because I can't imagine their marriage will end well if he doesn't. She's getting her career started and won't be dependent on him anymore and the childish things he does that she overlooks are going to be less and less tolerable when she knows she has a way out.
Typically I would tend to agree with you, and I certainly don't advocate for joining the military in general. But of all people, a teenage boy who ended up as the father of twins, who plays video...
Typically I would tend to agree with you, and I certainly don't advocate for joining the military in general. But of all people, a teenage boy who ended up as the father of twins, who plays video games too much and doesn't seem to be putting much effort into parenting, is probably the most likely person to benefit from the rigid structure and expectations of the military. Plus, the mother is taking advantage of the career resources for spouses, which seems positive. Honestly the main person who benefits is the mother, who knows how this kid would manage to support her and two babies otherwise - he probably wouldn't. (My little brother is a frankly lazy, deadbeat, teenage dad who can't hold a job, and as strange as it is to admit as someone who is not generally supportive of the military, I'd probably support him going into the military.)
It's obviously not an ideal situation, but it might be the best option for them right now, and I don't think the commenter necessarily had a "boomer" mindset behind their comment.
No, I definitely didn't. If this were 10-15 years ago and he were getting shipped off to the middle east in a combat role I'd be entirely opposed to the military as a solution to his problem, even...
I don't think the commenter necessarily had a "boomer" mindset behind their comment.
No, I definitely didn't. If this were 10-15 years ago and he were getting shipped off to the middle east in a combat role I'd be entirely opposed to the military as a solution to his problem, even given his circumstances. But the way I see it he has a safe, guaranteed, non-combat job with one of the safer branches of the military on a domestic base. If that coupled with the reality of his situation and counseling can't pull his head out of his own ass, I don't know what could.
Do you think that maybe Billy is being too harshly judged in this thread based solely on an article? As someone who became a parent relatively young and before I was able to finish school, I...
Do you think that maybe Billy is being too harshly judged in this thread based solely on an article? As someone who became a parent relatively young and before I was able to finish school, I sympathize with both of them. The main takeaway people should get from this article is that neither of them are mature enough to be married and be parents. It highlights the fact that the use of contraception should not be stigmatized at all and heavily encouraged.
Maybe you're right. I get that the point of the article is that the whole situation is unfair to them both, and I agree that it is, but it just feels especially unfair to her. She had to step up...
Maybe you're right. I get that the point of the article is that the whole situation is unfair to them both, and I agree that it is, but it just feels especially unfair to her. She had to step up right away and he got to keep being a typical teenager and when she tried to vent about how frustrating that was, she got some sexist "give him time to be a man" remark. Like did she get time to be a woman? To be a mother? No, she seemingly had to immediately jump into those responsibilities. So why does he get to fart around playing video games while she's full-time parenting? I just got a little hung up on what I perceive to be some unfair and sexist remarks from her own family.
He went through boot camp, works a full time military job and they were both torn away from their support systems. Many people demonize video game playing but ignore the amount of time people...
He went through boot camp, works a full time military job and they were both torn away from their support systems. Many people demonize video game playing but ignore the amount of time people spend on their phones or watching streaming video usually because people have a tendency to downplay the downsides of their own coping mechanisms. There could be unhealthy habits that both of them are participating in that are not addressed in the article. This article is a very small window on their life from one person's perspective.
When Brooke met Billy at a skate park in Corpus Christi, Tex., in May 2021, she could not have predicted any piece of the life she was now living. She’d been gearing up for real estate school, enjoying long days at the beach with her new boyfriend. Then she found out she was three months pregnant. And because of a new law, she could no longer get an abortion in Texas. The closest clinic that could see her was in New Mexico, a 13-hour drive away.
She gave birth to Kendall and Olivia six months later.
Brooke, Billy and their baby girls appeared in a story in The Washington Post just days before Roe v. Wade was overturned last summer, thrusting the family into a polarized national debate and turning them into symbols they never imagined they’d become.
For many readers, Brooke and Billy’s story was a Rorschach test, with each side of the abortion debate claiming the teenagers’ experiences as validation of their own views. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) called the story “powerfully pro-life.” Abortion rights advocates decried the Texas law that compelled an ambitious young woman to abandon her education and raise two kids on the $9.75 an hour her then-boyfriend made working at a burrito restaurant. People on both sides of the issue donated more than $80,000 to a GoFundMe account that Brooke created, providing a financial cushion the couple says has kept them out of debt.
I don't think they have no effect, they're just typically possible to skirt around if you have enough money. Fundamentally, they punish poor people and other disadvantaged communities and I...
I don't think they have no effect, they're just typically possible to skirt around if you have enough money.
Fundamentally, they punish poor people and other disadvantaged communities and I genuinely believe that's by design. The average supporter might believe it's about "protecting the children", but I truly believe that the reason there's any political support for abortion bans is because they help keep people "in their place".
It costs about 500€ to get everything done which is not that much even for Polish standards but you are right it does have some effect, however it only affects people with literally no income that...
It costs about 500€ to get everything done which is not that much even for Polish standards but you are right it does have some effect, however it only affects people with literally no income that shouldn't have any children in the first place due to lack of proper conditions to raise them. Fortunately in Poland we don't have such disparity between people and you really have to actively avoid doing anything that brings money to be poor in Poland so the effect is really limited to extreme cases.
So, to step outside the focus for a second, this piece is really well written. It's structured to whip your perceptions of the parents back and forth so you are left feeling ambiguous about the...
So, to step outside the focus for a second, this piece is really well written. It's structured to whip your perceptions of the parents back and forth so you are left feeling ambiguous about the two and I think it's really well done.
You know, now that you mention it…I think you’re right. I was ready to conclude the guy here is just an immature resentful man child who fails to appreciate his partner and her struggles. At...
You know, now that you mention it…I think you’re right. I was ready to conclude the guy here is just an immature resentful man child who fails to appreciate his partner and her struggles. At another point, I was ready to conclude she is an immature resentful nag who fails to appreciate her partner and his struggles. In the end, I’m not sure where I stand. I’m left with this feeling that they were both unprepared for this and there really is no “bad guy”. Just two people struggling.
Sometimes I’m reminded that life is hard and filled with layers of grey and nuance.
They skipped an important part of the story between these two steps, but there's more about it in the previous article from last year:
[...]
[...]
So apparently it's true that the abortion ban was a cause of her having kids. It also seems true that she was persuaded to do it, with some high-pressure sales tactics like you'd see in a car dealership? When the anti-abortion advocates convinced her mother to switch sides, that seems like a turning point. But it also seems true that she was aware she had options and it was her own decision, sort of.
It's hard to generalize from one case, but maybe one way to think of it is that the abortion ban makes it considerably easier for nearby anti-abortion advocates to convince pregnant women who can be swayed. The "free ultrasound" pitch might not work on other women, though?
If that's your impression you should read up on fake abortion clinics. They will dress up in the trappings of a medical facility and lure women in with a promise of help. Then they'll lie about the amount of women who regret abortions, the pain the baby will feel, the health consequences for the mother. They'll show fake images about development at that age. They'll outnumber a panicked woman and promise her there are better options like adoption or dismiss concerns that the parents/partner won't be supportive. They'll passive aggressively invoke religious sentiments like it being a gift, a miracle, and if that doesn't work they may get cruel and talk about what your parents, partner, God, or community are going to think about you. If that still doesn't work and you ask for what you actually went there for they'll delay, or say they need to talk to your parents/partner. They may try to get you to delay past a point abortion becomes inconvenient.
They are well-funded organizations that outnumber legitimate clinics >3:1 that exist and are polished solely to subvert the choice of vulnerable women.
When their choice without the fruits of those anti-choice activists would have been different. You get that picture from a quick comparison of anti-choice strongholds and other areas.
Shocker, psychology exists, and a teenage mom isn't the best candidate for the mythical rational human. Amazon has made billions on a 1-Click buy patent. People save for retirement if you use nudges. Organ donation preference flips if you make it "opt-in" instead of "opt-out".
Same deal with black people in areas that reduced to a single polling stations. If they didn't vote because they don't want to stand in a 2 hour line that is the fault of the people intentionally creating that situation.
Will you take a 13 hour drive which requires you to get a loan from your brother? Miss work, or lose your job if that isn't an option? Do you want to be forced to explain your situation to multiple parties, knowing how your town treated the last woman "sleeping with some deadbeat and thinking she was safe to go raw"? Go without anyone able to accompany you as emotional support?
Or are you going to choose that option an hour away that has some negative reviews but that's promising free ultrasounds and get shunted to a fake clinic?
My mother's Catholic education left women believing a middle finger is how you get pregnant. They had years of being told about eternal hellfire, the miracle of childbirth, and the iniquities of prophylactics.
You sound like you have your own issues going on with your acquaintance. As someone that cares about fixing some of this on a societal level I think blaming an individual is pointless. It's not just a shame, its causal. As a cohort society failed women that made it to 19 believing those things, or not having options like convenient birth control.
Just adding on to your thorough comment, where you quoted this:
Getting an abortion also is being responsible. Making a decision to correct a potentially life-threatening medical risk and to not give birth when you can't reasonably support a child, and society refuses to reasonably support the potential child, is the responsible action.
Being anti-choice is socially irresponsible. Not demanding subsidized, widely accessible birth control is socially irresponsible. Actively working to force births, like agents of those fake clinics, is entirely antisocial.
I think it's important to remember that the woman was under the age of 25 and so her brain may not have been fully developed for rational decision making. Plus she was at a life stage of having never lived outside her parents' household.
I think with both of these factors she may have had less ability to make a rational decision (and the article makes it seem her decision was emotional) and that her mother would have had a stronger influence. E.g., it seems like she wanted an abortion until her mother decided that she'd rather have grand-twins.
I posted about this because I was curious about how much agency she had. Pro-choice rhetoric often skips over that, treating women as primarily victims. But even when the law is against you, there are still choices.
I think you might have an excessively binary understanding of how people make decisions? Sales tactics work, sometimes. People make decisions they later regret. Also, fraud is all about tricking people into doing things, not forcing them. That’s why informed consent is the usual standard, not “was she bound and gagged.”
We also typically think of decisions as being made by individuals and sometimes it’s better thought of as a group decision. In this case, I don’t think it quite amounts to fraud, but it seems like it was a family decision as much as an individual one, heavily influenced by religion / ideology.
Understanding how people make decisions seems more interesting than deciding on a single person to blame. In legal cases there is a “but for” test about what caused an accident and I see a lot of causes in this case that meet that standard, things that could have gone differently.
It’s also true that people make dumb mistakes all the time. It’s the nature of things that the consequences are often nothing (you get away with it) but sometimes randomly severe, even fatal. This is good reason to be careful and to encourage others to be careful, but life-altering consequences of having some fun are not justice. We don’t have to like it and if there’s a way to change that, we should.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NNpkv3Us1I
Link for the lazy, allow John Oliver to describe just how insidious these places are. I recall a sign for one directly across from one of the exits of my old community college years ago. I regret not tearing it down.
You're right to be angry.
One of my podcasts had an episode about them a while back.
Apparently one of their newer tactics is to rent or buy a building next to a clinic that offers abortions, put out a big sign with a name that is nearly the same as that clinic, and basically just pretend to be that clinic so people who are coming in for their appointment will wander in there instead.
In that Last Week Tonight episode, it shows something like that and the abortion clinic paints the walkway in front yellow. One can only assume the CPC then painted their front walkway yellow after that, and then probably uses lines like "oh yeah they painted their walkway yellow to confuse pregnant women and try to trick them into coming into their
abortionhellfire clinic, but it's a good thing you found us".I think the abortion discussion here pretty much speaks for itself. But this like just pisses me off.
God this is infuriating. It seems to me like she had to grow up and become a woman the second she found out she was pregnant and she never looked back. She clearly has some self-esteem and trust issues, but generally speaking it seems like she's doing a good job despite the situation they're in. But he got to keep on being a dumb little boy and continues to be a man-child, only stepping up for the fun (ie, easy) parts of being a dad.
I sincerely hope the time in the military and the couples counseling they're doing helps put him on the right track because I can't imagine their marriage will end well if he doesn't. She's getting her career started and won't be dependent on him anymore and the childish things he does that she overlooks are going to be less and less tolerable when she knows she has a way out.
Didn't expect good ol' boomer "military will fix a person" talk here.
Typically I would tend to agree with you, and I certainly don't advocate for joining the military in general. But of all people, a teenage boy who ended up as the father of twins, who plays video games too much and doesn't seem to be putting much effort into parenting, is probably the most likely person to benefit from the rigid structure and expectations of the military. Plus, the mother is taking advantage of the career resources for spouses, which seems positive. Honestly the main person who benefits is the mother, who knows how this kid would manage to support her and two babies otherwise - he probably wouldn't. (My little brother is a frankly lazy, deadbeat, teenage dad who can't hold a job, and as strange as it is to admit as someone who is not generally supportive of the military, I'd probably support him going into the military.)
It's obviously not an ideal situation, but it might be the best option for them right now, and I don't think the commenter necessarily had a "boomer" mindset behind their comment.
No, I definitely didn't. If this were 10-15 years ago and he were getting shipped off to the middle east in a combat role I'd be entirely opposed to the military as a solution to his problem, even given his circumstances. But the way I see it he has a safe, guaranteed, non-combat job with one of the safer branches of the military on a domestic base. If that coupled with the reality of his situation and counseling can't pull his head out of his own ass, I don't know what could.
Do you think that maybe Billy is being too harshly judged in this thread based solely on an article? As someone who became a parent relatively young and before I was able to finish school, I sympathize with both of them. The main takeaway people should get from this article is that neither of them are mature enough to be married and be parents. It highlights the fact that the use of contraception should not be stigmatized at all and heavily encouraged.
Maybe you're right. I get that the point of the article is that the whole situation is unfair to them both, and I agree that it is, but it just feels especially unfair to her. She had to step up right away and he got to keep being a typical teenager and when she tried to vent about how frustrating that was, she got some sexist "give him time to be a man" remark. Like did she get time to be a woman? To be a mother? No, she seemingly had to immediately jump into those responsibilities. So why does he get to fart around playing video games while she's full-time parenting? I just got a little hung up on what I perceive to be some unfair and sexist remarks from her own family.
He went through boot camp, works a full time military job and they were both torn away from their support systems. Many people demonize video game playing but ignore the amount of time people spend on their phones or watching streaming video usually because people have a tendency to downplay the downsides of their own coping mechanisms. There could be unhealthy habits that both of them are participating in that are not addressed in the article. This article is a very small window on their life from one person's perspective.
archive link
An abortion ban in Poland makes people have a trip to Czech Republic. That's how effective are these bans.
Do you have statistics to back that up? I doubt that abortion bans have no effect.
I don't think they have no effect, they're just typically possible to skirt around if you have enough money.
Fundamentally, they punish poor people and other disadvantaged communities and I genuinely believe that's by design. The average supporter might believe it's about "protecting the children", but I truly believe that the reason there's any political support for abortion bans is because they help keep people "in their place".
It costs about 500€ to get everything done which is not that much even for Polish standards but you are right it does have some effect, however it only affects people with literally no income that shouldn't have any children in the first place due to lack of proper conditions to raise them. Fortunately in Poland we don't have such disparity between people and you really have to actively avoid doing anything that brings money to be poor in Poland so the effect is really limited to extreme cases.
So, to step outside the focus for a second, this piece is really well written. It's structured to whip your perceptions of the parents back and forth so you are left feeling ambiguous about the two and I think it's really well done.
You know, now that you mention it…I think you’re right. I was ready to conclude the guy here is just an immature resentful man child who fails to appreciate his partner and her struggles. At another point, I was ready to conclude she is an immature resentful nag who fails to appreciate her partner and his struggles. In the end, I’m not sure where I stand. I’m left with this feeling that they were both unprepared for this and there really is no “bad guy”. Just two people struggling.
Sometimes I’m reminded that life is hard and filled with layers of grey and nuance.