Fame and fortune

[ailbhe]

I was asked to do an interview about traumatic birth for a freelance magazine-not-newspaper journalist, and I agreed on condition she questioned me in email not over the phone, and she did, and that's fine. Now I've been asked to do an interview for a company that are making a documentary for Channel 4.

I can't do it. I hate phonecalls. I have no desire to be on television. I don't want my name on television. I want to be my own editor, dammit, and I don't want to do it in an oral / aural medium. I can't put myself across like that - it doesn't work.

But undoubtedly my birth would have been easier to live with had I know that traumatic birth leading to PTSD was one of the possibilities. So if I did the interview, other people's lives might be easier.

But I have surgery on Tuesday. I haven't had a single appointment with a psychologist yet. I am squishing tears out of my eyes so that I can see to type this, because I feel so guilty about it - but it's much too early. I need to be a lot closer to well, physically and psychologically, before I can undertake anything as stressful as actual publicity.

And for this, I really do need to be my own editor.

Perhaps they could interview someone to speak on my behalf. Would that fill the same moral purpose?

I don't know. I've told them that I can't make any decisions until at least the week beginning 20 December. It's all too fragile now.

What should I do? (in the spirit of tossing a coin to see whether I'm disappointed when it lands).

Comments

[mollydot.livejournal.com]

You need to put yourself first. Family second. Rest of the world is a distant third.
This would apply even if you were well, but you're not better yet and it's even more important to put yourself first until you're recovered.

As you want to get your story out, if/when you're up to it, how about writing an article for a magazine? - either a general woman's magazine or a pregnancy one. As other people have said, you write very well. That's why I started reading your journal.

No guilt - it's not up to you to fix the world.

Right on

[razordemon.livejournal.com]

Looking out for yourself in this instance isn't selfishness -- it doesn't even need to be characterized in those terms.

But you do write extremely well and movingly.