Lazy Lyndsie's Cancer is Back

[WonderingInWA]

Are you trying to say everyone in the south gets married at 12 or some other ridiculous thing like that? Just FYI, a quick google search will show you that Washington and most of the southern US have the same average marrying age -26 - while youngest ages are closer to you in Utah, Idaho & Wyoming. So she really she is no spring chicken in terms of girls out west and younger than average for the south.

Uh, no. But a majority of the fundies we watch here on FJ are from the south and they tend to marry before 20 or early 20s. Heck, my own grandmother was from the south and married at 16! I suppose it has a lot to do with culture and educational opportunities. Lots of factors influence marriage age. But in my immediate social arena, most people I know marry around 27-30 (college, then career development) and it does seem like the southerners marry much younger.

Thanks for doing the research. BTW, Utah and Idaho are heavily Mormon (I've lived in both) and those peeps marry young (after the boy-man returns from his mission!), and I don't know what's up with Wyoming.

[dairyfreelife]

Uh, no. But a majority of the fundies we watch here on FJ are from the south and they tend to marry before 20 or early 20s. Heck, my own grandmother was from the south and married at 16! I suppose it has a lot to do with culture and educational opportunities. Lots of factors influence marriage age. But in my immediate social arena, most people I know marry around 27-30 (college, then career development) and it does seem like the southerners marry much younger.

Thanks for doing the research. BTW, Utah and Idaho are heavily Mormon (I've lived in both) and those peeps marry young (after the boy-man returns from his mission!), and I don't know what's up with Wyoming.

I'm from the south and I'd say it's a mix. I know people who married young and many others who did not, including myself. Your grandmother is not an example of typical marrying age because times were different. My grandmother got married at 18. None of her children or grandchildren married at 18 (youngest grandchild is almost 19 and not getting married any time soon). My great-grandmothers got married between the ages of 16-18 as well. It was normal back then. It's not that normal now. I know very, very few people who got married under the age of 20. Mid-20s is actually the most common. Also, the more educated the person the later the marrying age seems to be. We all know fundie children are not usually highly educated people (as in college educated). The goal in fundie land is to marry and have lots of babies for Jesus so marrying young is vital to getting more babies.

[nelliebelle1197]

Uh, no. But a majority of the fundies we watch here on FJ are from the south and they tend to marry before 20 or early 20s. Heck, my own grandmother was from the south and married at 16! I suppose it has a lot to do with culture and educational opportunities. Lots of factors influence marriage age. But in my immediate social arena, most people I know marry around 27-30 (college, then career development) and it does seem like the southerners marry much younger.

Thanks for doing the research. BTW, Utah and Idaho are heavily Mormon (I've lived in both) and those peeps marry young (after the boy-man returns from his mission!), and I don't know what's up with Wyoming.

I think it does have more to do with education and custom specific to fundie culture than region. Doesn't Wyoming have a lot of Mormons, too?

[WonderingInWA]

I think it does have more to do with education and custom specific to fundie culture than region. Doesn't Wyoming have a lot of Mormons, too?

I don't know the Mormon saturation in Wyoming. I know the population density is one of the lowest of all states, so maybe the marriage rates are higher among young people because they don't leave the state? I can't explain that one.

[JMarie]

This is unfortunate. Nobody deserves to have cancer, and nobody deserves a relapse. I'm glad her family is helping out.

[Mama Mia]

I think people that are eager to have a family will adopt from wherever they get the least amount of torture. Any kind of drunk, jobless, substance abusing, child beating, child raping asshole is allowed to keep their kids and the worst they are likely to have to go through is a few visits from the cps.

Hard working, sober, clean, tidy, loving couples are given all kinds of shit before they can adopt a child and they drag out the adoption process for as long as they can, for no good reason whatsoever.

Basically, you are talking about several separate issues. It isn't a direct case of bad parents should give up their children so it's easier for loving stable families to adopt them.

Yes, lots of children are born to and raised by unfit parents. Way too many of those kids fall completely through the cracks and never receive help. But many do become involved with CPS. Generally the parents will work to fix whatever problems in order to keep the children at home or have them returned from Foster care. It is unusual to have a situation so severe that the parents aren't at least given a shot at fixing what went wrong.

Sometimes the kids are returned. Sometimes they stay in foster care and are eventually released for adoption. Fostering children, and adopting children through Foster care is great. But it's not for everyone. For one, by the time parental rights are terminated the children are usually older. People tend to want to adopt babies so that they are the parent for the child's entire life. Additionally the children who are available for adoption through Foster care, and not adopted immediately, usually fall into one or more of these categories- significant medical issues, part of a sibling group, school- age or teen and/or lots of behavioral/ emotional issues from the entire situation. I think it's good if people try to stretch their definition of what they are willing to take on. But I think it's a really bad idea for an adoptive parent to knowingly take on much more than they can personally handle just because they feel they "should".

There is a very good reason that it can take a long time and jumping through a lot of hoops to adopt. Most people want healthy babies who are voluntarily placed for adoption. And there just aren't very many of them. In most of society ( at least the U.S.) there is no longer a stigma to giving birth out of wedlock. In fact close to half of children are born to unmarried parents. Women who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant generally decide to raise their child. Women who adamantly don't feel able to raise a child from that pregnancy also have two other options than adoption. They might choose an abortion. Or her family / dad/ dad's family might raise the child.

Current social structures just dont leave as many healthy infants available for adoption as there are parents who want to adopt. Additionally, the biological mother in a voluntary adoption generally picks the parents she wants for her child.

[Vex]

I feel terrible for Lyndsie's family, especially her kids. Cancer is the worst and I really do hope she can recover, although since this is her 4th occurrence of ovarian cancer it seems unlikely.

That said, she and her husband did a shitty, selfish thing. I was there for the Aubrey 1.0 drama and it was awful. Of course, she's probably matured over the years and I really do think she loves those healthy newborns she adopted, but still. She went into this knowing it was a possibility, a strong one. I don't believe a personal desire to be a parent trumps a child's right to stability.

Lazy Lyndsie is how we all know her. This is a snark site and having cancer does not make a person into a saint. I'm not saying Lyndsie is a bad person, but cancer happens to bad people too. It means they suffer and it's awful, but I highly doubt Lyndsie is so bereft of things to do that she's reading here.

[whoviana]

She's not likely to recover from it for the nth time. I feel badly for all of them, especially the children.

[Feberin]

I think part of the rush to adopt was because of the fundie lite subcultures they are apart of. Daniel was 25 and Lyndsie was 23, when they started the process and they had only been married a year. Some of their friends and relatives that were around the same age were already starting their families. I think Daniel and Lyndsie could have been feeling that they didn't quite fit in with fundie lite friends and relatives. I don't know if D&L had friends that weren't fundie lite/fundie. I remember on the first blog Lyndsie would write about whenever friends or relatives had babies. Maybe, if D&L weren't fundie lite, there might not have been a rush to adopt.

I agree that their social group was having children already and that probably did make them feel more rushed. I remember all the posts about X friend having a baby or Y was expecting their third. However I think it was so incredibly irresponsible to adopt when she didn't have a clean bill of health. She still had cancer cells around the time of Audrey Anne. Her sister was still unmarried and without children so I have to imagine there may have also been a few friends in a similar situation. While they may have been the exception to their married friends the children's well being should be put ahead of their own desires. Having lost a mother to cancer as a child it always really concerned me that she would go through with adoption when there was such a high chance of the cancer coming back. Also not having the money to adopt at the time is another reason why waiting made sense. I understand adoption is expensive but they were fundraising for like $100 home study cost. I also always thought either she was healthy enough to work and should have been working to put their own money towards their adoption or she wasn't healthy enough to work and shouldn't have been adopting due to her health.

[WonderingInWA]

While Lyndsie was still blogging, someone asked her why she didn't work (this during the time they were fundraising for Aubrey v1.0). All she said was Daniel made enough for them to live on and that she didn't need to work. But why the begging bowl was out for a $1,000 homestudy then? No one knows. Awhile later, she had a yard sale and started selling Mary Kay, so I'm not sure if that was in response to that or not. I'm pretty sure they knew FJ was talking about her and that probably played a role in her shutting down her blog.

[Hane]

It bothered me when she, shortly after her wedding, put up a FB money-grab page titled "A Love Worth Waiting For." As I recall, she and her husband were able to adopt their son a big two years after they got married--micro-seconds in adoption reality. Hardly delayed gratification.

One of our Scandinavian members commented, after seeing the posts about the Aubrey v1.0 baby shower (two months before Aubrey v1.0 was even BORN, much less made available for adoption) that the shower looked like a stereotype of everything American: everything pink, brand-new, pricy, and monogrammed--including a pink, monogrammed Bible for the baby. The Jesusy talk thrown in made the whole mess look even more cheap and superficial.

The Lyndsie (God, how I hate that cutesy spelling) situation appalled me: she wanted marriage and comfy suburban life and a baby girl and she wanted them NOW, dammit, because she was ENTITLED to them as part of her chosen lifestyle--cancer and reality be damned.

[gustava]

It bothered me when she, shortly after her wedding, put up a FB money-grab page titled "A Love Worth Waiting For." As I recall, she and her husband were able to adopt their son a big two years after they got married--micro-seconds in adoption reality. Hardly delayed gratification.

One of our Scandinavian members commented, after seeing the posts about the Aubrey v1.0 baby shower (two months before Aubrey v1.0 was even BORN, much less made available for adoption) that the shower looked like a stereotype of everything American: everything pink, brand-new, pricy, and monogrammed--including a pink, monogrammed Bible for the baby. The Jesusy talk thrown in made the whole mess look even more cheap and superficial.

The Lyndsie (God, how I hate that cutesy spelling) situation appalled me: she wanted marriage and comfy suburban life and a baby girl and she wanted them NOW, dammit, because she was ENTITLED to them as part of her chosen lifestyle--cancer and reality be damned.

:agree:

[CelticGoddess]

If she truly loved children, she wouldn't have adopted two of them when she wasn't free of cancer.

This! Ovarian cancer is aggressive in the first place and as she still had cancer cells in her body, it was just selfish on her part. I really feel for her children.

[CelticGoddess]

Shame on her for adopting and wearing makeup and TJ maxx discount clothing!

F off guys. Rather have more adoptive parents than couples selfishly spending money trying to conceive!

This poor woman. Nobody deserves to have crap talked about them when they are going through something like this. Stop being dicks.

This woman KNEW she still had cancer cells when she adopted. This "poor" woman would have been educated by her oncologist about the risks of the cancer metastasizing, about the risk of a recurrence. This "poor" woman only thought of her self, not leaving behind two children. She should have thought of the fact that in order to be considered in remission, you need 5 years. Not 3, not 4. And each recurrence increases the odds of death. But no, she needed to have her babies to show off.

She was selfish. She was the dick. Not us.

[Clementine]

This woman KNEW she still had cancer cells when she adopted. This "poor" woman would have been educated by her oncologist about the risks of the cancer metastasizing, about the risk of a recurrence. This "poor" woman only thought of her self, not leaving behind two children. She should have thought of the fact that in order to be considered in remission, you need 5 years. Not 3, not 4. And each recurrence increases the odds of death. But no, she needed to have her babies to show off.

She was selfish. She was the dick. Not us.

I wonder if she told the birth mother(s) about not being cancer free or if she decided to just keep it a secret.

[whoviana]

What about the authorities?!

I wonder if she told the birth mother(s) about not being cancer free or if she decided to just keep it a secret.

[lilwriter85]

I agree that their social group was having children already and that probably did make them feel more rushed. I remember all the posts about X friend having a baby or Y was expecting their third. However I think it was so incredibly irresponsible to adopt when she didn't have a clean bill of health. She still had cancer cells around the time of Audrey Anne. Her sister was still unmarried and without children so I have to imagine there may have also been a few friends in a similar situation. While they may have been the exception to their married friends the children's well being should be put ahead of their own desires. Having lost a mother to cancer as a child it always really concerned me that she would go through with adoption when there was such a high chance of the cancer coming back. Also not having the money to adopt at the time is another reason why waiting made sense. I understand adoption is expensive but they were fundraising for like $100 home study cost. I also always thought either she was healthy enough to work and should have been working to put their own money towards their adoption or she wasn't healthy enough to work and shouldn't have been adopting due to her health.

How much younger is Lyndsie's sister? A year or two younger? I think some of Daniel's siblings were a little bit younger and unmarried at the time too. I agree, there had to be a few other fundie lite, friends male and female, who were unmarried and without kids. But again, Lyndsie was frequently blogging about new babies being born to friends and relatives and she could have been feeling "behind" in a way. It is difficult to see friends and relatives doing things that you can't exactly do right away. I did have sympathy for Lyndsie on that.

The home study was over $1000. I joined FJ yuku almost a year after the disrupted adoption. I got sucked in right away because I had never really heard of couples doing adoption fundraising. I have a family friend whose adoption of a daughter was partially funded by her parents and in-laws. That family friend and her husband both worked too. That happened back in the mid 90s. When I found out about Lyndsie on FJ yuku, I read some of the older Lyndsie threads and the blog entries that were left up about the disrupted adoptions. FJers pointed out that around the time they were fundraising for the home study money, Daniel and Lyndsie had buying expensive electronics and went on a vacation sometime before that or around the same time. I can see why people were turned off. It was a friend who suggested the online donation link. Then that expanded to fundraising for the adoption, after D&L passed the home study.

There was constant questioning of whether Lyndsie could work or not. Some FJers had the theory that she was on disability because of the cancer. But, one thing, that suggested to me, that she was in good health and capable of working was that she listed a goal of running a 5k. I also remember her going to Zumba or exercise classes. If she was back then in good enough condition to be doing that stuff, she was capable of working at least part time. Lyndsie was questioned on the first blog about working. One answer was that after she married Daniel, she no longer desired a career or job. Sometime before she had cancer, she was working at a salon as an assistant and she did consider a cosmetology career. The other time, Lyndsie was asked on the blog about not working, she said the reason was private.

I hate to say this, but the only way, I could ever see myself donating to adoption fund or an IVF fund, is if both spouses are working. Both spouses wouldn't need to have full time jobs. There would need to be effort on both of them, to at least meet the people donating to them halfway in a sense. Now, Lyndsie seem to have matured after the disrupted adoption and that was when she said they were doing more to save money like shopping at TJ Maxx, Target, and thrift stores. I also remember they were doing rummage sales at friends' houses. But, I still thought that Lyndsie should have been working part time.

Another thing with Lyndsie's first blog, was that she often linked to blogs of other couples hoping to adopt. There were some couples, in which the only the husband worked. But some of those types of couples were bit older than D&L. Through google searches on adoption fundraising, I stumbled onto some other blogs. One blog was of a Mormon couple in Utah. The husband worked in a family HVAC business and the wife worked for another business. They did some fundraising and they mentioned their parents helping out too. That couple ended up adopting a baby boy and the wife quit her job soon after. Not really surprising since they were Mormon. But I really liked that couple a lot more than Daniel and Lyndsie. It also kind of me mad at times, that a couple like Daniel and Lyndsie that was quite young was able to easily adopt two kids, while couples that were older and more established were still waiting.

[WonderingInWA]

There is at least one child between Lyndsie and her younger sister Kendyl (oh, all those Y's!).

It's Lyndsie, Chandler, Kendyl, Madison, and then maybe Ansley, and then some mix of Garrison, Jackson, and Ellyn. There is one boy's name missing here.

I think Lyndsie's mother aspired to be a beauty queen and probably competed in some pageants. Both Lynside and Kendyl were placed in pageants (per Lynsdie's old blog) which taught them that beauty is very important in their culture (and that translated to the spackle in adulthood, I guess). LIPSTICK IS ESSENTIAL!

[lilwriter85]

While Lyndsie was still blogging, someone asked her why she didn't work (this during the time they were fundraising for Aubrey v1.0). All she said was Daniel made enough for them to live on and that she didn't need to work. But why the begging bowl was out for a $1,000 homestudy then? No one knows. Awhile later, she had a yard sale and started selling Mary Kay, so I'm not sure if that was in response to that or not. I'm pretty sure they knew FJ was talking about her and that probably played a role in her shutting down her blog.

I recall her brother or someone claiming to be her brother posted on FJ yuku, claiming that FJ was the reason why the adoption didn't happen. The birth mother from disrupted adoption later found FJ sometime before the adoption of Ethan. The birth mother posted under the name Sunny and at first that FJ was entirely devoted to discussing Daniel and Lyndsie.. She said that she stayed in contact with Lyndsie even though she stopped the process with them and adopted her child to another family. IIRC, Sunny shared details of an email between her and Lyndsie. Lyndsie's first blog was gone sometime after that.

[WonderingInWA]

I recall her brother or someone claiming to be her brother posted on FJ yuku, claiming that FJ was the reason why the adoption didn't happen. The birth mother from disrupted adoption later found FJ sometime before the adoption of Ethan. The birth mother posted under the name Sunny and at first that FJ was entirely devoted to discussing Daniel and Lyndsie.. She said that she stayed in contact with Lyndsie even though she stopped the process with them and adopted her child to another family. IIRC, Sunny shared details of an email between her and Lyndsie. Lyndsie's first blog was gone sometime after that.

Yes, I remember all that, too. I don't know whether to believe all of it or not. My thought at the time was to believe Sunny was legitimate.

[lilwriter85]

Yes, I remember all that, too. I don't know whether to believe all of it or not. My thought at the time was to believe Sunny was legitimate.

I also think Sunny was legitimate. I remember Sunny said that part of the reason she stopped the process with D&L was because she didn't like how they answered a question she had. She never went into specifics. IIRC, she said that Lyndsie told her said she was cancer free and healthy.

If Lyndsie's brother was indeed posting way back when, he could've been lying about FJ being the reason the adoption happened. I actually believe that FJ wasn't the reason.

After Lyndsie and Daniel adopted Ethan and Aubrey, she did a guest posting or interview on another blog. There she said that there were other disrupted adoptions before Ethan and Aubrey 2.0. She only blogged about first disrupted adoption. Maybe there were other disrupted adoptions that she kept quiet on or maybe it was just that she and Daniel were interviewed by birth moms and not picked. I suspect that some birth moms, in addition to Sunny could have had background checks on D&L or lawyers could have looked into them, which included internet searches.

[snickerz]

she wanted marriage and comfy suburban life and a baby girl and she wanted them NOW, dammit, because she was ENTITLED to them as part of her chosen lifestyle--cancer and reality be damned.

Bingo. From her own mouth (the news article I posted earlier): "When I was 19, everything in my life was going just the way I had planned. I was going to attend cosmetology school and then marry the man of my dreams. We were going to have our perfect house and our perfect children and live happily ever after. Cancer was never a part of my perfect plan."

[Feberin]

The home study was over $1000.

Sorry for saying $100 instead of $1000. However anyone considering having a child by any means should have a spare $1000. My daughter's birth with pretty decent insurance was over $3000. I totally get a couple not having the $30K necessary to adopt but they should at least have a few thousand if they are financially stable enough to add children to their family.

[WonderingInWA]

Sorry for saying $100 instead of $1000. However anyone considering having a child by any means should have a spare $1000. My daughter's birth with pretty decent insurance was over $3000. I totally get a couple not having the $30K necessary to adopt but they should at least have a few thousand if they are financially stable enough to add children to their family.

Agreed! Children aren't free! I conceived mine naturally but didn't have a UC (unassisted childbirth) so dang it, even with good insurance, I still paid about $2500 out of pocket for my first baby's birth (hospital, no drugs, was there less than 24 hours), and that was 15 years ago.

Not sure what Lyndsie was thinking. Babies don't grow on trees for the pickin', no matter how you get 'em.

[lilwriter85]

Sorry for saying $100 instead of $1000. However anyone considering having a child by any means should have a spare $1000. My daughter's birth with pretty decent insurance was over $3000. I totally get a couple not having the $30K necessary to adopt but they should at least have a few thousand if they are financially stable enough to add children to their family.

It's ok, don't worry about it. Maybe, you misread the homestudy cost? It's ok, don't worry.

I agree, anyone considering having or adopting a child should at least have that amount to spare. I don't want to sound judgey on that, but it kind of makes me mad when at the same time, there are couples that wait,, to have or adopt kids, for money reasons. I also get a couple not having 30k for an adoption, especially a couple like D&L back then. Daniel's career had just started too, IIRC. He works at a Marine base and his job title is contract specialist. We have no idea what he makes and his pay has probably increased over the years.

Fundraising for IVF and/or surrogacy has been become a bit popular in some circles and there is debate over that too. There is a woman Rachelle Friedman who became popular in spinal cord injury community a few years ago. She got some media attention due in part because she was injured in a swimming pool sometime before she got married. Rachelle is a low level quadriplegic. She published a book and sometimes works as a motivational speaker. She and her husband got a lot of attention when they announced that a friend was going to be surrogate for them. IIRC, Rachelle can get pregnant, but she is on medications that would be risky for a pregnancy. Anyway, Rachelle and her husband can't afford all of the surrogacy costs. They set up a gofundme page with a goal of 25k. They have raised close to 15k and the surrogate is pregnant. I'm guessing that they possibly have some kind of payment plan in place with clinics and hospitals and are using the donations as they come in for bills.

People did question Rachelle and her husband wanting children, but not being able to afford the surrogacy costs. She said some of the fees related to surrogacy were waived and that some grants covered the costs and the surrogate is a friend who is waiving compensation. She says that she and her husband will be able to support the child. I do believe her on that point. This might sound bad of me, but I sometimes wonder if there is more of a sympathy factor Rachelle and her husband because of her disability. I have also wondered if there was more of a sympathy factor for Lydnsie due to her cancer bouts and the hysterectomy. I can sort of see a couple, in which both spouses are healthy and able bodied, not having much success in trying to fundraise for an adoption or surrogacy.