Dilemmas, by their very definition, don’t offer easy or tidy resolutions. Now, toss in some deeply ingrained stereotypes, social and economic pressures, and reproductive siren songs and reckonings. Top it off with a healthy amount of identity sorting. What have you got? A hardy dilemma salad of sorts with some intense and, at times, biting…
Category: Choices
Time Warp Tuesday: Decisions
Most weeks come and go without much fanfare. They’re filled with work, exercise, meals, appointments, chores, gardening, a weekend hike, coffee with a friend, a movie, or cleaning out that one drawer that always seems to hold everything because you once wanted to get something off the counter. And then there are weeks like this. The week that…
Ending Fertility Treatment Equated with Madness?
Halloween may be over, but the chance to really scare the living daylights out of someone remains real 365 days a year. How you ask? Declare that you’re stepping away from the path to motherhood — and to really induce shrieks wave around a copy of Silent Sorority. That will seal the deal. Horrors! Of…
To Mom or Not to Mom
Welcome to an open salon hosted by yours truly and Keiko of The Infertility Voice. We created this dialogue to discuss both sides of the motherhood debate from our unique perspectives in a responsorial fashion. Over the next five days and culminating in an open Twitter discussion #ALIMomSalon this Friday, 10/26 at 12:30pm EDT, we seek to…
Will It Be Fate or Destiny?
The steady falling autumn rain this past Saturday did not dampen my spirits one iota. One fleece, one windbreaker and a cheap hooded plastic poncho combined to keep me warm and dry. Amid the throngs, the thousands of students and alumni alike making their way into Ann Arbor’s “Big House” for Homecoming, I was transported decades back to when I was…
You’re the Star of Your Own Life
What do you do with years of expectation about roles and identity? How do you turn off the tape in your head about what was supposed to be the rest of your life? Where do you find a new sense of purpose and meaning? Those are some of the big, huge, enormous questions that have…
First Steps
An invitation to a neighbor’s barbecue on an early spring day in northern California might seem innocuous enough. It would be for most, but agreeing to attend the afternoon affair set in motion a challenge for me that was the emotional equivalent of climbing Mount Everest. That’s because the barbecue for an assortment of family…