Infertility Survivors Finally Heard
Now more than ever, I’d like to focus on renewal. It feels overdue after three tumultuous years. In what feels like another lifetime, November 2019, I happily dove into a glass half-full. I looked ahead, joyfully, to a new decade. New academic and writing successes blossomed one after another. Travel plans fired my imagination. My…
Groundhogs Day, the movie, once again feels fitting as we head into two-plus years of pandemic strangeness. That’s just one film comparison. There are others (and various analogies) that also come to mind. Take the sci-fi space-related films The Martian or The Midnight Sky. If I may riff further. In many ways our house, now…
February, please! First, I’m not gonna lie. January 2022 tested me in a big way. Some might have viewed Omicron as nothing more than an inconvenient speed bump. That wasn’t how I saw it. While fully vaccinated and boosted, the very idea of a *more* transmissible variant prompted dread. Why? I’ve had more than enough…
Warmth, wonder, and pearls of wisdom drop into our lives when we least expect them, don’t they? Late this afternoon, for instance, amid a spectacular late autumn sunset. Warm sunlight bathed my face and waves softly lapped at my feet. This natural beauty overwhelmed so thoroughly that, well, I burst into tears. There was nothing…
I sat as calmly as I could recently while Esther, an acupuncturist, held my wrists palms up and felt my pulse. My lungs, I shared, had been tested by unrelenting, cumulative wildfire smoke. This precipitated an extended asthma attack and related tightness. “How do you feel?” Esther asked. “Hmmm, asthmatic and a bit stressed,” I…
Failed IVF and the taboo of infertility stories don’t often take center stage. That is until Anything You Lose documentary filmmaker Irina Vodar decided to tackle the taboo head on. Irina kicked off a new video series, Infertility Tales, to shed light on this complex topic. You can learn more, watch and subscribe from Episode 1…
Word swap (inserting infertile or childless to replace other words) has long been my way to make a point about the perils of tribalistic thinking. It’s amusing and informative to highlight one’s myopic perspective. Further, the exercise can reveal insights applicable to other tribes or communities. In this latest example, an author asserts age confers…
Darkness comes ever earlier this time of year. It’s arrival — shrinking our days bit by bit — makes an already busy end of year seem even more frenetic. Yet, blackness also delivers stillness and focus. I reflected on this further following a yoga class at mid-day this week. Late autumn sunlight streamed through the…
Insights often originate with films and books. The really good stories and characters become touchstones or stay with me like familiar old friends. So, on this, my 11th anniversary of blogging (yes, Happy Anniversary dear readers, it all began here February 3, 2007), I’d like to encourage all to find and watch the soul-stirring documentary…
Non-moms recognized? Read on … That opening paragraph grabbed me. Did it grab, you, too? Truly, I didn’t expect this acknowledgement to make it into print, but it did. I stumbled upon this reference to ‘non-moms’ in a story because Silent Sorority garnered a mention in a feature about Dolly Parton. (And that…