Infertility Survivors Finally Heard
There are few things harder than bearing witness to suffering, grief, or pain. When we hear someone’s sorrow in their breaking voice, our hearts clench. Our eyes well up. Empathy, the glue that holds humanity together, kicks in. Empathy causes us to ache in unison. We cast about, sometimes helplessly, to find a way to…
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…
Childless Not by Choice (CNBC) folk don’t often get much visibility. That’s why I was surprised when an email query landed in my inbox several weeks ago. It came at the same time my husband was in pre-op for outpatient surgery. Suffice to say, I knew how I’d be spending my time in the waiting…
IVF survivorship as a concept didn’t exist when I first considered the medical procedure. That was in the late 1990s. All I knew came from the well-oiled IVF industry hype machine. The growing and enormously profitable business portrayed IVF as the science world’s answer to modern family formation. IVF clinics intentionally portrayed this hugely invasive…
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…
Egocentrism sure is easy to spot these days. This observation came to me this weekend. It started with a New York Times essay on co-housing initially titled: Is This the Cure for the Loneliness of American Motherhood? As an aside, my fellow blogger and dear friend Sarah discovered the print edition of the paper retooled…
My inbox has overflowed recently with new requests for writing and guidance as well as comments about the painful lived reality of IVF and egg freezing. The academic and bioethics world is also paying more attention to IVF survivorship. Here are some of the latest deep dives into the lived IVF reality. IVF Marketing Scrutiny…
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…
Life taxes us in ways large and small. This maxim is the one constant beyond the sun that greets us each morning. Value Each Breath Those well-acquainted with me know asthma remains my wily and unpredictable companion. Dog and cat dander floating in the air, pollen storms and smoke are just some of the pernicious…