Infertility Survivors Finally Heard
In the past year Time magazine has run two cover stories (Are You Mom Enough? and The ChildFree Life: When Having it All Means Not Having Children) and managed to miss — both times — a notable segment of the female population: women who don’t identify either as “moms” or “childfree.” If you dropped in…
It’s been a few years since I first began to pick up the pieces broken and splintered off in the tempest of infertility and failed IVF. Because there were no instructions for reassembly, no “how to cope with infertility” imparted by elders or learned through societal observation, I’ve had my fair share of trial and…
As part of my blogoversary week of lessons learned… #2 The Blogosphere Can Foster Strange Bedfellows One of the toughest aspects of being part of a group routinely held up for scrutiny (e.g. women without children) is facing detractors who feel perfectly at ease casting aspersions or passing value judgements on our lives. I don’t…
This is a story about the correlation of infertility and allergies. Each Wednesday for a year I dutifully showed up at my local allergy office to get three painful shots. The nurse plunged a syringe containing a cocktail of pollens, trees and grasses into my right arm. In the top left upper arm she injected…
Women who experience infertility and do not gone on to parent get short shrift not only in society but in research. They are left to cope without much needed support or understanding. This is made all the more difficult amid the deification of mothers. That’s why I’m pleased today to share an online discussion with the…
Editor’s Note: I’m pleased to share with you a guest post from Gillian Guthrie, author of Childless: Reflections on Life’s Longing for Itself. You might recall I included a link to an interview with Gillian in a previous post. (Thanks again, Carmel, for pointing us to the story.) Curiosity led me to seek Gillian out. A…
A recent conversation with Lisa Manterfield, a fellow blogger, validated the delicate balancing act required when writing about a topic that is deeply personal — one that has wide-ranging impact and carries the power to reshape our sense of identity and the way in which we grow and move forward in our lives. Lisa described watching a frog swim valiantly and hard across…
I’m not sure what possessed me to write it. Was it my cumulative annoyance at People magazine for devoting so much editorial real estate (for instance every week!) to celebrating all aspects of parenthood (hey – how about some equal time, People editors)? Was it the veiled tone of pity, the whiff of judgment, or…
Much has been written about The Help — the book and the movie. I made a point of carving out 146 minutes to lose myself in the film after the August 10 opening sparked new debates about character authenticity and raised questions about who is best equipped to tell the complex stories of women living…
In the category of inflammatory headlines posed as a question here’s one from a self-described “journalist, mother, thinker” that begs a response: Are Childless Couples Headed Toward Divorce? The short answer from my field research is an emphatic: Hell No! The link to the provocative Huffington Post blog headline first came from a longtime pen…