Infertility Survivors Finally Heard
While my gray roots benefited from a rich brunette color drenching in a new hair salon recently a younger stylist handed me a glass of champagne. She was not my usual go-to hair expert so there was the usual get-to-know-you chitchat. (Yes, I decided to splurge a bit this time around since it was the…
If you’ve read one breathless headline in popular media about the latest and greatest breakthroughs in fertility medicine you’ve read them all. Articles written about reproductive medicine routinely characterize assisted reproductive technologies (I.U.I, I.V.F., donor eggs, egg freezing and surrogacy) as a “sure thing” when, it turns out, close to 80 percent of the cycles…
Humans don’t do well with emotional discomfort of any kind. This has been proven time and time again, but no more so than with infertility. It can be traumatizing on many levels, but I guess I didn’t realize how difficult an infertility diagnosis can be on other people. They just do not want to see…
February 3, 2007 marks a turning point. It’s the day I decided to reach outside my head, to wear my heart on my sleeve, and to seek some answers. Minutes after publishing my very first Coming2Terms blog post on that stormy night six years ago my stomach turned queasy. After years of suffering silently in…
It’s hard not to be caught up in the excitement of the Olympics. Beyond the awe-inspiring athleticism, stories abound. They resonate in large part because we understand the context. The narratives fulfill a hunger of sorts — whether for inspiration, a sense of accomplishment or a common bond that goes beyond country or sport. Not…
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…
Have you noticed the way infertile women are routinely portrayed as one-dimensional, downright pitiful creatures in TV and film? It doesn’t matter what era the story takes place in. Swap out the costumes and look beyond the hair and makeup and the character is always the same distraught, hapless woman. Take a recent episode of…
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…
A woman who didn’t succeed with infertility treatment stands on stage in front of some 350+ people, many of whom were representatives of the infertility industry (very off putting to see so many reps from pharmaceutical companies and clinic staff) to receive an award for her infertility memoir. How to describe the experience September 28,…
“Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.” — Aldous Huxley When I started blogging from my kitchen several years ago about coming to terms with infertility, I never fathomed my experience would end up in a major national daily like Canada’s The Globe…