Infertility Survivors Finally Heard
When the Silent Sorority galley arrived in 2009 my pulse quickened. I thumbed through the pages and out jumped the grittiest parts of my life. I sat down at the keyboard to write my first and only birth announcement. Five years of blinking cursors and early morning draft rewrites culminated in Silent Sorority: A (Barren) Woman…
In Part II of the ‘Bitter Infertiles’ podcast transcript (Part I here or listen to the podcast here), we talk infertility trauma, the assault to identity and misplaced mommy glorification… Mo: One of the big issues we discussed last month with a therapist was the devastating effect that infertility can have on the emotional well-being….
There are pros and cons to having two personas. For my entire career in the auto and tech worlds my business cards and email signatures have read Pamela Mahoney. I’m rather attached to my given name and, let’s face it, it’s a lot less intimidating to spell or pronounce than my married name Pamela…
I’m more convinced than ever that women born between 1960 and 1970 came of age at a particularly weird time fertility-wise. Think about it. In 1960 the birth control pill was made commercially available for the first time, and by the time we were wrapping our heads around how babies were made (or not if…
My expectations for September 27 and The Cycle: Living A Taboo were very high — not only for those of us presenting at the forum, but for those who would join us. What transpired surpassed my expectations. As the evening drew near, we speakers assembled in Tribeca from Los Angeles, Silicon Valley, Spanish Harlem, Boston,…
UPDATE 8/27/2013: For those of you around the world who are unable to join us in person in New York City, we’ve opened up a page on our event website to share your thoughts. Please comment below and we’ll include you as virtual participants. …when a path wasn’t clear, the natural instinct was to go…
New celebrity infertility disclosures have been popping up left and right in popular media. Starting in April there was Nia Vardolos on the interview circuit for her new book, Instant Mom. Nia, as reported in various online publications, tried for nearly a decade to have a family, going through 13 IVFs in the course of pursuing infertility treatments, and failed adoptions before…
The life as a book metaphor isn’t new, but it does provide a novel way to infuse some creative license and fresh thinking into what can sometimes feel like stuff happening around and to you. I encourage those wrestling with what comes next to embrace the idea of becoming the author of your own life. At the same time…
You don’t often witness those who did (or did not) go on to parent after infertility openly discuss — and I mean with real names not aliases — how infertility impacted their lives. We’re at a pivotal time, in particular, within the tribe of women who faced situational or physical childlessness coming forward with books, PhD…
Much has been written about The Help — the book and the movie. The book contents remain locked in my iPad; I downloaded it several months ago but lacked the urgency to tap it open. The movie prompted a different response. I made a point of carving out 146 minutes to lose myself in the…