trauma Archives - Silent Sorority

Tapestry of Voices

A Conversation on Infertility Misconceptions

On the heels of her recent BBC interview (Drawing the Line: When IVF Doesn’t Work) health advocate and blogger Lesley Pyne offered to have an in-depth chat about my latest writing project, Finally Heard. Grab a cup of coffee or tea (or libation of your choice) and join Lesley and me as we launch into […]

Tapestry of Voices

Infertility Community’s Black Sheep: Women Who Don’t Achieve Motherhood

Some ‘no-holds barred’ conversations stick with you — like the one Loribeth and I engaged in on surviving infertility and the search for peace in a mommy mad world. (Listen to the podcast here). Not achieving motherhood is a taboo topic in the infertility community, which is why we were unlikely guests on the tongue-in-cheek named […]

News Reports and Studies

When Did Normal Aging Become an Infertility Condition?

Come again? Did I read that wrong? Hasn’t aging always been synonymous with losing fertility? Menopause, anyone? Seems odd to call out normal aging as though it’s a disease or a condition that needs to be treated with procedures. In fact, the bigger question is why are women waiting until the age of menopause to […]

News Reports and Studies

Pop Culture

Customers or Patients? What Happens When Doctors See Markets Not People

This week marks a year since Miriam Zoll and I authored The New York Times op-ed “Selling the Fantasy of Fertility.” The piece, which has since been nominated for a 2014 EMMA Exceptional Merit in Media Award by the National Women’s Political Caucus, had a wide reach and generated lots of discussion about the unregulated “fertility” industry. […]

Linking Around

Pop Culture

Strength Personified

Looking Out for Our Sisters In a World of False Fertility Claims

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 […]

Book Musings

News Reports and Studies

Tapestry of Voices

When Unexplained is the Modifier Assigned To Your Infertility

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 […]

Different Than I Expected

Fortitude

Movies

Tapestry of Voices

Casting off Chains of Infertility: Fertility Diary, The Life of Pi and Search for Peace

Each of us who confronts infertility has no idea where it will take us. We launch into turbulent seas unaware of when or if we will encounter calm water or be delivered into a safe harbor. Certain contributing reproductive conditions are more easily treated than others and some individuals have more disposal income than others […]

Linking Around

Generation I.V.F. Shares Lessons Learned

We don’t get to choose when we’re born or the era in which we live, but we can decide what lessons we leave behind for others. Author and fellow former fertility treatment patient Miriam Zoll lays out some truths associated with what it means to be a part of Generation I.V.F. in a piece posted […]

Bioethics

News Reports and Studies

Pop Culture

Tapestry of Voices

The Infertility Stories No One Advertises

Editor’s Note: Updates (10/26) included below from BBC Health. It’s been more than a month since the op-ed prompted by failed infertility treatments, “Selling the Fertility Fantasy,” ran in The New York Times. Infertility stories that don’t end in a baby don’t grab headlines. But this one did. It reverberated across the infertility blogosphere to the […]

Different Than I Expected

The Cycle Relay Forum

Teach and Learn: Lift the Veil on a Taboo

UPDATE: Hat tip to Amy McVay Abbott, the journalist who wrote Infertility: The Billion Dollar Business & the Heartbreaking Realities and Jody Day for thought-provoking perspectives on our event, The Cycle: Living A Taboo. About the importance of participating in the conversation. Jody wrote: “I get that it’s daunting to attend something where you’ll be […]