Pamela Tsigdinos - Silent Sorority

What others are saying about

Silent Sorority

Winner of the 2010 Team RESOLVE Choice BestBook Award

A Top 10 Book to Read thisSpring 2010.

- More.com

Mothers Day looksdifferent from where she stands.

-Lisa Belkin, The New York Times

Witty, fun, heartbreaking,and absolutely bittersweet.

- MarciePickelsimer, Grown In My Heart

...a tour deforce, a rare jewel. This is a memoir of aclearly intelligent woman. SilentSorority is without a doubt a landmarkbook

-M.C. Prinsloo, In Vivo

This book is snappy, funny,and irreverent as well as moving. SilentSorority does a great job addressing theinvisibility of non-Moms.

- Christina Gombar, More.com

If you are battlinginfertility or have a friend or family member who wants or needs totry to understand how infertility changes everything , I recommend Pamelasbook.

- Laurie Gordon, Executive Editor, Fertility Authority

Pamela gives voice to deep sorrow, rage,hope and love. Her raw honesty and humor light the path for themillions who have trouble conceiving and those who don't know whatto make of their infertile sisters.

- Wendy L. Rogers, Ph.D

Silent Sorority is a brave book and a gift to all infertile women,whatever stage of the journey they may be on.

- Kate Johnson, NBC/iVillage

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Silent Sorority

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos

For all who have struggled to find a newpath...

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Published by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos onSmashwords, August 2010

Silent Sorority

2009, 2010 by Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos.All Rights Reserved.

Cover design by Dan Swanson of Van-gardeImagery, Inc.

Library of Congress Control Number:2009902209

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This book is licensed for your personalenjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away toother people. If you would like to share this book with anotherperson, please purchase an additional copy for each person youshare it with. If youre reading this book and did not purchase it,or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should returnto Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you forrespecting the hard work of this author.

Visit Pamela MahoneyTsigdinos Author Page at Smashwords.com

Visit Silent Sorority.com

Connect With Pamela Online

Twitter: http://twitter.com/pamelajeanne

Her Blog: A FreshStart

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CONTENTS

Part I: Happily Ever After Takes a Few Left Turns

Part II: What Does a Non-Mom Wear When NothingFits?

Part III : Finding My Voice

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Introduction

Imagine learning that your body is incapableof ever conceiving a child. There will be no fruit of your loins.One instant you are like everyone else. The next, youre not. YourDNA now ends with you.

You are infertile .

Your branch of the family tree will foreverbe just a truncated twig. Youve been denied a rite of passage, abiological imperative. You had no say in the matter. It wasnt aconscious choice. The comfortable sense of continuity and legacyothers take for granted disappears in an instant.

Take a moment to really think about it. Whatare you supposed to do? How do you feel? Is there a particular wayyoure supposed to feel? I mean, really, how do you prepare forthat?

Okay, now get on with your life. You know,have a nice day.

Infertility is a touchy subject. Itssupremely personal, involves sex organs, and is one of the lastarenas where it is fair game to heap scorn. Thats becauseconventional wisdom today leads many to believe that infertility isself-inflicted, or a byproduct of feminism gone bad ergo itsokay to withhold any sort of compassion or show of interest.

In social psychologistMelvin Lerners book, The Belief in a JustWorld : AFundamental Delusion , he argues that peoplewant to believe in inherent justice, and that people who appear tobe suffering are in fact responsible for their own situations.According to the just world hypothesis, society has a strongdesire or need to believe that the world is an orderly,predictable, and just place, where people get what theydeserve.

Funny thing though. I have yet to meet orcome across anyone who deserved infertility, and Ive come to knowquite a few women (and men) of all ages, ethnicities, religions andpolitical views who have had to confront the condition. Those in mysilent sorority are far from a homogeneous group.

What I can tell you about my sisters and meis that we freely donate our time and dollars to causes that helpchildren in particular and society in general. We pay our taxes. Wevote. We recycle and we worry about global warming. We cry whentragedies strikes. We laugh at the absurdities life serves up fartoo often. We love life. We are in awe when we experience nature atits finest.

The primal urge to create is a powerful one.In my case, there were several times when we were in our 30s thatmy husband and I resolved to accept that our bodies were simplyincapable of conceiving a child. We did our best to be rational, tonot let emotions or primal longings dictate our life. We were,after all, supposed to be evolved, right?

We looked at the statistics. We debated thetrade-offs. We decided that the world didn't really need a littlePammie or an Alex Junior. We dedicated our naps to friends who werefighting sleep deprivation from long nights with colicky babies. Wetried to reassure each other, with a smattering of superiority,that we were more than our fertility. That worked for severalmonths at a stretch. Then the urge to reproduce would come backlarger than before, propelling us forward with the next medicaltreatment, the next in a line of what almost felt likehokey-pokey-esque routines aimed at getting our cells tocommingle.

Im still waiting tooverhear a couple on the verge of starting a family whoenthusiastically say, Lets NOT try the old fashionedway. Whaddya say we go the high tech route? Itll be great! Letsgive a few of the local hospitals and fertility clinics a whirl.You know, Ive always wanted to have my private bits examined atlength by people in white coats. And those hormones injected withthe long needles? Whats more romantic than that!? Wont it begreat to spend thousands of dollars on treatments not covered byour medical insurance, with no guarantees? What ARE we waitingfor?

Ours was a decade-long struggle to havechildren. Even I was amazed at how far I was willing to go. Therisks to my health I was willing to take. The desire to conceive,rational or not, was that strong. Even if you havent personallysuffered with infertility theres a very strong likelihood thatyour sister, your daughter, your granddaughter, your friend, yourneighbor, your colleague or the woman standing next to you in thegrocery store has.

Taming biology is not quite as simple as manythink. I challenge some of the nearly billion parents on the planetwho have reproduced to turn back the clock and shut off that partof their brain stem turn off that sex drive, too. (They areapparently related.) As evolved as we claim to be, Mother Naturestill exercises some serious power over us. Convoluting the matter,baby-making gets wrapped up in political or religious arguments.Somehow our society has lost sight of the fact that outside of thearm waving and pontificating about the negative impacts of feminismand who controls reproductive rights, a slice of the population (12to 14 percent) face a very personal sadness.

At its core, infertility involves twoindividuals who love each other and yet cannot joyfully,spontaneously conceive. But theres more. In the wake of conceptionfailure, Ive discovered that as hard as the loss of pregnancy andnormalcy was, making a life in the long shadow of infertility hasits own unique challenges. With the stigma and judgment surroundingthis difficult human experience, its not surprising that manychoose not to speak about it. The silence, though, can be deafeningand defeating.