Friday, May 16, 2014

Addendum

So here's the thing about infertility.  It's an intensely painful and deeply personal experience.  And even though I write a public blog, I do like to keep my personal life fairly personal.  But, along with painful and personal, infertility is also very lonely.

No one talks about infertility.   There's information there if you dig, sure, but it's not something that people are usually very open about. I get that.  It's hard to talk about things when you feel like you're so different from everyone else.  Like maybe everyone else has the secret to life that you just haven't pick up on yet.

I've debated back and forth for a long time on how open to be about my experiences.  Do I share and risk being embarrassed? Or do I keep quiet and perpetuate the loneliness?  Clearly, I've decided to share.  I don't want to be part of the cult of secrecy surrounding infertility.

I want to be available for friends with questions or as a shoulder to cry on (heaven knows I've cried on my fair share of shoulders so far).  I want to make infertility feel less inferior and more hopeful.

That's not to say that every post from now on is going to be medical-related.  Believe me, I'll spare you that.  I'll probably still write mostly about my dog, weird people on the metro, and good garbage finds, but I still wanted to put it out there.

If there are days when I feel like shaking my fist at the universe, you may hear about it.  If there are days when all I want to do is watch funny Jimmy Fallon clips on YouTube, you may get an eyeful of those.  Then again, that's what this blog has always been.  A blog about nothing and everything and the things of little importance in-between.

4 comments:

  1. You are so impressive, Rachel! And I didn't know you were experiencing this. I hope it doesn't trivialize your personal experience to say that i feel like many of the best people I know have gone through this (or similar) as well. It doesn't seem fair. But you seem to be handling it with so much grace! Big hugs to you.

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    1. Impressive? I'm not sure about that :) I'll take the compliment though.

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  2. I'm glad you're talking about it.

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