#Microblog Mondays: It's a Valid Choice

Aisha Tyler spoke again about infertility (as well as a lot of other interesting topics), and made some points I think are worth sharing.

1. Concentrating on your career, not family, at any time is a valid choice.  
2. Choosing to stop is a valid choice too.  
3. Most women can't afford to pursue treatment after treatment.
4. Most women don't get pregnant - we only focus on the Cinderella stories.  At last, someone said it.
5. There is no clock ticking on adoption. Whilst I disagree with this - depending on your location and budget, there is definitely an age factor when it comes to placements - I think that she was actually saying that choosing not to adopt (or not to rush into adoption) is a valid choice too.

If you have the time, watch her entire interview here.

PS.  Thanks to Mel for giving me the heads up on this interview.

Gifts of Infertility Series - #9 - Our No Kidding Lifestyle

Finally I come to the obvious. One of the true gifts of infertility is living a No Kidding Lifestyle. I’ve blogged about the advantages of this before, so won’t wax lyrical about this. Not this time. No, I’ll just add a quick list below of my previous posts as a reminder. It is by no means exhaustive. Feel free to add more of your own.

• Cruising and adults only destinations and restaurants
• Being able to savour the moment
• Freedom from the school year calendar
• Sex
• Staying young
• My relationship
• Some of the joys of no kids
• The things I can do because I don’t have kids
• Not having to endure some of the negatives of having children
• More negative “what might have beens”
• A few more negatives we avoid
• Saving the world

Gifts of Infertility Series - #8 - Self-Confidence

I hesitated to add self-confidence to my list, as one of the first impacts of my losses and infertility was a severe lack of confidence. It didn't help that I’d changed careers at the time, and I no longer had the daily reminders that I was an intelligent and capable person, or the reinforcement of colleagues and clients when I did a good job. This lack of confidence was surprising to me. If you’d asked me, I would have said I had never tied my self-worth or my identity as a woman to being able to have children. But when I couldn't have children, when I was shut out of the mothers’ club, I felt the onslaught of society telling me that I was “less.” And my confidence plummeted.

So it may seem strange that I list confidence as one of the gifts of infertility. I have the benefit of being a decade on from the first shock of loss, and if I look back, I see a real growth in self-confidence too. Yes, this may be a result of the wisdom of a few more years. But it is also the result of new experiences, of being thrust into a situation I didn't choose, and of being forced to work through this to find a place of peace.

But as I dealt with my losses and infertility, as I found new talents, as I realised I was learning to deal with life and whatever it throws at you, my confidence was restored. Strictly speaking, it was never restored, because it when it returned, it was in a very different guise, with quite a different view of life. 

I developed a much clearer idea of who I am.  I know what I think – and perhaps for the first time in my adult life, what I think about me is more important than what others think.  Oh, I'm a work in progress. But I am so much better than I was. Confidence doesn't mean that I never worry, that I don’t feel fear, that I don’t second-guess myself sometimes. But it does mean that, deep within, I don’t have those insidious insecurities about who I am, or what I am trying to prove. This gives me a real freedom to think and act and simply be. I like that.

I have been broken down, and rebuilt piece by piece. And that rebuild is solid.

Gifts of Infertility Series - #7 - Blogging

I've been a blogger since about 2006, and have worked through a progression of blogs. When I started this blog, I was actively maintaining two others. One of those has been sadly neglected (but I hope to resurrect sometime soon), but the other is still going strong. So I already knew that I could meet like-minded people through blogging. Likewise, my experience with an on-line support network and charity meant that I already knew how useful on-line support could be to learning, healing, and surviving.

So when I started this blog, I knew what I was looking for. I wanted to link with women who had been through similar experiences, and who were still dealing with the issues of living life with no kids. And I wanted to be able to talk about my own experiences, to help to formulate and consolidate my own views about this life. But I also wanted to talk about my own experiences to make sense of them, to to feel that those experiences weren't pointlessly painful, but could help others. And I have achieved all this, I think.

But what I didn't expect to find was a blogging community, and to learn so much more about blogging. Much of this is a result of Mel’s blog, where she actively talks about blogging, about community, , BlogHer, and the importance of good commenting. But it’s also about a community that cares about blogging and awareness, and specifically it is about the people who contribute. Mel I've also mentioned, Pamela’s example of deep thought and awareness activities, and Lisa’s Life Without Baby community (amongst many others, not least Loribeth, and more recent arrivals) take our experiences, put them in context, and give them a wider voice. Most importantly, they make them matter. As part of this community, we reach more people than I could ever have imagined. (Through Pamela (originally) and Nicole, my own Huff Postarticle is an example).

If I hadn't been part of the ALI blogging community, I wouldn't regularly be challenged to think deeply, to think about my life specifically and in a broader context, to think about new ideas, to consider other people’s perspectives, to understand how other people live.

Likewise, I wouldn't have this desire to turn up one day at BlogHer - though I’ll have to earn some money first.

Gifts of Infertility Series - #6 - New adventures in exotic lands

I have enjoyed a number of very special opportunities and experiences as a result of my infertility and loss. They range from simply meeting people I would not have otherwise met, to some fun experiences overseas:  

• That first raucous evening in an Italian restaurant in London back in January 2005, or a more recent meeting with friends at a pub in Reading
• My adventures in Coventry, Gloucestershire and Leicester, where I threw caution to the wind and stayed with people I had only ever met on the internet ... having invited myself!  (“They could be axe murderers for all you know,” said my slightly concerned husband.)
• A cream tea (I LOVE clotted cream) after exploring Warwick Castle with two of the axe murderers 
• Not-as-civilised-as-it-sounds-but-way-more-fun wine tasting in London with Sarah and Ruth on a warm summery day a few years later
• A day with the lovely Laura, exploring Westminster Abbey, pretending to shop for 4000 pound handbags in Harrods, and a champagne afternoon tea at Claridges (now one of my “must-dos” in London)
• Discovering the charms of English village life with Kathryn and her family, including a little one who shared a due date with my second lost little one
• Walking through a market in France with my internet friend who had flown in to Geneva specifically to spend a weekend with me and my Kiwi friend who was living there
• Discovering Slovenia, a country I may never have visited if it hadn’t been for Klara (and enjoying the delicious Lake Bled cream cake that it turns out is very similar to the Denheath custard square near my home town)
• A spectacular detour through the Dolomites a week or so later, as recommended by Klara’s husband.

One of the most special experiences, though, was attendance at the ectopic charity's ten-year birthday party in the House of Commons in London. It was very cool to be allowed into the Houses of Parliament, to stand in a room and look out of those windows at the river Thames, when normally I am on the other side, with a camera, photographing it from within. I loved emerging from the House of Commons as night fell, to take a photograph from inside the walls. And I was amused to see how the English love an afternoon tea, tucking in with relish! But of course what made this experience so special was that most (not all) my special friends were there. Some of us had a drink in the ancient pub on the corner beforehand, and later some of us squeezed into a taxi and headed off for dinner.

These are special memories, experiences I would never have had otherwise. And I hope for many return visits. But I hope there will be new experiences too, in the future, with some of you, in Canada and the US (California, Oregon and the East Coast), or Amsterdam, Sweden and Finland too.  And I have hosted visitors here in New Zealand too.  The fact that I hope to do this more in the future might seem obvious, but I have to say it too.

The key thing though is what brought us together.  We were more alike than we were different. Infertility and loss has made the world seem smaller. And that’s a wonderful thing.