Updated 1/4/2010
Wanted to share a TV interview scheduled at the end of last year that took place today on the ABC affiliate KXTV. I hope you find that it moves the discussion away from OctoMom and the related soap opera reality TV shows focused on unusual fertility treatment outcomes to the more basic realities faced by couples coping with infertility. Please feel free to share. You can view the video from the KXTV website here:
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Original broadcast can be found here>>>
Original post from 12/30/2009
I made my way into our coffee-perfumed kitchen yesterday morning and heard my better half in the garage. I opened the door into the chilled place that holds stuff that doesn’t rank storage space in the house and found him wrestling with a large, black plastic bag.
Trash day… of course.
Minutes later as my head got its first jolt of caffeine it dawned on me that this was not your average trash day. It was the last trash day of the decade! Oh, the opportunities to purge, de-content, toss and recycle 10 years of God knows what flooded my brain.
I’m a metaphor person. I also relish tidy bookends. Into my second cup of coffee I started to groove on the idea of bundling up the tired, weighty emotional baggage from the past 10 years of life and placing it on the curb.
Since publishing Silent Sorority (five years in the making) earlier this year I’ve been on high alert for signs of unfinished infertility business, halting denial, delusional wishful thinking. I’ve had some false starts in the infertility reconciliation department to be sure, but in recent months I’ve reached a new level of readiness. Good riddance Decade From [Infertility] Hell! (How appropriate in so many ways is this Time magazine cover?)
The dawn of a new decade provides a unique chance to turn the page, literally, and face the future unshackled by the ghosts and broken dreams that dominated 1999-2009. And I’m ready. I mean really ready. Eager even. As I foreshadowed in a post last May, I’ve started looking not down, not backwards, but UP!
While Coming2Terms will remain in place as testament to where I’ve we’ve come from — 275 posts and nearly 5,000 comments in the almost three years — I’ve been dabbling with the makings of a new blog that gives those of us without children a place to share “I not only survived, I’m thriving” stories. The new blog (here’s an early look) is in its formative stages so your contributions and ideas are welcome.
And with an eye to all good things that a new decade and new beginnings can bring, here’s to renewed hope, much joy and lives well lived. Cheers!
December 30, 2009 10:15 pm
Now I’m pissed that I didn’t think about our last garbage pick up for the year! For some reason I haven’t really put 2 and 2 together about a new decade. I guess that is because I am 31. The year of the millenium I was 21. I was just ready to party. Now that I am an adult I do see the significance of a new decade, a new start. The 00’s were pretty difficult. Not the whole time but at least 75%. I aiming for 90% for the next decade.
December 30, 2009 11:09 pm
What a great idea! I am eagerly anticipating this new blog.
December 31, 2009 11:48 am
Wishing you a happy new year Pamela. May the coming year be filled with peace and joy!
Love
Sharon
January 1, 2010 12:46 am
You’ve got me thinking about the last 10 years of my own life now! (I saw the Time mag cover, but never thought of it in those terms — how appropriate!!) Here’s to the next 10 years being fabulous for us both!
I haven’t had much time to check out your new blog/site yet, but I have a feeling I will be spending a lot of time there in the future. ; )
January 2, 2010 2:32 am
And a happy New Year to you, too! I’m also feeling really optimistic about this decade — and I love the concept of your new blog! We so need this community of celebration!
January 3, 2010 10:57 pm
*running over to the new site*
January 4, 2010 9:39 pm
I am new to your blog and I want to tell you that it is a great help to me. My husband and I have been living with infertility for several years and have finally decided to throw in the towel in the summer of 2008. I have been doing my best to cope with this terrible loss ( fertility clinics have told us that they can do nothing more for us) but I have had my ups and downs. This year , absolutely everyone around me including my work colleagues and all of my best friends have either given birth or are now pregnant. I usually share all my problems with them but I feel that infertility is something that they can’t understand and feel like I am alone in this. Although I wish them a lot of happiness, I feel very sad when I am confronted with all theses babies and bellies and just want to lock myself inside the house.
The holidays have been difficult for me, I just hope that things will get easier in the new decade and find it comforting to read about your evolution in this blog.
January 5, 2010 11:42 am
I can feel the purging from here and it is nice 🙂
Happiness is a place we all have to reach on our own and it sounds like you are most certainly on the path. I am really happy for you.
January 5, 2010 12:36 pm
I’m so thrilled with your T.V. appearance! See, it’s not impossible after all to start “crossing over” and bringing our message mainstream!
January 5, 2010 5:16 pm
What Chantal wrote.
We are trying to “come to terms” but i’m still struggling with it & still have (no hope) hope, but it isn’t going to happen.
For me it is still an every day, sometimes an every minute battle. You do give me hope that we can get past it.
January 5, 2010 5:20 pm
I love the ideas for your new blog, especially “Different than I expected.” I lost a lot of faith (in the Universe, God, whatever) during our infertility ride and I’ve been trying hard to shift my focus onto the things that we DO have, even though it’s different than we planned. Like you, I’m ready to move on and define my life in terms that don’t have anything to do with parenthood or fertility.
January 5, 2010 6:32 pm
What a great way to start the new year! Out with the old in with the new.
My Husband and I just ended our journey of infertile discovery have to show for all our investment just more clarity about why we will never be parents. The holidays were rough with another new family member born Christmas eve. The hard part? Everyone keeps sending me photos of the new baby and no one can figure out why I am not drooling over this baby. I gather since we haven’t mentioned anything for 3 months it’s all over in their minds. I think that fertile people forget and infertile people never forget.
As I move on 2010 will become the year of getting our lives back and learning to say “we can’t” to people who ask “do you have children…”.
It is somehow liberating to just lay it out for them to deal with instead of us.
So onward and upward! It’s time to take pride in our struggle to know we did EVERYTHING we could, we are NOT failures.
My husband and I have to believe there is a purpose to our plight. We might not find it this year, but we know we will with time. There is a reason we have gone through all this, we hope not just to raise awareness but to make a difference in other ways.
Time to spend energy on finding out more productive ways to spend our time now that we will not be spending it all in a doctors waiting room or being pin cushions of hope!
January 5, 2010 6:32 pm
What a great way to start the new year! Out with the old in with the new.
My Husband and I just ended our journey of infertile discovery have to show for all our investment just more clarity about why we will never be parents. The holidays were rough with another new family member born Christmas eve. The hard part? Everyone keeps sending me photos of the new baby and no one can figure out why I am not drooling over this baby. I gather since we haven’t mentioned anything for 3 months it’s all over in their minds. I think that fertile people forget and infertile people never forget.
As I move on 2010 will become the year of getting our lives back and learning to say “we can’t” to people who ask “do you have children…”.
It is somehow liberating to just lay it out for them to deal with instead of us.
So onward and upward! It’s time to take pride in our struggle to know we did EVERYTHING we could, we are NOT failures.
My husband and I have to believe there is a purpose to our plight. We might not find it this year, but we know we will with time. There is a reason we have gone through all this, we hope not just to raise awareness but to make a difference in other ways.
Time to spend energy on finding out more productive ways to spend our time now that we will not be spending it all in a doctors waiting room or being pin cushions of hope!
January 5, 2010 6:32 pm
What a great way to start the new year! Out with the old in with the new.
My Husband and I just ended our journey of infertile discovery have to show for all our investment just more clarity about why we will never be parents. The holidays were rough with another new family member born Christmas eve. The hard part? Everyone keeps sending me photos of the new baby and no one can figure out why I am not drooling over this baby. I gather since we haven’t mentioned anything for 3 months it’s all over in their minds. I think that fertile people forget and infertile people never forget.
As I move on 2010 will become the year of getting our lives back and learning to say “we can’t” to people who ask “do you have children…”.
It is somehow liberating to just lay it out for them to deal with instead of us.
So onward and upward! It’s time to take pride in our struggle to know we did EVERYTHING we could, we are NOT failures.
My husband and I have to believe there is a purpose to our plight. We might not find it this year, but we know we will with time. There is a reason we have gone through all this, we hope not just to raise awareness but to make a difference in other ways.
Time to spend energy on finding out more productive ways to spend our time now that we will not be spending it all in a doctors waiting room or being pin cushions of hope!
January 5, 2010 6:32 pm
What a great way to start the new year! Out with the old in with the new.
My Husband and I just ended our journey of infertile discovery have to show for all our investment just more clarity about why we will never be parents. The holidays were rough with another new family member born Christmas eve. The hard part? Everyone keeps sending me photos of the new baby and no one can figure out why I am not drooling over this baby. I gather since we haven’t mentioned anything for 3 months it’s all over in their minds. I think that fertile people forget and infertile people never forget.
As I move on 2010 will become the year of getting our lives back and learning to say “we can’t” to people who ask “do you have children…”.
It is somehow liberating to just lay it out for them to deal with instead of us.
So onward and upward! It’s time to take pride in our struggle to know we did EVERYTHING we could, we are NOT failures.
My husband and I have to believe there is a purpose to our plight. We might not find it this year, but we know we will with time. There is a reason we have gone through all this, we hope not just to raise awareness but to make a difference in other ways.
Time to spend energy on finding out more productive ways to spend our time now that we will not be spending it all in a doctors waiting room or being pin cushions of hope!
January 6, 2010 7:51 pm
Happy new year to you and your husband! 🙂
I just watched your interview – congratulations! You were very informative and well spoken in that short time they gave you. I’ve been wanting to read the book forever – I think I’ll make it one of my goals for this year.
January 6, 2010 9:45 pm
Pamela- You were fabulous on camera and so articulate! I think you’re ready for GMA or the Today Show (which I have stopped watching because they incessantly talk about motherhood and children!) I would love to see you on national TV!
I also loved your taking out the trash analogy. I started the millennium as a newlywed and hopeful mother to be and now realize that I spent the entire decade either pursuing pregnancy or grieving the loss of that dream. When I think of the refuse generated over my infertility, I conjure up an image of thousands of Hefty trash bags filled with the discarded tissues that dried my tears , industrial sized receptacles for all the empty bottles of wine I consumed to deaden my disappointment, and grosses of empty Hagen Daaz pints that served as one of my only pleasures. That’s a lot of trash!
Ten years later, it has not gotten any easier. But with inspiration from you and the other kind people who support the plight here, I am looking forward to a more peaceful and productive decade ahead. The truck can back up into my driveway and take all the garbage away once and for all!!
Happy New Year! Happy Decade!
January 20, 2010 1:04 am
You gave a very good interview. It’s nice to see someone talk so openly about not being a parent.
December 15, 2010 5:25 pm
Hi Pamela,
I just found your site from a NY Times article. I am 33 and been unable to conceive naturally for the past 4 years. I was wondering if you ever felt strongly about adoption, and would you adopt a baby now or wish that you had when you were younger. I don’t have a strong desire to adopt but wonder if I will regret it when I am a decade older?
Best wishes