Life

The vast and mighty blogosphere…

…is filled with people I’ve come to really care about, even though I will likely never meet them in real life. It’s weird and amazing and funny and awesome that I’m allowed to be a part of some stranger’s life on a daily basis, and they might not even know it. (And that there are people who are a part of my life without me knowing it.) Now I’m a good commenter. I live for comment-love, and I assume other bloggers are the same, so I oblige.

Every so often, though, someone else’s post (or in this case, a series of posts) gets me to thinking, and I want to talk about it in more depth than most comment spaces allow or I want to share my own experience or whatever. At any rate, Amy’s been on my toolbar for quite some time now. (Go here to figure out what that means.) I read her blog faithfully, and she’s become a friend, at least in my own mind. (Probably she’s thinking, “Steph. You’re stalkerrific.”)

At any rate, her series of posts has gotten me thinking about my own experience with the loss of fertility. My story is different than hers in that I wanted the hysterectomy. I was all done with all that mess of periods and birth control and babies. But when I read her posts, I know exactly what she means about having to rethink who you are as a woman when you become a woman who no longer menstruates, who can no longer bear children, etc.

Worse, you have to deal with social questions about the subject - at 34, I’m still in my “prime” baby-making years, but I will never have more biological babies. People seem boggled by this idea, and they wind up responding with an expression of sympathy/pity or by trying to “help” me see the bright side. Neither of these things bother me in the least, but it is a little funny when I explain that I’m really okay with the idea that I’m all done with baby-making and that I practically begged for my hysterectomy.

For whatever reason, my choice (and make no mistake, it was a choice, regardless of how unpleasant the other options were, I did have other options) to give up my fertility leaves most women speechless. They simply cannot fathom giving up the option to have more babies. Even women who’ve had tubal ligation are a little agog that I went ahead with a truly permanent method of ending my fertility. (Which sort of makes me wonder what they think they did when they had a tubal, but that’s another post.)

I think that’s been the hardest part for me — not only do I have to deal with my own feelings about not having more biological babies, I have to deal with other people’s feelings about it. Sometimes, I’ve genuinely felt that because I can’t have babies, I’ve somehow become less of a woman, as though my femininity is defined by my ability to procreate. And that’s not just coming from other people — I do it to myself, too. Crazy, I know.

Anyway, I’m posting this because…well, really because it was on my mind, but also because I wanted to give Amy serious props for the way she’s handled this. I know how hard it’s been for me to deal with this, and I had plenty of warning and plenty of desire to go through with it. I was able to adjust to the idea well before I actually had to go through with the hysterectomy. I can only imagine how I’d have responded in her shoes, and I think she’s shown amazing dignity and grace through all of this.

Now go leave her some comment-love, wouldja?

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