In retrospect, it was fitting that my last performance in The Vagina Monologues was reading “I Was There in the Room.” It’s a haunting, reverant, glorious monologue from Eve Ensler’s perspective of watching her adopted son’s child being born. She is present in the physical moment, in the space itself, but Eve is not the one birthing another. It’s a noticable void in The Vagina Monologues: there’s no monologue describing birth from a birthing mother’s perspective. Just Eve’s voice as the outside observer.
I often wonder if I will always be a kind of woman who is only there in the room: always observing, but never experiencing the moment myself.
When I was 18, I had my ovary removed in emergency surgery. Assured that my fertility would endure, I still felt like I was somehow broken. I had written a poem at the time about feeling like a tree with a broken branch.
She is a Tree of Life to those who take hold of her; those who hold her fast will be blessed. (Proverbs 3:18)
The Vagina Monologues were instrumental in my healing process back in college. They allowed me to shape and define my womanhood, a blossoming young adult woman myself. Performing three years in a row, the show gave me a space to take pride in my womanhood: to celebrate, cherish, and worship it. I performed another two times while working for another college; my final performance a visceral, but beautiful observation of the birthing process. It felt good to perform that monologue.
All this time, my soulmate was at my side. We celebrated, cherished, and worshipped each other. I knew we’d get married. I knew we’d have children together. This is just how it was supposed to be. And we did get married. We talked over our plans and agreed on May 2011: we’d begin our family. We’d give ourselves three years just as two, to grow to three (or more!) after that time.
I was worried about being down one ovary but remembered the assurance from my doctor from many years before: “You’ll still be able to have children.”
We had only been married a year and my puzzling symptoms at 26 simply didn’t make any sense. In March of 2009, everything changed: premature ovarian failure.
In an instant, “the way things were supposed to be” was robbed from me. From us.
“I have failed you as your wife, as your soulmate, as a woman,” I sobbed.
He held my face in his hands, looked me straight in the eye: “You are no less woman to me. You have failed no one. You’re my wife and my soulmate and I love you.“
“But I’m broken,” I said in a voice, barely audible.
“No Keiko: you are not broken, I promise,” Larry assured me. “We’ll get through this.”
Those years in college and in the years following, I took great pride and joy in being a woman. Sure, I griped about my monthly cycle: the cramps, the bleeding, the mood swings. But I still valued the work that my body was doing (or so I assumed at the time). I knew I was merely paving the way for my body’s greatest test, and I would celebrate that too when the time came.
My body, my woman’s body: a holy vessel of creation, power, life.
My infertility tried to rob me of that power. When I was diagnosed, I felt like Someone had taken a giant hammer and smashed my holy vessel to pieces. I am a broken woman, I would tell myself. I wove myself a blanket of shame and guilt.
Those days were the darkest, the days I felt robbed of all that I had celebrated and cherished about being a woman.
This was the myth I told myself.
In the past year, my voice has gained confidence, strength, and hope:
I am not a broken woman.
I am NOT a broken woman.
It’s not that I think women should be baby-factories, let me be clear. Rather, I see the acts of conception, pregnancy, birth, and motherhood as sacred gifts in the womanhood experience. Our bodies then, are truly vessels of creative – in the truest sense of the word – power.
Yet my womb lies barren. My tree bears no fruit of its own. I am endlessly blessed to live in an age of modern science, where my womb can be made full with the help of a selfless other, a lab, and a little luck. There is no guarantee, but it’s the chance I’m willing to take.
And if we can’t conceive with help, then we are just as open to adoption. Motherhood without its traditional preceding acts is no less sacred; to parent is no less a gift.
So when I look at the past two years, at the vastness of what has felt like a decade but has only been just two years – I’ve come a long way. Each month at the Red Tent Temple, I remind myself and am reminded of all the joyous ways of being a woman in all stages. I leave my titles at the door: Barren. Childless. Infertile. Broken.
And I choose not to collect those titles when I leave.
I am not a broken woman.
I invite you to shed this myth with me. To bury this myth, to banish it from your mental vocabulary, to cast it out from your hearts. Say with me now:
I am not a broken woman.
I am NOT a broken woman.
Now keep saying this – out loud – with me:
I am strong and beautiful.
I am a force to be reckoned with.
I am wise and joyous and whole in spirit and grace.
My infertility is only one facet of the many parts of who I am and I am not a broken woman.
I am not a broken woman and I have yet so many wondrous gifts to share with this world.
My Woman’s Work has only just begun.
It’s National Infertility Awareness Week. Infertility affects 1 out of every 8 couples… like me. Find out how you can participate and provide support to 7.3 million people living with this disease: www.resolve.org/takecharge. This post is part of the Bust a Myth Bloggers Unite project.
Wonderful words… and a message that we should all carry with us… I am NOT broken.
Found you via the NIAW Blog list. Although I'm from Australia, I still participated in this challenge. Afterall we're all women, who are either experiencing or experienced IF. I commend you for all the brilliant work and advocacy you do for this community.
You're definitely not a broken woman. You're a strong, surviving woman who's had to deal with a uniquely female sadness. I'm so glad you're proud of yourself and see that you are so much more than your infertility.
Sooo not broken. Entirely you. Thank you for this. Truly.
I've read your blog before, somehow missing the fact that I do believe we travel in some of the same circles. (Bostonian/Jewish/Feminist/Aspiring Parent.) My husband and I watched your video for the first time today and were incredibly moved. That's an understatement.
Thinking of you this NIAW.
Thank you for posting this Keiko. You had me tearing up when you wrote you are not broken because sometimes I really do feel that way. Wonderful and beautiful post.
Beautiful, realistic and defiant. I love the defiant part so much. It's inspiring to so many who don't believe they can fight. Yet, you show us we can.
This is an amazingly beautiful post. it inspired me and gave me hope on a day when i was feeling a bit blue.
Such a beautiful, eloquent post, Keiko. I HATE that infertility does this to us. I have "come through the other side," gotten all that I prayed for, and then some. And I still feel broken. I feel like I've been searching for that glue that Stinky mentioned but haven't managed to find anything quite strong enough. I am working on it, and I know that your mantra needs to be mind as well. I AM NOT BROKEN. Thank you for the moving reminder!
What an incredible, beautiful post. Reading that last part in bold brought tears to my eyes.
Wonderful Post Keiko. You really hit it on the nail. There are days that I feel broken and less of a woman as those women around me blossom with life. I too am a woman and not broken. I too am beautiful. And if I can't bring my own genes into this pool I'll make way to care for another's genetic makeup.
This is a beautiful post and you have such a simply eloquent way with words. I think that's one reason you IF video has been so popular is because you get to the heart of the matter in a simple yet powerful way that so many of us can relate to on some level.
I think Helen Reddy (I Am Woman) would be proud of your final mantra. At least I couldn't help but hear the song playing in my head as I read it.
Beautiful thank you so much for sharing that! I have felt broken myself at times, so I understood so well what you were describing. You are so inspiring!
Thank you! What inspiring words.
I love this. The last part made me cry, and I really needed that today. Thank you.
This is incredible, Keiko. You are such a gifted writer. And you point out here (whether you mean to do so or not) that not only are there myths about infertility that others perpetuate, but damaging myths that we ourselves believe. Being infertile, or losing a child, does not define our womanhood. We are more than the sum of our "parts."
Thank you for this, and for all of the work you do.
Beautiful post! Thank you for that!
Beautiful. The feeling of brokenness, of being less of a woman, has been so hard with my POF diagnosis as well. But you're right that we need to reject those labels because they are not the truth. We are strong, amazing women who are/will be wonderful mothers, however our children come to us. We must not let our diagnosis diminish our power and spirit and belief. Thank you for the reminder. You made me cry!
Fably written.
I had a few counselling sessions after one of our miscarriages, and I remember my counselling telling me about how she has heard women refer to themselves as 'broken'.
I had thought it, but I hadn't said it out loud.
Did you feel broken as in a broken toy/object, or broken as in spirit/something less physical?
I think I felt both, at that time. I don't now. Put the pieces back together with extra strong glue although there's still a few chipped bits!)
Just beautiful… Brought tears to my eyes. I know I have had those same thoughts before, and luckily had a great and supportive husband reassuring me that I wasn't.
We are all strong, amazing women. We are not broken.
Absolutely beautifully written and touching.
Thank you for writing the precious words that my heart longed to hear. Disease and infertility cannot rob me of being a woman. I am not broke. We are not broken.
What a beautiful post Keiko. Truly inspiring (as they always are). As a women whose first pregnancy got stuck in the wrong spot I too felt broken, to the detriment of my unborn child. It was so hard to take the steps necessary to "resolve" my pregnancy lest it destroy me. I've never felt so broken in my entire life.
Even after having carried a pregnancy to term there is still a part of me that feels broken.
Being a woman is a complicated thing. I've never been very confident in my own womanhood and my loss didn't help me with that. You're post reminds me to be proud of myself and my body, no matter what.
Thank you.
Beautiful post Keiko. You do such an amazing job putting into words what so many of us feel. You let us know we are not alone, that we are still women.
Love,
Sonja
~NIAW