In the Spring of 1993, I was diagnosed with infertility. My tubes were damaged and needed to be repaired, this diagnosis was devastating. It was unexpected, unfair, and unimaginable, and a few more uns that I have a feeling you can relate to.
Four years into my marriage, I was not ready for this news, but I sprung into action anyway. That was my modus operandi back then, get hit, take it, don’t process it, instead, spring into action and find another way.
As a conflict resolution specialist, shifting into problem-solving mode was natural for me even when emotions tried to get in the way. I knew how to take care of emotions. Growing up with parents who didn’t do emotions well, my mom expressed anger explosively and love confusingly, while my dad literally ran from any emotional expression that opposed my mother’s; I learned how to shove emotions way back in the corner of my heart on reflex.
In this situation, my “another way” was to immediately schedule surgery to repair my fallopian tubes. When that was unsuccessful, leaving me scarred physically and emotionally, I quickly moved forward with a new plan to try the latest in fertility treatments that might help our dream of parenthood materialize. After all, it was not like there was no hope, so many advances were being made, surely, I could be helped. When January 1994 rolled in, I was served with the crushing news that this baby thing was not going to happen.
Right away my husband and I decided to start the process of forming a family through adoption. Despite a few raised eyebrows and some loud warnings from well-meaning folk in my African American community, we lovingly went ahead with what I saw as my chance to finally be a mom. The chance to experience what so many parents experience, ecstatic grandparents ready and waiting to lovingly “spoil” our child. It was a dream I kept for so many years after watching my mom fuss over everyone else’s grandchildren longing desperately to hold her own. She was thrilled at the news, but something was wrong with her.
What was wrong? We didn’t know and what was more frightening, the doctors didn’t either.
Five years earlier, my mom had suffered in silence through breast cancer. She had shaped us into such an emotionally repressed family that a week after she was diagnosed, she and my dad gathered my sister and me around her spectacularly decorated Christmas tree, where she announced, “I have breast cancer, now let’s open our presents, you know how I love Christmas.” We knew that we were not allowed to voice the shock, fear or the mind-numbing questions screaming within us.
Now with this new crisis, we were supposed to have faith, be brave and act as if what was happening wasn’t the most terrifying thing that our family had ever experienced. We spent the rest of 1994 watching my mom suffer and waste away from what was later determined as the return of her breast cancer, and I was not prepared to deal with it.
Faced with the real probability that my mom could die, I started to see a side of me that I was not at all familiar with. In the face of real fear, the kind that stops your heart, takes your breath away, and threatens to bring you to your knees, I was barely recognizable to myself. Friends and family, even strangers saw me as this outgoing, funny woman with a giant smile who is always ready for good trouble and a little mischief now and then.
While I had met my infertility head on, never allowing it to slow me down or as the old commercial advised us “never let them see you sweat,” this crisis with my mom threatened to stop me cold. I was operating in a barely functional depression. I was awake and coherent, putting one foot in front of the other every day, going to work, painfully flashing “that giant smile,” crying in the bathroom, and sitting with my mom and my sister at the hospital until visiting hours ended. I would return home, give a report to my husband and other family members, yell at my dad for not dealing with it well, overeat and then throw myself into bed for what was now a regular three to four hours of sleep. Fear and worry were two constant companions that did not let me rest any longer than that.
I am sharing this excerpt from my essay in the book, The Difference in hopes that it will inspire, pick someone up, and motivate people to buy a copy of this incredible book. My experience with every author and their stories has been one of pride, courage, and hope. Check it out and grab your copy here.
