When I was first diagnosed with infertility, I felt like I was living on my own deserted island. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell people about how overwhelmed, sad, and lost that I was feeling. It was that I didn’t know who I could tell that would understand. I remember telling one of my good friends to which they responded, “Oh, don’t worry Maria. It will happen, you guys are young. You just have to give it time.”
I remember thinking, “No, you don’t understand. You don’t know how difficult it is for me to even get out of bed in the morning. You don’t know how upset I get when I see a pregnant woman pushing a cart in the grocery store. You don’t know how angry I get when I see a family taking a walk around my block. You just don’t know how deeply these little, everyday activities can trigger feelings of intense sadness.”
Maria, with her husband Kevin, who have now lived most of their 5-year marriage with infertility.
For a while I didn’t think I would meet anyone who would understand how I was feeling. And so I started to isolate myself – from my family, friends, even partially from my husband. I felt that I didn’t have anything to worthy to contribute to conversations or events, so I just removed myself from them.
My feelings of wanting isolation, however, began to change when I made the decision to attend RESOLVE’s Advocacy Day in 2014. Tired of living on this so called “infertile desert island,” I convinced my husband to make the drive from Grand Rapids, MI to Washington, D.C. to maybe start doing something about my frustration and isolation rather than just complain about how I was feeling.
How one decision can change your life. Seriously.
While at Advocacy Day I began to feel like I was taking action to not just change my life but the life of thousands of other infertile men and women silently suffering with the disease, the most impactful takeaway were the friendships that I formed. Particularly, my friendship with Elizabeth Walker.
Maria and Elizabeth in San Francisco, CA in July 2015 for the ART of Infertility.
For Elizabeth and me May 2014 was our first Advocacy Day. Both of us were representing the state of MI and so we spent most of the day together walking the halls of Congress handing out letters and asking our representatives to sponsor infertility related bills. Perhaps it was the experience of doing something totally out of your everyday that helped form such a strong bond. Or perhaps it was simply a friendship that was suppose to be. But whatever it was – Elizabeth and I both knew that we found another person who we could confide in and who simply got one another.
Since Advocacy Day in 2014, Elizabeth and I have worked together on the ART of Infertility. Traveling to numerous states, hosting art and writing workshops, dropping in at prominent fertility clinics to talk about the project, talking about infertility at academic conferences, and even mentoring young college interns about infertility. We are busy but being busy has also saved me – made me feel like I am being productive, no longer wallowing away on my infertility island.
I often think what my life would be like if I never met Elizabeth. Thinking about this, I get lost and overwhelmed. Our friendship has been integral to my healing, to my strength and to my commitment to always advocate on the behalf of those who are infertile. She has become not just my infertile sister, she’s simply Liz – my big sis.
And so while there are a million different reasons to consider attending Advocacy Day this year on May 11th, one of the most powerful reasons to attend is because it could quite literally change your life through the friendships you may form. If I never met Elizabeth that May 2014 during Advocacy Day, my life would not be what it is today. So, I encourage you all – if you are feeling alone, in despair, frustrated and ready to make a change – come to Advocacy Day where you will be greeted by hundreds of other infertile women and men who understand exactly how you are feeling. You will be amazed.
Advocacy Day isn’t just about coming together to advocate for infertility rights, it is also about coming together as a group that has been told their stories shouldn’t be told, their stories don’t count enough to be considered for legislative action. It is a coming together as a force of women and men who have become friends from across the U.S. to change how we think, talk, and support issues of infertility. Advocacy Day is powerful as it is a pure embodied display of how the coming together of friendships can make change.
Join us!
Maria and Elizabeth outside the Capital Building during Advocacy Day 2015.
