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GREENWICH, Conn. -- This column was never supposed to happen.
As most of you know, I don't usually write about my personal life, except when it comes to my own everyday experiences with financial matters. This time, though, I thought I would share an experience which you may find both inspiring and hopeful.
For the most part, I have lived a life focused on business, both building my own and educating people in how to build theirs. It has been my passion and had absorbed most of my time and energies, leaving little for an engaged, committed personal life.
Then, four years ago, that all changed. As some of you may have read in a New York Times article, I had traveled to Italy after a difficult period in my life. I had just ended an 11-year relationship, and, after selling my first company, I felt rudderless. I wanted time to reflect on those eternal questions: what to do with the rest of my life, how to balance the personal with the professional, etc.
And in a little pastry shop off the Palazzo della Signoria in Florence -- on the one day, coincidentally, that both of us were separately visiting that incredible birthplace of the Renaissance -- I met my future husband. He had sat down at the table next to me and tried to start up a conversation. I ignored him. But in a quiet way he persisted, managing to discover my weak spot (talking about my business ventures), and coming up with a great name for a budgeting program akin to Quicken I was developing at the time.
"How about ZipSave?" he asked. I think the name is taken now, but at the time it sounded very cool. Hmm. Maybe this guy had something going for him after all. I got up and moved over to his table. "Tell me more," I said.
Well, we ended up having dinner that night. To be honest, given my recent past, my head was still elsewhere on the whole relationship issue. But when I got home to Los Angeles a couple weeks later, I found myself thinking about him, and remembering the subtle, little signals that indicated a quality person. I emailed him, he called me ... and the rest, as they say, is history.
A year later we came back to Italy, this time together, and actually visited the same little patisserie. (My husband later said he had planned on proposing to me right there at the same table we had sat at the year before, but "the place was as romantic as a McDonald's."
He did later propose on a hotel balcony in Positano -- at sunset, overlooking the sea, with Pavarotti singing in the background. Much better choice.
When I share the story, people say it gives them goose bumps. Those who are single, but looking for a life partner, say, "You bring us hope."
But the story gets better.
Exploring all options
After we got married in May 2007, we decided to try to start a family. Now I was 42, and my husband was 50, so we knew that statistics were not in our favor. And after trying the old-fashioned way for 18 months, not much was happening. So like millions of American couples, we decided to pursue a number of options.
Beginning last October, we began several fertility treatments. You've read about them. IUI, IVF ... we tried them all. Lots of hormone shots. I had to jab myself with awful needles every day for months.
Disappointingly, my hormone levels were unchanged. So then we explored finding an egg donor. It took me a while to get comfortable with the idea of my husband's genes mixing with someone else's. But my open-minded mother said, "Why not?" It was still kind of weird scanning online through hundreds of pictures of attractive, intelligent women. For some reason, my husband didn't seem to mind as much.
We also started the process to adopt a child. This was grounded as much in our desire to give a needy infant a good home as it was a birth option. A referral from a friend led us to a wonderful organization called the Adoption Resource Center of Connecticut. We told them we didn't care what type of child we got, as long as it was healthy.
During our journey we discovered two things: first, how many couples out there have children with some kind of fertility assistance and, second, how committed
