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When BlogHer member PamelaJeanne offered me the chance to read her soon to be published book Silent Sorority: A (Barren) Woman Gets busy, Angry, Lost and Found, I jumped at the chance to read it. I have enjoyed (and been challenged) by PamelaJeanne's writing for years and I was really thrilled about her upcoming book. Heck yea I wanted to read it.
And then the second thoughts hit. Could I, as a mom, read this book and give it a decent review? Would I say something that annoyed those who are struggling with infertility? Or worse yet, would I hurt someone's feelings?
Too late, the book was on its way. And then it was here. A galley copy, uh oh. I'm not good with galley copies. They're paper, in a way that regular books are not paper. I tend to get the pages dirty or lose them or get them out of order which all adds up to frustration. Reading and reviewing a book I'm frustrated by... well I tend to avoid that. Reading and reviewing a galley copy of a book about infertility written by a woman I really respect... let's just say I was scared to death.
So I plopped the book on my desk, right next to my laptop. Every now and then I flipped through the pages and pondered giving it a try. But I stopped myself. Soon, stuff was piled on top of the book. My camera. The Flip Video. Some cockatiel treats. But I didn't forget it was there. I'd shift things out of the way and flip through the pages again, wondering over what I was going to find inside.
Oh, reprieve! Laurie Kingston's book arrived. I could read that first! Better to read PamelaJeanne's book about infertilty closer to NIAW anyway. Oops, Laurie's book took all of one evening to read and I was back to fondling the pages of PamalaJeanne's book. Rethinking all of the posts I've read about infertility, all of the anger and the pain and the frustration I've heard from women, like PamalaJeanne. I even spent a good long time thinking about a face to face conversation I had with PamelaJeanne about BlogHer.com and mommy bloggers and wondering just how badly I really mucked that conversation up.
I took a deep breath and dove in. From the first page, she had me hooked.
She didn't jump right in to the anger and the angst and the raw pain that I expected. PamelaJeanne wrote about her life, growing up in Michigan. She wrote about college, a failed marriage, and what that meant as a good Catholic woman. She wrote about starting a new life in California, meeting the right man. By the time she got to the angry chapter, (where she nicely provides a warning about just how much anger we're about to be hit with), I felt like I was living this experience right alongside of her.
Except that I wasn't. I've never struggled with infertility, as I've blogged many times before. The people I know who did face infertility did it silently, that silent sorority thing.
This is why I chose to title this post "Silent Sorority - it's not just for infertiles". Silent Sorority is about infertility but it's a book that could be so helpful to women like me who don't know what our friends are going through. It can help women like PamelaJeanne talk openly about infertility rather than hiding behind their wine glasses as another friend announces her pregnancy on the day she's found out IVF was not successful.
All the way through her book I wanted to shake her and say "TELL PEOPLE!" Give them the chance to be your friend. Give them the chance to not hurt you by wallowing in their mommmyhood in front of you. Don't stand there alone with your pain. Don't look for the nearest hiding place. Come out of the closet, even though there's pain in that, too.
Thank goodness for blogs.
I say that all of the time but PamelaJeanne's story is an example of a woman going through a horrible, difficult experience alone - until she found her community through blogging. Not only do infertility blogs offer support and information to infertile women, they help women like me learn to be better friends to women who are struggling with something we know nothing about (and if we're honest, are thankful that we know nothing about it.)
Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos
