First Gen Asian-American

Secrets of an Infertile

The first time I ever took a home preg­nancy test (HPT) was on the morn­ing of first wed­ding anniver­sary. Hubby & I had only recently decided that we were ready to start the next phase in our lives together. Plus, Aunt Flo had been miss­ing for over a week by then, so I fig­ured it was time.

I won’t lie … I also thought that the prospect of pre­sent­ing pos­i­tive “pee stick” as an anniver­sary gift would have made our first wed­ding anniver­sary together all that more memorable.

But when the test came back neg­a­tive, I threw the stick away and climbed back into bed to cud­dle with Hubby who was still sound asleep. And yes, I was dis­ap­pointed … but at that time in our lives, Infer­til­ity was just a dis­tant diag­no­sis, which was … in no way, related to me.

I’ve never told any­one this story before because until today, it wasn’t some­thing that I con­sid­ered very rel­e­vant to my life as an “Infertile.”

Hubby had been privy to this story, because later that day he hap­pened upon the open HPT pack­age in the trash and won­dered why I took one. But oth­er­wise, no one else in our lives had a clue that we were even “actively try­ing” at the time.

It was some­thing that Hubby & I, as a young mar­ried cou­ple, wanted to keep to ourselves.

*****

It’s only nat­ural that most cou­ples wish to keep their deci­sions on family-​​planning a secret. Okay … maybe not so much a secret, but more of a dis­cus­sion that hap­pens strictly between the couple.

After all, it really should be no one’s busi­ness to know what’s going on in a couple’s sex life. Right?

But what hap­pens when love and mar­riage don’t auto­mat­i­cally lead to the prover­bial baby car­riage? And what if months — nay, years go by with­out hav­ing any­thing to show but a garbage full of neg­a­tive preg­nancy test?

What if you had spent thou­sands of dol­lars for an infer­til­ity diag­no­sis and work-​​up? And then turned around and spent even more money on try­ing to “fix” the med­ical prob­lems so that you could pro­duce a bio­log­i­cal child of your own?

Should a cou­ple still keep their family-​​building plans and the infer­til­ity diag­no­sis a secret?

What if you and your spouse had to con­tin­u­ously be poked by var­i­ous nee­dles and prod­ded by var­i­ous health pro­fes­sion­als, month after month, just to deter­mine when the opti­mal time was to repro­duce? To go home and have a romp in the bed­room (stress-​​free, of course)? To col­lect a man spec­i­men in the com­fort of a ster­ile clinic? To have to sit nice and pretty in those G*d-awful stir­rups? Only to be dis­ap­pointed month after month …

Would it still be inap­pro­pri­ate for a cou­ple to talk about how infer­til­ity has affected their lives?

What if you or your spouse were done pur­su­ing the med­ical route of infer­til­ity and decided to adopt? What if you spent an addi­tional thou­sands of dol­lars in order to be scru­ti­nized by adop­tion agen­cies, local and fed­eral gov­ern­ment offi­cials? Just so these agen­cies can deter­mine if you were “wor­thy” enough to be parents?

What if the Birth Mom/​Family decided to change their minds at the last minute? Or what if the coun­try you decided to pur­sue an inter­na­tional adop­tion decided to close their doors on all adoptions?

Would now be a good time to talk to loved ones about infertility?

And finally, what if you and your spouse thought­fully and thor­oughly con­sid­ered all your other options to build your fam­ily … and after years of dis­ap­point­ment and heartache, decided that liv­ing child-​​free was your best path in life?

Would it be okay for the cou­ple to com­fort­ably dis­cuss this deci­sion with any ran­dom stranger who asks if the cou­ple has any kids?

These are dif­fi­cult ques­tions to answer. I know; as I’ve had to dis­sect each indi­vid­ual ques­tion with a fine-​​tooth comb. I’ve had to deter­mine how each answer would affect the rest of my life and my rela­tion­ships with those I’ve felt close to at one time or another.

The truth is, each per­son … each cou­ple and/​or the fam­ily & friends that are affected by this couple’s infer­til­ity … will have dif­fer­ent answers. That’s because each person’s jour­ney through infer­til­ity can be dif­fer­ent than the per­son stand­ing next to him or her. Even if they were sit­ting next to each other at an Infer­til­ity Specialist’s office.

*****

I find it sad that soci­ety deems “family-​​building” dis­cus­sions as a pri­vate issue amongst infer­tile couples.

Huh?! WTF …

Okay, let me reword that last state­ment: I find it dis­ap­point­ing that soci­ety deems “fam­ily build­ing” dis­cus­sions as inap­pro­pri­ate when it comes to Infertility.

While I do think that there are cer­tain dis­cus­sions and deci­sions that should be left pri­vate amongst the infer­tile cou­ple, I do think that other con­ver­sa­tions should be okay to dis­cuss with other peo­ple … other fam­ily mem­bers and friends and other infer­tile couples.

Because if any­thing, Infer­tiles can be the worse when it comes to openly talk­ing about their expe­ri­ences and emo­tions when it comes to build­ing their family.

There’s an arti­cle in SELF Magazine’s August issue that out­lines this exact issue.

This arti­cle (aptly titled “This Woman Has A Secret”) found that a recent sur­vey indi­cates that 61% of infer­til­ity patients hide their strug­gle to get preg­nant from friends and family.

And see­ing that 1 in 8 Amer­i­can cou­ples expe­ri­ence infer­til­ity … well, yeah. That’s a lot of peo­ple that aren’t talk­ing about the heady emo­tions that can be asso­ci­ated with the inabil­ity to reproduce.

Along with those ques­tions I pre­vi­ously posed, other com­mon con­cerns that an infer­tile cou­ple can expe­ri­ence include the fear that their life will be eter­nally empty. Or the sense that the cou­ple is dam­aged or broken.

Both amplify the shame already incurred by the cou­ple; as they likely feel dif­fer­ent from being dif­fer­ent than other “nor­mally repro­duc­ing” fam­ily and friends.

Both make the cou­ple more embar­rassed to talk about these strug­gles and asso­ci­ated emo­tions with their loved ones.

*****

It’s a dif­fi­cult thing … want­ing to talk about a person’s (or couple’s) indi­vid­ual jour­ney through infer­til­ity. It’s ten-​​times more dif­fi­cult, given the shame that’s asso­ci­ated with infertility.

As the SELF arti­cle points out, it gets even more exhaust­ing when an infer­tile couple:

… become slaves of their monthly cycle; often unable to leave town even for a week­end get­away due to daily mon­i­tor­ing for hor­mone lev­els and egg counts. When month after month a cou­ple fails to get preg­nant, their lives stall and the ques­tion of whether or not their fam­ily will expand looms over deci­sions about the car they buy, the house they live in, the clothes they purchase.

And this, along with many other rea­sons, is why many infer­tile cou­ples choose to keep their “family-​​building” strug­gles a secret. Why they con­tinue with the façade that “family-​​building” dis­cus­sions should remain per­sonal, as soci­ety dictates.

*****

After years of keep­ing my strug­gle a secret … of bury­ing the emo­tions I’ve felt for so long … I believe that it is extremely impor­tant to talk about these issues. And I think it’s impor­tant for an indi­vid­ual to find their own out­let or sup­port systems.

Hubby & I became “shad­ows” of our for­mer self …

But first and fore­most, I think it’s very impor­tant to keep an open com­mu­ni­ca­tion with your Spouse/​SO. Because if there is any­one else who should know what you’re going through, it should be the per­son who is trav­el­ing down the infer­til­ity jour­ney with you.

For Hubby & I, it’s a path that we took together, hand-​​in-​​hand. We made it a point to talk about each of our con­cerns openly and hon­estly (yes, even the scary parts) so that we knew where we both were at emo­tion­ally. And if one per­son was even slightly ahead of the other per­son, we’d make an effort to “wait” until both of us were both “on board” before mak­ing any major deci­sions. There was no push­ing or prod­ding; there was patience and under­stand­ing that both of us dealt with our issues in very unique manners.

If any­thing … that was my sav­ing grace in our jour­ney together. Hubby was my rock — my torch, so to speak, light­ing my way through the dark­ness. And I hope that he can say the same thing for me as well.

*****

As for other sup­port sys­tems out­side of the cou­ple … It’s dif­fi­cult to find sup­port out there. I know; I’ve tried.

I’ve sought sup­port amongst my loved ones; my friends. But it’s hon­estly hard for them to com­pletely under­stand what it’s like, unless they’re walk­ing in your shoes, your path.

But after years (and years) of deal­ing with Infer­til­ity, I’ve finally learned to turn this expe­ri­ence around by edu­cat­ing oth­ers about my jour­ney. And I did this by debunk­ing state­ments (like “just relax”) and myths (like “just adopt and you’ll get preg­nant”) when­ever they would sur­face in those inevitable conversations.

This is because I believe that the more an Infer­tile per­son openly dis­cusses their expe­ri­ences, the more that the gen­eral pop­u­la­tion will under­stand and learn to empathize with the Infer­til­ity community.

I hope that this is a les­son that other Infer­tile cou­ples can learn from my own expe­ri­ence: Talk openly about it now, so that oth­ers can be more empa­thetic to the Infer­til­ity path.

*****

I’ve also tried to find sup­port in an Infer­til­ity Sup­port Group.

For me, that was not my cup of tea. My expe­ri­ence mim­ic­ked how another per­son in the SELF arti­cle so aptly stated, “Every­one gets up and tells their suc­cess sto­ries. Infer­til­ity treat­ment isn’t always about success.”

But … that may not be the case for every sup­port group. So please … you should still seek out an Infer­til­ity sup­port group before pass­ing any judg­ment. It just may just be the per­fect out­let for you.

*****

Finally, (and only after a major cat­a­strophic life event) I tried some indi­vid­ual coun­sel­ing. And that planted the seed that allowed me to talk about my Infer­til­ity and the emo­tions that came with those struggles.

My advice for an Infer­tile per­son try­ing to find the right ther­a­pist? Talk to your Infer­til­ity Spe­cial­ist and ask for a rec­om­men­da­tion. If you’re not cur­rently see­ing a spe­cial­ist; call one in your area and ask. Chances are, the Front Desk staff or the RN in the office will be more than will­ing to give you a rec­om­men­da­tion. If not, check out RESOLVE’s web­site for a list of pro­fes­sion­als in the area.

*****

Again, huh?!

There’s one more out­let for sup­port that I want to point out. And this out­let, I must say, has been the most ther­a­peu­tic for me.

After much encour­age­ment from my ther­a­pist, I sought out sup­port from online com­mu­ni­ties. I started out by read­ing mes­sage boards and even­tu­ally sought out per­sonal blogs. From there, I stum­bled onto Mel’s list and found an entire blo­gos­phere of peo­ple that I sud­denly felt I could relate to.

Sud­denly I wanted to share my story. I wanted oth­ers to know what *I* had gone through in my jour­ney. And, because there wasn’t enough rep­re­sen­ta­tion from the Asian-​​American/​Filipino-​​American com­mu­nity, I wanted to let those Infer­tile individuals/​couples know that they weren’t alone.

And, as the Asian-​​American cul­ture typ­i­cally simul­ta­ne­ously praises Moth­er­hood and yet frowns upon dis­cus­sions lead­ing up to Moth­er­hood, *I* wanted to have an out­let for where I can point other fam­ily mem­bers and friends to read when the inevitable, “What? You don’t want kids?” ques­tions came up.

The sup­port I’ve received from the three years I’ve now been writ­ing on this blog have been over­whelm­ing. Not only have I met the most incred­i­ble peo­ple who get me (and under­stand my wacky sense of humor), but I’ve found sup­port in old friends and fam­ily that I might never have found any other way.

So yes … if any­thing, I encour­age writ­ing a blog as an out­let for your Infer­til­ity issues. I encour­age you to write about your strug­gles, your emo­tions … your biggest fears and worst night­mares and post it for the world to see. I encour­age you to be hon­est, as well.

But most impor­tantly, I encour­age adver­tis­ing it to your friends and fam­ily. Because we all know that keep­ing secrets from your loved ones (whether big or small) can ulti­mately be frus­trat­ing and tir­ing for all involved.

So why not let the secret out?

*****

I write this to let other Infer­tile cou­ples know that they do not have to suf­fer through these strug­gles alone.

I write this to encour­age other Infer­tiles to talk about their expe­ri­ences to others.

And I write this to ensure that those now-​​parents – those who suf­fered through Infer­til­ity on their way to par­ent­hood – con­tinue to share their strug­gles of Infer­til­ity … regard­less of how busy their lives may be, now that they have children.**

I write this to make sure that Infer­til­ity no longer remains a secret.

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Related Posts:

A brief his­tory of Emily’s Infer­til­ity Journey

When Emily decided enough was enough

Why Emily blogs for Infer­tile Asian/​Filipino-​​Americans

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** This was the only beef I had about the SELF arti­cle. For all that it said about the impor­tance of “let­ting the secret out,” the last sen­tence in the arti­cle is what soured me the most:

Work­ing behind the scenes [of sup­port­ing the Infer­til­ity com­mu­nity] is one option, but [Lisa] says, ‘I’m sure my vol­un­teer efforts will be for schools or parks. Once I have twins, I’ll have a lot less free time.”

Hind­sight is always 20/​20 …

Everything Is Kung Fu

When Dr. Bro was about 12 years old, he took up Tae Kwon Do. Part of it was to learn self-​​defense; another rea­son was to gain con­fi­dence. I’d watch his classes from time to time; fas­ci­nated by the dis­ci­pline needed to prac­tice this mar­tial art.

Of course, a year after he started prac­tic­ing Tae Kwon Do, the orig­i­nal “Karate Kid” movie came out. It was def­i­nitely a movie that both of us had wanted to see. Dr. Bro, because of the ref­er­ence to learn­ing mar­tial arts. And me, because I wanted to see Ralph Mac­chio again after see­ing him in “The Out­siders”. Of course, both of us just loved the film; as did every 10 – 14 year old that saw the film with us. It was quite evi­dent, espe­cially dur­ing the scenes dur­ing the tour­na­ment, when every kid cheered for Daniel Larusso to win.

This past Fri­day, Hubby & I went to an early evening show at the movies; some­thing we haven’t done in awhile since find­ing myself unem­ployed. And of course we went to see the new ver­sion the “Karate Kid” … not only because we wanted to see how Jackie Chan could fill the role of Pat Morita, but because we were wanted to see how the story would trans­late now that it was set in China. We were not disappointed.

I must warn you, if you’re look­ing for a com­pletely dif­fer­ent spin on the orig­i­nal movie, you won’t find it here. The story line, from the cute class­mate to the bully, down to the some of the say­ings “Strike first! Strike hard! No mercy!” are the same. Except with this ver­sion, there seems to be some sort of twist to each ele­ment we see in the orig­i­nal film.

The first (and obvi­ous) twist to the story is that instead of being taught Karate, Jaden Smith’s char­ac­ter (Dre) is taught Kung Fu. So, as a good friend pointed out … why not call it “The Kung Fu Kid” instead? Well, after a lit­tle research I did man­age to find out that the film is, indeed called “The Kung Fu Kid” internationally.**

Another twist is in how Mr. Han (Jackie Chan) teaches mar­tial arts to Dre. In the orig­i­nal movie, Mr. Miyagi’s method of teach­ing Karate ranges from from wax­ing a car to paint­ing a fence.  This ver­sion does not have Dre being Mr. Han’s chore boy. Nope … instead, Mr Han teaches Kung Fu by hav­ing Dre take his jacket on and off.

I admit that when ini­tially see­ing the whole “Jacket On/​Jacket Off” tech­nique (as opposed “Wax On/​Wax Off”),  it appeared pretty lame, for lack of bet­ter words. But when put into con­text with the rest of the film, this method of teach­ing not only taught Dre Kung Fu, but it end up teach­ing him about respect.

Being a first gen­er­a­tion Asian-​​American, that is the aspect of the film that spoke to me most. It was watch­ing a kid from the new “West­ern World” try to inte­grate his life in the old “East­ern World.” There are many moments where we see Dre  act like a typ­i­cal Amer­i­can teenager; brash and arro­gant, unaware of his sur­round­ings. This atti­tude obvi­ously would not be accept­able in China where tra­di­tion and elders (as evi­dent by the mul­ti­ple scenes  of senior cit­i­zens exer­cis­ing) are revered.

Mr. Han does an excel­lent job, albeit reluc­tantly, teach­ing Dre about the impor­tance of respect in the East­ern World. He does it in the method in which he trains Dre in Kung Fu; because as Mr. Han says:

Kung Fu is in every­thing we do. It’s in the way we put on a jacket. It’s in how we treat peo­ple. Every­thing is Kung Fu.

In other words (or at least what I get out of it), if you respect every­body … every­thing in your sur­round­ings … you, too could be a mas­ter of Kung Fu. You, too would be able to find bal­ance between mind and body.

What I hope that most kids (and let’s face it, adults as well) get out of this movie is that there needs to be respect for every­thing; that we must treat peo­ple with the same respect that we would want in return. Whether it has to do with other cul­tures or reli­gions … or with Mother Nature and our own planet … we should find that bal­ance within ourselves.

When reach­ing the last few min­utes in the movie, I couldn’t help but cheer Dre on as he moved through the tour­na­ment. And that last scene … oth­er­wise known as “the crane kick” in the orig­i­nal movie? Well, lis­ten­ing to those 10 – 14 year old kids around us clap and cheer … it reminded me of that day, some 26 years ago, when Dr. Bro and I watched the original.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** And while I was at it, I man­aged to find that there was actu­ally a Philip­pine TV show called “Kung Fu Kids”. Hmm … talk about com­ing around full circle!

2">Infertility Bets On Hold, Part 2

(If you missed Part 1, click here … )

While I’ve pretty much begun to resolve those par­tic­u­lar grief issues, there’s still that lack of strength that I feel I need in order to go through the entire adop­tion process.  Because it takes some­one who really has enough strength to climb over the prover­bial brick wall get­ting in the way of hav­ing a child. And specif­i­cally, I’m talk­ing about all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. Quite frankly, I know that I don’t have what it takes to go through that.

Why do I say that? (And Kelly … hope­fully, this will help answer the ques­tion you posed to me at one time … ) Well first of all, I just know what I’m capa­ble of han­dling emo­tion­ally, and I know that I wouldn’t be able to sur­vive any fur­ther dis­ap­point­ment or heartache. Or as my new favorite quote from Pam says:

It got to the point where the poten­tial for more heart­break was more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.

The sec­ond rea­son I feel as if I have lit­tle strength is because I have lit­tle con­fi­dence that things will come rel­a­tively straight­for­ward and sim­ple to us.

Not that I expect adop­tion to be an easy path. If we did decide to adopt, I have this very strong sus­pi­cion that we’d have so many more walls to climb. Give me a chance to explain … and I’d absolutely love to hear what oth­ers have to say to con­tribute to this discussion.

Let’s start off with Domes­tic Adoption:

  • Hubby & I both Asian Amer­i­can; Fil­ipino Amer­i­can, to be specific.
  • How often do you sup­pose any Poten­tial Birth Moms (PBM) would look at our dossier and — just by looks alone — think that we’d make great par­ents when their child will (most likely) not look at all sim­i­lar to the adop­tive cou­ple that they’d hope to raise their child?
  • Or that the PBM might worry that their child would face more bar­ri­ers hav­ing Asian Amer­i­can parents?
  • How often are Asian Amer­i­can babies given up for adop­tion; espe­cially if the PBM is also Asian or Asian Amer­i­can? Cul­ture dic­tates that fam­ily is impor­tant. If the child is not wanted in the imme­di­ate fam­ily; chances are that there is another fam­ily mem­ber (aunt, cousin, third uncle twice removed) that is will­ing to raise the child. Unfor­tu­nately, that’s a sit­u­a­tion that’s likely never going to hap­pen to us.

Mov­ing onto Inter­na­tional Adoption:

  • There are stricter laws and reg­u­la­tions from var­i­ous coun­tries in effect.
  • Some spe­cific coun­tries, like Rus­sia and Guatemala, have either sus­pended or have placed holds on any adop­tions to the US.
  • Wait time. Even for Fil­ipino adop­tions there are cer­tain stip­u­la­tions on how and when a child can be adopted; when the child can come back to the US with the adopted par­ents. And quite frankly, I don’t think I can afford the three-​​year wait in order to adopt a child from my native country.

And finally other, all-​​encompassing barriers:

  • Age: Let’s face it. Hubby & I are cur­rently push­ing 40. And yes, I know that there are cou­ples out there that are rais­ing babies that are much older than us. But there was a rea­son why Hubby & I started try­ing to con­ceive within a year of mar­riage: I had always seen me as a younger mother; one that wanted to fin­ish hav­ing babies before the age of 30. There was a spe­cific rea­son behind that: my mother and I are exactly 3o years apart in age (sorry Mom!). Grow­ing up (par­tic­u­larly in high school), not only did I deal with a cul­tural bar­rier, but I also dealt with a huge gen­er­a­tional gap. Both my par­ents were pre–baby boomer, while I was most def­i­nitely a Gen-​​Xer. Even though after I turned 30, I knew that this was some­thing beyond my con­trol, adopt­ing now — espe­cially as the rules and regs of adop­tion have got­ten more strict — well, it no longer seems pru­dent for both Hubby & my sake.
  • Energy: Along with age, this is the sec­ond biggest con­cern that I have. And, if I was hon­est with myself, the flim­si­est bar­rier of all. Because, really this has to do with energy and sta­mina. It’s one thing to raise a child with the thought in mind that you’ll be young enough to (some­what) keep up with their needs. It’s quite another thing know­ing that I can no longer wake myself up in the morn­ing with­out hit­ting the snooze but­ton a dozen times. Would I be able to care for another life if I can barely care for my own? Like I said, flimsy … but I’m just being honest.

I don’t bring up these points to be neg­a­tive in any way, shape or form. I’m sim­ply stat­ing facts that appear to be the most obvi­ous bar­ri­ers for our indi­vid­ual case when it comes to adopt­ing a child. And that’s assum­ing that we would ever go down that route. And, as I said above, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what I per­ceive as barriers.

*****

As it is, I feel that we’ve already played our game of Infer­til­ity Roulette. We’ve already placed all the bets we wanted to at this time in our lives. And we lost that bet. With adop­tion (or h*ll, even if we ever decided to go through IVF again), I want some­thing I can be sure of … some­thing I can count on.

I hes­i­tate using the word “guar­an­tee” … since noth­ing in life is ever guar­an­teed, but after more than ten years of fight­ing the odds and now fac­ing even greater odds against us (age, finances, etc), Hubby & I opted to get out of the bet­ting pool.

And this is why, at least in my eyes, it’s never as sim­ple to “just adopt.” It’s never easy to go through another round of IVF.

This is why Hubby & I have decided to “cut our loss” … or in this case, “cut the strings” … and live child-​​free after infertility.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

Related Links:

Cut­ting The Strings

Infer­til­ity Bets On Hold, Part 1

Thoughts on Adoption

Infor­ma­tion on Fil­ipino Adoptions

Wiki Info on the Pre-​​Baby Boom Generation

Wiki Info on Gen­er­a­tion X

Identity Labels

Any­body remem­ber the old-​​school Dymo label-​​makers? I’m not talk­ing about the fancy elec­tric ones where you can type in what­ever you want before print­ing it up. I’m talk­ing about the ones where you turn the dial to choose the let­ter and squeeze the han­dle (as hard as pos­si­ble) to imprint it on the red or black vinyl tape. And G*d for­bid if you mis­spelled a word and have to start from the beginning.

For some rea­son I was think­ing about that label-​​maker this past week­end. And really, it started last week when I received a won­der­ful email from an old High School Friend (HSF) that I hadn’t heard from in years. She had responded via Face­book in regards to the post in which I admit­tedly found myself ques­tion­ing my pur­pose in life.

HSF talked about how, as women, we are always ques­tion­ing our­selves about what we truly want in life. That we’re always find­ing a way to label our­selves while simul­ta­ne­ously try­ing to achieve more than what we can phys­i­cally and emo­tion­ally han­dle. And that, in the process, we tend to lose per­spec­tive of who we really are in the grand scheme of things.

For HSF, it’s a mat­ter of jug­gling mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties. She’s a wife, a daugh­ter, a mother of three (beau­ti­ful) chil­dren. She’s also a free-​​lancer, a found­ing pres­i­dent of one of her alma mater’s alumni groups. Yet as beau­ti­ful as her life appears (espe­cially from perus­ing through Face­book), she admits that she’s still com­ing to terms with the “Suc­cess­ful Career Woman” label; espe­cially as she’s cur­rently stay­ing at home to with her three young kids.

The point of HSF’s email was not to point out how much dif­fer­ent her life was to mine; rather it was sim­ply to point out that regard­less of how we view our lives, we only limit our­selves by plac­ing labels on who we are or what we do. And fur­ther­more, why can’t we just enjoy the path that we’re cur­rently on and embrace who we are while trav­el­ing down this path?

I must admit, I’m still strug­gling to deal with the valid points that HSF has brought up. I’m sure it has to do a lot with the many years of believ­ing that “Moth­er­hood” was the end-​​all be-​​all for a woman’s liveli­hood. (I con­tribute this, as always, to the strong Fil­ipino cul­tural influ­ence that I iden­tify with.) And, even though I’ve accepted the fact that I can’t have bio­log­i­cal chil­dren of my own, I still long for some­thing to fill that void that Infer­til­ity has robbed me.

Fur­ther­more, with my recent unem­ploy­ment sit­u­a­tion, I feel as though I’ve been stripped yet another label that I’ve iden­ti­fied myself with. That “suc­cess­ful career woman” iden­tity flew out the win­dow the day I found myself sur­rep­ti­tiously with­out a job.

And really … that’s what this post was try­ing to explain.

While I’d love to “give up” those labels that I’ve placed on myself, I also must admit that it’s these labels that I’ve come to rely on to “ground” myself, so to speak, when I’ve oth­er­wise felt lost. It’s these labels that help remind me of who *I* am in the face of uncertainty:

  • I’m a Wife.
  • I’m an only Daughter.
  • I’m a Sis­ter to my Brother.
  • I’m a friend.
  • I’m Filipino-​​American (1st generation).
  • I’m Catholic.
  • I’m a nurse.
  • I’m a writer.
  • I’m infer­tile.
  • I’m child-​​free after infertility.

When look­ing at who I am; what I believe is the cen­ter of my core … it’s pretty obvi­ous that there are those iden­ti­ties that I have no con­trol over. These are the iden­ti­ties that have been imprinted on my soul; the ones that I can­not change. The ones that I’ve grown to accept as part of who I am in this life.

Then there are the labels I’ve cho­sen for myself (Catholic, nurse, writer, friend). Those are the iden­ti­ties that, despite the years of time and invest­ment I put into them, I can read­ily let go. But do I really want to do that?

The prob­lem, as I see it, is when one of these iden­ti­ties has been lost; espe­cially at a time where I wasn’t ready to a) let go of that iden­tity, or b) accept that iden­tity for what it is.

Take for instance, the part of myself that iden­ti­fies with being infer­tile. This was one label I never expected to own. But the fact of the mat­ter is that after one year of try­ing to con­ceive (waaaay back when, it seems), we were unable to get preg­nant. By def­i­n­i­tion, infer­til­ity is the inabil­ity to con­ceive or carry a preg­nancy to term after 12 months of try­ing to conceive. That’s a fact. There’s no way I can change that pat of me; there’s no way I have con­trol over that situation.

But take the part of me that iden­ti­fies with being child-​​free after infer­til­ity. We tried every­thing that we could pos­si­bly do (within our own capa­bil­i­ties both finan­cially and emo­tion­ally) to give our­selves a bio­log­i­cal child, but that just never hap­pened. And because we thought long and hard about our other options, Hubby & I chose to accept that liv­ing child-​​free was what was best for me. And believe me … it was not an easy choice to make.

And because, she nails it right on the head … here’s how Pam from Silent Soror­ity recently described the rea­son why she and her hus­band chose the child-​​free path:

“It got to the point where the poten­tial heart­break was actu­ally more over­whelm­ing than the glim­mer of very small hope.”

In any case, my point is that with our deci­sion to live child-​​free, I dealt with hav­ing to let go of one cho­sen iden­tity and accept a new cho­sen iden­tity. I had to let go of that iden­tity of moth­er­hood that I held on for so long. and I had to accept that liv­ing with­out chil­dren, despite the incred­i­ble long­ing to have a bio­log­i­cal child of our own, was my new identity.

As I said before, the deci­sion to live child-​​free wasn’t a choice that we wanted to make. It’s not that we didn’t dis­cuss open­ing our hearts to adop­tion. Or open­ing our wal­lets to more infer­til­ity treat­ments. Sim­ply put, iden­ti­fy­ing our­selves as liv­ing child-​​free was a choice that we had to make. Hubby & I needed to weigh our options to decide if that the small glim­mer of hope was worth the insur­mount­able heart­break we’d already been through. Hubby & I needed to make this deci­sion so we (or rather *I*) could main­tain my sanity.

Because if I didn’t put that label on me, I’d still be strug­gling to deter­mine who I was … if I couldn’t be the mother I had always dreamed about.

And of course now … my new iden­tity cri­sis is to deter­mine what to do with my career. But I will take a page out of HSF’s book and learn to enjoy the jour­ney while I dis­cover what’s next.

How about you, Blog World? What parts of your­self keep you grounded? What labels do you place on your­self? How do you iden­tify yourself?

The Infertile Down the Road

One of the great things about the Inter­net is that it makes the world seem a lit­tle smaller. It makes the oceans seem less vast. It makes a one-​​person island seem less lonely.

Please click on image to read about this impor­tant week

When I started on my infer­til­ity (IF) jour­ney, like most infer­tiles I didn’t know that I was on the road to “The Land of IF.” I merely thought I was on the path to Mommy-​​hood. After months — nay, years  — of “detours” and “pit stops” I sud­denly found myself on the lonely road of infertility.

When I mean “lonely,” it’s meant fig­u­ra­tively. After all, it’s not like I wasn’t sur­rounded by the 1 in 8 cou­ples affected by a diag­no­sis of infer­til­ity. But since IF is more akin to a “Silent Soror­ity,” there was lit­tle that I could feel com­fort­able talk­ing face to face with others.

Oh, believe me … I tried attend­ing the local RESOLVE sup­port group … and it just wasn’t my cup of tea. Reflect­ing back at it now, I’m sure it’s because my self-​​esteem had been stripped down to noth­ing by then … and even in a room full of other IFers, I still didn’t feel I could relate to them, let alone con­tribute to the group. So I never went again.

Then, after read­ing some online Infer­til­ity mes­sage boards,  I dis­cov­ered the blog-​​o-​​verse and an entire world of IFers who wrote quite open and hon­estly about the same sad­ness and dis­ap­point­ment that I felt. And I was espe­cially drawn to those who expressed the same doubts about them­selves, the same lack of self-​​esteem that I so deeply felt. And, even though I rarely com­mented on these blog posts, I started to feel less alone.

My Mom gave me the idea to write about my per­sonal jour­ney; although I doubt she thought that I’d write about it on such a pub­lic forum. She knew that I loved to write dur­ing the years of letter-​​writing with my cousin, and thought that this might be ther­a­peu­tic for me.

It wasn’t until after real­iz­ing that there was an absence of infor­ma­tion about Asian-​​Americans expe­ri­enc­ing infer­til­ity that I decided I to blog. Because even though I iden­ti­fied with the other IF blog­gers who wrote exactly what I felt, there was this other void that refused to be filled. Specif­i­cally, it was the part of me that iden­ti­fied with being a first gen­er­a­tion Fil­ipino Amer­i­can going through infer­til­ity. And with that in mind, I had hoped to fill that void left in me …  and to also let those other Asian-​​American IFers out there try­ing to “save face ” know that they are not alone.

I am for­ever grate­ful to the Inter­net for giv­ing me the oppor­tu­nity to put my words out there. Writ­ing about being a first gen­er­a­tion Catholic Asian-​​American infer­tile has been more ther­a­peu­tic than any local sup­port group or other face-​​to-​​face inter­ac­tions could have been (the excep­tion always being Hubby, of course). And those friends I’ve made over the past three years of blog­ging? Well, I con­sider myself lucky to have them — and all the sup­port they’ve given me — in my life.

So thank you, Inter­net. Thank you for giv­ing me the world.

IF …">What IF …

If. Two let­ters that could be used to express hope or promise. “If only …” Or bet­ter yet, “If I could, I would …”

And then there’s IF; both let­ters in caps. The med­ical “Alpha­bet soup”-version of the word “infertility.”

Please click on image to learn more about this week

Some­how, the mean­ing between these two sim­ple “words” seem worlds apart. Yet they can also go hand in hand with one another. When I think of the word “if”, I think of pos­si­bil­i­ties; even though it can also mean “a sup­po­si­tion” or “an uncer­tain out­come.” When I think of IF (as in infer­til­ity), I cer­tainly don’t con­sider infer­til­ity in terms of pos­si­bil­i­ties or futures. No … I imme­di­ately think of that “uncer­tain outcome.”

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

For NIAW, Mel over at Stir­rup Queens has part­nered with RESOLVE to increase the aware­ness of how Infer­til­ity affects every­one. The project, aptly called “Project IF” is some­thing that has become more pow­er­ful than even I, an infer­tile for well over 10 years, could imag­ine. The first part of this project set out to unite all Infer­til­ity Blog­gers under one com­mon thread by sim­ply writ­ing a ques­tion address­ing the biggest “What IF” in regards to an individual’s infer­til­ity. The emo­tion behind it is weighted in more than just gold or plat­inum. And if you haven’t already gone to visit … please go now.

The sec­ond part of Project IF expands on Part 1 by ask­ing the blog­ger to choose from one of the recur­ring themes that came from the over 500 “What If’s” and explore that theme on our per­sonal blog. And since I’m a firm believer in the power of words, I felt the need to participate.

********

“What if, after years of strug­gling with the roller coaster of infer­til­ity and FINALLY accept­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free, I get pregnant?”

This was the “What IF” I sub­mit­ted for Part 1 of “Project IF.” I chose to write about how infer­til­ity impacted my future. And based on that state­ment, it would appear that infer­til­ity con­tin­ues to weigh heav­ily on my future decisions.

In the Fil­ipino cul­ture (like most other cul­tures), fam­ily has always been held in the high­est regard. And despite being a well-​​educated Fil­ip­ina with a suc­cess­ful career, being a mother is con­sid­ered the noblest pro­fes­sion for a woman.

As a first gen­er­a­tion Filipino-​​American, there have been many things within my cul­ture that clashed with the very “Amer­i­can” envi­ron­ment I grew up in. But being part of a fam­ily, let alone being the matri­arch of my own fam­ily, was some­thing that I con­stantly car­ried with me through­out my child­hood and for many years after that. I had dreams of hav­ing a large fam­ily (larger than two, because *I* always wanted more than one sib­ling), and of hav­ing my par­ents there to help raise them with some knowl­edge of our Fil­ipino cul­ture. After all, that was another Fil­ipino con­sid­er­a­tion; to have grand­par­ents there to pass on the tra­di­tions of our culture.

Although I some­how found myself mar­ry­ing within my cul­ture, it’s no sur­prise that my Hubby would also share that same love of fam­ily; the same dream of want­ing to have a brood of chil­dren of our own. And along with this dream, we had dreamt of mov­ing out-​​of-​​state (Chicago, to be pre­cise); but not before our first-​​born would be old enough to start school. After all, we wanted both of our par­ents to enjoy the early child­hood stage of their grand­chil­dren; and yet also didn’t want to uproot our chil­dren from a school that they were already attend­ing. We had all these plans for our lives that revolved around rais­ing our children.

So it came as a big sur­prise to us that we weren’t able to con­ceive. What was worse was the painstak­ingly long process it took deter­mine why we couldn’t con­ceive; only to end up with a diag­no­sis of “Unex­plained Infer­til­ity.” And because of this strug­gle, we ended up putting all of our dreams on hold. We put off advances in our careers; we put off mov­ing out-​​of-​​state.

Instead, we spent years going to var­i­ous OB-​​Gyn and Repro­duc­tive Endocri­nol­o­gist (RE) offices in our home­town of Sub­ur­ban Detroit; spent many lunch hours with var­i­ous Ultra­sound Tech­ni­cians that I got to know on an “inti­mate” basis. We spent many hours in line wait­ing for var­i­ous pre­scrip­tion drugs to be filled; used many nee­dles pok­ing myself in my belly or thigh, or — worse — rear end. We spent enough of our “retire­ment” money financ­ing an In Vitro Fer­til­iza­tion (IVF) cycle that gave us three per­fect embryos; two which were implanted in me, and one that we “let go” a year later after we knew our chances of defrost­ing one frozen embryo and financ­ing another IVF cycle were slim to none.

We spent six years of our mar­ried lives lead­ing up to our one failed IVF cycle. By that time, I was emo­tion­ally and finan­cially spent; I was at my absolute break­ing point. That was the first time Hubby & I decided to step away from actively try­ing to con­ceive (TTC). Not that I didn’t hope for a mir­a­cle every month (only to be let down every month), we just decided to take a break from the IF roller coaster.

Look­ing back now, that would prob­a­bly have been the best time for Hubby & I to move on with our other dreams; per­haps look at mov­ing out of Michi­gan and some place else. But hind­sight is always 20⁄20; and truth be told, I just wasn’t ready to give up my biggest dream of being a mother; the one in which I felt I would finally have a rea­son to exist … at least that’s what I believed.

So instead Hubby & I con­tin­ued with our daily lives; me secretly hop­ing for that “immac­u­late con­cep­tion.” And in the fall of 2006 … in the midst of sta­tus quo … my emo­tional foun­da­tion was shaken to the core. I received the news that my husband’s sis­ter, who just remar­ried four months prior, was expecting.

Never mind that before all this TTC-​​business started, my SIL and I were the best of friends. Never mind that my SIL already had a 10-​​year old child from her first mar­riage, who was born the same year that Hubby & I got mar­ried. Never mind that I always believed that my old­est child and her son, fol­low­ing in the Fil­ipino tra­di­tion of extended fam­ily, would be the clos­est of friends. And cer­tainly, never mind that I had always har­bored resent­ment towards my SIL because I felt she was never there for me, as I felt a best friend should, after the failed IVF cycle. The fact of the mat­ter was that my SIL was preg­nant … and I wasn’t.

I’ll be hon­est and say that I had a com­plete emo­tional break­down with that preg­nancy announce­ment … and it’s not just because my SIL was preg­nant. It was because like any “good” Fil­ip­ina, I had spent the entire “try­ing to start my own family”-time push­ing all those emo­tions aside. I never gave myself the chance to cry; never gave myself the chance to fully grieve the loss of my babies … even if they were just embryos. Instead I spent the time shov­ing all these emo­tions under the rug just so I can, as Asian-​​Americans call it, “Save Face.”

It was at that time, I finally sought coun­sel­ing; and it was with this therapist’s encour­age­ment that I decided I would have a heart-​​to-​​heart con­ver­sa­tion with my SIL. And we did talk rather openly about my feel­ings. I told her how hard it would be for me to be as excited about her preg­nancy as she and the rest of the fam­ily was. I even told her that I may not always be up for a con­ver­sa­tion about her preg­nancy. In fact, I told her that unless I brought up the sub­ject, it meant that I wasn’t ready for baby talk. I came away from that “pow­wow” with a renewed sense of hope towards our friend­ship. And I also came away with a sense that I could start heal­ing those emo­tional wounds that sti­fled me from mov­ing for­ward on my Infer­til­ity path.

But then less than a week later, the prover­bial sh*t hit the fan.

At 20 weeks, my SIL found out that her baby would be born with some con­gen­i­tal anom­alies. Despite our recent chat … there was no other recourse but to be avail­able for my SIL dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time. And even though I was pretty uncom­fort­able about dis­cussing the issues sur­round­ing her preg­nancy, I just knew that my SIL needed some­one to talk to about her fears and her emotions.

I tried to be there for her as much as I pos­si­bly could. And when Liam was born pre­ma­turely and passed away four months later, I tried even more. Per­haps it may have not been as much as she wanted me to be. But I can hon­estly say I tried to give her all my sup­port … as much I emo­tion­ally could, anyway.

Two months after Liam’s pass­ing, Hubby & I received a card in the mail. It was a beau­ti­ful card express­ing how much Hubby & I meant to both my SIL and her hus­band; espe­cially dur­ing the past year. It was also a card to tell us some news that no one else had yet known …  that she and Mr. SIL were expect­ing again. And while I truly appre­ci­ated the man­ner in which she told us, I can’t say that I was emo­tion­ally strong enough to be exu­ber­ant about another pregnancy.

If I was hon­est enough, I would have to admit that I felt as if I just barely sur­vived a “Tour of Duty” in Baby­land and was then sud­denly and  unex­pect­edly deployed for another “Tour.” And while I was incred­i­bly happy that SIL was able get a “sec­ond chance” (if one could call it that) at hav­ing another child with her new hus­band, I was still try­ing to sur­vive the Post-​​Traumatic Stress caused from her first preg­nancy and sub­se­quent birth. In a word, dur­ing this preg­nancy, I was apa­thetic.

My apa­thy came across as try­ing to go back to the “sta­tus quo” I was prior to my SIL’s preg­nancy with Liam. I was des­per­ately try­ing to get back to what­ever sense of nor­malcy there was before my world got so turned around. Quite lit­er­ally, I was frozen and at a dead stop on the road through the Land of Infer­til­ity. And because I was still in a state of post-​​trauma, I didn’t know how to move for­ward … I didn’t know what to feel.

A week before Kairi was born, I finally felt some­thing stir inside me. And, okay … per­haps it wasn’t the best thing to feel, but at least it was some­thing . What came out was was a volatile anger; one that had been brim­ming at the sur­face for months … prob­a­bly since the events after that heart-​​to-​​heart with my SIL dur­ing her preg­nancy with Liam.

I can now say, with­out hes­i­ta­tion, that my SIL’s reac­tion to my post was cer­tainly jus­ti­fied. How­ever, what resulted from that reac­tion was a pow­er­ful blog post that forced me to take stock of every­thing that had lead me to that point in my life.

And today, I can now say with 100% cer­tainty that it was that post that pushed me just a smidge for­ward towards find­ing a res­o­lu­tion to that dream (the one that involved a large fam­ily with me as the cen­ter) that I was obvi­ously meant to let go. It was that post which forced me to quit putting my life on hold … to look towards a dif­fer­ent future.

Since Sep­tem­ber of 2008, I have started to dream my new future; I’ve began to live that new life. But first, I man­aged to ful­fill one old dream … Hubby & I actu­ally did make it to Chicago and have now been liv­ing here for the past 18 months. We moved here for the career oppor­tu­ni­ties we both put on hold for so long. And I’d be lying if I didn’t say we moved here to put our “past dreams” to rest.

Our new dream? Our new future? Well it’s a future that, after much soul-​​searching, involves liv­ing child-​​free. It’s a future that also involves refo­cus­ing our lives around our rela­tion­ship as “just hus­band and wife” … and not as “Mr. & Mrs. Genetic Dead End.”

It also involves the free­dom of being able to plan future deci­sions with­out the con­stant need to deter­mine whether it’s the opti­mal time dur­ing the month to con­ceive; with­out wor­ry­ing where our dossier or “Dear Birth­par­ent” pro­file is in the adop­tion process.

It allows us to travel together; explore a life together with­out the con­stant worry of not know­ing if we’ll ever have a child to look out for us when we get older.

It allows us to dream again.

********

There was one last piece to Project IF: Part II. Mel had asked us to end our post with a pos­i­tive “What IF” statement.

The thing is, I could only come up with the same state­ment I used at the very begin­ning of this post. And I’d like you to take the time to re-​​read it again below.

Because despite the appre­hen­sions I would have about rear­rang­ing the life I had finally accepted I would live … I would hap­pily rearrange it again, if it meant that I’d be able to bring a life (made out of the love my Hubby & I have for one another) into this world.

“What if, after years of strug­gling with the roller coaster of infer­til­ity and FINALLY accept­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free, I get pregnant?”

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

This entry is a con­tri­bu­tion to Project IF. Blog­gers from the ALI (Adop­tion, Loss, Infer­til­ity) com­mu­nity are writ­ing “What IF” entries for National Infer­til­ity Aware­ness Week, April 24 to May 1, in con­junc­tion with Stir­rup Queens and Resolve.

To add your own “What IF” and to read oth­ers entries, click here.

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Thoughts on Adoption

Today, an arti­cle appeared on the New York Times regard­ing Russia’s deci­sion to sus­pend adop­tions to the U.S.

More Pics from Kairi’s visit

The rea­son that Rus­sia called for a halt on all adop­tions of Russ­ian chil­dren by Amer­i­cans, in my opin­ion, was jus­ti­fied. I do believe that there needs to be fur­ther inves­ti­ga­tion from both sides of the ocean (or Bering Strait, I suppose).

As one half of an infer­tile cou­ple, who at one time seri­ously con­sid­ered adop­tion as a method to start our fam­ily, what this adop­tive mother did was sim­ply out­ra­geous.  And fur­ther­more, her actions have now affected any other poten­tial adop­tive par­ent who have invested much time, money and emo­tions in adopt­ing a Russ­ian child. This woman effec­tively shat­tered many dreams of many people.

Sim­ply put, this breaks my heart.

******

Speak­ing of dreams … Dur­ing our engage­ment, Hubby & I had mul­ti­ple dis­cus­sions about how our future would be. We dreamed of own­ing a house big enough for at least 4 kids with a yard big enough for the dog we would own. We dreamed about how great our careers would be and how we would some­how man­age to bal­ance work life and home life.

And we dreamed about how incred­i­ble it would be to raise our chil­dren; how we would help our chil­dren find that bal­ance between being Amer­i­can and being Fil­ipino. We would make sure that they could be proud about their her­itage and still be able to embrace the envi­ron­ment in which they lived.

Tyler at the Lego Store in Down­town Chicago

After all, Hubby and I were half– and first-​​generation** Filipino-​​Americans. We knew, first hand, the strug­gles of grow­ing up with half our feet steeped in Fil­ipino tra­di­tions and the other half find­ing a way to assim­i­late into the West­ern cul­ture. This was espe­cially evi­dent when we were teenagers grow­ing up in the ’80’s.

I mean seri­ously … Hubby & I have joked around about how we learned about typ­i­cal Amer­i­can Teenager behav­ior from watch­ing John Hughes (RIP … ) movies. In real­ity, that’s  actu­ally not that far from the truth.

But I digress.

Another one of our dreams as an engaged cou­ple look­ing towards our bright future had always been about adop­tion. Yes … adoption.

We had always dreamed about open­ing our hearts and home to other chil­dren who might not have been given the same love and oppor­tu­ni­ties and life that we had. Specif­i­cally we looked into adopt­ing inter­na­tion­ally, because we wanted to help a child with tran­si­tion­ing into the Amer­i­can cul­ture much like we had while grow­ing up. We wanted these chil­dren to embrace their new envi­ron­ment while being proud of where they were born. Much like we were.***  Err … rather are.

How­ever, in that foggy crys­tal ball ver­sion of our future, adop­tion was some­thing that Hubby & I planned to do after we had chil­dren of our own. After we were able to pro­duce off­spring that con­tained both of our DNA.

Kairi loves her Big Brother

Kairi loves her big brother …

Call us self­ish, but we just really wanted to see our genetic traits in a bio­log­i­cal child and then be able to raise a child through adop­tion. This child might not share the same genes as us, but would share the same love and warmth and upbring­ing as our bio­log­i­cal chil­dren. And for me per­son­ally, it was a chance for me to see Nature vs. Nur­ture at its best.

Unfor­tu­nately we never did get to see that nature part. At all. And if I was a strong enough per­son, I might have been able to see the nur­ture part. At least with rais­ing a child.

******

I applaud any­one who has sought to adopt as a means to start or add to their family.

It takes an incred­i­bly strong and capa­ble per­son to be able to put them­selves through all the rules and reg­u­la­tions and inves­ti­ga­tions into your pri­vate lives just to raise a child that is not bio­log­i­cally your own. I know this from read­ing other IFer’s blogs about adop­tion and from talk­ing to adop­tive par­ents about their own expe­ri­ences. From going to adop­tion agen­cies to gather infor­ma­tion on our own.

… And Tyler loves his baby sister

Read­ing about Rus­sia today also reminds me about other coun­tries such as China and Guatemala that have also placed restric­tions on poten­tial adop­tive par­ents from the U.S. And it’s because I know how long most of these indi­vid­u­als have been wait­ing for their chance to raise an inter­na­tion­ally adopted  child. For those who have faced infer­til­ity, it’s the chance to raise any child.

And if I had enough strength, adopt­ing inter­na­tion­ally would have been my chance in pass­ing a lit­tle bit of myself … that bit about being proud of my her­itage while embrac­ing the uncharted ter­ri­to­ries of being a first-​​generation immi­grant … to my adop­tive child.

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

** Hubby was born in the Philip­pines and migrated to the U.S. at the age of five; effec­tively mak­ing him a “half-​​generation” immi­grant. Of course, depend­ing on what ver­sion of immi­grant gen­er­a­tions you go with, Hubby & I can be seen as 1.5– and second-​​generation immi­grants. At least that’s what Wiki says … )

*** Well … okay, so I was born in the U.S. … but hope­fully you under­stand what I mean.

PO’d">Patriotic and PO’d

I am so annoyed. And the thing is, I should know bet­ter. It’s not like I haven’t been out and about social-​​networking for years; so I can’t use the excuse that I’m igno­rant to internet-​​iquette.

Except … well, except there are cer­tain things in life that I guess I con­sider my moral com­pass in life. And one of them (amongst many oth­ers) has always been the abil­ity that we’ve been given as human beings to make our own choices in life; to reason.

So when I start see­ing Tweets or Face­book sta­tuses that are intended to show “pride” or elicit some sort of dark humor, but end up sound­ing more offen­sive than any­thing … well, that just makes think, “What the H*LL were you thinking?”

In other words, did some­one I *know* con­sciously make that deci­sion to post some­thing that might … just might be offen­sive to other people?

Don’t get me wrong … I’m the first one to admit that I’ve done things just as stu­pid as what I’m com­plain­ing about. I’ve even been called out on the car­pet for such stu­pid actions as well. While it’s not the most pleas­ant feel­ing in the world, it has taught me the les­son to think what I’m say­ing before I speak … er, I mean type.

So what exactly am I PO’d about? Well, this is the sta­tus that started it all. One post that says …

“WELCOME TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Press 1 for Eng­lish. Press 2 to dis­con­nect until you learn to speak Eng­lish. And remem­ber only two defin­ing forces have ever offered to die for you, JESUS CHRIST and the AMERICAN SOLIDER. One died for your soul, the other for your free­dom. If you agree and have the guts … copy and paste in your status!”

Yeah. I *per­son­ally* felt the sting of that one. On many lev­els. First there’s the whole “You’re in Amer­ica, so you should only be speak­ing Eng­lish.” Well I hate to burst the bub­ble here, but I believe that the US is con­sid­ered a MELTING POT of dif­fer­ent nations. You know, a mix­ture of peo­ple from dif­fer­ent nations that have come to this nation in order to improve the qual­ity of their lives and their fam­i­lies’ lives?

My par­ents were one of those peo­ple. Both came from the Philip­pines in search of a bet­ter life for them­selves; a place where they could best make use of their edu­ca­tion and tal­ents and share it with the rest of the peo­ple in what has become their new “home.” While my Mom spoke flu­ent Eng­lish (a pri­mary lan­guage taught in Catholic school in the Philip­pines), my Dad learned it as a sec­ond lan­guage. And while I can’t *com­pletely* under­stand what it’s like to learn Eng­lish as a sec­ond lan­guage,  I can cer­tainly empathize … espe­cially since I’m “once-​​removed” from being born and raised out­side the US.

And then there’s the part about hav­ing only two defin­ing forces that have ever offered to die for me. I make no bones that I’m Chris­t­ian; or more specif­i­cally, Catholic. I also fully admit that I’m not exactly a “prac­tic­ing” Catholic; mean­ing that (much to my Mom’s cha­grin) I don’t attend mass weekly. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t believe in God or Christ. Nor does it mean that I don’t hold myself to the basic Golden Rule, of which Chris­tian­ity (and all other reli­gions) is based.

In real­ity, I believe in the spir­i­tu­al­ity of Catholi­cism. I believe that there is GOOD in the world and that if your actions reflect what you believe in your heart to be good … then that good­ness will return to you. But on the flip­side, I do believe that BAD exist much in the same way. You reap what you sow. By liv­ing *my* life under the premise that I should do unto oth­ers as I would want done unto myself … well, that’s one of the rea­sons I *stop and think* about what I say or do before I act upon them. Would what I do hurt any­one else? What are the con­se­quences of what I’m about to do?

Yeah … so to sprout the whole “Christ died for me” lec­ture in that Face­book sta­tus? Gimme a break. That is *NOT* a very “Chris­t­ian” thing to do.

And trust me … I won’t go into the whole “Amer­i­can Sol­dier” bit; other than to say that I am patri­otic enough to know that these sol­diers have given up their “free­dom” to keep Amer­ica safe and *FREE*. And I’m also patri­otic enough to know that it was a choice that they made. ‘Nuff said.

So why am I still riled up even though that Face­book sta­tus is now more than a week old? Well, it’s because of this sta­tus that was just posted on Monday:

“Shame on you Amer­ica: the only coun­try where we have home­less with­out shel­ter, chil­dren going to bed with­out eat­ing, elderly going with­out needed meds, and men­tally ill with­out treat­ment — yet we have a ben­e­fit for the peo­ple of Haiti on 12 TV sta­tions. 99% of peo­ple won’t have the guts to copy and repost this.”

Uh huh. Seriously.

Okay I get that, as a nation, we have home­less peo­ple and starv­ing chil­dren and a health care sys­tem that’s bro­ken for our elderly pop­u­la­tion /​ men­tally ill pop­u­la­tion. But there is a rea­son why we are con­sid­ered a wealthy country.

And when I mean “wealth,” I’m not strictly speak­ing about *FINANCIAL* wealth. I’m talk­ing about a nation where we have many of the smartest, most pro­gres­sive minds in the world. I’m talk­ing about a coun­try that shows their “wealth” by giv­ing *every* indi­vid­u­als the oppor­tu­nity … the choice, if you will … to improve themselves.

Do you think social­ist coun­tries afford every per­son that abil­ity to bet­ter them­selves? To move up in their sta­tion in life? More impor­tantly, do you think that THIRD WORLD coun­tries, like the Philip­pines or Haiti, are able to pro­vide those same oppor­tu­ni­ties  to every citizen?

This is when Amer­ica shines the most; when we pro­vide *our* resources and ser­vices to coun­tries that have been dev­as­tated by nat­ural dis­as­ters. This is when we show exactly how gen­er­ous a coun­try we can be.

These moments … they are the moments when the words on our Statue of Lib­erty shine the brightest:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your hud­dled masses yearn­ing to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teem­ing shore. Send these, the home­less, tempest-​​tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

As I wrap up this long and ram­bling polit­i­cally charged post … let me just remind every­one of one sim­ple fact. Unless we are 100% Native Amer­i­can … we are all “immi­grants” to this land. The same soil that has pro­vided our fore­fa­thers (and now our­selves) with the abil­ity to forge a new future; the land of oppor­tu­nity … the land of CHOICES.

So just like our par­ents /​ grand­par­ents /​ great-​​grandparents, etc who chose to come to the land of free­dom (and who may have *NOT* known how to speak Eng­lish) … choose your des­tiny (and your words/​actions) wisely.

Walt in the World?!

My cousin, who oth­er­wise loves the Dis­ney Chan­nel, recently made a com­ment about how Dis­ney hates Asians. She com­mented on how many of the Asian actresses or car­toon char­ac­ters on this net­work tend to be por­trayed as either b*tchy or ditzy. Well, other than Mulan, that is.

And even though my cousin might dis­agree, I do think Lilo (from “Lilo & Stitch”) can tech­ni­cally be con­sid­ered an Asian. Because … and fol­low along with me here … The Philip­pine Islands are located in the Pacific ocean. There­fore, Fil­ipinos are con­sid­ered Pacific Islanders and are lumped into the “Asian/​Pacific Islander” cat­e­gory (as “dic­tated” by the US Cen­sus Bureau). And see­ing as if the Hawai­ian Islands are in the Pacific …

Yeah, so that’s my logic in explain­ing Lilo’s Asian-​​ness …

But my cousin’s com­ment reminded me of some­thing that was pointed out to me by one of Hubby’s cousins last sum­mer on our trip to Dis­ney­world. While at Mickey’s Toon­town Fair, we stum­bled upon one of the biggest mass-​​marketing stores inside the Magic King­dom. Inside this store were rows and rows of toys from var­i­ous movies. One entire sec­tion was ded­i­cated to the Dis­ney Princesses.

What Hubby’s cousin pointed out to us was this:

308

Rather incon­spic­u­ous, don’t you think? I mean really … Snow White, Belle, Cin­derella and Sleep­ing Beauty in one pack­age. Princess Jas­mine, Ariel, Mulan and Poc­a­hontes in a sep­a­rate package.

The “Clas­sic Princesses” (although, I ques­tion if Belle, cre­ated in 1991, is con­sid­ered a “clas­sic”) in one set, at eye level on the shelves. And the rather “unique” Princesses (an Ara­bian Princess, a Red­headed Mer­maid, a “China Doll” and an Amer­i­can Indian Princess) in another set, located at waist level on the shelf below.

To me, it’s one of those things that make you go “Hmmmm .…”

Any­hoo, going back to my cousin’s ini­tial com­ment … the rea­son I’m writ­ing about this topic is because I’ve often felt the same thing about the way that Amer­i­can mass media por­trays Asians. And specif­i­cally Asian-​​American females. It seems as if we’re per­ceived as being one or the other.

Yeah ... Lilo is a "Pacific Islander"
Yeah … Lilo is a “Pacific Islander”

Bitchy or subservient.

Intel­li­gent or ditzy.

Foreign-​​born or Adopted.

As an American-​​born and bred Fil­ip­ina (and even for those that may have been born “abroad” but spent there for­ma­tive years grow­ing up in the US), this is a rather annoy­ing (and not to men­tion incor­rect) obser­va­tion that has not often been voiced aloud.

I can’t tell you how many peo­ple have asked when my Hubby (who is also Fil­ipino) and I moved to the US. And did we marry each other before mov­ing here? Or did we marry after one of us became a US cit­i­zen? (The answer is NO for both ques­tions, btw … we met in high school here and sub­se­quently mar­ried here six years after we started dating.)

And while I’m on the same sub­ject, I can’t tell you how many of my Asian girl­friends who mar­ried “non-​​Asians” have been told by oth­ers that they thought they were “mail order brides.” Just because they mar­ried out­side of their culture.

Or how about when I was work­ing at the beside as a Reg­is­tered Nurse in a hos­pi­tal set­ting? I found myself tak­ing care of many Amer­i­can Vets who served in either WWII or the Korean/​Vietnam wars. And many times, I was told that they could “never under­stand” me because my Chi­nese /​ Viet­namese /​ Korean /​ Japan­ese accent was “too strong.” Even though I speak per­fectly clear Eng­lish with my home­town Mid­west­ern accent.

I could go on and on. Like my first job at a local fast food estab­lish­ment; where my boss thought that Asians were “too smart for their own good” and should not be allowed to work the cash reg­is­ters. Or even this inci­dent, men­tioned in one of my much ear­lier blog post. But then it would seem as if I’m merely “complaining.”

The truth is, I hope that oth­ers would see that not all Asian women fit into any one stereo­type. That we are all unique, just like every other woman out there. That like every Dis­ney Princess out there, we want to be rec­og­nized for the unique strengths we can offer to this world … regard­less of how we phys­i­cally see our “outer” reflec­tions in the mirror.

And so, to bring it all back to Dis­ney … here’s a song from one of my favorite movies of all time; one that some­times hits closer to home than I’d like it to.

6th of July">Born on the 6th of July

I’m com­ing up on the last min­utes of my actual birth­day; I turned 37 years old today. And while I’m not exactly thrilled to be another year older, I must admit that this has been a won­der­ful day. Actu­ally, it’s been a won­der­ful four days.

297It started out on Fri­day with the cor­po­rate Inde­pen­dence Day hol­i­day; which meant I wasn’t chained to my desk or weighted down by twenty zil­lion emails on my work-​​issued crack­berry. It was also the only day Hubby and I both knew we’d have all to our own this entire weekend.

So what did we do? Spent it sleep­ing in until about 9 am, fol­lowed shortly after by the pre­sen­ta­tion of my “early” birth­day gift. Then it was off to Evanston and on to the beach, where we spent the after­noon swim­ming in the cool (but not freez­ing) Lake Michi­gan weather and lying on our large two-​​person beach towel read­ing. That was fol­lowed by a really late lunch (or early din­ner) at the local seafood restau­rant and a movie at the Evanston the­ater. Over­all, a very relax­ing day.

Sat­ur­day morn­ing was spent clean­ing, in antic­i­pa­tion of my par­ents arriv­ing by train later in the after­noon. And really, that was prob­a­bly the most work I did all week­end long. (Except for that rel­a­tively last-​​minute doc­u­ment that work required me to have com­pleted by Fri­day morning … )

298By 1 pm Sat­ur­day after­noon, Hubby and I were on the Chicago River wait­ing for our Chicago Archi­tec­ture Foun­da­tion (CAF) docent to begin our tour of the sig­nif­i­cant build­ings along the river. It was an excel­lent tour and it def­i­nitely gave us a dif­fer­ent view of the Chicago sky­line; one we had never seen before. The only downer was that it was a very cold and wet day. Oh well, this just means we’ll have to go again on a brighter and sun­nier day. :-)

My par­ents “rolled” into town around 5 pm on Sat­ur­day evening. And because it was still rain­ing at the time, we headed over to the Water Tower only to find that the indoor shop­ping cen­ter would close at 6 pm. So instead, we took the Lakeshore scenic drive up to Evanston to have din­ner at the same seafood restau­rant Hubby & I ate at the day before.

299What I didn’t real­ize at the time was that Hubby was already think­ing in “advance.” You see, by the time we made it up to Evanston, the rain and clouds blew over leav­ing a clear evening sky in its place. Which made it per­fect weather for Evanston’s 4th of July fire­works. So after din­ner, we walked down to Patriot’s Park along the water­front and sat front and cen­ter for the show. Per­fect way to end the day.

Yes­ter­day (Sun­day) was spent at the Shedd Aquar­ium down­town in Chicago’s Museum Dis­trict. Hubby & I had been there ear­lier in the year when our nephew Tyler spent his Easter break with us. Unfor­tu­nately, the sea-​​quarium was being remod­eled, so we didn’t get to see the dol­phins or whales at that time. But yes­ter­day … those beau­ties were back. And show­ing off just for my par­ents; who had never been there.

For my par­ents, I think the best part was the whole “Wild Reef” exhibit, which is the shark exhibit. Hubby & I had been to the Shedd about 5 years ago when this exhibit first opened; mainly because our nephew has always had a thing for sharks. What we hadn’t expect was:

  1. The sharks to be so d*mn small at the time, and
  2. The whole exhibit to revolve around pro­tect­ing coral reefs

The whole coral reef aspect was the same thing that both my par­ents and Hubby & me loved. And that’s because the Philip­pine Islands played a ginor­mous role through­out the exhibit. What we had learned is that the Philip­pine waters house the largest, most diverse fish and coral life in the world. And see­ing how promi­nent the role of the Philip­pines played every­where in this dis­play, it was an absolute cool way to learn more about my her­itage and where my par­ents came from!

300And today … “B”-day (as opposed to “D”-day … ;-) ). I wasn’t expect­ing much of any­thing other than a (well-​​deserved) day off from work to spend with my Hubby and par­ents as we traipse through the town. But it was such a fun day!

We started out in Chi­na­town where we walked through and picked up a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent things … like a back scratcher (can never have enough of them) and a hand-​​painted fan (for those hot days). Oh, and some del­ish sweet and sour gum­mies from an Asian candy store … yum! How­ever, the real rea­son to go to Chi­na­town was to have a Dim Sum feast at our favorite Chi­nese restau­rant. And because it was my birth­day, I had to have my tra­di­tional “Long Life” noo­dle dish!

While  in a post-​​food inges­tion haze, Hubby drove all of us over to the Sears — oops, I mean Willis — Tower to do the most touristy thing in Chicago. Yep, went all the way up to the obser­va­tion deck; but not before spend­ing more than an hour in line. But it was def­i­nitely worth it … the views of the city were absolutely spectacular!

And then there were the glass bal­conies. Oh yes; glass. It’s the newest part of the the attrac­tion; four retractable glass bal­conies that allows a view of the city that’s def­i­nitely unique. As in “103-​​stories-​​straight-​​down” unique.

It was a lit­tle daunt­ing at first, but once I was on there it wasn’t so bad … as long as I didn’t con­tinue to look down for extended peri­ods of time. From then, it was just a mat­ter of tak­ing silly pic­tures of us “falling” or “hang­ing on to dear life.” And of course, since I’m such a “rebel,” I had to do some­thing “dan­ger­ous” … well at least what oth­ers would per­ceive as dangerous.

302Oh yeah … I made Hubby take a pic­ture of me jump­ing on the bal­cony. Which, if one didn’t know how absolutely rein­forced these bal­conies were by steel, would really freak any­one else that was on the bal­cony when I jumped. Heh … told you I was a rebel.

My par­ents took us out to din­ner after­wards, at my place of choice. But because my par­ents had yet to to expe­ri­ence authen­tic Chicago deep dish pizza. So that’s how we ended up at Pizze­ria Due and stuffed beyond belief and in des­per­ate need of some­thing to do walk off all the food we ate.

That’s how my Mom, Hubby and I ended up at the beach 3 blocks from our apart­ment, walk­ing along the lakeshore. And it was a beau­ti­ful evening to do so as well, with the full moon shim­mer­ing off the lake.

After­wards, it was back to the apart­ment where, after an unex­pected phone call from Dr. Bro (who actu­ally remem­bered to call on my actual birth­day — a mir­a­cle in itself), Hubby sur­prised me with a birth­day cake.

303And so that was my Birth­day week­end. A lot of activ­ity in a small span of time. I’m so grate­ful my par­ents were there to cel­e­brate it with me. And I’m so incred­i­bly lucky to have a Hubby that loves me so much.

So now I’m off to do a lit­tle more work before head­ing off to bed. I’m not going into work tomor­row, as we’re tak­ing my par­ents to the train sta­tion late-​​morning, but this is some­thing with an unfor­tu­nate deadline.

And what a bless­ing it will be to have tomor­row off. Because after a busy four days, this 37-​​year old body cer­tainly needs the rest.

301

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