Customer Reviews

Altered Dreams...: Living with Gender Disappointment

5 star:		(3)
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Coming from someone who has suffered gender disappointment I am so pleased that Ms. Asbery has written this wonderful book. She has finally allowed so many of us to discuss this topic without feeling guilty for our feelings.

She shares with us the readers her personal journey dealing with gender disappointment and how she has learned to live her life with her amazing 3 boys!! She also allows us to "meet" many other women who have battled with this as well. Reading this book made me feel like I was not alone in this. Many people suffer with this everyday but do not speak about it or get help to work through it. I truely think this book will help countless women as they come to grips with their feelings on this topic.

Thank you so much for writing this book about this issue that so many are unwilling to face. I love my three boys...but I had issues to work through when the third was confirmed to be of the male gender. Your book validated my feelings and helped me so much.

I am pleased to have just read the Associated Press article released about Ms. Asbery and gender disappointment after having read her informative and sensitive book on the same subject. The reviewer who spouted off without thinking is obviously one of the many people in our society who do not understand the real pain and anguish that can be associated with having gone through this experience. Bravo to Ms. Asbery for bringing the subject to light so more women will not feel so alone. I had hoped to do the same with my own Novel,(based on the circumstances of being guaranteed that I was carrying a baby girl after not one, not two but THREE different sonographers and doctors told me so after viewing my ultrasound only to have a delivery room shock). The experience was harrowing to say the least when nobody around me understood my sorrow at the loss of a dream that was very real in my head. There is currently a very negative article about me and this subject in Elle magazine (where I was misquoted and further falsehoods were perpetrated) and because of that, I was just the subject of a radio talk show in which the hosts termed me "selfish, psychotic and an unfit mother." This is a very misunderstood issue (WE LOVE AND ADORE ALL OF OUR CHILDREN EQUALLY!) and I am sure MANY women are grateful to have it addressed in the effective manner that Ms. Asbery does in Altered Dreams.

This is yet another book for affluent, self-absorbed neurotics who don't have real problems and therefore feel compelled to invent some. "Gender disappointment"? Please.

This book and others like it do indeed make a powerful statement: A statement about the wanton and vacuous self-absorption in our decadent culture. In a society obsessed with frivolity, where some people throw birthday parties for dogs, fret about the statement their dinner parties make about environmental awareness, and do whatever it takes to get their kids the "fashionable" Christmas toys every year, it makes perfect sense that there is a group of silly women out there losing it over something this inconsequential.

Next I suppose we will have to deal with the scourge of "cinema disappointment" when we go see a movie that doesn't live up to the previews. Or maybe "doggie disappointment" for those whose Labrador retriever puppies don't grow up to chase sticks. Oh, the humanity! Is there no end to this crushing burden of grief?

Here's my book on the subject: Look at yourself in the mirror, and then slap yourself. Hard. Then go down to a children's hospital or the cancer ward and meet some people with REAL problems. Soon enough, you will discover that your "gender disappointment" doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore.

And hey, MY book is FREE!