Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found [Paperback]

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 18, 2009

From celebrity and news magazines to TV programs to Facebook pages and mommy blogs, family-building successes are routinely and glowingly shared and celebrated. But where are the voices of those who are unable to have children? In relating what happens when nature and science find their limits, the award-winning memoir Silent Sorority examines a seldom acknowledged outcome and raises provocative, often uncomfortable questions usually reserved for late night reflection or anonymous blogging. Outside of the physical reckoning there lies the challenge of moving forward in a society that doesn't know how to handle the awkwardness of infertility.

With no Emily Post-like guidelines for supporting couples who can't conceive, most well-intentioned "fertile" people miss the mark. Silent Sorority provides an unflinching and insightful look at adjusting to a new path, and offers a steady voice rarely heard in the noisy era of designer babies and helicopter parents.

Silent Sorority received the 2010 RESOLVE Award for Best Book. It's also included as a recommended resource in the 2011 edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"This book is snappy, funny, and irreverent as well as moving. Silent Sorority does a great job addressing the invisibility of non-Moms." --More.com

"Silent Sorority is a brave book and a gift to all infertile women, whatever stage of the journey they may be on." --NBC/iVillage

"The author has the gift of using humor to get through the pain and she just nails the irony of life as a 'non-mom.' " -- Fertility Authority

"Tsigdinos has given a voice to infertile women's experience." --Bitch Magazine, Spring 2011

About the Author

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (Sig-din-us) is an award-winning author, blogger and an infertility survivor. In her first book, Silent Sorority, Pamela shares with naked candor, humor and poignancy the intense and, at times, absurd experience of adjusting to a life as a "non-mom." Pamela and her blog have been profiled in the New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The New Atlantis, The American Prospect, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen and Yahoo Shine. Her writing is featured in a variety of online outlets including Fertility Authority, Open Salon, MORE.com, and BlogHer, just to name a few.

Product Details

• Paperback: 218 pages
• Publisher: BookSurge Publishing (April 18, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439231567
• ISBN-13: 978-1439231562
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #235,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #98 in Books > Health, Fitness & Dieting > Disorders & Diseases > Infertility

More About the Author

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos (Sig-din-us) is an award-winning author, blogger and infertility survivor. In her first book, Silent Sorority, Pamela shares with naked candor, humor and poignancy the intense and, at times, absurd experience of confronting infertility -- particularly overwhelming in an era of designer babies and helicopter parents. Silent Sorority is the antidote to the "momoir." It gives voice to the large but little known population of women left to confront the often unpredictable and lasting impact of failed fertility treatments. Relationships and identity are among the casualties. With raw honesty Pamela draws from her experience to explore the stigma associated with infertility and the complex effects of living involuntarily childless.

Pamela was honored in New York in September 2010 at RESOLVE's Night of Hope where she received the 2010 RESOLVE Choice Award for Best Book. In 2011 she learned that the latest edition of Our Bodies, Ourselves included Silent Sorority as a recommended resource. She first dealt with the confusion and weirdness of infertility in isolation. This was a time not so long ago (pre-"Dr Google" and before the proliferation of Internet communities) when most information on the topic was available via the library or book store. It was only after she and her husband decided they were done being human lab experiments that she began to realize that overcoming infertility is about much more than making a baby. It's about coming to terms, when nature and science find their limits, with a life different than one so often taken for granted.

At the same time she was writing Silent Sorority she started her blog Coming2Terms, which allowed her to connect with women around the world also looking reconcile the challenges of living in societies that devalue those without children. Her international readership includes those who have never stepped foot in a fertility clinic, those pursuing fertility treatment, those who became mothers after treatment or adoption, and those, who like her, are building lives without once sought after children.

Pamela and her blog have been profiled in The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, The Globe and Mail, The American Prospect, The Ottawa Citizen, The New Atlantis, Vancouver Sun and Yahoo Shine. Her writing has been featured in a variety of online outlets including Fertility Authority, Open Salon, MORE.com and BlogHer, just to name a few. She earned a B.A. in English Literature at the University of Michigan and an M.A. in Organizational Communication at Wayne State University in Detroit. After ten memorable years working in the auto industry, she now lives and works in Silicon Valley. When she's not writing, she enjoys travel and discussing history, Indie films, documentaries, politics, current events and literature with her husband and friends. She is passionate about raising infertility awareness, particularly for those who don't go on to parent, as they are often left to resolve their grief amid questions about their decision and without the volume of support offered on other paths.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

27 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must read for EVERY adult: infertility affects someone you know, whether you know it or not., April 25, 2009

By 

Thursday Brown (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found (Paperback)

Hiding out in public bathrooms? You're not alone.
Subjected to celebratory baby bump chatter around the water cooler? Not alone.
Feeling left out of experiencing one of life's biggest milestones? Not alone.
Struggling to make peace with never getting to be a bio parent? Not alone.
Grappling with the overall ignorance and indifference towards infertility? Not alone.
Learning to embrace the next stage without having to save up for a college fund? Not alone.

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos represents a side of infertility that has been insultingly overlooked in the literary world: her story doesn't end with a bouncing baby, instead it's delves into the heart and mind of an involuntarily childless woman.

Those just starting down the fun infertility rabbit hole may find her outcome scary because she ended up on the other side of hope... until she found new dreams for which to hope. She shares a truth about advanced reproductive technologies (ART)--sometimes they just don't work. Actually, make that oftentimes they don't work. And adoption isn't just the simple panacea the general public seems to believe will soothe the Infertile's broken heart.

Those of us who have suffered silently through the trials of infertility due to its still-present public stigma, viscerally crave our plight to be understood. And it's no easy task to convey what it's like to struggle with infertility in a world where today's "news" involves glaring headlines about the latest celebutante who, oopsie, managed to get knocked up by her boyfriend of several months--yet convey she does.

Not only will "Infertiles" find comforting validation reading and relating to this author's (decade-long!) struggle with trying to conceive, but hopefully "Fertiles" will be enlightened about the pain their sisters in the IF (infertility) world must face. Mrs. Tsigdinos delivers her message with a resonant voice that clearly depicts for the public at large what it's like to ride the IF roller coaster while reassuring us "Infertiles" that we are not alone.

In truth, having recently joined her in the same "involuntarily childless" boat, it was a bittersweet experience to hunker down with her book. Let's face it; I'm a tad raw regarding this subject matter. However, I was so grateful to read a kindred-spirit's insights while I shed many cathartic tears. As she intimately and honestly chronicled her heart wrenching path going from failure to conceive, to hopeful for a different kind of future than she ever designed, she gave me a newfound hope as I struggle to cross the threshold into the next stage of our lives.

This book is an important read for every single person out there--in the infertile world or otherwise (despite the potential discomfort one may feel reading about the infertility travails she endured). Because guess what? You may not know it, but the likelihood is great that you DO know someone who is silently suffering through the pain of a childless empty nest. Just as we should be sensitive to apparent medical conditions, so should we too regarding infertility. Mrs. Tsigdinos does a stellar job leading the troops in raising infertility awareness and understanding with her forthright, brave, and humorous voice.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Non-Mom's Survival Guide to Life, April 28, 2009

By 

C. Gombar "christinagombar" (Saunderstown, RI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found (Paperback)

I'm so glad someone wrote this book! While the publishing industry spews out dozens, if not hundreds of titles a year that wind up with Baby and Happily Ever After, there's nothing for the large minority -- or maybe it's a majority? -- of people the fertility industry failed. This book tells the whole story, the peaks and valleys -- of that journey. Can a book that ends without a baby have a happy ending? A resounding yes.

Like the author, I also wound up without children, though due to different circumstances. Dealing with that private loss is one thing, dealing with the social stigma is ten times worse.

I hope that this book is the beginning of a sea change in a baby-frenzied culture. Octomom brought home to the wider world that being a Mom isn't necessarily a thing to be admired in itself.

This book does a great job addressing the invisibility of non-Moms -- the author identifies as Infertile -- but women who wound up without for other reasons will also relate. Why is 70% of all public conversation kid chatter? Where did manners go?

I hope this book brings some awareness to wider society that there's a pretty large group of people out there who aren't just being marginalized, but often maligned simply because they couldn't/didn't reproduce.

This book is incredibly well-written, snappy, funny irreverent as well as moving. The author takes us through the steps of shock, grief, hope, anger, denial and acceptance. The denial part really hit home with me -- you kind of have to park yourself there for a while, it takes some time to accept your fate.

What this book doesn't do is tell you "six easy steps" -- or how to "fix your attitude" to your childless state. Thank God! For me it was much better to hear the inside thoughts of someone who's gone through the same, or similar trials I have, and how she's found a way to be in the world. Bravo!

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A different kind of happy ending, May 20, 2009

By 

loribeth (Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Silent Sorority: A Barren Woman Gets Busy, Angry, Lost and Found (Paperback)

There aren't many resources out there for those of us who opt to leave the infertility treatment path and live without children (as opposed to those who are childfree by choice in the first place).

There are a few Internet sites and message boards, and a few (very few) books devoted specifically to this subject -- most of them written in the 1980s & early 1990s. And a lot has changed since those books were written. Whereas once upon a time, the choice for infertile couples was stark & clear -- adopt or remain childless/free -- the options available to them have multiplied almost exponentially.

Thanks to birth control, it's now easier for women who don't want to have children to remain childfree -- and an increasing number of them are doing so -- sometimes quite vocally. At the same time, the public's seemingly endless cult-like fascination with the pregnant bellies and all things mommy, pregnancy and baby-related has, if anything, only intensified -- as has the growing outspokeness of those who are childfree by choice. No wonder it sometimes feels as though the voices of women (like me) who are living without children after infertility are getting lost in the cacaphony, struggling to be heard above the din.

That's why I was so happy to recently receive & read my copy of Silent Sorority. For me, finding Pamela's blog on the Internet a few years ago was like stumbling into an oasis in the middle of a desert, and her book continues the good work of her blog. Silent Sorority describes Pamela's personal journey, from girlhood to the present, the influences that shaped her life choices, her valiant 11-year struggle to have a family, her painful decision to remain childfree, her resolve to create a new kind of meaningful life for herself and her husband as a family of two, and her sharp-eyed, sometimes hilarious observations about what it's like to be infertile in a world gone mad for babies & pregnant women.

The hard truth is, not all infertility stories end with a baby. But that doesn't mean there isn't a happy ending. Maybe it's just a different kind of happy ending than we've all been programmed to expect. While this book will bring great hope & comfort to women like Pamela & me, who have found themselves involuntarily childless at the end of their infertility journey (however long or short it may have been), or those contemplating such a future for themselves, it deserves a much broader audience. Anyone who has ever struggled with infertility, past or present, will recognize themselves in the pages of this book, no matter how they choose to resolve their situation. Fertile people also have a great deal to learn from Pamela's story.