I am an infertile woman. While my experience of infertility does not define me, it informs and impacts every aspect of my life and my relationships. Much like a cancer survivor who is forever changed in the fight for her life, I too have been changed in the desperate fight for life: that of my children.
I grew up in a close-knit community in South Holland, IL where our lives and activities revolved around family and faith. The birth of a new cousin was a time of great joy for me as a child. I would patiently wait my turn to hold this new baby, longing to feel his body mold into my own. Pulling him close, his baby smell filling my nostrils, I was already dreaming of the glorious day when I would hold my own child.
With time, this growing maternal identity was joined by an awakening to the life-giving energy I derived from relationship, from real connection with others. It was my soul's awareness of other souls: their vulnerabilities, their dreams, their searching for protection, and their hungering for nurturance. In short, this combination of inclinations, gifts, and yearnings were the foundations of my callings to be both a mother and a therapist. With increased focus, life experience, and education, these realities have molded me into a psychotherapist specializing in the emotional and relational issues of infertility.
Not long after beginning my career as a Pastoral Counselor, a new and totally different stage of my education began. I joined my life with the man I love, Bob Stewart, and his four children. These children were unexpected gifts who, with time, love, and patience, allowed me to be their mother. They are the children of my heart.
My husband and I spent the next six years engaged in the battle against infertility with all of its testing, diagnoses, uncertainties, procedures, and heartbreak after heartbreak. And yet, in the darkness and despair, I once again found comfort and healing in relationship. There were a special few people who had the courage to walk beside me in my pain. One such person is my dearest friend, Julia, who co-authors this book with me.
In 1998, I finally held my baby boy with wonder, joy and disbelief. In 2003, I was blessed to cradle my second infant son. Now, a decade later, in the stillness of the night, I take one last peek into the bedrooms of the children I feared would never be my own. I find comfort in the rhythm of their breathing. It is with profound gratitude that I pull up the kicked-off covers of my sleeping boys.
Shari DeGraff Stewart
Bachelor of Arts • Belmont University
Master of Divinity, Pastoral Care and Counseling • Southern Baptist Theological Seminary
What could have driven us apart has brought us closer than ever.
The most important relationships in my life have been changed forever by my years of infertility. Infertility has been a furnace of pain and grief that has strengthened some relationships and burnt away others—or parts of others. Of course, I still see and often love the individuals in this latter category, but there are limits: we have changed, or at least, I have changed. There are places of vulnerability I will not go with them. There are areas of my life I keep separate. I love them, but I cannot trust them with my deepest longings and joys.
As irony would have it, my best friend for many years, Julia, is the most fertile woman I know. Somehow her love for me reached across the chasm separating her experience from mine. She listened; she held me when I cried. She gave me the opportunity to choose whether I wanted to talk about my pain and she let me decide when I did want to hear about her own pregnancy and ultrasound results. Somehow, she "got it." She understood my infertility as I have seldom seen from a woman who hasn't experienced it. I call her the most "infertile" fertile woman I know.
The gift of Julia's commitment has now led us to a whole new creation as we have become writing and business partners. In a very real way, out of that time of darkness, new life has emerged. My friend, who understood me through so many years, now offers the gift of her writing. We talk and process a topic or idea for hours, and she is the one who translates the work I do onto the written page. She is close enough to understand what I am explaining, that she writes with integrity about infertility, and she offers insight into the experience of the one who loves an infertile woman.
Infertility was a crisis for me and for my relationships. Like any crisis, it tested the strength of each bond: some held firm and others bent or twisted—all of them were transformed.