Finally Heard

A Silent Sorority Finds Its Voice

By: Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

Length: 1 hr and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos emerged as a reluctant spokeswoman on infertility after a health reporter from The New York Times asked if she’d be willing to openly discuss her IVF treatment experience. Tsigdinos discussed the stubborn persistence of infertility and the lack of a cultural framework to process the losses. An accompanying health feature story produced astonishment and relief that someone candidly addressed the trauma and legacy of infertility. Soon thereafter she wrote the award-winning book Silent Sorority. It became the first infertility memoir not authored by a mother, Tsigdinos' writing explored the complicated, disenfranchised grief and identity issues following prolonged failed attempts to conceive. Now outside of the grief she once felt so viscerally, Tsigdinos brings us Finally Heard: The Silent Sorority Finds Its Voice. In an intentionally short ebook designed in the Kindle Singles model, it incorporates wisdom from ‘Generation IVF.’ Finally Heard is meant to spark discussion about the little discussed aftermath of fertility treatments. It moves beyond the personal to examine the complex inter-relationship of the psychological, social and cultural effects. Today’s cultural preoccupation with parenting and the growth focused for-profit fertility industry has birthed a fear-driven patient/consumer population and society ill-equipped to process reproductive failure. Tsigdinos makes clear that the disproportionate emphasis on ‘magical thinking’ and the industry focus on 'social egg freezing' has bred an expectation of parenthood. This creates new challenges and decisions not only for women but for parents who may one day be called upon to counsel children on decisions around reproductive health.

Not what I’d hoped for

AI voice does not know how to say many basic fertility terms (IUI for example) and lacks empathy (as expected). Could they really not spring for a human to voice this?