I did one thing that mattered more than any of it.
I looked into the vasectomy lie, and the years of infertility shame, and I realized how many women carry exactly that — blamed for “failures” that belong to a partner who lied, shamed by in-laws for a reproductive story that isn’t even true, made to feel grateful for staying with someone who was quietly betraying them the whole time.
So I started funding legal help and fertility counseling for women in exactly that position. Women being told they’re barren, inadequate, lucky to be tolerated — who deserve the truth, and their own names on their own things, and someone in their corner when the family closes ranks against them.
I tell them what I learned, reading paperwork with a glass of wine on the worst anniversary of my life:
They will tell you that you’re the disgrace, the failure, the one who should be grateful. They will build a whole story where you’re small and they’re generous.
