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Brenda Strong

About the AFA

The AFA is a national, non-profit organization serving the United States through its national office in New York City, and is a leader in providing men and women, health care professionals, public officials and the media, both nationally and internationally, with information about infertility treatments, reproductive and sexual health and family building options including adoption and third-party solutions.

AFA National Spokesperson and "Desperate Housewives Actress," shares her Fertility Story

Taking life just as it is may sound easy. Doing it? Now that's hard, necessary and ultimately liberating, but definitely labor-intesive. You see, there are gifts embedded in the accidents of fate that give existence its shape, meaning and richness - even when they're wrapped in bleakness. In my case, bleak was second infertility. But because of it, I learned the dance between acceptance and surrender that leads to compassion and contentment. Let me explain.

Backstory

I was a 26 year-old actress making it happen in LA. Motherhood? Uh, no. Not just yet. Of course I wanted children when the time was right. I had visions of my big belly. I imagined my swaddled newborn snug in my arms.

Then I fell in love. I married my husband and fell backwards into parenthood. I became the stepmother of an adolescent. I wasn’t ready. I was hardly out of my own teen years. She wasn’t ready. But there we were, struggling to make a home together.

A couple of years later, I was a veteran mom yearning for the baby I would make with my husband. I went off birth control during my stepdaughter’s high school year, confident I’d get pregnant. I did. Just not on my schedule. It took a lot longer than I reckoned.

Still, motherhood-by-marriage and the birth of my son lulled me into assuming another child would come easy. Wrong, wrong and wrong.

Yoga 1

When I decided it was time, I hit a brick wall. Between my fast-forward film and TV career and my family, I was living pedal-to-the-metal, overworked and over- stressed. Oh I was a yoga practitioner and teacher but I didn’t get the connection between my hyperactive mind and my uncooperative body.

I wasn’t getting pregnant so I pushed for IVF.

My husband, already the father of two, was dead set against spending a lot of money on high-tech medical interventions.

I felt abandoned and betrayed. I can say, fondly, in retrospect, it was almost a deal- breaker.

Was it irony or destiny that at that time we were teaching a couples yoga class, using the practice as a metaphor for marriage and sex, as a vehicle for discovering new levels of intimacy? That’s where he wanted to devote his energy and resources.

So I took matters into my own hands. It was on me to heal my own body. I plunged headlong into a self-prescribed treatment of acupuncture and yoga postures to balance my hormone cycle and lower FSH levels. I stayed with it, and I started to calm down.

Before long my body felt like it was mine again. I started teaching yoga for fertility at the Mind-Body Institute at UCLA. It helped me to help other women who were as angry with their bodies as I had been with my own. When the first 10-week course was over, I continued classes in my home. Women who couldn’t get pregnant were suddenly dropping like flies. It turns out that yoga combined with their medical protocols was potent.

Perhaps even more significant, irrespective of the outcome, the women working with me found how much they’d been suffering from fear, from resistance to their reality, from the denial and shame around fertility issues. They came in with a fierce attachment to an idea of the future that may never be, of anger turned inward. I recognized myself in every single one of them.

Yoga 2

With the practice comes change. I’m blown away by how much these women evolve as they build a deep and loving connection to themselves and compassion for their partners. I’m amazed as they unleash the creative energy that exists within all of us to give back something of value. They may finally have a child, or they may write a book, but they move forward with grace and arrive at a place of receiving life.

In my parallel journey, my husband and I produced “Yoga for Fertility” and “Yoga for Partners” DVDs. After we packaged them, I got pregnant. So did my stepdaughter—and my then 45-year-old sister!

My pregnancy lasted three months. I discovered that my husband was grieving the miscarriage as much as I was and I saw him in a new light. Together we recovered and expanded our notions of love and parenting. We cherish our son, an extraordinary being, 11 going on 21, strong, passionate and kind. Boy do we love our grandson, our niece and nephew.

Every day encourages us to be open and flexible so we can take in the gifts that surround us if we’re awake. Instead of straining against the “this is how I want it,” we practice sitting with the fulfillment of desire in what is. I learned to trust that where I am is exactly where I need to be.

It’s contentment in knowing that no matter what happens tomorrow, this day was good.

Brenda Strong
		About the author:
		Brenda Strong can be seen (and heard) as Mary-Alice Young, the all-knowing narrator of ABC's smash hit "Desperate Housewives." While Strong's seemingly perfect character committed suicide in the premiere episode, she starred in several flashback scenes as the mystery surrounding her death unfolded. Her weekly voiceovers provide viewers with insightful commentary from beyond the grave. Previously, she was perhaps most recognizable to television audiences for her role as Sue Ellen Mishkie (a.k.a. "The Braless Wonder") on the award-winning series "Seinfeld." She also has appeared on such acclaimed series as "Nip/Tuck," "Everwood," "Sports Night," "7th Heaven" and "Party of Five." Other television credits include "CSI," "Ally McBeal," "Gilmore Girls" and "ER." Strong is a certified yoga instructor who owns a studio, Yoga Villa (www.yogavilla.com) in Los Angeles. She also produces and stars in a line of videos, "Yoga 4 Fertility," (www.yoga4fertility.com) designed to help infertile couples through yoga therapy. Additionally, she has taught at UCLA's Mind-Body Institute.

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