Main NavigationHomeYahoo ShineSilent Sorority TV InterviewOpen Salon About AuthorNew York Times Radio SegmentComing2TermsHealing Salon: Some Unfinished Business Welcome back. Pardon me while I tidy up a bit.  I need to get some of the dust and cobwebs off the furniture so I can offer those involved in the Healing Salon a place to sit, ponder and participate. For those new to this blog, here's some background on it: The  Coming2Terms posts were initially written under a pseudonym. This allowed me the freedom for cathartic writing about my futile trying to conceive (TTC) experience and the losses associated with it. I could experience and process all the raw thoughts and emotions in a safe place and express things I wasn't comfortable articulating in my offline life. Through C2T, I connected with women who have profoundly influenced my life.My blog began at the end of a decade of TTC, unexplained infertility, unsuccessful treatment followed by more unsuccessful treatment, followed by anger, sadness, grief and, ultimately, acceptance... In the early days of TTC all I'd ever hear about were the success stories. The infertility (IF) blogroll maintained by Stirrup Queen Mel and the community it fostered offered a place to let my hair down, but after treatments failed it was hard not to feel like an outcast. I couldn't hide (in real life or online) from, at times, pain-inducing pregnancy announcements or joys of motherhood stories.At times it felt as though the IF blogroll was a living room with three doors. Door #1: in treatment; door #2: on the path to, or actively parenting, by way of pregnancy/adoption; door #3: the door no one wanted to open — reconciling a life without once sought after children. The world beyond door #3 became my little niche of the infertility blogosphere. After several years of thrashing about I concluded that part of my inability to move forward and find peace was the lack of real life, relate-able stories of women who had walked in my shoes, stumbled and gotten back on their feet. In time I went public with my story. I also wrote a book called Silent Sorority. My "outing" brought about a new responsibility and accountability.  I not only became more measured in what I said, the nowhere-to-hide-nature of my writing forced me, further, to think about the impact of my words on others. Did I become less provocative and colorful in my blogging? Perhaps, but because I was more circumspect I also began to explore the motivations behind what I thought and felt. It was no longer just about me, but about me and the infertility experience in the context of the world in which I lived. As longtime readers know, a few years ago I retired Coming2Terms and set up a new blog called A Fresh Start.  The break was symbolic on many levels. It gave me an official way to declare an end to my infertility crisis days. The impetus for my new space? To no longer wrestle with the "what ifs," and instead to live the "what is" — my life after