A lasting legacy put into words
Written over five years and hundreds of hours of conversation, a new book by Dr Margo Lowy and Shterny Dadon captures the history, heart and soul of the Australian Jewish Fertility Network.
It was supposed to be a one-off. When Shterny Dadon organised a fundraising night at the Hakoah Club in Bondi in 2006 to help pay for her sister’s fertility treatment, she had no plans beyond that single event.
But the community response was overwhelming, uncovering both a gap in and a hunger for support around infertility. Twenty years and a community movement later, the story of what followed has been put into words for the first time.
Yearning for My Baby: Giving Voice to Infertility and the AJFN Story, written by Dr Margo Lowy with Dadon, chronicles the founding and growth of the Australian Jewish Fertility Network from the first Spa for the Soul event through to Dadon’s departure from the organisation in November 2021.
The book was five years in the making, a process that began when Lowy pushed Dadon to publicly commit to writing it during her final address to the AJFN in 2021.
“I just had such a deep sense at that time that if Shterny said it, we would do it,” Lowy told The AJN. “I knew we had to tell this story about the AJFN.”
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