A lasting legacy put into words

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.”

Dadon, though, points the credit finger squarely at Lowy.

“It wouldn’t have happened. Margo’s the one that made it happen,” she said. “Her commitment was from the beginning to the end.”

The writing process was slow and often unwieldy. Dadon was juggling family life and a new career, while Lowy wrote and published a separate book in the interim. But it was the subject matter itself that demanded time. The pair spent hundreds of hours in conversation, trying to work out how to weave together the AJFN’s organisational history, the deeply personal stories of couples who had come through its doors and the emotional reality of infertility without losing the thread that bound it all together.

“We had hundreds of hours of conversations to really try to understand how we bring in so many different parts of the story in a way that flows and also talks to the message of the story, not just telling the story but trying to bring out the messages,” Dadon recalled.

The result is a book that is part institutional history, tracing how a loosely-structured grassroots charity grew into a registered not-for-profit that supported 82 couples and helped bring 35 babies into the world, part academic exploration drawing on Lowy’s research into infertility and mothering to give language to an experience that so many endure in silence, and part community archive, weaving in testimonials from volunteers, board members, fertility specialists and the couples themselves.

“Every person who did something believed they could make a difference, and they did.” Shterny Dadon

For Lowy, the book is also personal. She experienced secondary infertility herself and wrote her master’s thesis on the subject. She thought she had closed that chapter. But then, she met Dadon in 2007.

“There was a part of me that hadn’t finished this. I knew I had to write about infertility to help me come to terms with it even more,” she said. Lowy recalled attending a London production of Yerma, a play about an infertile woman, in 2017, more than 30 years after her son was born.

“I was bawling and crying when I walked out of that. Infertility doesn’t leave you,” she recalled.

Lowy said one of the driving motivations behind the book was to give language to an experience that is still widely misunderstood.

“One of the things about infertility is that many people don’t feel heard. What Shterny and I wanted to do was to make sure that these voices are heard and they’re listened to,” she explained.

She also wanted to equip the people around those struggling, saying those around the family experiencing infertility have an important role to play in their physical, emotional and mental health.

“When people are unthinking, it can make the person’s life much more difficult and make them feel even more alienated.”

The book includes a section of practical guidance on how to support someone going through infertility, with a simple message. Don’t try to fix it, just be present.

Among the book’s most candid passages are Dadon’s reflections on stepping down from the organisation she founded. She admitted that without Lowy’s encouragement, she probably would have cut those sections entirely.

“I was a bit like, why does everyone have to know this?” she said. “It is a bit daunting to know some of my emotions are out there, but I knew it was very integral to the story.”

Lowy, however, was firm on the inclusion.

“We really wanted the story to be authentic. It just wouldn’t feel right if we wouldn’t have put that in,” she said.

For Dadon, the writing process itself became the vehicle for processing the transition. She described Lowy as her “personal trainer” in navigating ambivalence, the capacity to hold contradictory feelings at once, a concept central to Lowy’s academic work.

“Infertility doesn’t leave you” Dr Margo Lowy

“The work with Margo, the muscle got stronger and stronger,” Dadon said. “Being able to live with the contradicting feelings was really difficult in the beginning.”

She hopes that honesty will resonate beyond the AJFN, particularly for others grappling with leadership succession in communal organisations.

“People that really invest a lot in a grassroots organisation and then move on, they always feel connected, or things are hard for them. It can apply in lots of different ways.”

Both authors are clear that the book is not one person’s story.

“It was never about one person from the start. It’s about the collective,” Dadon said in her ever-so-humble way. “Every person who did something believed they could make a difference, and they did.”

Dadon describes the AJFN’s culture as a “circle of giving” that drew in people from across the community, including non-Jewish fertility specialists who volunteered their time.

“I would have all the people wanting to help, all the people getting the help, and the constant circle of giving that was just so incredible. It never stopped.”

Asked what they hope readers take from the book, Lowy said she wants people to feel the neshama, the soul, that was embedded in the organisation.

“It’s an infertility book, but it really gives another layer to the Jewish community. There is something essential in it about the neshama that we really want to be the legacy,” she said.

Dadon hopes it reaches people who are not ready to seek help directly. Someone might be able to get strength from a book where she may not want to speak to someone or have a conversation,” she said. “It’s just another way.”

Yearning for My Baby: Giving Voice to Infertility and the AJFN Story is available on Amazon from October 1.