Is infertility a bad thing?

Many, if not most of us, came to consider adoption after a long and arduous journey down infertility lane. I think it's best described as a roller coaster in both the physical and emotional sense, and by the time we get to the end of our journey, we are exhausted. We are grieving. We are relieved to be moving on to happier things.

Is infertility a bad thing? While I know it will never be a "good thing," as Martha Stewart would say, I still struggle to figure out where in my identity "infertility" fits. Adoption changed my life dramatically, but it did not make me any less infertile than I was before. I still read infertility blogs now and then, and will follow news and developments in the world of modern medicine. Is it a morbid obsession?

And then there's the "why me" angle. Why did G-d decide to send me down this path? What do I gain, what do I learn from adding "infertile" to my identity?

I was once talking with a good friend of mine who went through a divorce many years ago, and has now been happily remarried for quite some time. He said he used to wonder why the divorce had happened, and why was he destined to go through such a difficult time. He felt that he had gone through this experience for a reason, and he decided that he now had an angle - a real 'been there done that' badge. He said that he found it easier to empathize with others who were also going through a hard time, and found that he judged people less based on their situation.

Infertility certainly changed the way I look at people, just as adoption has. And perhaps for me, infertility changed the way I can empathize with people going through a different time. I do believe everything in this world happens for a reason, though we may never know what the reason is. It took me a long time to come to terms with the word "infertility" and what it meant for us, and even now and then there are still hard days. But I find comfort in the fact that there is a reason for the way things play out, even if I don't know why it is that they happen that way.