And this return is one to memoir and creative non fiction, after so long as solely a poet. I’m proud to be multi-genre, multi-racial, multi-lingual, multi-everything writer-person, and so pleased that this essay found a home on the Sisterhood blog of the Jewish Forward. Sending hope and strength to anyone facing infertility now, this National Infertility Week, and all year long.
The Jewish imperative to life helped me find air when I felt I might drown in a sea of overwhelming sadness. Without it, I was so focused on what was lost that I nearly lost track of what was not – my own self, my potential, my life full of creativity and friendship. Jewish ritual and teaching, with its unambiguous insistence on the soul of the mother and the not-soul of the embryo, restored that to me. It gave me the courage to grab strong hold of my new partner, my bashert, with whom I now make a Jewish home.
Last year, to mark my exit from these years of sorrow, I ran the NYC marathon. I also hired a Hebrew tutor. At her suggestion, I ran loop after loop in Prospect Park to the v’ahavta, learning the sounds, the rhythm and, in some way, inscribing the might of the prayer into muscle memory.
Dania Rajendra 