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Sari Botton is recalling the day her doctor told her she needed a hysterectomy. “It was very liberating for me,” she says.
The author of And You May Find Yourself… Confessions of a Late-Blooming GenX Weirdo and publisher of Oldster had by that point spent years ambivalently going through, as she puts it, “fertility stuff,” and enduring severe endometriosis and adenomyosis. “ I was in agony my entire menstrual life,” she says now, “ and I had a lot of bad doctors” — including one who flippantly informed her that her pain was “ just what women experienced.”
Eventually, after a few painful procedures and, of course, a fight with her health insurance company to explore the root of her issues, she learned that “Pregnancy, fertility wasn’t my main issue. It was something wrong with my junk.”
And then she felt relieved.
In our conversation, Botton opened up with me about what happened when she was misdiagnosed with cancer, aging in a country where it’s expensive to grow old, and how she’s planning on “keeping this young for my age thing going.” And she reflected on what it takes to be happy being child free.
“I didn’t feel permitted to just decide no, I don’t feel like having kids. I’m just one of those women. I had to wait for a doctor’s note.”
You can watch our conversation below, or if you prefer, listen to a gently edited version above or on your favorite podcast platform. Please do like and subscribe if you are so moved; it really all helps.
And if you’re lucky enough to be in New York City on March 4, you’ll have a good time at Joe’s Pub for The Oldster Magazine Variety Hour Presents: What I Did For Love...an Evening of Story and Song.”
Show notes:
You can find Sari and the cool people she talks to on Substack at Oldster, Memoir Land, and Adventures in “Journalism.”
Do yourself a favor and read Sari’s memoir and the anthologies she’s edited:
And her Modern Love on why “My Biological Clock Can’t Tick Fast Enough.”
Learn more about endometriosis and adenomyosis from the Mayo Clinic.
You can find more information on Lupron from Cleveland Clinic.
Here’s more about the aging “cliffs” and what they mean for us, and Emily Gould’s article in New York about Millennials facing the cliff of 44.
