Fertility Patients and Advocates Share Insights and Open New Dialogue
Unprecedented Public Forum Focused on Emotional Healing after Infertility
New York, NY – September 23, 2013 –The CYCLE: Living A Taboo, (www.thecyclelivingataboo.com), a first-of-its-kind, patient-led forum tackling the complicated human experiences and emotions surrounding infertility, will take place in lower Manhattan on Friday, September 27, 2013.
Open to the general public, the event begins at 8:00 p.m. at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center Theater #2. The 90-minute program will feature media, medical and mental health experts as well as authors who have lived through infertility and created literary works, audio recordings and film focusing on understanding and processing the experience. To secure a seat, visit: http://www.smarttix.com/show.aspx?showcode=CYC3.
“We want to honor the full spectrum of the infertility experience from diagnosis through treatment to letting go and restoring wholeness to one’s life. This event will celebrate the strength of the human spirit to uplift against the odds,” said Irina Vodar, award-winning documentary filmmaker and the creator of The CYCLE: Living a Taboo Forum. “We’ve gathered a resilient group of women and men to discuss what they’ve learned to mark the beginning of societal change in how we universally speak about this once taboo topic.”
Organizations endorsing the event include Our Bodies Ourselves; the Center for Responsible Genetics; the Center for Reproductive Psychology; the Seleni Institute; Voice Male Magazine; Gateway Women; We Are Egg Donors, and The Halli Casser-Jayne Show: Talk Radio for Fine Minds.
The Forum will be taped and some footage may be used in the upcoming documentary film by the same title.
Featured speakers include:
Irina Vodar, the creator of The Cycle Forum and the producer-director of the upcoming autobiographical documentary The Cycle: Living A Taboo, a love story in the age of reproductive technologies. Originally from Moscow, her well-received first full-length documentary, Miss GULAG, showcased at 36 international film festivals (including Silverdocs) and earned recognition from the Ford Foundation, Sundance Institute and the 57th Berlin Film Festival.
Dr. Marni Rosner, the first scholar to research the long-term emotional, social, and cultural implications for women living without children after pursuing treatment for infertility. Dr. Rosner is the current editor of the University of Pennsylvania’s Doctorate of Social Work Newsletter, The Clinician, and is the recipient of the University’s 2012 Dr. Ram Cnaan award.
Dr. David Barad, director of clinical ART and senior scientist at the Center for Human Reproduction in New York City. Dr. Barad recently participated in a national research effort that revealed some I.V.F. clinics manipulate federally mandated public reporting of I.V.F. outcomes to gain economic advantage.
Jennifer Wolff Perrine, an award-winning investigative health journalist who has covered reproductive health and the fertility industry for nearly two decades. Her milestone article, “Breaking the Silence on Infertility” won RESOLVE's Hope Award for achievement in 2011.
Miriam Zoll, author of the new memoir-expose, Cracked Open: Liberty, Fertility and the Pursuit of High-Tech Babies. Zoll is a member of the board of the global women’s health and human rights organization, Our Bodies Ourselves, and the founding co-producer of the Ms. Foundation for Women’s original “Take Our Daughters To Work Day.” A 2005 MIT Research Fellow, she has worked for the United Nations, the U.S. Government, Planned Parenthood and the Earth Institute at Columbia University.
Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos co-producer of the Forum, was first profiled in a landmark article by The New York Times called “Voices of Infertility.” She went on to write Silent Sorority, the first memoir to document fertility treatments not written by a mother. It received the Hope Award for Best Book in 2010 by RESOLVE, the National Infertility Association. Tsigdinos is an internationally recognized blogger who explores the stigma associated with infertility and living involuntarily childless.
Tracey Cleantis, a writer, speaker and practicing psychotherapist. Her critically acclaimed blog, La Belette Rouge, and her new book, The Other Side of Impossible: How to Let Go of the Life You Planned and Find a Happy Ending, address themes of “finding depth in the ordinary” and “surviving and thriving while being childless.”
Sonia A. M. Daly, an author and voiceover artist and producer of Voices of Zen: Guided Meditation for Women Who’ve Miscarried. Collaborating with two-time Emmy® award-winner composer, Michael Whalen, she launched this inaugural guided meditation series that addresses unheralded topics of emotional disease based on her experiences with multiple miscarriages.
About The Cycle: Living A Taboo
The Cycle: Living A Taboo (#TheCycleLivingATaboo) is the first independent, patient-led event focused on infertility and the experience of fertility treatments as well as the ramification of childlessness on individuals and society. The September 27, 2013 event will be recorded and filmed, and some footage may be used for a documentary film by the same name. The Cycle is fiscally sponsored by Women Make Movies (WMM), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. To make tax deductible contributions visit, http://www.firstgiving.com/fundraiser/thecyclelivingataboo/WMM
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