Grecia Lopez

It’s been more than a decade since you were diagnosed with MRKH and you have been living a fruitful life. 

Up until you were diagnosed, you knew something different internally. 

How? You just knew. You felt it.

When you were in your high school health class and the teacher was lecturing on the female reproductive system, it triggered you that you weren’t the same. You weren’t getting your period. 

One thing is for sure, MRKH has made you super empathetic and you wear your heart on your sleeve.

You are very in-tune with your emotions when it comes to expressing how you feel about anything! The confusing part is, when it comes to talking about MRKH, you feel numb — but everything else in your life — you feel it 100x harder. 

For the next few years you will have visited doctor after doctor after doctor, until you finally get the answers you have been searching for. It wasn’t the best news, but it wasn’t the worst news either. 

What mattered was that you were okay and you would continue to be okay. Your mom was more affected by the news more than you were at the time. Perhaps it was her motherly instinct. It’s still a topic you two never talk about.

It’s like you’ve learned to ignore it and not speak about it, though you think about it every day.

You will watch your two younger sisters become adults and their reproductive systems are normal. You think, “Why am I the only one who was born without a uterus?” 

It will kill you inside, but you don’t show it. 

At the time of your diagnosis, you didn’t really care because having kids was nowhere near your immediate plans. You knew it was something you had absolutely no control over, so you dove into the one thing you did have control over, your future. Your desire to succeed professionally.

I wish I could go back and let myself feel the emotions of learning that you, as a woman, will not be able to have kids. However, a decade later and you still feel the same about it — numb.

You have been numb about the diagnosis and will continue to be numb. That is — until you meet someone that changes your perspective on having kids. Bittersweet to tell you that you had a special person in your life that understood your syndrome, but the relationship fell apart. You are healing.

For the next eight years, you have taken that sadness of knowing you can’t conceive and apply those emotions into your professional career. You have landed media internship after internship. Growing as a professional journalist and news producer. Your dream of moving to Miami, FL will come true and you will be self-fulfilled to the rim. 

A constant thought you’ll have is, “Well I can’t get pregnant. I can’t have a family, so I will devote my time and energy into building my professional legacy.”

However, as the years have gone by, your priorities have shifted. The career and lifestyle you once longed for, is no more. Are you still working in the media? Yep. Are you happy? Yep. Do you want kids? Ehh. It’s complicated. 

Now, at 26, and after being in a relationship for seven years and thinking you were so sure marriage would come, you never second guessed yourself with your partner. But, now that you’re in the dating world, you quickly realize the question of “how many kids do you want” is asked right away when getting to know someone new. So what do you do? You back off. You don’t want to share that side of yourself with just anyone, so you keep quiet. 

For a decade, you have ignored the questions of “How many kids do you want?” or “When do you plan on having kids?”. 

To be honest, being diagnosed with MRKH has played a huge part in your sex life. For as long as you can remember, you don’t really view sex the same way some peers around you do. You haven’t longed for it as a person with a normal sex-drive has. You’ll have weird days where you think you are broken because your sex-drive is low. As a woman, with attractive features, you don’t feel attractive because you yourself, don’t long for sex. The truth is — intercourse is very painful for you but you begin to be patient with yourself and you slowly but surely start to enjoy it. You research and speak to other women with MRKH and you are happy to know you are not the only one that feels that way.

Let’s clear up one thing though, just because you don’t enjoy traditional sex, doesn’t mean you don’t enjoy pleasure in other ways. You enjoy exploring what your partner is into and you long for someone who is patient and wants to understand how your body works. 

One thing I wish I knew was that I wasn’t going to start enjoying sex until my mid-twenties. Your sexuality evolves as you grow.

In college, you decide to take an “Anthropology of Sex” course to learn more about the human sexuality. Actually – one of the lessons that your professor shares is the “Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome” or for short AIS. You are STUNNED to find out that there are courses taught about a similar syndrome like MRKH. You felt happy. You actually cried in the middle of the class and you shared with your professor that you, yourself are dealing with something similar. You received weird stares from your peers around you and your professor thanked you for being brave enough to share your story. 

As the years go on, you’ll hear ignorant comments from friends such as, “You’re lucky you can’t get pregnant”, but in reality, they are the lucky ones who WILL get pregnant. 

Another ignorant comment is, “You’re so lucky you don’t get a period.” 

You’ll learn to ignore and live on. 

It’s been more than a decade and you’ve been strong about the topic, opening up about not being able to conceive.

Your superpower has been your vulnerability and I applaud you for being so vulnerable with everyone you meet. Let’s talk about that for a second, you’ve only had one serious relationship where he understood your diagnosis and said he didn’t care and when the time comes, we’ll “figure it out”. The relationship has ended and it was a painful split. The most painful part of it was him saying, “I started to think about how you couldn’t give me children.” and that — is what broke you. What amazes me is that after the painful heartache, you continue to be the nice, smart, kind, resilient young lady.

You’ve been opening up your heart to other people that are crossing your path whom you’d never thought you’d be interested in. You’re afraid of how they’ll react to you not being able to conceive, but it’s something they won’t know until you feel it might be a long term relationship. For now, you are focused on yourself, your career, and your family.

Your MRKH journey is forever, it will end the day you take your last breath.

Continue to live your life with kindness, can’t wait to see what you accomplish in the next decade.