You don’t actually realize that as you grow up your surroundings are causing you to subconsciously configure your future. You watch as everyone grows up, goes to college, falls in love, gets married, has kids, and lives happily ever after. Keep in mind, this scenario is seen through a child’s eyes where everything is fantastical. This young child was definitely me. It is most likely a lot of people. The fact of the matter is, life doesn’t often happen that way and I quickly learned that mine certainly won’t look anything like it.

At the age of 16 I was diagnosed with a rare syndrome that only affects 1 in 4500 women. Its correct medical name is Mayer-Rokitansky-Kuster-Hauser syndrome, but it is commonly known as MRKH because that is far easier to pronounce. Other than my ovaries, my reproductive organs either didn’t develop properly or didn’t bother showing up at all. I cannot carry a child and I cannot have proper sex until I choose to go through some form of bizarre treatment. This is when it hit me that I had been subconsciously planning to become pregnant after falling in love and making love with a vagina I was born with. Who would have thought it was even possible not to have one? It certainly hadn’t ever occurred to me.

Learning about my condition made me rethink my entire future. There were so many new things to consider now. How will I have a child if I truly want one bad enough to go through the long legal process of adoption or the major cash of the procedure for surrogacy? And even before that, how will I find a man that will accept me for what I am? I could barely accept myself.

It has taken a lot of thought and a long process of healing that will never truly end. MRKH has become a major part of my life and some people say not to let it take over my life, but to be honest, it already has- right from the start. Not many people understand and so it’s easier to explain it in a context that they can relate to better: it’s like losing a loved one and thinking of them multiple times every single day. With me, it’s the fact that I lost a dream that never even existed.

Anyways, MRKH has made me stronger as a woman. It makes me want to reach out to other girls like me and unite with them because we are the only ones that truly understand what it’s like to have MRKH. We are a hidden species it seems… it is a topic nobody addresses because of how taboo its subject matter is. I was once ranting to a few close friends about how stupid it is that nobody is comfortable talking about vaginas and I busted out saying “I don’t get it, all women have one!” I realized as soon as it escaped my mouth how mistaken I was and corrected myself: “Well, most people do.” My point is that we all have a body so why are certain parts off-limits to talk about? We all poop for Christ’s sake! So why are we scared of the subject?

In my future I want to be an advocate for MRKH. I want to break down the boundaries of taboo topics because that is what causes so many girls to be extremely ashamed of themselves. I want to be proud of what I have overcome as a woman second-guessing what womanhood is. I don’t care if others know about my syndrome because the more people learn about it, the better they’ll understand and the less likely it’ll be such a taboo topic.

In my future I want to have a child or two. I’d love for one of them to be biologically mine so people can say we look alike. I know how proud I am when people say I “look just like my mother.” If I choose to have a second child I’d like to adopt because I can’t help but find sense in how some woman with MRKH believe that we cannot have children because we were put on this earth to save the children that do not have loving parents. I mean, who is more loving than someone that doesn’t take a child for granted and truly wants to be a mother?

Our futures are chosen for us in a small sense, but overall, we can control what we do with what we’re given. Like the old phrase about lemons and lemonade you have to make something good out of what you’ve got and that’s what I plan to do.

-Ashley