{"id":3844,"date":"2011-04-13T12:50:32","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T19:50:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=3844"},"modified":"2011-04-19T14:54:53","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T21:54:53","slug":"a-face-for-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=3844","title":{"rendered":"A face for activism"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Keiko Zoll '04<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It had been more than a year since Keiko Zoll \u201904<\/strong> received the diagnosis she never wanted. Dressed casually in a blue-striped cardigan, jeans, and flip-flops, she headed to Boston Common, dry-erase board and black marker in hand. While her husband manned the camera and a group of children frolicked in the playground behind her, Zoll looked straight into the camera and used that board and marker to silently pose serious questions related to her life-changing diagnosis: What if I stop defining myself by my infertility? What if I lived in the moment rather than living in an uncertain future? What if my story can help millions?<\/p>\n

That last one was especially prescient. In only a week, the video<\/a> that had taken Zoll 10 hours to shoot and eight more to edit had been viewed 10,000 times. That number has since climbed to more than 31,000\u2014plus 325,000 loads in more than 150 countries. It has appeared on clinical and counseling Web sites, and grabbed the attention of high-profile infertility doctors and specialists across the country. It even led to an award for Best Viral Video from RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d always heard about videos going viral, but this was the first time I could comprehend what that impact was like,\u201d Zoll says. \u201cI got very caught up in the creative aspect of the project, and it didn\u2019t really hit me until a week afterward that I\u2019d leant my face and name to this story.\u201d<\/p>\n

Only a year earlier, in March 2009, Zoll had learned that the worst-case scenario, the one that seemed only a distant possibility when her doctor first mentioned it, had happened. \u201cI knew when I had my blood work done that premature ovarian failure\u2014commonly referred to as premature menopause\u2014was one of those super-extreme possibilities,\u201d she says, \u201c but when I got that e-mail and that [diagnosis] was mine, I was like, \u2018Woah. Hold on here.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

She left her office immediately, headed to her on-campus apartment at Tufts University, and called her husband, sobbing the news into the phone and adding, \u201cHere\u2019s what it comes down to: I can\u2019t have my own genetic children.\u201d<\/p>\n

As she spent the next few months confirming the diagnosis through more tests and doctors\u2019 visits, Zoll began blogging about her experience. Going by Miriam (her Hebrew name), she wrote about everything\u2014her hopes and fears, fights with her husband, even conversations with her therapist. Eventually, she decided to reveal her true identity, both on her blog and in her award-winning video. It was a step many women in the infertility community have not been able to take.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a certain stigma, but it\u2019s even broader than that\u2014it\u2019s a cultural silencing,\u201d Zoll says. \u201cIf it happens in the bedroom, we don\u2019t really want to talk about it, but the fact of the matter is, [infertility] affects 7.3 million people in this country. Diseases like breast cancer or diabetes have their walks and their fundraisers, but where is our ribbon? Where is our national event?\u201d<\/p>\n

While Zoll says she started out as simply \u201can advocate for myself,\u201d she soon realized that through the popularity of her blog and video she had become an inspiration for the many women who weren\u2019t yet ready to publicly share their infertility stories.<\/p>\n

Evelina Sterling, president of the women\u2019s health nonprofit Rachel\u2019s Well, describes Zoll as \u201ca wonderful patient advocate, bringing attention to often under-recognized and stigmatized health issues.\u201d She adds, \u201cThrough her honesty and openness, she has shown many women (and men) that they are not alone. Additionally, she has prompted them to become their own advocates and speak out with regard to their own experiences with infertility. \u00a0We definitely need more people like Keiko to show the world what a huge issue infertility is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zoll now serves as a board member for RESOLVE\u2019s New England chapter, and has begun collaborating with Sterling and Rachel\u2019s Well. She says her blogging and video work have been \u201cemotionally healing and spiritually healing\u201d\u2014so much so that a prominent infertility doctor and researcher from the National Institutes of Child and Human Development took note and contacted her. He told her that the coping and healing she\u2019d accomplished in only a few short years was something that took other patients much longer to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe basically wanted to ask me what my secret way,\u201d she says. \u201cI didn\u2019t have an answer for him; I still don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zoll says she hopes to write a book about her experience with infertility and POF\u2014but first needs to find out what the last chapter will hold.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy husband and I have talked about adoption, and we\u2019ve recently put donor egg IVF back on the table,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m hoping to finish this story by coming out on the other side.\u201d<\/p>\n

What IF<\/a> from Keiko Zoll<\/a> on Vimeo<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keiko Zoll ’04 is one of the 7.3 million people in this country afflicted with infertility. But rather than let that diagnosis define her, Zoll has become an inspiration and advocate for the many who aren’t yet ready to publicly share their infertility stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":63,"featured_media":3847,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3844","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni-corner","category-april-2011"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3844","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/63"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3844"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3844\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3844"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3844"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3844"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}