Don’t Tell Her to Relax: 22 Ways to Support Your Infertile Loved One Through Diagnosis, Treatment, and Beyond ..by: Zahie El Kouri.

Over 14 million American women are either unable to bear children, or are using some type of fertility treatment to assist in their efforts to have children. While these statistics illustrate the pervasive issue of infertility in the United States, they do not begin to illustrate the emotional toll that infertility produces: feelings of social isolation, depression, and frustration. 

Worse yet, family members and friends of those struggling with infertility oftentimes don’t know how to help, or what they can say to try and comfort and support their loved one.  

To try and help those struggling with infertility and the people who love and support them, former lawyer Zahie El Kouri wrote the new book, Don’t Tell Her to Relax: 22 Ways to Support Your Infertile Loved One Through Diagnosis, Treatment, and Beyond. Based on her own painful experiences, El Kouri teaches readers how to be supportive with women dealing with fertility issues without being intrusive or offensive.  Written in a compassionate and friendly tone, this new book is the ultimate guide for family members and friends who wish to help and emotionally support a loved one cope with the stress and frustration of infertility.

Designed as a tool to open the conversation between the person who is going through infertility and the person who wants to help, Don’t Tell Her to Relax also touches on:

·      Common Causes and Diagnosis: Common causes of infertility and different types of diagnostic procedures

·      Treatments and Costs: Various fertility treatments such as IUI (intrauterine insemination) and IVF (in vitro fertilization) as well as the financial costs associated with each

·      Hormones: The volatility of emotions that fertility hormones can produce in your loved one and how to handle them

·      Emotional Support Simple tips to help your loved one minimize stress and focus on the future

·      Building a Family: All of the ways possible to build your own family including: surrogacy, gestational carriers, embryo adoption, and traditional adoption

·      And much more!

“There was a long period in my life during which I was simultaneously trying to get pregnant, exploring adoption, and trying to imagine a life without children. During those years, there was a part of me that wanted to retreat, because it was so hard to explain how I was feeling to people who weren't struggling with the same issues,” says El Kouri. “At that time, I remember wishing that there was a manual I could hand to them, with step-by-step guidelines for what to say and what not to say to help me through a difficult time. When I finally did have a child, I didn't forget that need. I wrote this book to bridge the gap between those going through infertility and their loved ones.” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Zahie El Kouri writes about infertility and immigrant culture, sharing her experience of surviving infertility through personal essays and articles. She has taught creative writing at the University of North Florida and the University of Oregon Law School and legal writing at Santa Clara University and Florida Coastal School of Law. She holds a J.D. from Cornell Law School and an MFA in creative writing from New School University.

El Kouri’s work has appeared in Mizna, a Journal of Arab-American writing, Memoir Journal, Dinarzad’s Children: an Anthology of Arab-American Literature, Brain, Child: the Magazine for Thinking Mothers, Ars Medica, and Full Grown People.  She currently lives in Austin, Texas with her husband and three beautiful children.  Don’t Tell Her to Relax is her first book. 

Don’t Tell Her to Relax is available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble Nook, and her websitewww.zahieelkouri.com.

Website: www.zahieelkouri.com

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