People often have a tendency to connect woman with mother than any other role. Is it fair to think that way? Aren’t there women who are not able to conceive a child? They are also women and not lesser to anyone, right?
It was when she reached 17, Malaysian writer and performer Wani Ardy realised she had some health problem. She thought it would be treated. She consulted doctor after doctor when she missed having her first period. And what they told hit her really hard. They told her the same thing over and over that she did not have a uterus.
After long twenty years, Wani now remembers how the diagnosis baffled her doctors and left her unable to relate to her peers. “As a teenager, I felt very isolated because at that moment, I knew I was different,” she said.
She at her 20s learned that her rare condition had a name and it wasMayer-Rokitansky-Küster-Hauser syndrome (MRKH) the condition when internal sex organs such as the womb or the vagina are either absent or underdeveloped at birth. The rare condition affects about one in 5,000 women and its causes are unknown.
Wani, who is Muslim kept her condition a secret even as she embarked on a career as a singer, poet, author and scriptwriter. Later joining a US-based online support group for MRKH women, Wani decided to disclose her ‘rare’ secret.
“I thought if I could feel this way with a person who was basically across the globe, just imagine how I would feel if I could find an MRKH person in my own country, who would be more relatable in terms of upbringing, background and culture,” she said.
Wani said she hoped she could help women and society in reshaping motherhood. She has acted in and consulted on “Rahimah Tanpa Rahim” (“Rahimah Without A Womb”), a television series whose lead character has MRKH, which aired in January.
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