Yep, and I am proud to say it loud and clear.  In a world right now, where there seems to be so much emphasis on pregnancy and motherhood (both rich parts of the female experience), my life has included other significant and meaningful parts of the female experience such has sexual harassment, infertility, and hysterectomy.  When I embarked on my doctorate, I promised myself that even if I was 4 years into a degree that would take me 5 years to achieve, I would quit if it no longer felt right to me.  One year of my life was too long to spend doing something that no longer was fulfilling.  I never felt that way and went onto complete the degree.  But after years of infertility treatments, I decided I had done enough to try to be a parent, and that there was more to my life than parenting.  I needed to say enough is enough; it was a limit that I needed to set.  That limit is obviously different for everyone–some women never consider having children and others won’t quit trying until they become pregnant, and others still parent through adoption, others will try conceiving and/or adoption and decide to stop trying, others become parents only to lose their child, others lose their fertility due to illness, and the list goes on and on.  All of us women.  I am no less a woman without my reproductive organs or because I do not have children.  I am but one of the facets of the jewel that is my gender.