Elusive Ovary by Jenn Director Knudsen

“I can’t find your left ovary.”

In a very compromising position, I asked the ultrasound tech what she meant. Before responding, she requested I push down with my left hand low on my belly, where I knew my left ovary should be, lurking beneath layers of tissue. Doing so might help coax the ovary into view on her screen, she said rather robotically.  

Then she said, eyes averted from mine and focused on the monitor, “It’s normal for ovaries to shrink as women get older.”

So she confirmed what I already knew in my heart but didn’t want to believe in my brain: I am officially barren. My ovaries hadn’t merely ceased to function. One of them had disappeared. Normal or not, it was a definitive statement about the end of one very powerful, life-giving stage, and the official start of a new phase.

One that has been marked by jarring loss, as well as new hope.

***

About two years ago I had lunch with a friend in her mid-90s who knows a thing or two about loss. I shared with her I had just entered the empty-nest phase. Both my young-adult daughters had moved out of their childhood home to pursue higher education and lives untethered to their folks. Missing our dog and the two cats they grew up with, they both became cat moms.

My friend perked up. Widowed decades ago via a tragic and freak accident her husband suffered while they were exploring Antarctica, she told me in her thick New York accent, “Once your dwoig dwise, you and your husband will be free to do as you’d like.”

At the time, our labradoodle Jacky Fudge hadn’t yet reached her dotage and was her sprightly, kinda slobbery self. Empty-nest life meant one without the children at home; it did not mean a life bereft of Jacky.

For she was a loving (if maybe sometimes odiferous) presence, joining me in the school pickup line when the girls were young; vying for the aloof cats’ attention; and sharing my work space once the human presence shrunk from four, to three and then to two. She was my companion, and I hers.

Saying goodbye to my daughters was a two-year process. Twenty-six months apart, they left town at an expected cadence. The eldest went to school on the East Coast in 2020, where she still remains. The youngest headed for Denver in 2022. She was more of a homebody than her big sister; for a long time I assumed she’d spend summers between academic years at home. Until the summer she announced Colorado’s capital rather than Oregon’s largest city would be her homebase.

I knew intellectually that at some point even she would desire complete independence, returning to our pet-friendly house only as a visitor, not a resident. But her decision caught me off guard and corners of our nest began collecting dust.

I again was caught unawares when I lost a job at a non-profit for which I’d worked tirelessly for years. The boss dispensed with me quickly. In mere moments, the work — and the community I’d served through it — was gone. Loss took the place of productivity and goal-setting.

When the humans in my life tired of my sadness-induced word salad, I’d toss it instead with Jacky. Even when she looked like she wasn’t paying attention, I knew she was listening to my every word; her mere presence helped me through my pain, confusion and sorrow. As it did after the girls left home. 

Jacky wagged her tail and made eye contact as I yapped at her. Even for non-dog lovers, I know that you know the look of sheer love and understanding canines provide their humans. Jacky’s round, amber-tinged eyes absorbed my struggle with loss and projected affection. 

She and I were getting older together. Some of her teeth began to rot. I began ripping off layers of clothes as hot flashes consumed me from core to hair follicles. Small growths cropped up indiscriminately on the dog’s body. I began spending more time stretching than doing cardio workouts. On increasingly languid walks, Jacky stopped to sniff every single blade of grass. I commenced hormone replacement therapy, underwent a few gum grafts, had cataract surgery in both eyes and a hernia surgically repaired.

Every time the girls returned briefly to their natal nest, Jacky and I did the same wild jig as they apparated in the house. And once they finished eating our food and requesting I do their laundry, signalling the time to fly back to their current homes to continue their growth trajectory, Jacky and I’d console one another before returning to our own maturation journey.

***

Only hers occurred too rapidly. With increasing frequency, she’d seek out a patch of sun on the grass, lay down, close her eyes and turn her muzzle to the sun. Like what old people do.

Soon, like the girls already had, Jacky also prepared to leave. One day, she started bleeding from the mouth; the next day, her anus, and we knew her last day had come. Devastated, the girls had to say goodbye to her via FaceTime. 

The dwoig dwied. Rather than feel free, I felt inconsolable. Jacky’s death was another loss in a growing litany of them as I marched toward my mid-50s. 

Shortly thereafter, a couple girlfriends invited me to an outdoor Indigo Girls concert. I didn’t hesitate to say yes. The duo’s lyrics had inspired me for decades, in particular “What separates me from you?” from their 1989 “Tried to Be True” album (yes, album). I listened to that song on repeat as a Planned Parenthood medical assistant while trying to make sense of the inescapable reality that some people suffer while others seem not to. 

The last time I’d seen the Indigo Girls in concert was during a heart-wrenching period of infertility. About a quarter-century ago, my husband and I nabbed tickets to their live show at a small outdoor venue to get a change of sound and scenery, to take a break from the daily, stress-inducing conversation that began and ended with, “Why can’t we conceive?”

At that concert, I looked down our row and recognized a couple I’d seen at the (in)fertility clinic. The other wanna-be mom made eye contact with me, and then we turned back to the tunes. Both of us were trying to realize a dream, with an assist from science. 

The guitar-heavy, somewhat gravelly sound of the Indigo Girls is the soundtrack of my journey from slumbering ovaries to ones that functioned. As they should have in a woman in her 20s. 

Not long after the concert, my husband and I successfully conceived. My first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. Jolt after jolt of hormones eventually resulted in my second and then third pregnancies, producing our healthy, wonderful daughters.

Who, at a certain age, started asking for a dog. Neither my husband nor I required much convincing. 

The four of us selected Jacky Fudge from a swarming pile of pittling puppies and loved and cared for her for the 13-and-a-half years she gifted us. At Jacky’s first well-puppy checkup, to which the giddy girls accompanied me, the vet said, “Your dog will be there to see your daughters off to college.” Which, at the time, felt like that’d be 1,000 sleepless years into the future. 

A quarter-century later, the groundbreaking and revered Indigo Girls’ voices were gulpy, their power diminished, their energy flagging. The years had not been kind.

At first, I was both disappointed and surprised. And then I took a closer look at the venue, packed with people my age when first trying to start a family, as well as those in midlife and those well past. All dancing, their spirits lifted, the famous women on stage still playing their guts out, even as they introduced a few younger band members who picked up the vocal slack.

I bet the Indigo Girls’ ovaries, too, have shriveled and are undetectable on ultrasound. But here they were, doing what they loved regardless the toll on their vocal range and diminished lung capacity. And this audience loved them as much as I remember their fans whooping it up 25 years ago. 

Our baby girl born less than a year after my first Indigo Girls concert got married this year, desiring to begin a family of her own. 

And my husband and I recently began talking about getting another dog. 

Luna Jay, named in memory of Jacky, joined our family just this spring. 

Jenn Director Knudsen is a storyteller for a large healthcare organization. Her reporting and personal essays have appeared in The Jewish Daily Forward, The Boston Globe, The Oregonian, The Mother Chapter and more. She created and co-facilitates a grief-processing, letter-writing workshop.

6 August 2026