Editor's Note: This is the text of an e-mail we received a few days ago. It seemed well worth sharing.

Hi, I had a tubal ligation after my 4th child was a few days old. I was just a baby myself. I was 26 years old and 3 months of age myself. I took the advice of a psychiatrist and my spiritual director who was a priest who said it was OK with the Bishop. So, thinking it was not against Church teaching, I went ahead with the surgery in 1976 January of that year. I remember waking up from the surgery and felt terrible. You could say I felt like I had committed a serious sin.

Well I was always a loving mother and very patient but I was sort of resenting the fact that I couldn't have any more children, so I would for the first time in my life feel a kind of resentment of being a mother. Even though I still took good care of my children I didn't appreciate my femininity 100 percent. I felt like an IT, not totally 100 percent feminine

Well I got a reversal almost 20 years later when I was 46 years old and practiced N.F.P. for almost 7 years now. We have not gone through the menopause as yet, and I did not conceive a child like we hoped we would have, but I am just thankful to have gotten back my 100 percent feeling of my femininity.

Thank God for being a woman completely again through the reversal.