My infertility journey is a topic that I rarely talk about, even with my loved ones, never mind publicly. It’s a seven year period of my life, which can’t be summed up in a concise way, and which changed me in every way. It is deeply personal. Nonetheless, at this point on my path, I am feeling called to share about it openly. The act of writing this has deepened my awareness and healed wounds. But I’m specifically feeling a pull to put this out in the world, in service of anyone who is in the midst of their own experience of infertility and/or pregnancy loss, and feeling alone in it. I’ll speak to you directly now: You Are Not Alone. So many women go through some form of infertility in silence, and the isolation compounds the heartbreak and struggle we face. I want to chip away at that sense of taboo, by bringing this out to the light. My hope is that you will read my story and find even just one bit of resonance, and that this will remind you that we are all connected. 

Writing this was not easy, and I acknowledge that it may not be easy to read. If hearing about another woman’s eventual success with pregnancy triggers feelings of depression, I see you. I’ve been there, and it’s ok to give yourself permission to stop reading. Everyone’s journey is different, and it’s important to honor your feelings, your needs, and your timing. Our culture teaches us to do the opposite of this, which can make it even harder to read our own signals and to take actions that lead to our healing. That was the case for me.

This story isn’t just about infertility. It’s about the transformation I experienced along the way—spiritual, emotional, and physical; shifts in how I view health, medicine, and myself. My choice to include these elements here is based on the hindsight I have now, seeing that it was all connected. For many years, I didn’t have that vantage point; of course that’s how life works. We are all on healing journeys, and yours may look completely different from mine, though there are likely some moments where you may recognize an element of yourself in some part of what I have to share.

For me, the path includes getting pregnant and having a child. For others, that may also be the case, and for some it may not. That is a hard truth that I hold with deep compassion as well as reverence for the mystery of life, and the complexity of all of the emotions that truth brings up.

In my case, the desire to have a child became a catalyst for profound healing. This desire was born during my own childhood, watching my three younger siblings and many younger cousins grow up. I assumed that I would someday have a big family of my own. Fast forward to adulthood, to the many years when it seemed like my dream for my life would not come true; where over and over, I had to release rigid assumptions, beliefs and resistances, to surrender to life. I felt challenged to my core. I thought that achieving my goal of motherhood would mark the end of these challenges (ha!), but the truth is that life’s lessons continue, now, in large part, through my child. Life teaches us what we need, through whatever circumstance we find ourselves in.

Regardless of the specifics of your journey, we share in common a deep longing, coupled with the inability to control or know the future. This longing may have different roots and the manifestation of it may look very different. I challenge you to consider the possibility that the “success” of your journeying on this path is not solely determined by whether or not you end up having a child, but that the lessons and transformations that you allow to shape you might actually be the end goal.

As a kid, making art was one of the biggest ways I learned about the world; through getting my hands on different materials and finding out how they worked, and how they could work together. I found it very satisfying to make things that were quirky and unconventional, with some kind of underlying meaning, even if the meaning was only understood by me. Despite my artist/rebel tendencies, I was also a serial people pleaser. I was obsessed with getting good grades, following the rules, being a “good” daughter, sister, friend, and never having anyone be upset with me. I also had a lot of rules imposed upon me by religion, and I suppose this gave me a framework for how to live my life, but it also trained me to deny myself and to quiet my inner wisdom. I learned to place my self worth on standards set by society. The story you are about to read is essentially about my process of adjusting my internal compass; letting go of an externally imposed set of rules for my life, and slowly learning to trust in my own inner wisdom. I’m thankful for the role that art has always played (and continues to play) in this process.

A few years after graduating from college, I found myself in an intense period of questioning everything. I had spent almost a year traveling in Central America, expanding the way I understood the world, and opening my eyes to the oppressive nature of some of the cultural and religious structures I had bought into. I left my job, ended a long term relationship, and distanced myself from the church that I had always belonged to and found connection in. The loss of my religion was completely disorienting for me. I desperately needed a way to connect to God, but I felt jaded and skeptical, unwilling to just trade one patriarchal system for another. During this time, I discovered a love of the art of mosaics. I found the process of cutting or smashing, and then assembling pieces of a mosaic to be intuitive and empowering. It was a metaphor for using my own agency, trying out different arrangements of the pieces of myself. In 2007, I transformed this passion into a career, opening a mosaics studio where I taught classes and created both personal and commissioned pieces. Being an artist and teacher was fulfilling work that gave me a sense of how I could begin to rebuild trust in myself and my voice.  

During this time of beginning my art career, I began dating Bill, who is now my husband. He was a few years into starting his own business as a dietitian, helping people improve their health through the Mediterranean diet. We had been friends for years, having worked together at The Food Bank of Western Massachusetts. The age difference between us (15 years) and the fact that we had both been in other relationships during that time as coworkers had kept us from considering each other romantically. That changed one day when we went kayaking together, and Bill expressed his interest in something more. I was surprised to realize that I felt the same way. From that moment, our connection grew quickly, marked by laughter, creativity, and deep conversations about life and the universe. We recognized each other as soulmates in every sense.

Although Bill hadn’t envisioned having children, he knew it was important to me, and he committed to building a family together.  It took him a few years longer than I would have liked, to get to the point of taking steps in that direction, but finally in 2011, we got married and began trying to conceive. 

At 32, I was healthy and assumed getting pregnant would be easy. Based on the number of babies born in my own family growing up (I’m the oldest of 4 siblings and 10 cousins), I hadn’t considered the possibility that getting pregnant might not happen right away. I naively started turning down teaching opportunities for the following year, certain that I’d have a newborn at that point. But months of trying to conceive turned into years. My younger sisters, as well as most of my friends, started having babies. I started feeling worried that I’d get left behind, and this worry grew into desperation over time as I felt more and more out of place in my own circle. Imbalances in my health began to show up, which felt like frustrating obstacles to being able to focus on the “real problem” of how to get pregnant. And the world was giving me a strong message that I had to figure it out quickly, you know, tick tock. 

The first health challenge during this time was candida, which is an overgrowth of yeast in the gut microbiome, causing painful rashes. My doctor kept giving me the same prescription over and over to treat it, and pretty soon I started questioning the approach. Prior to this experience, I had never thought to question what a doctor said, or the way in which medicine was practiced. But it quickly became obvious to me that there must be some other way to get to the root of the problem. 

The rebellion I suddenly felt toward western medicine was similar to the rebellion I felt against organized religion. Thankfully, I found a brilliant herbalist to work with. She helped me understand the importance of food as medicine, and helped me develop a strong foundation in the way medicinal plants support the natural functions of the body. I was blown away, realizing the depth of connection between the human body and the world of plants. In order to balance my gut microbiome, I had to take a hard look at my diet and my stress management. This was surprisingly emotional. I followed an elimination diet and took herbal formulations made specifically for me, which thankfully helped clear up the candida. 

This process took many months. I was feeling caught between the fact that true healing happens slowly, and the fact that I was quickly approaching my mid 30’s and therefore “running out of time”. But when I look back, I realize that I was actually enjoying the healing process because for the first time, I was learning to tune in to what I was feeling, on a more subtle level.

I spent the next two years working with this herbalist in her apprenticeship courses. The class met monthly; we harvested the herbs in season and made medicine with them, learning about what systems of the body they supported, and in what cases it was appropriate to use them. Following the cycle of the growing season like this was such a source of joy and connection for me.

It was the happiest I had felt in years, because I was suddenly finding myself really in the moment with mother nature, and connected on a physical, and emotional level, which also fulfilled my desire for learning.

The next order of business was tracking my menstrual cycle. This was a maddening process, as there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to my timing, with my cycles being anywhere from 40-55 days, a far cry from the target 28 day cycle. When herbs were not helping to create the shifts I wanted to see, I met with reproductive endocrinologists to figure out what was going on. Eventually I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), which causes hormonal imbalances and is the leading cause of infertility for women. It can be tricky to diagnose, because it manifests in different ways in different women. 

In hindsight, this was the part of the process where I started to really internalize the story that my body didn’t work right on a fundamental level. I started feeling angry and blindsighted. All the signs had been pointing to this, ever since I was a teenager, but, with my damaged internal compass, I had never learned to pay enough attention to my own body. My doctors’ messaging had always been that as long as I got my period at least once every 3 months, that everything was fine. Furthermore, I had experienced so much culturally-induced shame and avoidance about my period, instead of getting the message that it would be ok to love my body and the way it works. 

These new realizations opened the floodgates of grief and anger.  The doctors recommended a whole range of fertility treatments, but I rushed out of the office and didn’t even take home the binder full of literature they offered me, because I was sure I couldn’t justify taking actions that, at the time,  I thought of as “playing God”;  taking hormones and forcing a pregnancy to happen. Based on my newfound love of earth based medicine, coupled with my newfound skepticism about western medicine, I was determined to use natural means to balance my hormones.  I felt angry at the educational system around women’s health that had totally failed me.  I was also angry at God, and I had no ritualized way of working through my anger, since all I knew was what I no longer believed in.

Over the next few years, I tried many natural approaches, working with a naturopathic physician, and a few different acupuncturists, but I couldn’t regulate my cycle. Prior to this experience, I had found that hard work and persistence was the pathway to success, but I was finding that I couldn’t work harder to overcome this problem. I felt increasingly helpless and frustrated. I experienced some of the lowest lows I have ever felt. I felt broken and undeserving of life, and those feelings worsened over time. I isolated myself from friends and any gathering or experience that highlighted my status as a non-mother. Many of my relationships suffered. Perhaps the worst part of this time was that I lost trust in my own body. It would be natural to wonder how all of this affected my relationship with Bill. While it stirred up a lot for us and forced us to question our commitment to each other, it was miraculous how, for the most part, we were able to go through it together, and in many ways, it actually brought us closer. 

I threw myself more deeply into my work- growing my art business. Maybe it was partly to distract myself, maybe it was so that I could feel successful at something, but in addition to being a good distraction, there were many gifts that came from this; I learned a lot, built rewarding collaborative relationships, did work I am proud of, and became a skilled teacher. The truth is, if I had had a young child during that time, I would not have been able to devote myself to my work in that way.

During this time, I also started to work with meditation and sound healing, feeling what it’s like to silence my mind and become receptive. One Saturday, I cleared my schedule and went on a guided sound healing journey that lasted most of the afternoon. During this journey, I heard the voice of a child singing to me. In my heart, I knew that it was my daughter. I felt a surge of reassurance that her spirit was alive and well, even though she was not yet in bodily form, and that she was communicating her love to me. It was this experience that gave me faith to keep moving forward, believing that a miracle would be possible. I also began to believe that I would end up with a child, regardless of how that child arrived in my life. I think this shift was important for me, in loosening my rigidity, and instead focusing wholeheartedly on the bigger picture. 

A friend recommended an acupuncturist from China who had an impressive resume of outcomes with regard to conception. In the second month of working with him, I had my very first positive pregnancy test. It was a miracle. I was thrilled and felt like I finally belonged in the world, as though I had become “good enough” to deserve this miracle. I began connecting with my child, whom I believed to be a girl. At 7 weeks, the acupuncturist said he could hear the heartbeat, and though I couldn’t hear it, I trusted him. At 11 weeks, we began sharing the happy news with friends.

But at 12 weeks, I began bleeding heavily. An ultrasound revealed I had a blighted ovum—fertilization had occurred, but no fetus had developed. The sense of loss I felt was compounded by this knowledge that there was not even anything tangible to lose, that the connection I had felt was a lie that I had fooled myself into believing, simply by wanting it so badly. In my lowest, most vulnerable state, I called the acupuncturist and asked how he could have heard the heartbeat if there was no fetus. His reply was a cold “I must have heard something else. You should be smart enough to know that.” The suffocating sadness was suddenly infused with a spike of rage and disbelief that he could have said something so heartless.

The combination of grief, anger, and confusion took a long time to process and I sunk into a pretty depressive period.* There were loving friends around me who tried to help me feel better, but the thing that stands out in my mind the most was the one friend who said “It’s ok to feel how you’re feeling”. I’ll always remember that, because it was such a foreign concept to me. Nevertheless, I didn’t really take it to heart. When I think back on this time, I can remember talking myself out of feeling sad, telling myself that I didn’t deserve to grieve, that there was, in fact, nothing to grieve. This denial of my feelings kept me stuck in this depressive state for over a year. I was so afraid to come to terms with my feelings that they ended up ruling my life. It wasn’t until several years later that I would trace the thread of this pain, and other pains back to the habit of avoiding my feelings, and to the underlying wound of believing I was unworthy.

I don’t believe that I was ever clinically depressed. From my understanding, depression has different causes, ranging from situational to biochemical, and so there is no one size fits all solution to treating it. For some people, therapy is helpful, sometimes acknowledging and healing the root of the pain can cause the necessary shift, and sometimes, medication is necessary. Please honor yourself and your unique situation, and get the help you need from a trusted ally or professional, if you are experiencing depression.

I often thought back to the deep connection I felt with the child who had sung to me during my sound healing journey. It wasn’t just my own longing to have a child; I sensed her spirit calling on me to heal, to open the pathway for her arrival. Now that I was 37, the sense of urgency grew, and I began to consider western medicine as a way to help. But I struggled with a voice inside me that told me that this would be “taking charge” or “playing God” and that felt wrong. But on closer examination, and through talking it out with some trusted friends, I realized this voice wasn’t God—that it was my own resistance and stubbornness. I realized that I had conflated science with religion and put up all of my resistance against these as strict patriarchal systems of authority. To move forward, I knew I needed to heal my relationship with God and release the anger I was still feeling about the ways I had been oppressed by religious dogma so that I could stop transferring this anger onto the whole western medicine system. 

A friend introduced me to ceremonial work, and I began participating in sacred ceremonies rooted in indigenous practices and rituals, with a community that I came to love and feel at home with. The teacher who leads the organization is deeply rooted in earth based wisdom teachings, and I recognized her immediately as a clear channel to the divine. My life was revolutionized by this new way of experiencing God, that transcended the dogma of religion and connected me with all of life. It resonated with my growing love for herbal medicine and my deepening connection with nature. Through these practices, I reconnected with my own divinity, understanding that I am inseparable from the divine. This deeper sense of wholeness helped me soften, open to new possibilities, and accept myself unconditionally, which is a radical concept for a people pleaser.

In this space of healing, I returned to the question of whether using science to conceive could be in alignment with life. In prayer, I received a clear “yes.”

Around this time, I met a naturopathic physician who shared my ambivalence about western medicine. She had conceived her twins through IVF at 40, and her story helped dissolve the duality I had created between medicine systems. She showed me that I didn’t have to reject western medicine entirely to honor my values. This was the final piece I needed, and the way forward became clear.

Bill and I began the IVF process with testing, meetings with doctors, and extensive research. Insurance typically requires couples to try six rounds of a less invasive process called intrauterine insemination (IUI) before covering IVF, but our doctors advised that IUI was unlikely to succeed for us. After a complex appeal, we were granted IVF coverage—a significant relief since the process can cost over $20,000 per cycle without insurance.

We received the medications, most of which were injectable, and I enlisted my friend, Emily, to help with the shots, since I didn’t think I could do it myself, and Bill tends to pass out around needles. After a month of birth control to align my cycle, we began the injections to stimulate follicle growth. Each day, in our kitchen, with Emily next to me (and Bill nearby but looking the other way) I watched instructional videos, carefully and nervously mixed the vials of different medications, filled the syringe and then handed it over to Emily, who would inject it into my arm, leg or stomach. Five days later, my eggs were retrieved while I was under general anesthesia, and Bill contributed his sample. We “laugh” a lot about how small his role in the process was, on a physical level anyway.  When I woke up, the doctor told me that she had retrieved 12 eggs, which sounded like good news (but we were warned that the numbers would quickly dwindle). After being sent home to rest (exhausted, bloated, constipated, emotional) I received a call the next day to let us know that, of the 12 eggs, 7 of them had become fertilized. This was also good news! The practice is to let the fertilized eggs develop, untouched, until day 5, when they are checked again to see if they have grown appropriately and reached blastocyst (embryo) stage, at which point one of them could be transferred to the lining of my uterus. In preparation for this, and with Emily’s help, I began daily injections of progesterone (done with a long needle so that it goes into muscle in the hip). The hard news came from the lab on day 5: all but 2 of the fertilized eggs had died, and the two that remained had not quite reached the benchmark to consider them viable. We were advised to give them another day to develop, so we went back to the waiting game. 

On that 6th day, the lab called to tell me that we had two marginally viable blastocysts, and they thought it would be worth a try to transfer both of them. So we did. The transfer was not too difficult, or painful, but it was emotional. We went home and resumed the waiting game and daily injections for 12 endless days. On the 12th day of waiting, I went to the lab with all of the hope and faith I could muster, for bloodwork, which unfortunately confirmed the worst: I was not pregnant. 

This roller coaster of a process had consumed me for a full 3 months and I had placed all of my hope in it, especially since it had felt divinely guided. Needless to say, I hit the bottom pretty hard. My body was hijacked by hormones, my emotions were haywire, and I needed time to recalibrate. That was a painful period of time. The pain deepened in its complexity a month later when Emily, in the most loving and gentle way she could, shared with me that she was 3 months pregnant, with her second child. I held back tears and genuinely celebrated her joy, but wondered how life could be so unfair. 

IVF protocols can vary widely, and are determined by many factors specific to both partners. The process I describe here is not universal.

A month later, while speaking to a customer, the topic of IVF came up. She recommended an acupuncturist she knew who specializes in fertility treatments and works in conjunction with the IVF process. I met with her right away and she recommended a few months of targeted treatments for both Bill and me, to prepare both of our bodies for an optimal next try with IVF. So we each went weekly for acupuncture (Bill can handle acupuncture needles, as long as he doesn’t have to look at them!) She was so knowledgeable about the process of IVF, and the ways her treatments complemented and enhanced the process. Plus, she was so compassionate and had a lot of optimism for us, based on her many years of experience. Talking to her bolstered my hope in giving this process one more try, and made me feel less alone.

For years, I had been trying to be the bridge between the MDs and the holistic practitioners I was seeing, since they spoke very different languages and both had skepticism about the other. It was such a relief to realize that acupuncture is a healing modality that lives in the zone that understands and utilizes both allopathic and traditional frameworks of healing. This served to further break down my dualistic perception of medicine.

After 3 months of acupuncture treatments, we began our second attempt with IVF. The familiar package arrived in the mail with about 20 different vials of injectable medicines that needed to go in the fridge. The process went similarly, daily shots and monitoring, except that on the ultrasound on day 5, we could see that there were more follicles and some of them were larger than on the first try, which was good. The other difference was that this time, we decided that I would take some time to rest and heal after the egg retrieval, placing our embryos into frozen storage for a few months until we were ready to move forward. Separating out the process into 2 stages was very helpful for me. On day 6 of follicle stimulation, I was called in for egg retrieval, and for Bill to do his thing in the private room. Thirteen eggs were retrieved this time. The next day we learned that 12 of them had become fertilized. Three days later, we found out that we had 4 robust, viable looking embryos, which we sent to be frozen. But before freezing them, a couple of cells were carefully removed from each one and sent to another lab in New Jersey for something called preimplantation genetic screening (PGS). This was not covered by insurance, and was quite expensive, but we thought it was important to know if our embryos were genetically normal before attempting pregnancy with them. This allowed us to choose the healthiest of the 4. When those results came back, I remember getting a call from the nurse, who was excited to tell me that we had 3 genetically normal embryos. We breathed a huge sigh of relief and gratitude at this news.

It was the beginning of July, and we had some fun trips planned for that summer, and I spent some time really healing from the treatments and rooting myself in all of the things that made me feel like me. I also made some powerful artwork during this time. Three months later, in preparation for the embryo transfer, I began the intramuscular injections of progesterone, with the help of Emily, who now had a newborn. After 5 days, we went back to the hospital, and one of our healthy embryos was placed in a catheter tube and transferred into the lining of my uterus. We went home and continued the daily injections, along with more frequent acupuncture treatments, while we waited until the 12th day, to go back to the lab for bloodwork. This time of waiting was a pendulum, swinging between my highest hopes, and the deep fear of the past repeating itself.

Then, the phone call came: I was pregnant. I’ll never forget sitting on the stoop outside of my office, crying happy tears, as I called Bill to share the news.

Obviously, the story doesn’t end with me becoming pregnant. My pregnancy and labor were full of challenges, both physical and emotional, though I won’t go into those here. And then, Sophia was born. Surprisingly, the long-held belief that I wasn’t worthy of motherhood didn’t magically disappear. Though I was overwhelmed with love and gratitude, the early days with her were tough because I still had to face this unworthiness. I realized I’d avoided learning too much about how to care for a newborn because a big part of me was afraid of getting too attached. I also held onto unrealistic expectations of what this time should look like with my newborn. I had had many years of waiting and idealizing, and when things in actuality were messy, chaotic, and sleep-deprived, I judged myself harshly. It wasn’t until years later that my therapist introduced me to the word “matrescence” which describes a woman’s transformation to becoming a mother. It’s an actual developmental stage. I had expected myself to just slide into that new identity, but here was validation that it is a process that takes time and work.

And the work is ongoing. The wound of unworthiness now often surfaces in my relationship with Sophia. It’s a wound that I trace back to my own childhood, and even to my ancestry, and now my role as a mother gives me daily opportunities to face it. I’ve continued the ceremonial work with my beloved community, continuing to expand my understanding of God and of who I am, learning to utilize ancient wisdom, and lean into my feelings with curiosity. I’ve also been trained in Reiki (I’m currently working toward my Master level Reiki training), which is the channeling of spiritual healing energy, with origins in Japan. Thanks to these magical tools, I feel so much more equipped to face my wounding when it comes up. It’s still messy a lot of the time. The main thing though, is that I’m able to recognize that the belief that I’m not worthy is a lie.

Throughout this journey, I went through extreme pendulum swings around my relationship to both western medicine and religious dogma, and I now have a greater sense of balance around both. I neither subscribe to a religion, nor do I resist religion. So it doesn’t have the same power over me. There are elements of my Catholic faith that I have come back to embracing, while living in a much more expanded vision of the Divine than I ever used to. Similarly, I look at western medicine’s use of pharmaceuticals with skepticism, along with the doctors who refuse to admit what they don’t know. But I also recognize the value of this knowledge and the developments that have saved so many lives. 

Reflecting on my first IVF attempt, which did not result in pregnancy, I see it as a crucial part of the process. I once feared that using science to conceive was “playing God,” but that experience taught me that creating life takes more than just medicine—it requires a miracle. The miracle didn’t happen until the second attempt, but I now see that every step, no matter how painful, was necessary. So in a way, I guess that first attempt was also a miracle.

Looking back, I realized I’d been holding onto a story that conception “should” be easy, comparing myself to others and feeling wronged by life. I now understand that all of the struggles I faced shaped me into who I am today. The truth of life is that we don’t control it; we only get to choose how we respond to it. Whenever I feel frustrated by how long something is taking or how difficult it is, I remind myself that acceptance of what is, is the key to peace.

My infertility journey, and my work with my own healing has changed me profoundly. It has inspired me to build the tools and intuition necessary to support other women struggling to conceive, or dealing with grief and loss. I’m grateful for the professionals who guided me, and for the opportunity to now offer support to others. Being part of another woman’s journey, to help her feel seen and understood, is an honor. I have had the privilege of going through intensive training in both mentorship and Reiki for the past 2 years, really experiencing what it means to get out of the way, and hold space for someone else’s unique and sacred experience.  My path has shaped me into a more compassionate listener and a more mindful speaker—qualities I strive to embody so I may help others in their own journeys toward healing and wholeness. It is such a gift, and so humbling, to be able to do this work. I am grateful to you for reading my story; for the ways, both known and unknown, that our lives and experiences intersect, and for the oneness that connects us all. I am grateful beyond measure for the many healers who have helped me along my path. If I can be one such person in your life, it would be an honor.