INFERTILITY: The Silence No One Hears
I don't talk about this much—not really. Most days, I nod along when people ask how I'm doing. I say I'm “fine.” I smile at the baby pictures my friends post. I send the heart emoji when someone announces a pregnancy. I go to the baby showers, I hold the little ones, I try to breathe through the ache in my chest like it’s normal.
But behind closed doors, I’m not fine. I am unravelling in the silence of something no one sees.
Infertility is grief in slow motion. It’s hope rising and crashing in monthly cycles. It’s the bruises from injections, the medications that mess with my body and my mind. It’s tracking everything—timing, temperature, test results—and still coming up empty. It’s sitting in a clinic waiting room with others who all look just as tired, just as quietly desperate.
It’s being told to “just relax,” to “have faith,” or “maybe it’s not meant to be.” It’s the sting of people meaning well but not understanding that their words can feel like knives. It’s feeling like your body has betrayed you. Like you are failing at something that seems to come so easily to others. Like you are disappearing from your own life.
And then there’s the shame. The part I rarely admit. The way I scan my own body in the mirror and wonder what’s wrong with me. The way I pull away from conversations with friends who have kids because I don’t know how to explain that I’m happy for them and also hurting so deeply I can barely breathe. The way I feel guilty for the jealousy, the bitterness, the isolation. The way I wonder, in my darkest moments, if I’ll ever feel whole again.
There are nights I lie awake and ask questions I don’t say out loud:
Who am I if I’m not a parent?
What if this is it?
What if I never get to hold my child?
What if I never stop feeling this way?
But I also know I’m not alone. Even when it feels like it. Even when the world is silent and my grief echoes louder than anything else, I know there are others whispering the same pain into the dark.
So if you’re reading this and nodding—if your heart hurts in the same way mine does—please know I see you. I get it. You are not broken. You are not weak. You are not alone.
This journey is not linear. It’s not fair. It’s not easy. But you are surviving it, even on the days it doesn’t feel like you are. That matters.
Maybe this isn’t the ending. Maybe this is just a part of the story we’re still writing.
With you in this,
—Someone in the thick of it
