Lessons from a Fertility Therapist

After working with clients with fertility challenges for several years, I have a few lessons that anyone who’s on this journey can benefit from adopting. The infertility journey is a winding road of hope and disappointment. No one is walking the path perfectly and you’re not expected to either. These are lessons from a fertility therapist.

When an infertility diagnosis is made, it’s shocking and devastating. The grief begins at this moment. You’re grieving all that you assumed about how you would grow a family and what it would have been like. You’re not just mourning an imagined future. You’re also mourning a role or an identity as a parent.

Infertility teaches you a lot and the lessons aren’t always bad. Painful to learn but not bad. The experience itself is difficult and sometimes the narrative around the experience heightens and deepens the pain. These lessons I’m sharing are meant to help you walk through this path without losing your sense of self and hold your experience with a great deal of compassion and understanding because you deserve nothing less.

12 Lessons from a fertility therapist

1. There’s always more you could do. That doesn’t mean you’re not doing enough.
Fertility struggles will have you believe that you need to work harder and do more. The problem is there’s always more that can be done and more doesn’t mean better or right.

2. Infertility does not define you. It’s something that you are experiencing, it’s not who you are. It says nothing about who you are as a person.

3. You don’t have to delay your joy until you get to where you’re trying to get to. Your life is meant to be lived fully now. Live it fully now instead of waiting for the life you hope is coming.

4. Your grief is real even if it’s invisible to anyone else. Reproductive grief is compounded by invisibility. Your grief doesn’t have to be acknowledged or validated in order for it to be real.

5. You can build a rich and meaningful life even if it looks radically different than you imagined.

6. You’re not failing in life. You’re navigating a different version of life than you imagined and that’s hard.

7. You don’t have to be strong enough or strong at all. You’re not struggling because you’re not strong enough or capable enough. You don’t have to carry the weight alone. It’s not a sign of weakness and you deserve support.

8. You’re allowed to take up space in all the spaces you encounter. You don’t have to hide your grief or make it smaller to make others comfortable. Your story matters and your experience matters.

9. You don’t have to perform okay or grin and bear it. This has nothing to do with being polite. It’s about taking care of yourself and having authentic interactions where you can share your experiences and your feelings.

10. Play is medicine and it’s protective. Don’t let your life devolve into endless ways of optimizing fertility. It can be all consuming so you need to be intentional about making space and time for play. Integrating play into your life enhances life satisfaction, builds resiliency and mental wellness.

11. At the end of this path, however it ends, you’ll still have yourself. How do you want to arrive? What do you need to do now so that your future self will be grateful that you did. What would make your future self proud?

12. Check in with yourself and reassess your values. Build your life around these values so that you can make values aligned choices that help you stay connected to your true self.

I’m a therapist in Orlando Florida and I help women navigate complex reproductive journeys. Share this list with someone you know who would benefit from lessons learned in my many years of doing deep work with clients experiencing fertility challenges. If you’re walking this path yourself, I’d love to invite you to schedule a consultation with me to explore how this work can benefit you.