If you’re reading this, you might be one of the 17.5% of people walking the hard road of infertility. And if you are, you already know—this path can feel lonely, confusing, and relentless. It’s completely normal to feel fear, anger, sadness, and dread at any point in your infertility journey. You might feel like your emotions are all over the place. One moment you’re cautiously hopeful. The next, you’re blindsided by a wave of sadness or rage you didn’t see coming. That’s not weakness. That’s grief. And today, I want to talk about the quiet, heavy presence of grief in the infertility experience—especially two forms it often takes.
Grieving a Pregnancy Loss
This kind of grief is often expected, though it’s no less devastating. Miscarriage—the most common pregnancy complication—affects around 15% of pregnancies. For many trying to conceive, it comes after months or years of effort, countless appointments, and cautious celebration after finally seeing that positive test. And then, just as suddenly as hope arrived, it vanishes.
Many people getting infertility treatment have experienced miscarriage, and some have gone through recurrent pregnancy loss. If this is you, please know that your feelings of grief are valid and have weight. Sometimes we get the message that we need to rush past grief and focus on hope. But it’s easier to access hope if we allow ourselves the space to acknowledge and honor those important feelings of loss. Additionally, it is not your “job” to feel any certain way. Your struggles to conceive are not your fault. Neither are any losses. And allowing yourself room to feel sadness and anger after a pregnancy ends will not impede your future attempts to make a baby.
If this is your story:
Your grief is real.
Your grief is valid.
Your grief deserves time.
You don’t need to “get over it.”
You don’t need to move quickly to hope.
And you certainly don’t need to apologize for how deeply you feel the loss.
There is no expiration date on heartbreak. Let yourself honor it.
Grieving the Picture You Had in Mind
There’s another kind of grief that shows up too—the kind that sneaks in quietly, in the background. The grief of your life not turning out the way you imagined. Most of us have some kind of vision of how our life will turn out. Whether or not we’ll marry, how many kids we’d like to have, where we’ll live and how we’ll spend our time. Infertility is an unwelcome disruption to the picture of our life and this sudden wrench can really make us feel as though we’ve lost control over our future. Combine that with fear that we won’t get the child or children we long for and we can quickly feel completely overwhelmed. Often we’ll tell ourselves we shouldn’t dwell in these feelings. After all, life isn’t fair. Please allow me to grant you permission to stomp your feet, scream into the abyss, or cry your eyes out at the unfairness of it all. Losing our picture to something beyond our control is infuriating and taking time to grieve this loss is perfectly fair.
Maybe you had a picture in your mind:
• When you’d have kids
• How many you’d have
• What it would feel like
• What your family would look like
Infertility bulldozes that picture.
And in its place, you’re left staring at uncertainty.
That grief—the loss of the dream, the plan, the timeline—can feel overwhelming. You may wonder if it’s “dramatic” to feel this way. It’s not.
You’re allowed to feel angry.
You’re allowed to mourn what should’ve been.
You’re allowed to scream into the void, cry in the shower, or just sit with the heaviness of it all.
This kind of grief is real too.
What Helps (Even a Little)
I wish I could give you one perfect coping skill to make the grief disappear. But healing doesn’t work that way. Instead, here are a few things that might help—not to “fix” the grief, but to support you while you’re holding it:
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Name what you’re feeling. “I feel angry. I feel lost. I feel broken.” Naming the emotion can take away some of its power.
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Give yourself a break. Literally and emotionally. Step away from social media. Say no to baby showers. Turn off the tracking app. Rest.
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Talk to someone who won’t rush you to be okay. A therapist. A support group. A friend who will just sit with you in the mess.
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Write a letter to the version of life you thought you’d have. Honor it. Say goodbye. It may bring some unexpected peace.
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Create a ritual to mark a loss. Light a candle. Plant something. Give it a name. Loss deserves remembrance.
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Allow space for joy and grief to co-exist. You can laugh at a meme and sob over a negative test in the same hour. That’s okay.
There’s no one right way to grieve. It comes in waves. It can knock the wind out of you. Then recede. Then surprise you again. But every tear, every deep breath, every day you keep going—you are doing the work of healing.
Even when it hurts, even when it feels endless—
You’re still doing great.
And you are not alone.