Why do fertility struggles so often feel invisible?

Not all grief is accompanied by friends dropping off casseroles at your door or cards arriving in your mailbox. You don’t always get a day off work or get closure at a funeral with loved ones. Sometimes, it doesn’t get acknowledged at all. Not because it isn’t real, but because those around you just don’t know that it is happening. This is the grief of those going through fertility struggles and it is some of the heaviest grief I know, very often carried alone.

When loss is discussed in the context of fertility, everyone usually thinks only of miscarriage. Of course, that is a profound and devastating loss, but fertility grief extends far beyond just miscarriage. It lives in the two-week wait that finally comes to an end with a negative test. It exists in the failed IUI or the canceled IVF cycle. It sits in the anniversary of the month you thought you’d be due. These are real losses and they don’t need a death certificate to leave real marks.

So why does this grief so often go unseen? Part of the reason is that these struggles happen quietly, behind closed doors. Many people only share a pregnancy announcement after the first trimester, which means losses prior to that time are grieved in secret. Failed cycles are even more hidden and there is no social script for how to mourn an embryo transfer that did not work.

And when people do share, they are often met with comments that minimize the experience, even if they are meant with the best intentions. “At least you know you can get pregnant” or “Just relax and it will happen” or “Have you tried….?” Usually, the other person is saying something that makes them feel better in the situation, because sitting with someone else’s grief on this topic is often too much to handle. One or two of these interactions and it is easy to understand why people stop talking about it with others.

Carrying grief privately can be extraordinarily taxing. It can feel omnipresent; the lens through which you experience nearly all things in life. Sometimes, simply having the experience named can be the first step in feeling less alone about it. It is legitimate grief. And it deserves to be acknowledged and processed; not minimized, compartmentalized, or rushed through.