Being told we had "undiagnosed infertility" was really hard. It’s hard when there’s no clear reason why my body isn’t doing what I hoped it would. For a long time, we were searching for answers that never came.

Our days were a blur of hospital appointments, blood tests, and waiting for results that never seemed to bring good news. I would sit in those sterile waiting rooms with many other mothers-to-be and pregnant mothers, feeling the toil of the constant back-and-forth, only to head straight back to work. I used the routine of my job as a distraction to feel like life was "normal," but inside, I was struggling. I felt like I was living two different lives.

During those months, my grief didn’t always feel like a big event. Often, it just felt like a literal lump in my throat that left me with no words. There were days I just felt emotionally numbed while the world kept moving, and days spent in hospital hallways where time seemed to stop. We went through two cycles of IUI and IVF and finally just as we celebrated a conception, we found ourselves in grief again.

I spent five weeks and six days in a strange limbo with our little one, moving from the fear of an ectopic pregnancy to the reality of a miscarriage. It felt like a lifetime and a heartbeat all at once.

What made it harder was how invisible this kind of loss felt. There is a strange stigma around miscarriage that makes you feel like you can't publicly acknowledge your pain. It’s a "disenfranchised grief," where our sorrow didn’t seem to have a formal place in the world. But what truly changed things for us was when we decided to share our story openly on social media. Suddenly, we experienced this wave of normalisation. People started texting us to say they were struggling in similar ways in their own fertility journeys and conversations were deepened as we connected. I had primary school classmates and ex-colleagues who reached out to share that they were still trying too.

Going to individual therapy during that time saved me. It gave me a safe place to unpack the mess of grief and loss where I came to an acceptance that I may never become a mother to my own child. As I did my own work in therapy, I began to see how I could be a “parent” in other ways - in my kids ministry, in my own walk with my youth clients, and perhaps even fostering children too. There was so much meaning in this whole journey and it is through suffering that we began to see things clearer.

We managed to conceive a second time and our child is now 2 years 4 months old. As we try for a second child now in 2026 through fertility procedures again, I’ve learned that I can feel deep sadness and still find moments of joy. We are learning to let go of the need to control everything and instead trust that we are being held. Even after the recent unsuccessful IUI cycle in January, we chose to celebrate "us" - the gift of having each other and our firstborn.

If you are reading this and you’re in the middle of your own silent season navigating the clinical exhaustion of infertility or the heavy, invisible grief of a miscarriage, you’re not alone.

For a long time, I thought being "strong" meant staying contained, but I’ve learned that there is so much healing in simply being seen. We’ve found that the dark valleys aren't quite as scary when you have someone walking beside you who understands the path.