Infertility & The Holidays

Facing infertility can be especially challenging during the holidays. With holiday cards, pregnancy announcements, and child-centered traditions everywhere you look, the holiday season can amplify your sense of loss. It is completely normal to experience feelings of sadness, profound loss, anger, guilt, envy, shame, and hopelessness. This is a time to show yourself supreme kindness.

1) If you feel guilty for turning down an invitation to a holiday party where everyone else will have babies and children, remind yourself:

“I am doing the best I can, and it is okay to focus on my healing during this season.”

2) If you feel angry or envious when you open a friend’s holiday card and see a pregnancy announcement, remind yourself:

“This is really difficult, and I’m not alone in this struggle.”

3) If you feel sad or lonely for celebrating the holidays differently from in the past, remind yourself:

“It’s okay to experience the holidays differently this year.”

“My holidays don’t have to look like everyone else’s.”

Showing yourself supreme kindness may include setting boundaries, creating new traditions, and prioritizing physical, emotional, and spiritual self-care. Others may not understand your choices, and that is okay. Protecting your peace and healing is the ultimate self-care during this holiday season.

Why see a therapist who specializes in infertility?

Reason #1: Disenfranchised Grief

Infertility often leads to disenfranchised grief, which is grief that is not openly acknowledged, socially accepted, or publicly mourned. The losses suffered by women and couples facing infertility can be invisible to family and friends and, all too often, are unacknowledged in the therapy space. Infertility losses can include:

• Miscarriage and Stillbirth

• Loss of trust in one’s body as healthy and capable

• Loss of ability to plan for the future

• Loss of the belief that, “If I work hard and do things ‘right,’ I can achieve my goal.”

• Loss of ability to share the experience of parenthood with peers and loved ones

• Loss of ability to announce pregnancy (ever, or as a surprise)

• Loss of genetic ties to children if third-party reproduction or adoption is chosen

As a therapist who specializes in infertility, I am trained to recognize, name, and validate all types of losses associated with infertility. Furthermore, as a woman who navigated infertility personally, I know firsthand the importance of not minimizing, glossing over, or looking for the “silver lining” of infertility losses. I am dedicated to providing a safe and supportive space to grieve and to heal- your story matters.