My Story: An Unexpected Path to Motherhood

Like many, my journey to parenthood wasn’t simple. It took 11 IVF attempts over six years before my daughter was finally born. Each cycle came with its own emotional rollercoaster between hope, anxiety, heartbreak, and the exhausting need to pick myself up again. I searched endlessly for answers, for a way to make sense of the struggle, for someone who could tell me, this will all be worth it in the end.

What made my journey even more complex was that my daughter was conceived through egg donation. This added another layer of emotions, questions, and identity work to the already excruciating experience of infertility. It challenged me to redefine motherhood in ways I had never expected, to grieve the genetic connection I had always assumed I would have, and to hold both gratitude and loss in the same breath. But in the depths of it all, I found something even more powerful than reassurance: I found truth.

The Shift: Seeing Infertility Differently

Before infertility, I had already been on an intense path of self-development and therapy for over a decade. I had dissected my childhood wounds, sat with my pain, and done the deep work to heal. I thought I knew myself. I thought I had seen and done it all when it came to personal growth.

But then infertility happened, and it humbled me to my core. It cracked me open in ways I never expected. It was an unforgiving mirror, reflecting back parts of me I hadn’t yet touched; fear, resentment, anger, jealousy and doubt. Infertility didn’t just test what I had already learned; it shattered the illusion that healing is ever ‘done.’ It pushed me into places I had avoided, forced me to confront emotions I thought I had mastered, and made me question everything: my body, my purpose and ultinately, my worth.

And because this was a challenge I wasn’t facing alone but in partnership with my husband, it brought a whole new level of reckoning. But it wasn’t just about our marriage—it was about every relationship in my life. Infertility made me face the hard truths about relationships…not just with my husband, but with friends, family, stepkids—you name it. It was like learning to walk again, figuring out life while carrying this deeply challenging experience, and trying to stay connected to others. It was a crash course in navigating relationships under pressure, in learning who could truly hold space for me, and in redefining what connection even meant.

The weight of infertility exposed the fragility of a young marriage thrown into an identity crisis as a system. It forced me to learn boundaries, to have difficult conversations, and to hold both grief and connection at the same time. And through it all, I realized that relationships, how we show up in them, how we communicate, how we repair, how we love and are loved, are everything.

That realization made me want to become a relationship expert. To understand, teach, and help others navigate the complexities of human connection, especially in the face of life’s most profound challenges.