Dear Younger Me; A letter before this journey began

This infertility awareness month

There are things I wish I had known before I started this journey.

Not the clinical things, the human things. The things nobody puts in a pamphlet or mentions in a consultation room.

Things like: it's okay to grieve a timeline you had planned, even if nobody else thinks it's a big deal. That some months will feel heavier than others for no clear reason. That the two-week wait is its own kind of marathon, one where you learn to run on hope and caution at the same time.

I wish someone had told me that asking for help is not admitting defeat. That talking about it openly, really talking about it  makes the road lighter. That the women who have walked this road before you carry a kind of wisdom that no textbook captures.

I wish someone had told me that there is no right way to feel. That grief and hope can coexist in the same breath. That you are allowed to be angry and grateful at the same time. That joy on someone else's behalf and sorrow for yourself can exist in the same heart without contradiction.

If I could sit with the younger version of myself at the very beginning of this journey, before the tracking, before the appointments, before the tests, I think I would put down everything else and just say:

"You are going to be okay. Not because it will be easy. But because you are stronger than you know right now. And you will not have to do this alone."

"If you could write one sentence to yourself at the very beginning of your TTC journey  before you knew what was ahead  what would it say?

Share it below. Your words might be exactly what someone who just started this journey needs.