The Hidden Struggles Behind Publishing: One Writer’s Battle with Infertility
I never imagined I’d sit with this story for so long, a proper decade of gestation. In cradling it against my chest, gazing into its eyes each morning when I opened my laptop, the most traumatic period of my life has grown into something I can’t quite imagine living without.
When you’ve been pregnant with something for a decade, it’s hard to know who you’ll be once you finally let it go.
I may not be “birthing” this book, but its publication does feel like something of a rebirth. I’m a different woman than the one who began telling this story. I’m now a mother of three, for starters. I’m also someone who tells strangers that I’m infertile, something inconceivable to that newly pregnant woman whose suffering — whose shame — was still so fresh. “Wow, a book!” people say. “What’s it about?” I used to mumble something vague about nonfiction, a memoir, and pray there’d be no follow-ups. But, over time, I’ve grown into someone who says clearly, “It’s an infertility memoir-in-essays.” Period.
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