Beyond The Wait...
A Newsletter for Those Navigating the Complex Emotions of Infertility
Issue #32 7th September 2026 (originally written in July - sorry!)
Dear Reader,
After a couple of months of technical chaos with KIT, now thankfully resolved, I'm back in your inbox.
If you've been on this journey for any length of time, there's a good chance you've found your way into the fertility community at some point. Whether that be a forum, a Facebook group, an Instagram account, or all of the above.
The fertility community is a great thing. But it is also, I want to be honest with you, a complicated one. This month I want to sit with both of those truths, because I think they deserve equal space.
Deep Dive: The Fertility Community, Two Things Can be True
What It Gives You
Let's start with what the fertility community does really well, because it does a lot.
It gives you language. Before finding others on this journey, many people struggle to name what they are experiencing. Being around others who talk about failed cycles, grieving negative test, and the horror of the two-week wait without flinching, who understand because of their own lived experience, is huge. It means you can talk with out explaining yourself, sometimes for the first time.
It gives you validation. When you share something like fear, rage, or a specific kind of sadness, and strangers respond with "me too", your experience stops feeling like a personal failing and starts feeling like a human response to an awful situation.
It gives you information. Shared knowledge about protocols, clinics, consultants, medications, and what to ask for is genuinely valuable, and often more practically useful than what people get from a rushed GP appointment. The community’s collective intelligence is vast.
And perhaps most importantly, it gives you company. The 2am, I can’t sleep moments. The days after a negative test when you don't want to talk to anyone in your real life because you can't face the responses. Knowing that somewhere, someone else is in the same place, is comforting in a way that is difficult to replicate anywhere else.
What It Can Cost You
And yet.
The very thing that makes the fertility community so amazing, the shared experience of the journey, is also what can be the hardest part. Because people’s journeys end and they don't all end at the same time, or in the same way.
When someone in your online group gets that positive test, there is a complicated emotional moment that many people feel and very few say out loud. Sometimes you are glad for them, they know the pain unlike those who get there easily. But you are often gutted for yourself because their success holds a mirror up to where you still are, and that hurts. Especially as it can also mean you have lost a close ally on your journey.
This experience can be considered one of the “uglier” parts of infertility, but I think it deserves to be named clearly rather than tiptoeing around it. It is not about pettiness or a lack of compassion, rather it is what happens when you are grieving something and someone nearby gets the thing you are grieving. Of course it’s hard.
There is also the more general “information overload” within the community to consider. The protocols people swear by or the supplements that "changed everything", and the advice that gives the implicit message that if you just tried the right thing, you'd be there too. It can all be too much!
Knowing When to Step Back
None of this means the community is bad for you. After all, it’s where most of you have found me! For many people, at many points in this journey, it is genuinely essential. But I do think it's worth giving yourself permission to engage with it on your own terms, rather than feeling obligated to show up for it when it is costing you more than it's giving.
That might mean muting certain accounts during particularly hard cycles or choosing not to follow along with someone's pregnancy journey after they've graduated, even if you care about them. It might mean stepping away from a group for a week or a month when it’s providing information overload. It’s okay to take care of yourself during this horrendous journey.
You are allowed to take what helps and leave what doesn't.
This Week's Self-Care Exercise: An Honest Audit
This week, take a few minutes to think about the accounts, groups, and spaces you engage with as part of the fertility community, and ask yourself honestly, for each one: does this tend to leave me feeling more held, or more depleted?
You don't have to act on it immediately. It's simply about noticing, without judgment, what is actually serving you right now versus what you are following out of habit, obligation, or a sense that you should be able to handle it.
Some things that once helped may no longer help. Some things that felt hard to look at before might now be exactly what you need. It’s constantly changing, and that's okay. The question is just: right now, in this season of your journey, what is working for you?
Give yourself permission to answer honestly.
Let me know your thoughts
Has the fertility community been a lifeline for you, a complicated one, or both at different times? I'd love to hear your experience, and as always, your responses genuinely shape future editions.
Remember Reader: You did not choose this, it is not your fault, and you are not alone.
With compassion,
Dr. Grace đź’•
@thenotsofertilepsychologist
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