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The peace is unassuming. It gently creeps in, a rippling gentle current that builds slowly every day. Not in stature but in confidence.

It breaks softly against the shore, bringing contentment, ease, and a more considered, curious perspective on life. It encourages me to stride along the warm sands; to be decisive in the direction I take because I know in my heart where it leads to. And I know I can calmly divert to a different path if need or fancy dictates. It leads me to dance and play on my journey, with the soundtrack of the ocean in my ears. Even invites me to take my time, to sit for a moment. To breathe in the air slowly and exhale it with joy.

But panic? That arrives abruptly. Without warning. It has differing levels of ferocity. Sometimes frantic, insistent, relentless and all consuming. At others, it’s the foreboding backdrop on an otherwise peaceful day, clouds and light winds rolling by with the suggestion - the promise even - of what could be to come.

Often it lasts only a few minutes but sometimes the storm rages for hours or days. Be it quietly or loudly. It laps away at my sense of self worth, washing over me with corroding sentiments of imposter syndrome, doubt and worry.

No matter the length of its stay, it always leaves behind the reassurance that it will return.

It’s hard to pinpoint why I can’t seem to break this never-ending cycle. Why, once I’ve reached peace I can’t stay there, happily. Ignore the frequent baiting of panic.

The sea is governed by the pull of the moon on its tides…But what is governing me? What’s my moon? What orchestrates the night and day shift of my panic and my peace?

Well, although it’s hard to tell how this cyclical effect has become so embedded, the cause is plain to see: I am living a life I didn’t plan; a life without children, a life with chronic pain that ebbs and flows, a life without the corporate identity I clung onto for decades.

I find myself childless and unemployed. One a circumstance that I have grieved, am still grieving in many ways, heavily in the beginning. But also one that I ventured out the other side from, and can see the wonder that still awaits me there. The other is a circumstance I welcomed, courted even. It’s one I could see an opportunity in; to start again, to reset, to rebuild.

But they’re both shrouded in loss none-the-less, in choices taken away from me. And they come abound with uncertainty, which for me has always signaled fear.

Fear of the unknown. Fear that it will all go wrong (again, if we take what’s led me here to be ‘wrong’. We’re agreed it’s off-plan at least though, right?) Fear that my dreams, the things I want to achieve, the path I want to take this journey on, are not open to me.

Objectively, I know that’s all just sh*t talk from my mind. Not facts. Just thoughts. But I have a little confession. If I tell you what those dreams actually are, you might see that the fear runs deeper than what might, or might not happen. It runs so deep that sometimes it’s been hard for me to even say what those dreams are out loud.

I’m not sure if it’s a generational thing (elder millennials, raise your hand and say aye if you hear me) but I’ve always had this strange ingrained belief that if I say something that I reeeeeeeeallly want to happen out loud, it will jinx it. Wrench it from my grasp. Wave it in my face in mock horror that I ever thought it could be for me. You know the vibes, right?

I have no idea where the belief came from. But it’s a pesky one to shake off, having gone decades unchallenged; plenty of time to really worm its way in there.

But I’m working on releasing it now. I’m even going to say the dream out loud here because I know it’s not going to stop me from getting there.

I want this path to lead me to a world where I write and create and imagine constantly. Where there’s an ever present light in the pit of my belly; a light that balances peace and joy, excitement and calm.

It’s a world where I work in a whole suite of different ways, all of them fueling me. A part time job for a warm and wonderful remote company, where I’m doing work that inspires me and where my contributions are valuable and recognised. A safe haven that also funds me to continue creating… on Instagram, on Substack, on paper… without pressure. To let my platforms grow slowly and with intention, so they continue to be something I love and enjoy. Creating for creations sake. Creating for connections sake.

It’s a world where I do get paid to write, though. In print and online. Not for the money itself, mainly, but for the recognition that my words have a value that could be paid for. A childhood dream that might still manifest itself in a published book, but would hold as much weight as personal essays or opinion pieces or columns.

It’s a world where travelling with my husband is not just for holidays, but where we live in new places too. Just for a few weeks at a time, but long enough that a place starts to feel like a home away from home. Somewhere we’ve lived and worked and adventured.

It might sound like a dream that’s just focused on a different style of working, and there is more to the dream, some of it I’m already living actually. But it’s the work element that has a chokehold on me, that feels like the unlock for a life that truly feels joyful in its entirety.

So, naturally, I desperately want to grip onto it, to force it into existence to complete the dream.

I know that’s not the way, neither is it helpful to think that once I’ve spoken it out loud, it will just find its way to me without actually taking the steps to move in that direction. But that’s the peace and panic cycle at work right there. Desire turned to desperation, that only feeds the desperation of the desire even more.

When I started writing this article I planned for it to be full of questions, that there was no real wisdom in me on how to keep moving forward in circles.

And that still holds true, but I did find a little nugget of direction. Perhaps.

You see, when I hit writer’s block mid-draft, I went for a walk. I ventured somewhere that I hadn’t walked before, though eventually it brought me out on an old familiar path I hadn’t trod in a long time. And it did give me a little perspective. It moved me away from the ocean in my mind, the continuous crashing waves of peace and panic, and onto a different path. Literally and figuratively.

This old familiar path that I ended my walk on has a beautiful wetland nature reserve on one side of it. On the other, in direct opposition, it has a dual carriageway.

You literally walk through the middle of the calm and chaos. Not quite peace and panic, but something that felt close to it.

And actually there, in that setting, it felt kind of thrilling to be between two extremes. From my standing point in the middle, I could choose to veer off and be with nature. To move further away from the road and the noise of the journeys taking place on it. In the depths of the wetland you can still hear the distant hum of cars but they become more of a melody than a bother.

But, even though it’s beautiful there, I don’t want to stay there forever. In the stillness.

Sometimes I might choose to embrace the chaos of a road. It can take you on exciting adventures, even when the destination is undisclosed; there are routes already mapped out and the opportunity to reroute if needed.

That’s when the realisation hit that the ocean analogy is not the answer to my peace and panic cycle (though, the ocean will forever be the literal answer to so many things for me). The ocean is a place where the turning of the tides, from peace to panic, is out of my control. They are at the behest of the moon, or meteorology. Or something. But not me.

On that path near me, the one sitting plumb between chaos and calm, I might not get to choose the side of the track I land on but there’s always a way back to the other side when I need it. And I can get myself there.

That’s how I’m choosing to see the peace and panic going forward.

I’m settling into something new, trying to build something new. And mostly it’s exciting but it’s also scary too. That’s when panic comes to test my resolve, to check how steady I am here. How safe I am. And really, it does me a good service. It encourages me to show up for myself, to bolster my belief. To take the steps back to peace when I need them.

The mistake I’ve been making, I think, is to see that place between peace and panic as somewhere I am trapped, instead of somewhere I can move between, intentionally.

I haven’t arrived at this conclusion entirely on my own, I’ve had some expert help from a wonderful (and patient) coach, . I think she knows that even with these light bulb moments, it probably won’t be the last time I get stuck with the endless circling. But at least now I recognise that whilst I can’t stop the peace / panic cycle from existing, I can adapt how I respond to it. And I can choose where I focus my attention and action (so a wise transformation coach tells me, anyway. I’m kidding, I know that deep in my bones now too, no questions asked).

Today I’m choosing to focus on peace. Who knows what tomorrow will bring but I know I can pull that focus back again, even when it momentarily wanders.

Where are you sitting on the panic and peace scale today? Let’s hold hands as we skip our way around the circle together.

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

I recently spent a glorious evening in Silverstone on a Thursday night before the British Grand Prix. In recent years festival vibes have started with full force on the Thursday, ahead of the main event, and it’s become somewhat of a tradition for us - as locals - to go up to the track and dance and sing and drink and soak up the atmosphere at a landmark on our doorstep that we take for granted.

This year David Guetta took to the stage to begin the long weekend of proceedings. His greatest hits seem to chart a journey through the past two decades of my life, so it was always going to be a nostalgia-fest.

As I danced in the fading light of a summer’s day, I felt so full of joy. Bursting with it. I was surrounded by good friends, good moods and good music. I could feel it all soaking in through my skin, filtering deep into my soul.

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I could also see traces of past versions of myself there; the ‘me’ that attended that same event in the years before. The soundtrack was different then, Sam Fender and Kings of Leon if we chart back in reverse chronological order, but I danced the night away on both those nights too. Even felt pockets of joyous relief.

Yet the smile on my face was more fleeting; the crosses I was having to bear were sharper. More imminent. Greater.

The version of me that belted out all of the words to ‘People Watching’, caught in a rare moment of peace, was two weeks away from starting what would be a final attempt at IVF. An attempt that would result in more pain and anguish than I could imagine back then, despite the slew of both emotions I’d already encountered many times in the preceding months.

The 38-year-old version of me that felt like a uni student again, jumping up and down to ‘Sex on Fire’, was just days away from surgery that would leave me with part of my bladder missing. That section still accounted for, but absent all the same. And actually the prospect of what was to come was infinitely scarier than the reality turned out to be, and that says a lot. But the me of then didn’t know that, yet. The fear was all too close to the surface.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen these traces of myself littered around old haunts. Life’s funny like that, isn’t it? These traces of what’s to come linger everywhere.

I saw them frequently every time I visited the IVF clinic. I would sometimes see the naive newbie who thought my difficult journey would be over soon; certain that having walked through the blazing fires of life with endometriosis I’d soon emerge on the other side with a baby in my arms, ready for a different chapter to begin. I wished frequently for that return to naivety again, as I thought of those traces once they were gone.

I’d walk back from the clinic after negative results; desperate, despairing, tears streaming down my face and those walking past would glance the other way, so they didn’t have to witness this outward display of a pain that they weren’t privy to (I was partly grateful to them for that though, actually). Sometimes it would be a trace of the positive version of myself I’d pass, one not yet blighted by news still to be delivered. I longed for the luxury of being at the beginning of this thing where I could still believe it was going to work. Even now, I occassionally walk that route again deliberately, even when I don’t need to, and I see both traces of me; the hopeful and the harrowed.

In my bedroom I regularly see versions of myself lying on the bed ready for my injections. Awaiting a needle to pass a small vial of hormones into my body so they could try and do battle on a field that largely proved itself to be resistant to their powers. Or I see a trace of me standing by the window administering a solitary injection myself. I feel the ache of hearing laughter float in through the windows.

I want to go back and hold that version of me, let her know that the laughter will come from her mouth again too. Not for a while, but soon.

I wonder if we should have found another more neutral space to do the injections, one that wouldn’t replay those traces to us almost daily. But of course, so much of the IVF process actually happens in your house. Your home. Nobody emphasises that before you start. You think it will all happen in a clinic. But more time is spent at home injecting, administering pessaries, popping pills. So it infects every part of your life, including your living space.

There is no neutral ground where these memories can remain untraceable.

I don’t want to imply that these traces linger only in relation to IVF. When I walk past my local hospital, just up the road from where we live, I regularly see the trace of me exiting through a side door that was once unfamiliar to me but will never be again. We’d just spent a nightlong vigil at the bedside of my father-in-law and I needed to go home briefly. I know that trace of me is rushing and hoping she will make it back in time to see him again. I want to reassure her that she will.

Nor is it just in moments of despair that I sense different versions of myself. I live just around the corner from a school I used to visit for musical performances as a child. I can’t quite grasp an image of the younger me in those moments; that trace is lighter, more vague. But I often think of myself waiting to take to the stage within the walls of that same building and marvel at the tiny me that doesn’t know in 20 years’ time she will live just steps away. That she’ll build a large chunk of her adult life just around the corner.

But overwhelmingly, perhaps, it is the versions of me that were hurting or struggling that I think of - and see - the most. The versions of me that I want to console. To love. To reassure.

That’s exactly what I was thinking as I stood in the grounds of a race track listening to David Guetta and thinking about the times I’d been in that same spot, but in the midst of a life that felt a little more impossible.

I’m not sure there are words of reassurance I could tell the Sam-Fender-and-Kings-of-Leon-listening versions of me. Everything felt so heavy for me then. I feel heavy now, just thinking back to those times, seeing the shadows of the people I was then wandering along beside me.

We’re forever wishing to be on the other side of the difficult things, or I am at least. And I’m incredibly thankful to be on that other side now. I felt pure gratitude as I breathed in the moment. But I’m also thankful to the versions of me that were walking the path I had to, which lead to me here.

This version, the me of now, is full of hope, joy, positivity. (A word I’ve always struggled to associate with myself).

This year, standing on that same ground, the lyrics “you shoot me down, but I won’t fall. I am titanium” rang deep in my soul. There are so many things I thought would break me over the past few years; chronic illness, IVF failure, losing close family.

But, and it’s an unbearable cliché I know, I’m still here and determined to live a good and joyful life.

Whether that is because or in spite of all of those things that have happened, it doesn’t really matter.

Unfortunately, my bladder is sometimes still a temperamental beast and so, when I say I was standing on the same ground as the past version of me when I heard those words pulsing out from Guetta’s mixing desk, I was actually sitting. Having a toilet break for my poor weak little bladder…for the third time in ninety minutes. Of course, it could have been the result of liquid volume (Aperol, Prosecco, Pimms, teeny tiny cocktails) consumed in a short space of time, rather than bladder function. Who’s to say?

My point is, things still aren’t perfect. They’re never going to be.

But I’m consciously trying to let in the things that bring light. And encourage the dark to bounce back off me. Sometimes a dark speck will linger for a bit. And I try to tend to it, pour a little love on it. But life’s a work in progress really, isn’t it? We never find the answer, we just have to keep noticing what makes the ride worthwhile.

If you find yourself stuck under a dark patch, it will pass. I promise you. One day soon you’ll be looking back on that trace of yourself with compassion, love and gratitude that you made it to the other side.

That’s my love letter to those traces of my past self anyway. What do you hope a later version of yourself will say to the you of now, in the future?

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

It looms over you, overshadowing everything. And it doesn’t feel isolated to the specific failure to have a baby. It’s the failure to have a healthy body. One that could create and carry a baby. It creeps into your failure to be good at your job, to keep getting promotions whilst you navigate the battle to try and become a parent.

Then it masquerades, tauntingly, as a failure to deal with not having the baby, a failure to be positive in the wake of abject heartbreak. A failure to hold it together. A failure to flick a switch and carry on with life, ‘what’s next, then?’

At the time it feels like that sense of failure is something that comes from deep within you. Something rotting, scalding, poisoning.

But perhaps, its source is elsewhere? Or stoked by something outside of you at least.

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Everywhere you turn on social media, those still in the throes of IVF seek out ‘success stories’ to cheer them on, to keep their hope alive. They crave stories that mirror their current circumstances but do end with a baby. To show that it is still possible for them.

I sought those stories out too. Scoured Reddit forums after every disappointing retrieval. And again every time we were left with just one transferable embryo. Still visiting every time a transfer failed. Seeking out that reassurance that others had been where we were then, and they still made it. Got their success story.

I thought of them in that way too, as success stories.

But of course, if the stories we all look to as models of success in this instance ultimately involve getting a baby. Becoming a mother. Then me and my empty arms can’t be anything but a failure, right?

The dictionary definition of failure is simply ‘the fact of someone or something not succeeding.’ Well, that’s me. In our three rounds of IVF we had two failed transfers. A failure too early to even warrant its own specific language.

We had an embryo implant too, our only positive pregnancy test (and thus not a negative, failed one, of course). This stage did have a specific word to describe it, when it went wrong. Multiple, actually. Miscarriage. Chemical pregnancy. A Doctor even told us this round couldn’t really be deemed a failure. Not really. ‘The embryo implanted, didn’t it?’

But even when the word failure is absent, banned, the outcome equates to the same thing. Not quite a failure but not success either. Loss. Toxicity. It all leaves you with a sense of underperformance. Inability. And grief, actually, often unacknowledged.

You’re told in counselling afterwards to avoid blame, that there should be no blame between you and your partner, or within you. No self blame either.

But that blame is caked into everything that is said to and about you throughout the whole process when it doesn’t work. The language sinks into you, infiltrates your own thoughts. Brings unexpected moments of despair.

Words of failure rang in my ears as I walked home crying from an appointment needed simply to confirm the completion of our last IVF failure, weeks after blood tests had already identified the miscarriage. ‘Yes, we were right. Your body failed you. It’s done now. Off you go, on your way.’

They were reiterated again in an email from our fertility finance company confirming we’d ‘completed the programme’. No baby. But completed all the same. An echo of that Doctor’s assertion that this final round couldn’t quite be considered a failure. Not entirely. Complete is a success, right? Except we still had months of payments to go with nothing to show for it.

The failure was even marked on my body. Still is. Months of hormonal interjections bloating and distorting my body beyond recognition. A body I don’t recognise for no reward; looking pregnant but with no baby.

Whether it was me or my body that had failed to become pregnant, it is certainly my body that has failed to leave me unmarked by the experience. One thing at least that wasn’t entirely my fault.

Except my body is me, I guess. Myself and my body inseparable from each other. So it seems that one’s on me too.

But what really is the failure here? Well, nobody knows the specifics. Otherwise we would all - us, medical professionals, and various fertility experts alike - have found a way for this to be a success, presumably. At least not a failure.

The failure, it seems, is the time, money, dignity, mental and physical health spent in the pursuit of something that, in the end, was unobtainable for me.

It is the fact of someone (that someone being me) not succeeding. Not having the baby. Not being able to have the baby.

This failure left an emptiness. When you’ve stuck your head above the parapet, said you want something, please, and the answer that comes back is a resounding no. But only no to you. Specifically. Well, that leaves a gap.

A friend’s mum once reassured me when I was trying - and failing - to learn to drive, not to fret that I wouldn’t be able to do it but instead to look out the window and see all of those people driving around, and know that there was a time when they couldn’t do it either. But now they can.

Sometimes I thought about that analogy with pregnancy and becoming a mother. I looked out my window and saw all of these people that can do it. But it turns out, this time, that didn’t mean I could too.

And then, when I couldn’t, motherhood felt too visible. It was usually easy to spot those that were part of that club. As easy as it was to spot the drivers. My fate, my failure, was invisible, hidden from view. It wasn’t possible to look out the window and see it reflected back at me.

And my failure didn’t just affect me. In those difficult initial days, weeks, months, I marinated in the knowledge that I’d inflicted this particular failure on my husband too. Of course, he was insistent that this wasn’t a failure, and certainly not one on my part.

Like the language of failure, the counter point takes some time to sink in too. To infiltrate the mind. To tinker with the thoughts.

And then, suddenly, a pivot? A move away from thoughts of failure to something else. Because is something a failure when there’s nothing more you can do? When you’ve put in every effort available to you? Taken the medication. Punctured the skin. Switched the beauty products. Changed the diet. Given up the alcohol. Thought only (mainly) good thoughts. Manifested it. Tried everything. But still you’re here empty handed.

Maybe it’s not so much a failure, and more a case of not being picked?

You often see messages on Instagram where parents celebrate the birthday of their offspring by declaring ‘thanks for picking me’. I guess they’re referring to the spiritual idea that their child’s soul pre-existed and “chose” them before being born.

I remember when I first saw that, I thought it was a beautiful idea. Now it highlights that no-one chose me. I was going to liken it to not being picked for teams at school, except the stakes here are infinitely higher, and the wound stings much deeper.

And anyway, I have no real memory of that particular trauma from school, though I was very bad at sports so I suspect it did happen. What I remember more is running away from the ball, not towards it, in every sports lesson. Actively trying not to be picked. Saving face can feel more comfortable than outright rejection.

Perhaps something similar happened with my recent redundancy. I survived many rounds of cuts before my turn arrived. And even then I put my hand up and felt relief when I had the opportunity to decline to interview for a new role. To leave on ‘my terms’.

Not quite rejection, but not being picked either. And so it turns out that whether the rejection is direct, or you have to walk away before it happens, there’s still a grief to it either way.

The heavy weight of infertility is so couched in the language used to discuss it, even in my own words. Just typing that we ‘walked away’ from IVF at the beginning of this article unleashed a knot in my stomach. Perhaps it’s something I should have rephrased. Corrected myself. So that I’m not part of the problem.

Except now, in this moment where I’m starting to find hope and light in my new path, I want to think of walking away not as a negative thing, but as a success instead. Or at least something that just happened. With no value needing to be ascribed to it. It happened. It’s done.

We need to change the definition, or the perception, of failure - of not being chosen or of not choosing what you thought you wanted - to something more hopeful. A change of direction. A re-route. Not the direction you wanted to go in, but still a valuable one. A rewarding one.

Not in a dismissive ‘who wants to be picked anyway?’ kind of way. Because me, actually. Achingly, longingly, devoutly me. I wanted to be picked as a mother. I wanted to be picked by our little embryo. I did not want to fail at that.

But in the wake of it not happening, I choose to grow from the loss, rather than being drowned by it.

I choose to take positive steps forward, one by one, and shape my own destiny. At the moment it’s (mainly) a peaceful one. And it’s full of joy. Who knows what the future holds from here?

But I know that I’ll be looking at any failure that comes my way differently this time. I’ll be looking deep inside it for the success story, the opportunity to re-route, instead.

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

If, like me, you’re part of the generation that grew up avidly devoted to Friends, it probably felt like adult life would play out as it did for Ross, Rachel, Monica, Chandler, Joey and Phoebe, whose lives were lived side-by-side in a (very) tight-knit group.

Nothing else seemed to exist outside of those friendships. They lived together, ate together, laughed together, cried together, gossiped together.

They knew all the goings on in each other’s lives.

And so, when life didn’t go to plan, they were right there living it with each other. Or, if they weren’t there in the precise moment, they rocked up pretty soon in the aftermath to help pick up the pieces.

They crowded around when Chandler lost his job, and helped him find something else. They were there to jump and shout and dance when Phoebe got a positive pregnancy test impossibly soon after her surrogacy transfer. The whole gang camped out at numerous births (Ben, Emma, the triplets). Maybe that one is the step too far; I’m not sure the labour ward is a place for a group hang out (but I’m happy to be corrected if I’ve left a friend feeling unsupported on that front)!

I guess that’s exactly the point.

The Friends knew what was needed in any given situation because they existed, in every facet of their lives, tightly wrapped up in each other’s pockets.

And I worry that maybe we judge friendship by this fictional ideal too.

But in reality we’re all just out here living our own separate lives and, frankly, it’s hard enough to keep abreast of our own diaries, dilemmas, feelings… let alone be able to keep tabs on the full ins and outs of even our very best friends and closest family enough to know exactly what support is needed in every situation.

Really it’s impossible to be the kind of friend that Friends holds up, and it’s impossible to receive that type of friendship back.

Our lack of proximity doesn’t allow us. Our lack of time doesn’t allow us. But most importantly our lack of telepathy doesn’t allow us because, afterall, even if we know what is happening in someone else’s life, we still can’t know the full depths of how they are thinking and feeling at any given moment.

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Maybe you’re ready to rail against me here? Maybe you’ve found the magic sauce to keep on top of it all for everyone you love, or at least for the big stuff. And there have definitely been times when I’ve thought that too. When life got close to the Friends ideal.

The times when it felt like many lives merged into just one.

For me it was those few sweet years at university where, during term-time at least, you lived and breathed the lives of your housemates as much as your own. Discussing what’s for dinner, dramas from the day, and where you were going tonight, all in the same breath. Or when I wangled my way into a house share that I wasn’t really part of, by virtue of romantic connection, and became part of the delirious cycle of post-work dinners cooked together, lazy days on the sofa or in the garden, weekend pubbing. Plans that were always made together.

But, whether in your twenties, thirties, or forties, it does always come to an end. The pocket living. It’s a case of logistics, really. People break off and move out to separate houses, to their own separate adult lives. And those lives often herald the expansion of social circles. The expansion of careers. The expansion of families.

With expansion, everyone scatters a little. You’re still connected but not cocooned.

Of course, we didn’t ever see the Friends crew have to battle the emergence from their cocoon. I like to think they’d have been faced with the lesson we all get in the real world. That it’s less compact outside the cocoon, sometimes (in our most nostalgic moments) it can feel a little less safe, but there’s good things outside too. It’s just a different phase.

But being on the outside also means that when life doesn’t go to plan your friends can’t always be on hand to heal you. And you can’t be that kind of friend for others either.

I know because I haven’t been! Not for want of trying, but I’m confident that I’ve said or done the wrong thing in a variety of heartbreaking situations. I can also recall the supportive texts I’ve written and never sent, not wanting to make responding another task on a never-ending list, or just to say the wrong thing.

The thing is, when someone else’s life crumbles it’s sad. Devastating even. But, unless you are there with them in the trenches of it all, once you’ve supported and comforted them, you generally have to get on with your own day. You can forget about the sadness for large swathes of time. But for them it’s all consuming.

I say all of this because my feeds are often saturated with posts about the (potential or real) failings of friendship. About the right or wrong things to say to someone in any given situation. Usually all valid, all worth reading to absorb advice and different perspectives, to learn. But perhaps they also make you reevaluate the support you may or may not have received, or on the other side of the coin paralyse you about whether you are offering the right support.

I guess I also mention it because, when our fertility journey ended without a baby in our arms, I felt incredibly lonely. Achingly so. Abandoned even. Not by anyone in particular, as such, but because I was walking a new path with no-one to follow. And I felt so suffocated by it that I forgot to tell others, wonderful friends that were trying to keep on the path beside me, what I was feeling. What I was going through.

Sometimes in the depths of heartache it’s hard to articulate what’s wrong or what you need. You become a tangled mess of sadness and confusion that feels impossible to articulate, much less unpick.

What I needed and hoped for from those around me changed all the time. It was difficult to keep up with myself, it would have been impossible for someone else to try and predict or attempt.

I went through a phase where I’d cry every time I was due to see friends, a mess of contradictions constantly swirling within me. Worry that I’d have to talk about what was happening, but also worry that no-one will ask. Worry about the conversations that would take place that I couldn’t be part of, but also worry that those conversations would happen in another room without me instead, to save me.

Sometimes I would cry after too, hemmed in by the fear that these paralysing contradictions would never ease. That my normal was now so far removed from everyone else’s normal that I wasn’t sure we’d ever understand each other again.

But of course no-one’s normal is the same, even if their situations broadly are.

And my own normal did eventually start to feel better. Not because anyone around me did anything different. But because I felt different.

I’d been a friend to myself. No matter how many times I chopped and changed direction on what that should look like. I listened. Sympathised. Redirected. I let time heal me and I’d done some work to help it along too, seeking support within communities going through a similar experience. Not to replace old friends with new, but to land myself in spaces where I didn’t need to explain anything because it was already understood. And, of course, I still lent on friends too. But I didn’t expect them to single-handedly heal me.

I started to let joy back in too. Just the small things, at first. Letting those small joys wriggle around to make room for the rest. To make room for the big joy. The joy that could come from my friends too. I had space to let it back in.

So I guess what I’m building up to here, in the depths of a Substack article, is a gentle nudge not to lose faith in friends if you feel like they haven’t showed up how you wanted them to, when something happens that changes your life irrevocably.

And a rallying cry that the most important thing to focus on in those moments is being your own friend first.

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

It paints a beautiful picture, sure. But it’s not the version of life that I’m living in this reality, and it’s not the one that you’re witnessing on these Substack pages.

Instead I’m traversing a different transition. It’s laced with some of the same feelings; uncertainty and fear, certainly, but hopefully lots of joy and love too. I started leave for redundancy on almost the exact day that my maternity leave would likely have begun.

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It’s a very different journey, and the juxtaposition of timing could have felt cruel and sad. But, as the possibility of leaving a job that I’d been in for more than two-thirds of my working life (14 years) started to emerge, it didn’t feel cruel. It didn’t even really feel that sad.

Instead there was relief at the prospect of finally being able to stop, to catch my breath. A chance to get off the rollercoaster, after the whiplash of a particularly jaunty ride over the last few years. A chance to work out where I want to go next. Perhaps calmly floating down a lazy river for a while, for instance?

I’m about as risk and uncertainty averse as they come, but somehow, somewhere deep inside me, I found a lot of hope and positivity in the timing, be it coincidence or some kind of divine intervention.

I guess in some ways I’m thinking of it as a maternity leave of sorts, still, except I’m mothering myself. Nourishing myself. Growing myself.

No doubt that sounds a bit self-indulgent. And of course, I’m in a privileged position to have the option to just down tools without knowing what’s next; my long service role and a generous redundancy package offer me the gift of time.

And of course I know maternity leave isn’t a holiday. But for me this isn’t a holiday either. It’s some time to try and piece back together the parts of myself that a journey through endometriosis, infertility and miscarriage has broken.

So, maybe it is the universe offering something up for me? Admittedly, it’s not the offering I was hoping for nine months ago, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be full of abundance in different ways. Right?

Don’t get me wrong, it was scary to just shut my laptop one day, after 14 years. For that to be it. Finished. Done. In the days leading up to that final shutdown my head filled with thoughts about the corporate world that I had been so entrenched in for so long; a macabre understanding that it will all go on without me. Perhaps barely even noticing my absence. That the things I used to do, the decisions I used to make, will now be done by someone else. Or more likely they will be quickly cast aside and abandoned. There’s something very strange in that. In lifting right out of somewhere that was such a huge part of your life.

Not to mention that, according to social media, I’m now one in a huge number joining the great-millennial-resignation (I know, I know, I didn’t actually resign) and there’s a low-lying, lingering panic about financial stability and the future job market that goes with that.

In spite of all that though, there’s a glimmer of something positive emerging. Maybe even something great. A promise that there’s something better ahead of me than what I’ve left behind. A promise that I might not have been able to birth a baby, but that this can be a rebirth for me, of sorts.

The first week of my redundancy-induced-not-quite-maternity leave (shall we call it something else? Raternity? Too rodent adjacent. Redundancy reset? Too personal development. Answers on a postcard, I’ve got nothing else to offer) was spent in Slovenia.

It was specifically planned for this week because we felt we’d be more able to contemplate the week we were due, when nothing was actually arriving, at a safe distance from the monotony of day-to-day life and with the sun on our faces.

Actually, the sun didn’t shine the whole time. It rained on our (presumed) due date. The one that the app told us would be ours, in the brief days when we were able to consider parenthood in our future.

I actually found peace in that, the rain. The acknowledgement that it was a day for grey contemplation, that there was a need for cosying down, for cleansing. I saw the poetry in that moment.

A few days later the sun came out again and that felt right too, my heart felt lighter. Brighter.

And, although we couldn’t have known what would happen in my working situation when we first booked that trip, the timing became even more perfect as the first steps into my own my new start.

I know that the journey ahead of me will still have its ups and downs. But I’ve already walked a tough path, and in this version of reality I’ve hopefully conquered the hardest part. That initial agony of despair and hopelessness that came with enforced childlessness.

And I’m confident my future holds good things.

Whether you’re following along because you’re experiencing infertility and the prospect, or reality, of being childless not by choice; or you’re embarking on an navigating your own unexpected transition; or perhaps you just want to know how this story unfolds (me too!). Whatever brings you here, I hope that you’ll see that no matter what life throws at us there is always a path forward, and it can still be one full of beauty and joy.

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

When the shape of yourself - of your thoughts, and your actions, and your relationships - can completely change in pursuit of this thing, until you feel completely unrecognisable. The change can be good. Or bad. Or a heady mixture of both.

This is how I felt about IVF. How I felt about infertility. How I felt about living with endometriosis. But there was only one of those things that I could put a stop to.

After going through it, I’ve come to realise that you can completely lose yourself to IVF in a way that is hard to properly explain.

I certainly got to the point where I knew that if I continued I would no longer be the person I wanted to be. I also feel quite strongly that, even if we had carried on, got our miracle baby, I could probably no longer have been able to be the mother I wanted to be either.

I would have been irrevocably changed, maybe in some good ways, but mostly into someone I didn’t want to be. Shorter. Sharper. Distant. On edge. Bitter.

I came close to that person anyway, bent in that direction.

But there was still enough malleability to bend back before it set in.

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Who knows if I’m right about that, about the point of no return? I don’t get to live the life where we carried on. Or the life where IVF was ‘successful’ for us. It’s just something I feel in my bones.

I worried, as we embarked on the third round, that we might already be going beyond that point for me. But we’d paid for the cycle as part of our ‘package’, so what were we gonna do apart from soldier on? (Said somewhat ironically).

So, onward with story time, I guess…

The third cycle started in earnest, and as it happened the timing coincided almost to the day with a close friend who was also going through IVF. There was so much blessing in that; someone that truly knew what you were going through, within the same moment in time.

But on this round I also found myself wanting to be more closed off.

I felt cagier about sharing with anyone when retrieval was happening, when the transfer would be made, when we were due to test.

So much of you is exposed in IVF, people know things about your planned conception that would never be possible (or reasonable) in a natural cycle. Of course, it was up to us to be open with people about it, but the double-edged sword if you don’t is that you become even more isolated. Telling fibs about not drinking or trying to explain away last minute changes of plan. There seems to be no middle ground.

So, there was so much that was difficult about this final cycle, and the icing on the cake was the likelihood that the planned dates would mean I’d have to administer some of the injections myself, something that I know many people do anyway, but as a needle-phobe it absolutely filled me with dread.

Towards the end of my cycle I practiced, so that I would know what I was doing rather than panicking in the moment. I was sure everything in my body would prevent me from jabbing myself with a sharp object. But I did it. Multiple times.

And that on its own would have been fine. But it became apparent that I was going to have to administer the trigger shot myself.

I’m so lucky that in all of our preceding rounds this horror had fallen to my husband, and he’d wisely shielded me from the horror of having to ‘mix’ an injection before administering it at a very specific time.

I will never forget that injection.

My husband was in Ireland watching Oasis (a trip that he would have dropped in a heartbeat if I’d let him), there were no friends or family around (because I’d been too proud to ask them or share my concern about the situation), and through my window floated the sound of laughter and fun from a neighbouring garden.

I couldn’t stop crying.

That laughter felt so far removed from where I was, fun felt like something I was completely excluded from.

When it came to the trigger injection I left what I thought was plenty of time, but no matter how much I tried, I struggled to mix the powder in the vials and extract it all. My slowness was breeding panic because of the need to inject at such a specific time.

I called my husband in a state; feeling guilty for tearing him away from the concert and worrying him, but also desperate not to get this wrong and ruin our chances.

In the end, I did the injection, on time. I was dejected after. I felt like I hadn’t extracted enough of the liquid, but couldn’t bring myself to look at it again after the timeslot had passed, in case I found an excess in there that I couldn’t be administered. My husband did check the sharps box when he was back and gently assured me there was nothing left. Not a drop.

But on that evening, I remember thinking that if I couldn’t cope with administering the injection to make the baby, maybe I wasn’t meant to be a mother anyway. I couldn’t be the calm, dependable presence they could rely on when ill, or upset, or worried.

I’m not sure if I still think that a little bit, even now.

When it came to collection we retrieved nine eggs, matching the previous round. So it seems like I managed to do what I needed to after all.

But this round was still to deliver the hardest blow yet. The first punch: only two eggs fertilised normally and survived to the next day. I was devastated and convinced we would never make it to the next stage.

Both embryos did make it to transfer day. But they were not at blastocyst stage (the stage of maturity you’re looking for when transferring embryos). On transfer day you receive a lot of highly charged emotional information in seconds, and then have to immediately collect yourself to go in for the procedure.

In my heart I wondered why we were bothering, this felt like it could be the worst outcome so far. But we went in regardless.

We’d pre-agreed multiple transfers in advance because of our history. Of course, we’d done so in the hope of increasing our chances, but in this situation it felt more about not having to dispose of some of our combined DNA. The clinic didn’t say it in as many words, but it felt like one at least was unlikely to be viable. Maybe both. So, they were both implanted.

I held two photos in my hand this time around. I looked at them regularly and begged for them to hold on.

The two week wait was excruciating as usual. I spoke to my friend going through IVF regularly, and worried even more about what would happen if one of us had a positive result and the other didn’t. I couldn’t bear to be on either side of that outcome. I wanted us both to make it so badly.

As with all the other rounds I had the usual pregnancy symptoms that come hand in hand with the progesterone, often giving you false hope. And this time around progesterone levels were being maxed out at six pessaries a day and regular injections straight into my bum.

I tried to caution myself, with the knowledge that our chances were even lower than before with the grading of our embryos, that the symptoms didn’t necessarily mean anything.

A few nights before testing I had terrible indigestion from a favourite meal, something that had never happened before and that my friend reported experiencing too. I put the thought aside, but it ignited a little glimmer of a different possible outcome.

I thought my prayers had been answered when we got the positive test. And a few days later my friend shared the same joy.

Unfortunately for me it was the very specific cruelty of a positive test that was never meant to become anything more. I lived a different life in those short days and hours when it was a possibility.

I had started to feel quite nauseous, and we were due to go on holiday for my 40th birthday celebrations, so I bought sick bags in case I needed them with me while we explored. My pelvic pain was increasing, almost period like, which Dr Google assured me was normal.

And then one morning, while I was mooching around at home, the sick feeling just stopped. I didn’t think much of it until I went to the toilet and a very pale smear of pink appeared on wiping.

Of course, I knew about implantation bleeding. But again, I knew deep down that wasn’t what was happening here.

I tested again and it was still positive but it was the weekend so I couldn’t contact my clinic. I left a message to speak to them on Monday. We were due to fly to Mallorca that Wednesday.

My clinic wasn’t concerned but I knew something wasn’t right, so initial blood tests were carried out. Unsurprisingly they indicated that HCG levels were not where they expected, so two days later we pushed morning flights to the evening to test again.

By then my spotting was more like a period and no amount of muted reassurance could convince me that this could be a positive outcome. My panic wasn’t particularly appeased when a nurse at the clinic told us we would still be fine to go on holiday but that we should make sure we always knew where our nearest hospital was, in case I was experiencing an ectopic pregnancy.

Of course, that advice is both fair and medically practical, but it made me feel like my world was ending as I sat on the floor and sobbed.

We didn’t know what else to do but to get on our delayed flight; it felt like there was no good option, no good place to be to receive the inevitable news.

We were sitting in a square in Palma when I heard that my bloods indicated miscarriage, but also a reiteration of the nurses warning that there was a risk it could be ectopic. I needed more blood tests to confirm.

During that time I had to continue inserting pessaries and injecting, as if those fruitless actions were still preserving any life in me, until we knew it wasn’t ectopic. It was excruciating.

To know it was over but have to continue to administer drugs that were taking over my body and my sanity. To know all you’ve been through. The time that’s gone. All you’ve spent. And it’s come to nothing. Worse than that, it’s come to this on a trip that should have been full of joy, not heartbreak.

I felt numb. Surrounded by beauty with so many ugly thoughts swirling around my head.

Trying to process the loss alongside fear of being in another country and not knowing how to get the medical support needed was terrifying. But my husband took care of everything; the next morning I had more tests.

Results were sent to our clinic and later that day, on a rickety train heading to Soller with a young family chattering away behind us, I got the message that I was no longer pregnant.

The miscarriage was over.

But it wasn’t ectopic, the one bonus I was expected to be pleased of; it meant we could go on with our holiday ‘as normal’.

We were five days away from my 40th. And just five days previously our future had looked very different.

I received ‘happy birthday’ messages when I was cloaked in a cover of sadness that I thought would never lift. I took pictures on that trip of places I don’t remember seeing. Not properly.

But I’m thankful to Mallorca for holding us while we tried to process and contemplate what was next. I looked out onto many horizons, across many bodies of water, and tried to steady myself. To convince myself that this feeling of devastation would not last forever. I definitely found an element of peace there. Just my husband and I.

The return to reality after that holiday was unbearable. As we flew home everything inside of me was kicking and screaming that I didn’t want to go back.

I didn’t want to see anyone.

I didn’t want to have to face this new reality.

After three rounds of IVF with increasingly worse outcomes, no embryos surviving for freezing (in any cycle), and finally an early miscarriage, we knew we had to accept that our future would be childfree. Particularly as my endometriosis pain had started knocking at my door again to remind me of the dangers of leaving it unchecked. Not to mention that there seemed nothing different to try with IVF.

I know that some people would say we still have options, that this didn’t need to be the end of the road to parenthood for us.

They might think that, in our position, they would have stopped at nothing to get there. But it’s the luxury of the fortunate to muse over what they would do if they observe from a safe distance where they don’t have to walk in the same shoes.

Sometimes we make different decisions to the ones we think we will make, when we are in it, when we are living it.

And sometimes we don’t, but it’s best to be kind in our judgement of those who choose differently for reasons of their own sanity.

What hit next was acute loneliness.

How do you come to terms with a door forever shut to you in such a brutal way? The door to a gathering that almost everyone you know sits on the other side of.

Well that’s exactly what The No Kids Club is here to explore, if you’d care to come along for the ride?

Because what I’ve found is that on the other side of this journey there is healing and there is joy. Bundles of it.

Healing isn’t linear and not everything is sparkly and light; it’s important to keep that real. But it’s also important to collect the moments of light that do shine through.

They all add up to a truly joyful life and that’s what I’m here to keep building.

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

So here’s the crumbs, perhaps less artfully laid than you’d find in a novel. We had three cycles of IVF. Two ‘failed’ / were unsuccessful. However you prefer to phrase it. Regardless of the terminology, embryos were implanted (notably of poor quality), but they didn’t last long enough to pick up on a pregnancy test.

The third cycle kind of failed too. Though if you were speaking to our clinic Dr she’d say it depends what you think of as failure and success. In this context, I think we can assume a live baby was what everyone was aiming for. But it’s not what we got.

That third time we did get a positive pregnancy test. But I miscarried. Chemical pregnancy. More ambiguous terminology that all means the same thing, no baby.

I appreciate that wasn’t a short and snappy spoiler. But hey, at least you know where this is headed. I want you to know what you’re getting yourself into from the beginning.

I’ll happily walk you through the motions though, if you’ll take a wander with me? These stories aren’t often heard, the ones that don’t end how fertility clinic marketing will have you believe they all do. So, I’d love to tell you what got us to our new reality.

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I’ve already talked you through how we ended up having IVF, but here’s what it was like going through it.

I know that some people sail through IVF but for me it was honestly hell, likely accentuated by how close it happened to my endometriosis surgery. It all merged into one and felt like part of the same treatment. The same torture.

The first round was awful. Those that had been through IVF told me you get used to the needles. Well, I never did. I acutely remember the dread that would happen around 6.30pm every day. Injection time.

I don’t even know how to explain what it felt like. A dark cloud would start hovering over me as soon as my working day finished and I knew that the time was approaching. It would remain there as I lay on the bed waiting whilst my husband, who took on all of the medical side of things, administered the injection and then gently kissed my belly when he was done. And it would hang over me for at least the next hour, knowing we’d be doing the same again the next day.

We had a lot of scans on that round too; it seemed my body wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do (no great surprise with my track record).

It started to feel like my body was no longer mine. I thought I was used to being poked and prodded with endo, but this was different. This was like some sort of performance review that I was constantly failing.

But my low grades didn’t just affect me, I was dragging everyone else down with me too. My husband, my family, my friends. Expectations felt high, everyone wanted it to happen. But most of the weight of the outcome felt like they fell at my door.

That’s not to say that I was feeling pessimistic about the outcome. I knew that IVF statistics weren’t that great. I had friends that had gone through multiple rounds. But I still thought, somewhere deep in the back of my mind, that this would work.That this was the answer.

I’d had the surgery, the endo was out. I was doing everything that was asked of me to make this baby happen.

A lot of high stress things happened during that first round. None that affected the outcome but certainly things that were difficult to manage alongside an already tumultuous experience, where emotions were high and my hormones were raging.

My father-in-law was diagnosed with a rare (and as it turns out aggressive) form of cancer in the build up to us starting, and then mid cycle we were at my parents house when it flooded. Badly. Leaving an aftermath that took many months to remedy and changed their lives and their livelihoods.

The diagnosis happened just after we’d started the cycle. The flood between our egg retrieval and our transfer.

We retrieved 12 eggs at that first retrieval and that felt like a good number. Although you’re ‘privately’ sequestered away in a theatre when the procedure happens, before and after you’re on a ward not dissimilar to what you’d expect in a hospital; beds closely packed together, separated only by a thin curtain.

You can hear (pretty much) everything that happens, all the vulnerable conversations. And you know your other (nearly) bedfellows have access to the same of you, too.

We didn’t see the face of the woman on one side of us, or her Mum who had accompanied her, but we know that they retrieved six eggs in her procedure, and that she was using donor sperm. It didn’t sound like it went to plan for the couple on the other side of us. I felt tears prick my eyes at the knowledge that I was privy to their very personal moment of pain.

Eight of our twelve eggs fertilised, and we felt like that still gave us good odds. In-line with the statistics, at least.

So, I was shocked and then later devastated when I received the call on transfer day that we only had one ‘viable’ embryo to transfer. ‘And by the way, it isn’t of great quality.’ Not the precise words said, but the gist of them certainly.

I think the trace of hope in me that this would work left me then.

When I went in for the transfer that same day, I was shown to a different bay; moving from the fourth bay to the second. Did that mean that two others who had retrievals on the same day as me hadn’t got to this stage?

You retrieve and transfer to very set timelines. But maybe they were just freezing their embryos. I assumed they probably had multiple, that other people wouldn’t be suffering the same fate as us. I hoped at least that they were still in a position that still held possibility for them. But I did wonder, momentarily, if it made our odds higher. Being one of the few there that day.

One of the most torturous things about transfer day for me was the need for a full bladder. I’ve (obviously) never made it that far, but I believe it’s a requirement of all ultrasound scans. So that they can see everything more clearly. But after years of battling with an unmanageably frequent and urgent need to go, and the removal of a section of my bladder, getting it full to just the right amount for visibility, without the worry of wetting myself on the table, was traumatic.

Regardless, I managed it and we transferred our single remaining embryo.

For some reason, no-one had told us that my husband could be there for the transfer, so it was just me on my own, legs in stirrups feeling so devoid of hope, and life. I couldn’t even look at the embryo photo we’d been given; handing it over to my husband when he came to pick me up and telling him to do something with it.

So certain was I that it wouldn’t work, and I didn’t want to become attached to the little bean that had been placed inside me.

The two week wait was torturous. But somewhere in amongst it I started to wonder if maybe it would happen after all. Started to picture a different life, one where I was pregnant. Where there were little people who called me Muma. Where my husband and I had the family we’d been planning for.

I went to a friend’s house for a Christmas get together, just something casual with our favourite beige buffet and a catch-up. I went to the loo, not long before leaving, and there was blood when I wiped. It felt like the bottom of my world fell out.

My friend, who had been through multiple rounds of IVF and had twins, gave me a lift home. We chatted about where I was in the process, but I didn’t share what it felt like was happening. I tried to maintain normality when I wanted to scream.

Of course, I could have confided in her. But I didn’t want to put it into words. Jinx it. Make it real. In case it wasn’t.

I disregarded that reservation as soon as I got home anyway (of course I did). My husband and I both endlessly googled. Found out about implantation bleeding and tried to cherry pick the articles that gave us the smallest slither of hope.

Deep down I knew. I tested on a Tuesday morning two weeks before Christmas, 3 days after that blood on my toilet paper, and it confirmed what I already knew.

The thing with IVF is that everyone knows your business. They know you’re ‘trying’. They often know exactly where you are in the process too. All things that you never have to, or want to, reveal if you fall pregnant naturally.

So, gradually, in the depths of our grief, we also had to tell others. It hadn’t worked. We had to repeat the heartbreak over and over again every time we had to relay it to someone else.

Pretty quickly we had to face the reality of what we wanted to do next. Originally we said we’d only do one round but with such a drop off between collection and transfer, it felt like it hadn’t been a fair shot.

With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps we should have seen it more as a sign of things to come, but my tendency is to dig deep on these things. Try to find the answers. So, I did the research and found some things that we (but mainly I) could change to help. I upped the supplements. Switched out our plastic tupperware. Revisited my skincare. Re–evaluated my diet (again, many of these steps were already familiar to me for endo management purposes).

Our clinic didn’t seem to have much wisdom to offer on the things we could change on the medical side, mind you. They switched out one of the drugs we were using and slightly upped the dosage, and suggested CoQ10 (at a fairly high dosage).

But it felt like we were doing things at least a little different, and maybe that would make the difference.

Of course, life was still life-ing. The second round also started in a tricky place, with some developments in my father-in-law’s illness that meant my husband was travelling to hospital pretty much daily, with a 3+ hour roundtrip.

It felt like the wrong time to be starting again but we were already into the cycle when that became apparent. And anyway somehow, before we got to the retrieval point, I’d managed to find some positivity.

I still hated the injections but I’d managed to let a bit of hope back in. I was calm. I’d been meditating, vision-boarding, manifesting. You name it.

When we retrieved nine eggs this time, a drop off from the first cycle, it was hard not to feel a little disappointment. But by the following day eight had fertilised, so it started to feel like we might have done something right. That maybe the quality had improved even if the quantity had failed us. And that was surely better, right?

Well, maybe. But the fertilisation number probably isn’t important now because eight, once again, became one. One embryo to transfer.

The quality was slightly better than the first round but we were still clear that this was not a top notch embryo. On Easter Saturday we went into the clinic for transfer. My husband was there this time, holding my hand. And everything felt a little more hopeful with him there.

This time around I kept hold of the photo and tried to cling onto hope with it

The two week wait was just as difficult the second time around. Every twinge, tiniest hint of nausea gives you hope. And there was no bleeding this time.

But the outcome was the same.

We tested on a Friday and, because I had no bleeding, the nurses told me I’d have to continue with my medication and test again the next day, just to be sure. I remember crying pretty solidly across both of those days. As I repeatedly inserted pessaries that I knew were for a lost cause. As I tested again knowing the outcome.

It’s even harder to pick yourself up the second time around and convince yourself it’s a good idea to go again. To keep putting yourself through it.

But, at that point, it felt like our only option, partly because of how we’d funded it. Two cycles bundled into one handy monthly payment. A 2for1 offer, you might say.

I couldn’t bring myself to walk away from a cycle that was paid for, couldn’t bear the ‘what if’ that would linger with me.

So, we embarked on a mission to see if we could make it third time lucky. You already know the spoiler on this one, right? But perhaps we all need a little rest before moving onto the closing chapter. I know I could do with one…

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!

Well, consider this, here at the beginning of my first ever Substack, my millennial pause. Solidly couched in a heap of uncertainty on where to actually begin…

I have so much to say about a topic that has no easy way in.

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Probably the best place to start would be to introduce myself: Hello, I’m Emma! And maybe share a little bit about how I found myself in The No Kids Club? (Spoiler, it’s not by choice. And the ‘how’ isn’t as quick or simple as the ‘Hello’. So, buckle in for a three-parter for the answer).

The difficulty is it’s hard to know, let alone articulate, where this sort of ‘journey’ actually starts.

The self-loathing tendency in me (never fear, I’m working on it in therapy!) often wonders if it’s my comeuppance for years of assuming, and openly sprouting, that I was childfree by choice. Or if my twenties spent book-ending the working week down the pub, has led to alcohol fried eggs that are now no good to anyone.

The practical side of me might assume it’s the result of a long (and still ongoing) battle with endometriosis and adenomyosis, which has meant waving goodbye to part of my bladder, and has most likely held any hope of fertility hostage, with no plans for release. (But of course, if I wasn’t already in therapy I might also tell you that some of that is probably my fault too, somewhere along the line..).

I suppose for the purpose of today’s retelling, I’ll focus in on the practical stuff, rather than the cause… on what led us to IVF and ultimately what led us to leave without a miracle baby in our arms. There will be much (much) more to say on everything else later, I’m sure, if you fancy sticking around for a regular chat.

I naively hoped that having children would just happen for me. I mentioned that I considered myself childfree by choice for many years, and that’s definitely a scab to pick at another time, but I think my indifference was rooted in anxiety.

I can catastrophize with the best of them, and when I started to poke around in my mind to understand why I didn’t ‘want’ children, I found this feeling was actually burying crippling worry about how I would deal with pregnancy and then motherhood.

My anxiety always peaks around major life events; house moves, major lifestyle changes, the end of relationships, new relationships, marriage, house renovation. So, naturally, it seems my subconscious had concluded that the whole ‘family building’ thing could throw a bit of a mental loop for me.

I thought that if it could just ‘happen’ and take the worry of that particular decision away, then I’d just be able to get on with it and everything would work out ok anyway, as it usually did in those circumstances, once I’d started the descent back down the anxiety mountain.

Anyway, that was the theory. And of course, it wasn’t a theory that had a chance to make it into practice.

After years of suffering with debilitating periods, the aforementioned endometriosis and adenomyosis reared their head and they were ready for war. It took four years of medical prodding, scanning, and dismissal for Doctors to identify that it was this particular formidable duo causing my pain, mind you.

It was in amongst that medical misery that we decided to start actively trying to conceive, ultimately spurred into action by two very close friends receiving cancer diagnoses, and the accompanying stark realisation that while we were busy dawdling and musing on the topic, other things could happen to take the decision out of our hands.

Oh the irony, if only we’d realised then that the game was probably already up.

After a year of trying we still had no baby, and my ‘period pain’ had spread to whole body issues: throbbing headaches whenever I moved, bladder and bowel issues that sometimes rendered me unable to leave the house.

So, with much pushing, it was investigated more. I landed on the list of a Doctor who finally gave me hope of a resolution, when a transvaginal ultrasound indicated that endometriosis could be at play. She advised I’d need surgery to diagnose. Not ideal, admittedly, but it felt like a step in the right direction.

I’m going to skip quickly through to the ending on this bit to save us all some time. I had the surgery in August 2023 where they found ‘superficial’ endometriosis on my ovaries and burnt it off. They also identified an unusual spot on my bladder but didn’t conclude that it was endometriosis, so it wasn’t removed. I left that surgery feeling somewhat pleased to finally have answers, but also confused.

My bladder was by far my most disruptive symptom at that point. That might seem strange to say when I’ve talked about how debilitating my period pain was, but unfortunately when you suffer excruciating period pain at the hand of endo and receive no answers, you often have to find a way to live with that. We wraith around on the floor in pain, have endless sleepless nights, contemplate A&E every period (but usually don’t go) and just hope that in a few days life will carry on as normal.

On the other hand, my bladder issues were impacting every single moment of my life. I couldn’t be far from the toilet for any stretch of time, so I often didn’t leave the house. I couldn’t understand how no solution had been found for that.

The surgery was also done with the intention of preserving and improving fertility outcomes. Tubes were flushed. Problems were identified but not necessarily diagnosed (one tube didn’t flush but apparently there wasn’t a specific blockage, no-one seemed concerned about it so I let it go). There were still question marks, sure, but we really hoped that going through this might be the answer to our fertility issues.

Five weeks after the surgery we went on holiday for my birthday. I’d been told to expect a few difficult periods as everything settled. But off we went to Valencia regardless. Armed with a portable tens machine to help alleviate any pain I had whilst there. And there was definitely pain but I could still function - and that was a relatively new development. So we carried on, expecting things to get better from there on in.

But the bladder situation only seemed to get worse.

I remember travelling down to Cornwall for my husband’s birthday and stopping at a National Trust enroute (we’re avid NT lifers, I’m afraid. Which I could protest is a sure sign of our middle age, but has in fact been a favourite pursuit for sometime). I was uncomfortable the whole journey and couldn’t leave the toilet when we arrived. I was in floods of tears. It felt like I was ruining his birthday. It felt like I ruined everything.

I was still in touch with my surgeon at this point, discussing further treatment for my bladder issues; she was proposing weekly self catheterisation to administer bladder installations. She didn’t seem certain it would help, and I wasn’t keen to put myself through that without more medical confidence.

I felt that I was left with no choice but to try and find other options and, after hours of research, I found an endometriosis specialist who was able to identify that the spot on my bladder was endometriosis (in fact, it was quite a large spot). Problem was, it wasn’t just sitting pretty on top of the bladder, it had wormed its way through the bladder wall, infiltrating it. So it couldn’t be cut off, that section had to be cut out.

We had to make the choice; IVF now and try for the baby asap or surgery. The surgeon recommended the former, though not for reasons of improved success but simply because it was major surgery (which I’m not sure is a good idea with the possibility of a small child to look after in the wake of it, either). We opted for the latter. At that point I could barely leave the house let alone look after another human being.

Within days of that appointment I was being lined up for a second, more invasive, surgery. I was put on Zoladex for three months, pushing me head first into medical menopause. Hands down the worst I have ever felt in my life. I’d get down on the floor to try and do some yoga, to feel better. And not be able to move. Or get up. I felt like I couldn’t carry on. After a week or so it lifted enough for me to keep going, but that period of life was very dark.

The surgery happened in July 2024, I awoke to news that they had removed all of the endometriosis they could find, including a section of my bladder. I had a catheter and stents in place to allow my bladder to recover for three - four weeks respectively.

And honestly I struggled so much in those weeks. Mentally and physically. There are so many times I wondered if I could ever live a normal pain-free life again.

I still don’t 100% know the answer to that question, but I do know that things can get better. Even when you don’t get the thing you want most.

By September we were knee-deep in IVF discussions and ready to start our first cycle in October 2024. My bladder had recovered enough to contemplate it, though it still didn’t function in a way most would consider normal. I was severely limited on the length of car journey I could tolerate and the type of activity I could say yes to. (Cinema trips and gigs are still problematic for me mentally to this day, but back then they were an outright impossibility). I had to be near a toilet and feel completely able to go at all times.

But yeah sure, let’s start jabbing me with daily hormonal injections anyway. What could possibly go wrong?

Well, I’ll save the answer to that question for next time…

I’m Emma, and I was made redundant at a time when I should have been taking maternity leave. Now I’m childless, jobless, and living with a chronic illness that has previously dominated my life. It’s fair to say that life hasn’t gone to plan. But I’m taking the opportunity to rebuild my life with intention; gathering joy, magpie-like, piece by piece. Here I share the beauty and the grief alongside each other, and encourage you to sit with me and share your story too.

You can also find more over on Instagram, if you don’t already follow along. Come and say hi!