…if there is one day in particular that is without a doubt incredibly difficult during infertility, it’s Mother’s Day. And the day after. All the social media posts showing the ways your friends and family celebrated and were honored as mothers is simply too much for your heart to bear right now. You have invested so much energy and effort into becoming a mother, with nothing to show for it. Your feelings are 100 percent valid.

Mother’s Day can be a particularly challenging and heartbreaking day for women who are struggling to conceive. If you are undergoing fertility treatment or trying to conceive without success, you may have already noticed some anxiety building up in the days before Mother’s Day. While there’s no denying that the holiday can be a painful reminder of what you are missing, here are a few tips on how to make the day a little bit easier for you.

When we think of grief, we often think of losing a loved one.  But grief can also be losing the plans you mapped out for your life or losing part of your identity.

Going through fertility treatments can be such an emotional rollercoaster.  Starting out, you may feel hopeful that all your efforts will pay off, then you’re devastated when a cycle doesn’t work out.  You question everything you possibly could have done wrong, only to find the determination and strength to try again.  It’s difficult to ride this rollercoaster without maintaining some hope that what you’re doing will work out eventually.  

But how much hope is ok?