The Silent Ache: What a Decade in Infertility Taught Me About Invisible Pain

Before I became a psychiatric nurse practitioner in maternal mental health, I spent ten years walking alongside women and couples through one of the most emotionally grueling experiences of their lives: infertility.

As an IVF nurse, I had a front-row seat to a type of heartbreak that was often invisible to the outside world. It was visceral. It lived in the body—in the hollow ache after a negative pregnancy test, in the bruises from daily injections, in the tremble of hands clutching pictures of embryos, and in the steady stream of tears that often only came once the clinic door closed behind them.

Infertility pain isn’t loud. It doesn’t wear a cast or show up in a sling. More often, it hides behind polite smiles at baby showers, behind excuses for lateness at morning work meetings, and behind quiet disappearances from social events that became too painful to attend. So many of my patients were carrying this enormous emotional weight completely alone. They didn’t share their struggle with friends. They didn’t tell their parents. Their employers had no idea. 

And I understood why.

The fear of judgment. The sting of well-meaning but deeply wounding comments—“Just relax and it’ll happen!” or “You can always just adopt.” The way hope and shame get tangled up when your body isn’t doing what it’s “supposed” to do. The desire to protect your heart by not having to explain, again and again, what cycle you're on, how many embryos made it to blast, or how you're holding up after another loss.

What struck me most in those years was how many people were suffering silently, waiting for permission to speak their truth. To say: This is hard. This is unfair. This is breaking me. And in that silence, the shame festered. The loneliness grew. After I became an IVF nurse, several of my own acquaintances revealed to me that they had been struggling with infertility themselves the entire time I had known them, but never felt they could share until they knew that I understood what they were going through. 

If you’re part of this tribe and you've walked through infertility—or you're walking through it now—I want you to know something: your pain is real, even if no one else sees it. You are not broken. And you do not have to carry this burden in silence.

Now, as a psych NP who works with mothers and mothers-in-waiting, I know how critical it is to hold space for these stories. To tend to the wounds that aren't stitched or bandaged, but live just as raw in the soul. I also know how powerful it is to be witnessed—to say out loud what you’ve kept inside for too long and to have someone look back at you with compassion.

This community exists to hold you. Whether you’re pregnant after years of trying, parenting after loss, still in the thick of treatments, or unsure what comes next—you deserve care, support, and the freedom to speak your truth without shame.

You are not alone here.

With love and support,

Katie