- It just was never even a question.
I always knew that one day,
I would be a mom.
- Growing up, my thoughts were
that you meet someone,
you get married,
and you eventually have children.
- That kind of seems like something
that I would eventually do
because it's what most people eventually do.
- I wanted kids really badly when I was growing up.
Whenever I would get in trouble,
I would write it down in my diary, like,
"See kids? Even your mom was like this one day."
- In 2012, I was diagnosed with endometriosis,
which is basically one of the leading causes
of infertility in women.
- Have hypothyroidism,
I have Hashimoto's and I have PCOS as well.
so all combined, were just really,
really high risk factors.
- The definitive reason was unexplained.
- Times when I would talk about it,
people would either
A. change the subject, or just
B. kind of awkwardly talk to me about it
because they felt like it was something
that I was really upset about
and they didn't wanna upset me further.
- I kind of didn't tell anybody
for many, many, many years,
because it's not something that you tell people,
"oh by the way, I have issues."
- I shared it so publicly via an anonymous blog.
- When I got married within a year, I got pregnant.
I was like, yay, God is sending me this child,
so I'm supposed to be a mom, and this is a sign.
Within three months, I started having problems
and I started bleeding, and eventually,
I had a miscarriage at home.
- There were a few times where
I thought I was pregnant and then I wasn't.
It started to feel like I was cursed.
- It was never my choice
whether or not I would be able
to have children easily.
I was seeing the face of the unborn child
that I would never have.
- Whether or not you wanna have children,
receiving that piece of news is really hard
and can change your life.
- I feel like I'm missing out on this club.
I wanted to be a part of that club,
and I still couldn't get in.
- I felt really lost, and I felt like
I couldn't offer what I needed to offer
in order to be like someone that someone
wanted to with for the long term.
- It sucks, sometimes.
I don't know how else to describe it,
except that it just stinks.
- I can possibly do the hormones and do everything,
but with my health issues, I don't know that that is
the best or the smartest thing to do for either
myself or any child that I bring into this world.
- It just felt like my life was at the whim
of this thing that didn't even exist.
- We made the conscious choice
of not pursuing any more pregnancies.
- You don't have to give birth to someone
to be their mother.
And I think that was the turning point for me.
- So I said, let's just take this time to just be
present with what's actually happening.
And it was the best time for me.
- Think about all the motherly characters in your life,
and the influences.
Not all of them gave birth to you.
- We may, in the future, adopt a child
or even foster for a child.
- Now I'm 38, and I don't want kids,
which is such a weird thing to say out loud,
especially considering who I was.
- I'm going to talk about it because it's my life
and it's something that I went through
and I want everyone to be able to talk about it
and not feel ashamed that something
happened to them that they cannot control.
- There's more ways to leave a legacy
than a biological child walking around this earth.
- We have so much more going for us
than just producing children
and I just wish that everyone could see it
the way that I see it.