Navigating and honouring your unique journey
Wherever you are in your fertility journey, beginning, mid-treatment, between cycles, or sitting with a loss that no one else seems to see, there is space here for it.
Some losses carry a name. Others do not.
The pregnancy that did not hold. The embryo that never implanted. The transfer that failed. The future you imagined, slipping a little further out of reach with every cycle. These are real losses, even when no one around you treats them as such.
There is a name for this, disenfranchised grief. Grief for losses that society does not recognise, leaving us to carry them in silence. In my counselling room, we do not valorise the wounds. We give voice to what has felt unspeakable. We name your losses, and we let them be losses.
Whatever is in your way, we move through it together
- Coming to terms with a diagnosis, named or unexplained
- Endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS)
- Decision points around IUI, IVF, ICSI
- The emotional weight of medical cycles
- Recurrent loss and recurrent miscarriage
- Donor conception, surrogacy, adoption decisions
- Male factor and shared decisions in couples
- Faith, culture, and family dynamics around fertility
- Knowing when, and how, to step away from treatment
Endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) are among the most common companions on this road, hormonal conditions of a woman’s reproductive years, mostly of the ovaries, and closely bound up with fertility and, for many, with infertility. If you are carrying one of them, it is named here too, and held.After Kirkegaard et al., 2024
Not a fixed condition, a fluid season, with its own weather
Through my research and my own experience, I have come to see fertility impairment not as a fixed condition or a single diagnosis, but as a fluid season of life, one with its own particular weather.
There are processes within it: the affirming of a diagnosis, the onboarding of a medical pathway, the acknowledging and naming of emotion through cycles, the management of multiple losses, the coaching through informed choice, and for some the re-evaluation of treatment itself. We do not march through these in order. We move through them as your journey requires, and I walk with you.
A few terms I may introduce, with care, and only when they help
Reproductive loss
Any pregnancy that does not reach the point where a baby could survive, through miscarriage, stillbirth, failed transfer, or an IVF cycle that did not produce a viable embryo. Whether you saw a heartbeat or only hoped for one, the loss is real.
I may gently name what sits alongside it too, the chronic sorrow that returns in waves, and the ambiguous, nonfinite losses that carry no clear ending.Doka 2002; Charon 2006; Boss, Roos and Harris 2021
Disenfranchised grief
Grief for losses that society fails to recognise. Coined by Kenneth Doka in 2002, this term has been my anchor for years. It speaks to the loss of hopes, dreams and expectations that may not have a tangible form, but carry tangible weight.
Fluid season
My own term for the experience of being inside fertility impairment. Not a fixed condition, not an illness, not a state to be cured. A season with its own weather, its own length, its own way through.
After years of trying to conceive, I felt hopeless about motherhood. Dr Marie’s coaching and psychotherapy gave me the tools and mindset I needed. Not only am I now expecting my first baby, I’m finally feeling confident about becoming a mother.Female client · online sessions