I never thought I’d be going through menopause at twenty-eight. I assumed I’d have another twenty years before hot flashes, hormone changes, and all the things women are supposed to experience much later in life. I thought I’d have time to decide whether I wanted children, time to change my mind, and time to imagine what a family of my own might look like.
I certainly never expected to be coming to terms with infertility while fighting to stay alive myself.
My relationship with my reproductive system was complicated long before cancer. I spent years living with endometriosis, painful periods, and a body that seemed determined to make something as ordinary as menstruation unbearable. I begged doctors for a hysterectomy. I was young, I was hurting, and I wanted someone to take me seriously.
Instead, I was repeatedly reminded that I might want children someday.
I think about those conversations often now. For years, preserving my fertility was considered more important than allowing me to make decisions about my own body. Then cancer came along and took away the very possibility everyone had been so determined to protect.
And the cruelest part is that I did want children.
When cancer entered the picture, there wasn’t much time to process what was happening. Suddenly, I was discussing fertility preservation alongside treatment plans, surgeries, and a diagnosis that had already turned my life upside down. While trying to understand whether I was going to live, I was also being asked to make decisions about a future that had become terribly uncertain.
I went through three egg retrieval attempts.
Three times, I allowed myself to hope that we might be able to preserve something. That perhaps my husband and I could still have the family we’d imagined, even if getting there looked different from what we’d expected.
None of them worked.
Infertility is difficult to explain, especially when it arrives alongside a life-threatening illness. There isn’t always a single moment when the reality sinks in. Sometimes it’s a series of disappointments, each one making the future you imagined a little harder to picture, until eventually you realize there are possibilities you may have to let go of entirely.
Then came menopause.
At twenty-eight, while women my age are announcing pregnancies, having babies, and planning families, I’m dealing with hot flashes, sleepless nights, and a body that has been pushed into a stage of life I wasn’t ready to enter.
The physical symptoms are miserable. Between cancer treatment and hormonal changes, my body often feels completely unfamiliar. I can be freezing one minute and burning up the next. Sleep is unpredictable, my emotions are sometimes all over the place, and there are days when I hardly recognize the woman looking back at me.
There’s something particularly disorienting about experiencing menopause so young. Most of the information available is written for women decades older than I am, women who have had time to make decisions about children and move through those years naturally. I’m trying to navigate the same physical changes without having had that opportunity.
And while I can appreciate the occasional absurdity of having hot flashes before I’ve even turned thirty, the reality behind them is considerably less amusing.
There is a particular loneliness in being at such a different stage of life from the people around you. Friends are deciding when to have children, whether to have another, or what kind of parents they want to become. Pregnancy announcements and conversations about family plans are part of ordinary life.
I’m genuinely happy for the people I love who are building their families. Their happiness doesn’t take anything away from me. But sometimes those conversations remind me how differently things have turned out, and I find myself feeling sad about something I can’t change.
I’ve heard the reassurances. There are other ways to become a mother. Families can be built in many different ways. I know those things are true, and I appreciate that people are trying to help. But sometimes I wish there were more room to acknowledge the disappointment before moving on to alternatives.
I wanted the opportunity to experience pregnancy. I wanted to have those conversations with my husband about when we might be ready, what our family might look like, and whether we were prepared for everything that came with it. I wanted the ordinary uncertainty of making those decisions together.
Instead, I have three unsuccessful egg retrievals and a medical history that explains why there won’t be a fourth.
What makes infertility especially complicated in the context of advanced cancer is how easily it becomes secondary to everything else. When doctors are focused on keeping you alive, reproductive health can feel like a relatively small concern. And in the grand scheme of things, I understand why survival takes priority.
But that doesn’t make the other consequences insignificant.
Cancer treatment doesn’t happen in isolation from the rest of your life. The physical changes, hormonal symptoms, and loss of fertility follow you home. They affect your relationships, your sense of self, and the way you think about a future that already feels uncertain.
Sometimes I think about the younger version of myself sitting in those doctors’ offices, asking for relief from the pain of endometriosis. She was told to think about her future children, to consider what she might want someday.
I wonder what she would think if she knew how things turned out.
There’s an irony in having your fertility protected for years against your wishes, only to find yourself desperately trying to preserve it later. I understand that the circumstances were different, but it’s difficult not to feel frustrated by how little control I’ve ultimately had over any of it.
And then there’s my husband.
We’ve had conversations most couples our age never imagine having. Cancer has changed our plans in ways neither of us could have anticipated, and infertility is one of those things that doesn’t come with an easy answer. We have a life together that I love, but I sometimes wonder what it might have looked like under different circumstances.
I don’t know what kind of mother I would have been. I like to think I would have been a good one. I know I would have tried, and I know I would have loved the opportunity to build a family with him.
It’s strange to know that something you once considered a possibility has become a question you’ll never really be able to answer.
I’m twenty-eight years old. I’ve written books, started a foundation, and built a life with people I love. There are things I’m proud of, things I’m working toward, and plenty of plans I still intend to make. I don’t believe motherhood is what makes a woman’s life meaningful, and I know that my own life has value exactly as it is.
But I would be lying if I said I didn’t wish this part had turned out differently.
I wish cancer hadn’t been the reason those decisions were made. I wish the fertility treatments had worked. I wish menopause were something I’d eventually experience at an age when it made a little more sense, rather than another medical consequence to manage before I’ve even reached thirty.
Most days, I get on with things. I go to appointments, work on the foundation, spend time with my husband, and make plans for whatever comes next. The sadness isn’t always at the forefront of my mind. Sometimes weeks go by without my thinking much about it at all.
And then something ordinary reminds me.
I don’t think this is something I’ll ever have a perfectly satisfying perspective on. I’ve accepted that my life looks different from what I once imagined, but acceptance doesn’t mean I have to be happy about every part of it.
I’m still young. There is so much I want to do, so much I hope to experience, and so much of my life that has nothing to do with whether or not I become a mother.
I just wish I’d been the one who got to decide.
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