Let’s start with just how common it actually is. In 2023, the World Health Organization released a report finding that roughly 1 in 6 people worldwide — about 17.5% of adults — experience infertility in their lifetime. One in six. That’s not a rare tragedy that happens to unlucky women in the corner. That’s your sisters, your coworkers, your friends, the women smiling next to you at the baby shower and it isn’t new, either. Infertility and miscarriage have quietly haunted humanity since the very beginning of time. This has always been part of being human, so how come we haven’t evolved enough emotionally to see it for what it is?

The shame comes from the belief that someone must be at fault. And the deeper I get into this, the more I realize we do not understand fertility nearly well enough to be assigning blame to anyone.

Our instinct to point a finger is ancient and it has always been aimed at women. For thousands of years, when a couple couldn’t conceive, there was only ever one person to blame: the wife. She was “barren”, a word we literally borrowed from describing empty, dead land. Entire marriages and reputations were destroyed over a woman’s supposed failure, and the man was almost never questioned. Henry VIII discarded and even beheaded wives for failing to give him a male heir, when modern historians strongly suspect the problem may have been him all along. We have been rushing to blame the woman for centuries and we were wrong the entire time.

And here’s where the science dismantles the whole blame game. Male factor infertility is roughly half of the story. Fertility specialists generally estimate about a third of cases trace to female factors, about a third to male factors, and about a third to a combination or to causes no one can explain. For most of medical history, “infertility” was simply treated as a woman’s condition and the male half was barely studied at all. But, and I want to be really clear here, I am not writing this to flip the blame onto men. That’s the opposite of my point. The point is that the more we actually learn, the more the simple story of whose fault it is completely falls apart. It was never as simple as one person’s broken body.

Because here’s what we forget: conception is a miracle. Not in a cheesy way but in a literal, statistical, how-does-this-ever-work way. Even a perfectly healthy couple in their most fertile years has only about a 25–30% chance of conceiving in any given month. The fertile window is only a few days long, the egg itself is viable for maybe 12 to 24 hours, and even when everything lines up, a large share of fertilized eggs never implant at all.

So when someone deals with long-term infertility, it is very rarely one dramatic villain you can point to, it’s usually a hundred tiny things: a little bit of timing, a little bit of biology, a little bit of luck that just didn’t land and sometimes there is no answer at all. As much as a quarter of infertility cases are formally classified as “unexplained” — meaning couples go through every test modern medicine has and doctors still cannot find a single thing wrong. Think about how humbling that is. We can’t even name the cause a shocking amount of the time so how on earth are we handing out shame for it?

Which brings me to the thing I actually want to say, the ego of it all. When conception happens fast for a couple, they often quietly mistake luck for merit. “We just tried and it happened.” “We’re so fertile.” As if it were a skill they earned rather than a coin flip that happened to land their way. And that ego, that subtle belief that getting pregnant easily means you did something right, is exactly what manufactures shame for everyone it doesn’t come easily to. Because if easy conception is a virtue, then hard conception must be a failing.

And if you need proof that fertility isn’t a scoreboard of who deserves it, look around. We genuinely cannot explain why a person in deep poverty, in poor health, living on the street, maybe struggling with addiction, can conceive without even trying, WHILE a conventionally healthy couple with no obvious health issues cannot. It makes no sense. There is no version of “she just took better care of herself” that survives contact with reality. The healthiest don’t always win and the struggling aren’t always punished, which means fertility was never a measure of your worth, your health, your love or your discipline. It’s a mystery. One that medicine, with all its tools, still cannot fully explain.

So.. there is no one to blame and therefore there is nothing to be ashamed of. The shame only exists because we’ve been pretending fertility is something we fully understand and fully control — a test you pass or fail — when the truth is it’s a miracle we’ve all just been taking for granted.

If you’re in it too: you did nothing wrong. Neither did your partner. You are not barren soil and you did not fail a test. You’re standing in front of one of the oldest mysteries there is, doing your best, like millions before you. There’s no blame to carry here and there was never any shame in it either.

Sources / studies:

• World Health Organization (2023): ~1 in 6 people (17.5% of adults) globally experience infertility in their lifetime.

• Male factor is involved in roughly half of infertility cases (commonly framed as ~⅓ female factor, ~⅓ male factor, ~⅓ combined/unexplained) — RESOLVE / clinical fertility literature.

• A healthy couple in peak fertile years has roughly a 25–30% chance of conception per cycle; the fertile window is short and the egg is viable ~12–24 hours; many fertilized eggs never implant — reproductive medicine (ASRM).

• “Unexplained infertility” accounts for an estimated 15–30% of cases — no identifiable cause found after full evaluation.

• Historical context: infertility was long blamed on women (”barren”); male infertility was under-studied until the modern era

My social media screen time was an absurdly high number that I’m even embarrassed to admit. I became the person I criticize for being “chronically online”, but underneath that number was something harder to admit.

It’s not a secret to my followers I’ve been walking through infertility, which is its own quiet grief that most people never see and I was opening an app all day long to be met with pregnancy announcement after pregnancy announcement, each one a small sting and somewhere along the way I realized I had almost gotten addicted to the sting. To the rush of being triggered, to checking again and again even though it hurt, maybe because it hurt.

I don’t want to call that weakness and I’ve decided I won’t — because walking away from something that’s quietly hurting you isn’t weakness, even when it doesn’t feel like strength either. Sometimes it’s just honesty. I definitely don’t feel strong right now but I think I’m finally being truthful and maybe that counts for more.

Here’s the first thing stepping back taught me: not every follower is your friend.

And I say that holding both things at once: I have made genuine friends on the internet — people I’ve been in the DMs with for years, pen pals I’ve never once met in person who somehow understand me better than people I see in real life. Those connections are a gift and I will never talk down about them but the honest other half is that a good number of people follow me (or stalk me) precisely because they don’t like me.

Which leads to the tension I’ve been sitting in for a while now. My entire business was built on wanting to help people. I shared the most intimate details of my infertility because I genuinely believed that if it helped one person feel less alone, it was worth it, but at some point I had to ask: when does helping everyone else stop helping me? Because the unfortunate truth is that lately, the bad has outweighed the good and I’ve had to accept that I don’t deserve the comments I get or the constant bullying, simply because I live a different life than someone or believe something they don’t.

I’ve also noticed something telling: people tend to only speak up, only get brave, once they’ve already “succeeded” & I see why,the cruelty comes cheap and anonymous, from behind a screen from a person you’ll never see and will never be held accountable. That realization is a big part of why I started this Substack, so I could have a little sense of control over who gets access to me. Not everyone gets a front-row seat to my life anymore and I’m learning that’s allowed.

AND here’s another thing I’ve come to believe: we don’t actually need to know everything about everyone. It runs against the whole logic of being an influencer, where the more you open up, the more people connect with you but I keep coming back to the same question. Who is connecting to you? Openness is beautiful until you realize you’ve left the door open to people who don’t wish you well and you have no way of knowing which is which.

The strangest and best part of stepping away has been remembering what people are actually like off the screen. It’s made me want to do so many more in-person events, because in real life, people are kind — not like on the internet. People are open-minded — not like on the internet. People can hold two different opinions in the same room and still treat each other with respect — not like on the internet. I’m so grateful my business has given me the chance to be in rooms with real people again, because it turns out humanity is doing a lot better in person than the comment section would have you believe.

I’ll admit stepping back has made me see influencing as almost… sinister. I hate even typing that. But I am not someone’s entertainment. My grief is not someone’s entertainment. My struggle, my body, my life — none of it is content for a stranger to consume and judge and move on from. I’m a whole person behind this screen and I think a huge portion of the internet has genuinely forgotten that the people they interact with are people at all.

The parasocial relationships, the need to add your 2 cents to literally anything, even if it doesn’t relate to you, the “whataboutism”, the chronic bullying over just not liking someones outfit, the harassment in the dms, personal attacks, then taking it to reddit … if this was how someone acting IRL, they would have no friends.

That’s a scary thing to hold. So many people are living inside a bubble made of screens and truly believing that this is life. That the comment section is community. That watching a stranger’s day is the same as having someone in yours.

Life is beyond our phones. I know it sounds obvious, but I really, truly think people forget and stepping away has helped me remember, that yes what we see on social media is happening but not IN my life.

I don’t know exactly what my relationship with all of this looks like going forward. I just know I want to be more of a person and less of a feed. I want smaller rooms and realer conversations. I want to protect the tender parts of my life instead of handing them out to be picked apart.

By no means does this mean Im backing down from fighting for our health rights and fertility rights or sharing my favorite low tox swaps and health knowledge but I need boundaries (we all do.)

Thank you to the ones who are actually here — you know who you are. I’m still learning, but I’m learning it as a person again, and not as content.

Sources: The State of American Friendship, Survey Center on American Life; Pew Research Center on friendship in America. Share of U.S. adults reporting no close friends rose from ~3% in 1990 to roughly 12% (and ~15% among men) by 2021.