Infertility is one of the loneliest experiences a person can go through. And yet it almost always happens surrounded by people - friends, family, colleagues - who have no idea what is actually going on.

That gap between the life you are visibly living and the one you are privately enduring is exhausting to maintain. Every baby shower you attend. Every pregnancy announcement you respond to with a smile. Every time someone asks when you are going to start a family and you say, oh, we're in no rush, when in reality you have been trying for two years and had three failed rounds of IVF.

I got very good at the performance of being fine. I was one of those people who could walk into a room looking completely normal while internally I was holding myself together with both hands. For a long time I thought that was strength. Now I think it was just survival.

What I did not expect was what infertility would do to my friendships. Some of them deepened in ways I will always be grateful for - friends who showed up without needing to be asked, who did not offer advice or silver linings, who just sat with me in it. Those friendships became some of the most important of my life.

But others became quietly, painfully difficult. As babies arrived, life paths and life experiences inevitably altered. Some of these friendships manage to evolve in a space of sensitivity and understanding. Whereas for others, I felt increasingly less welcome in their new world. . I did not begrudge anyone their joy - I genuinely did not. But there is a particular kind of loneliness in watching your friendships move into a world you cannot follow. In finding yourself less and less able to relate to the conversation, and wondering whether they can still relate to you.

Some friendships drifted. Some went through difficult patches and came out the other side stronger. Some I had to step back from temporarily, not out of bitterness but out of self-preservation. When you are already using every resource you have just to get through the day, you learn quickly which relationships give you energy and which ones cost it.

If you are in the middle of this right now, here is what I would say. You are allowed to protect yourself. You are allowed to say no to things that are too hard right now. You are allowed to be honest with the people closest to you about what you are going through, even if the conversation is difficult to start. And you are allowed to let friendships ebb and flow - not every relationship will be able to hold the weight of what you are carrying, and that is not a reflection of the friendship's worth, or yours.

The friends who matter will still be there when you come up for air. And the ones you meet on the other side of this - the ones who have been through it too - will understand you in ways you cannot yet imagine.

You are not too much. You are not too sad, too heavy, too complicated. You are a person going through something really hard. And you deserve friends who can hold that.

If this landed for you, Inconceivable goes deeper into the loneliness of infertility - and into the friendships and community that helped carry me through it. You can also join the community here for honest conversations with people who understand.