How often are we ignored? Made to feel that because our bodies can’t do this specific thing or look a certain way, we matter less. All we want is to be seen. Even if we are not gifted like young Matilda, we all have talents and interests, things that should be celebrated instead of tolerated or flat-out rejected.

St. Colette of Corbie was born in 1381 to parents who had long given up hope. When we hear of a woman conceiving at 60 years of age, it's easy to stop reading there. The miracle becomes the whole story, and we miss everything that came after. But St. Colette's life didn't end at her birth; it began there. And if we reduce her to the answer her parents received, we rob ourselves of the witness she offers: a life that shows us what fruitfulness looks like.

I’m just going to come outright and say it; Lent is not my favorite liturgical season. I shared with a friend recently that I honestly feel as if I’ve been living in a “perpetual Lent”. Thinking about adding Lenten fasting, abstinence, penance, and altering my diet feels like more weight than my level of overwhelm can bear. I’m sure this seems like a strange blog to read on The Fruitful Hollow, but I figured some of you may relate.

I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back This is the truth infertility forces us to face: we can’t go back. We can’t return to who we were before the diagnosis, before the loss, before the treatments, before the years of waiting. That version of ourselves—the one who believed our bodies would cooperate, who thought motherhood was just a matter of timing, who hadn’t yet learned what it means to grieve something that never was—she’s gone.