Seven years ago, when I started this blog, I was a desolate mess. I’d made plans to build my dream life and, bit by bit, those plans were crumbling beyond my control.

I’d quit my corporate job to become a writer. My plan was to make a living writing articles for magazines, which would allow me time to write my novel. Then, when my children were born, I’d be able to work from home and be there to take care of them. It was a perfect scenario.

Except, the children didn’t come and magazines started to go out of business and my novel wouldn’t sell. My dream quickly began to fall apart. I felt alone, despite being surrounded by people who loved me, and my life felt hopeless and utterly out of control.

And once things fell apart, it seemed like so many areas of my life suffered too. I felt challenged in my career, finances, marriage, health, family, all while trying to navigate grief. I had already hit my rock bottom when I decided to start this blog. It was a first step in starting my climb back up.

All of us hit our rock bottom at some point and each of us has to make our own way back to the surface. I hope this site and this community have served as a small step up for you.

So today, I’d like to share some stories of other women from our community. I met most of them through their blogs, when they were already on their way back up from their lowest points. These women have incredible success stories, but I know that, at some point, they each felt out of control and hopeless. They suffered through depression, failed marriages, health crises, and deep grief. I hope that sharing their successes will inspire you to keep moving forward and keep believing that things will get better.

Last week, Jody Day presented her first TED talk, “The Lost Tribe of Childless Women”. She has become a powerful advocate for women aging without children.

Melanie Notkin of has also done TED talk and has shone a new light on “Otherhood” and the value of childless aunts.

Tomorrow, Tracey Cleantis launches her second book, An Invitation to Self-Care, hot on the success of her infertility-based debut book The Next Happy.

Also preparing to launch her second book, The Mother of Second Chances, Justine Froelker is coordinating a tour of 21 infertility blogs leading up to National Infertility Awareness Week.

Pamela Mahoney Tsigdinos was the first blogger I found when I started to reach out for my tribe. She is continuing to blaze trails with investigative journalism and advocacy work around the fertility industry.

Lesley Pyne is hard at work on a book that has come from her wonderful world coaching women through grief after infertility. I hope to share news on that later this year.

And our own Kathleen Guthrie Woods is in the revision of her story, The Mother of All Dilemmas, early drafts of which I have been privileged to read. More to come on this soon, too.

As for me, I’m doing all right. My plans are working out too, even if not quite as I’d first envisioned them. Tomorrow, my debut novel, A Strange Companion (the one that couldn’t get a sniff) will be published. I am enjoying a relationship with Mr. Fab’s grandchildren, something that would have been too hard to navigate seven years ago. And, I never believed I would say this, I’m happy. My life is good.

Today, my rock bottom feels a long way behind me. I hope that yours will someday, too.