I am in Paris for Christmas, and I keep thinking about success and failure and why we use these words to measure women’s procreation via IVF. The image above shows me with my friend’s child. We both used IVF to get pregnant. She succeeded and I failed.
But what we actually shared was the same experience: desperately wanting a child, going through the grueling physical and emotional process, and having husbands who supported us along the way. We lived the same story — but our endings were different.
Why do we use those terms – Success and Failure?
Society says that she “succeeded” at IVF and that I “failed.” Even I use those terms.
I felt like a failure.
I felt like I was not good enough, didn’t try hard enough, stopped too early. I blamed myself for not “manifesting” correctly. I blamed myself for going to Greece instead of Spain to get donor eggs. I blamed myself for not going to another doctor.
I took everything personally — as if reproductive biology is a moral test. As if there is a right answer and a wrong answer.
But acceptance is teaching me something different
As I go through this transition — coming to terms with acceptance and what that means — I’m learning that it is not about that at all.
It is not about what I did right or wrong.
It is not about what she did right or wrong.
It is not about comparison.
It is just life.
Life just happened.
And sometimes life refuses to give us the ending we begged for.
In nature, some things grow and some things don’t
For example, a seed pushes through soil and becomes a tree — but the stone beside it stays exactly what it is.
The seed isn’t “better.”
The stone isn’t “a failure.”
One was built to transform.
The other was built to endure.
Rivers move. Mountains don’t.
Flowers bloom. Rocks weather.
Nothing is shameful in that. Nothing is proof of worth or proof of blame. It’s just nature doing what nature does — moving, changing, holding, letting go.
Maybe acceptance looks a little like that: letting my life be what it is without assigning fault or comparison. Allowing myself to be the stone sometimes. Allowing myself to stop forcing myself to bloom where blooming was never promised.
Maybe nothing went wrong.
Maybe this is just nature.
Maybe this is just life.
We need to stop using the words success and failure
Using these terms is stigmatizing. It pits women against each other as if we’re contestants — as if motherhood is a prize you win with effort or purity or luck.
One woman is not “better” because she succeeded.
One woman is not “less” because she failed.
We need better language to describe life’s realities when it comes to procreation, fertility, and dreams that don’t unfold.
We need to accept that a seed is a seed and a rock is a rock — and neither one owes the world an explanation.
