For many people, the journey of infertility can make them feel as if they are not capable of anything, hopeless, and not knowing what awaits them on the other side. For Austin and I, our journey into parenthood was filled with years of heartbreak, unanswered questions, and copious amounts of uncertainty. Ultimately, we ended up finding something soo much beautiful that we never anticipated, which was hope.
In our memoir The Long Way Home: A Couple’s Journey to Parenthood, we share the deeply personal experiences of struggling with infertility that ultimately led us towards adoption. Infertility is, by default, an isolating experience. All the waiting, constant appointments and the disappointing results can put a person in a constantly numb state. We attempted to conceive for many years while going through various treatments such as IVF in hopes that something actually worked out for once, but time after time, we were met with failure.
Yet infertility does teach us something valuable: the power of hope. Our hope lived on, despite everything seeming it was impossible to realize our dream of becoming parents. Hope became the thread that tied us together, and eventually led us to adoption. Adoption was not the goal we were aiming for at first, but eventually it was the decision that gifted us our son, Parker. The moment we first held him in our arms was all the suffering and failure we had gone through to reach an aim. Everything we went through was beautiful, unexpected, and completely transformative.c