“Imagine this pinch in your stomach, deep where your ovaries are. Mostly on the left side, sometimes on the right. It feels like my eggs are desperately trying to escape, but they can’t. Each attempt brings a sharp, pinching pain, often accompanied by a fever that lasts through the night.”

The first time this happened was right after the HSG procedure. At first, I thought I was just getting sick. But as it happened again and again (each month, right between my periods) I noticed a pattern. It was my ovulation. My doctor confirmed that it could indeed cause pain.

Knowing that my eggs were trying so hard to fulfill their purpose only to be met by blocked fallopian tubes made it harder. As if knowing I couldn’t conceive wasn’t enough, now I had to feel it every month, a physical ache to match the emotional one. But it didn’t stop there. That was just the cherry on top.

Even though I felt “less of a woman,” I still had to have my period. Aside from my blocked fallopian tubes, my reproductive system was functioning better than before. My period, which has been irregular for years, suddenly became as punctual as a clock after the HSG. Seriously? Now of all times? Every month yet another reminder that my uterus shed the lining it had prepared for a baby that might not come.

For somewhat 10 years now, I’ve had these bi-weekly reality check-ins: ovulation pain, reminding me of blocked tubes, followed by a period confirming an empty uterus.

For a long time, I felt broken. How can I be woman if I couldn’t bear children? I resented the platitudes people offered: “You can still be a mother in other ways,” or, “You don’t need to bear a child to be whole, you can grow them in your heart.” Though they meant well, those words barely scratched the surface of my pain. Isn’t woman different from man because of our womb, like wo(mb)man. Now that I have a womb not being able to fulfill its initial purpose, I’m more like “wo(w)man, you still have to go through all of that!“

I’ve felt like that for quite some time but not anymore, finding pieces of myself I didn’t know existed. I’ve been on this beautiful path rediscovering myself. I’ve learned to listen to my body, to treat myself with kindness, and to embrace the strength I never knew I had. Each ovulation, I take a moment to acknowledge what’s happening within me. I let myself feel it, the physical pain and the grief that lingers in my heart. Then I travel with my eggs down those blocked fallopian tubes in my mind.

Every ovulation is a moment of fleeting hope and every period is a wave of surrender. They’re exhausting, yes, but they’ve become opportunities to pause. To rest. To simply be. Grief, I’ve learned, doesn’t truly go away. You simply learn how to carry it. Each cycle is a reminder of what could have been, but it’s also a reminder of who I’ve become. I’m not broken. I’m not less. I’m a woman on a journey—one who has found strength in places she never thought to look.