There are stories that often go unspoken… And journeys that can feel invisible—even to those closest to us.
In this special, personal event, Relinde de Graaff, actress, presenter, and author of The Life I Have, shares her own experience of struggling to have a second child, the emotional impact of fertility treatments, and the complex grief that many people feel but often suppress.
For many people, the medical uncertainty is only part of secondary infertility; just as difficult is the sense that this kind of grief is not always welcomed. When someone already has a child, others may respond with versions of the same message: be grateful for what you have. That reaction can shut down honest conversation and leave parents feeling that their sadness is selfish or inappropriate.
That sense of being unable to speak openly is part of what makes secondary infertility so isolating. The loss is not imaginary simply because a child is already in the family. The grief is tied to a hoped-for child, a future family shape, and a life that once felt possible.
That picture can be surprisingly powerful. She had imagined having three children and had already chosen three names. When that future no longer seemed possible, the loss was not limited to a treatment outcome. It touched identity, expectations, and the story she had once told herself about what her family would become.
Part of the problem is comparison. Primary infertility and secondary infertility are often discussed as if one must be more legitimate than the other. But they are not the same experience, and comparing them does little to help anyone. Secondary infertility brings its own emotional tension: deep love for the child who is already there, alongside grief for the child who is not.
That tension can be hard to explain to other people. Parents may feel guilty for mourning while also feeling lucky. They may worry that speaking openly will make them sound ungrateful or as if they are complaining. De Graaff found that fear was not unfounded. After speaking publicly, she received angry messages from people without children, which reinforced how misunderstood this experience can be.
People often stop talking because they expect judgment, and once grief is pushed underground, it can grow heavier instead of lighter. De Graaff’s view is that unspoken grief does not simply disappear. It stays with you.
During research for her book, de Graaff found that 1 in 10 couples have trouble having a second child. That number helps explain why so many people recognise themselves in stories about secondary infertility, even if they have never said the words out loud.
Yet the condition still feels hidden. Fertility struggles remain taboo, even in places that see themselves as open about personal life. Relinde recalled hearing women in a hospital waiting room talk about how hard it was to leave work for treatment without colleagues finding out. The secrecy around fertility treatment not only affects people trying for a first child. It shapes the experience of parents trying for another child, too.
Even when a second pregnancy eventually happens, the uncertainty can still be brutal. Not knowing whether the family you imagined will ever exist can dominate daily life. Much of the emotional strain arrives well before any final answer.
Secondary infertility often shows up in ordinary family moments. Birthdays, school events, and other milestones can become reminders of what will not happen again. A parent may watch a child grow and feel joy, then suddenly feel grief at the thought that these stages may never be repeated with another child.
That can be confusing from the outside. Someone may look at a family with one child and assume everything is fine. But if that parent feels the family is incomplete, those recurring moments can sharpen the sense of absence. The grief is not constant in the same way every day, but it can return in waves.
Relinde has said that acceptance did not erase those feelings. The experience remains “a small scar.” Seeing a big family can still trigger the thought that she would have wanted that too. What changed was not the fact of the loss, but the weight of it.
Infertility can also become a crisis of identity, especially when it collides with a person’s sense of what their body is supposed to do. Relinde gave birth to her son at 31, later had a miscarriage, and then did not become pregnant again. At 37, after her last ICSI cycle, she was told there were no eggs to retrieve and that treatment had come to an end.
The medical details mattered because of what they meant emotionally. Her blood hormone levels were equivalent to those of a 55-year-old woman. She described that moment as feeling as though she suddenly had an old body that no longer felt like her own.
For someone already grieving a hoped-for child, that physical reality can intensify the sense of loss.
De Graaff did not want to do IVF unless there was no other option. Eventually, she did. That shift is familiar to many people in fertility care: boundaries that once felt firm can move over time as hope narrows and decisions become more urgent.
There is no single right place to draw that line. Her experience suggests that personal limits can change during treatment, and that each person has to decide for themselves what they can and cannot take on. That includes the physical burden, the emotional burden, and the meaning attached to continuing or stopping.
She described fertility treatment as physically hard, but mentally even harder. “A roller coaster” is a common phrase for a reason. The appointments themselves can be brief and highly medical, while the emotional consequences spill into every part of life between visits.
One of the clearest lessons from de Graaff’s experience is that fertility care should not focus only on the body. She accepted support from a social worker through the hospital because she felt she needed help during the process. That support mattered because the medical side of treatment did not address the full reality of what she was living through.
Short appointments can leave little room for fear, grief, guilt, or the exhaustion of repeated disappointment. Yet those feelings may be the hardest part of treatment. De Graaff believes hospitals should offer mental support routinely to everyone undergoing fertility treatment, not as an afterthought but as part of care.
For patients, that is a useful reminder: needing emotional support does not mean you are coping badly. It means fertility treatment affects more than hormones, eggs, and procedures. It affects relationships, work, self-image, and the way a person imagines the future.
Secondary infertility can be especially lonely inside a relationship. Relinde said her husband supported her through treatment, but he did not experience the grief in the same way. Although they had once imagined a big family, after one child, he felt that one child was enough for him.
That difference left her feeling alone, even within a supportive family. It also highlights a difficult truth: partners do not always want the same thing with the same intensity, and they do not always process loss on the same timeline. Expecting identical feelings can create more pain.
A more realistic goal is communication. Relinde’s advice is not to demand that a partner feel exactly what you feel, but to say clearly what support you need. Grief belongs to the person experiencing it. Others can stand beside it, but they cannot be required to inhabit it in the same way.
Secondary infertility does not unfold in a vacuum. It is shaped by social expectations about what a family should look like and what a woman’s life is supposed to become. Relinde has called these expectations “invisible boxes”: the private family image people build for themselves, and the public assumptions placed on women by society.
Those assumptions can sting in everyday conversation. People ask why someone does not have children, or when the next child is coming, without realising how loaded those questions can be. Relinde’s point is simple: open questions are kinder than assumptions. They give someone the choice to share or not share.
That matters not only for people facing infertility, but for anyone whose life does not fit a traditional script. The pressure to be a married mother with several children can make fertility struggles feel like a personal failure, when in reality they are often a painful collision between biology, hope, and social expectation.
What helped: writing, talking, and giving grief a place to go
Relinde began writing The Life I Have during the COVID period as a fictional novel. After being diagnosed with early menopause and realizing she could not have a second child, she decided to weave her own experience into the book. The result was not a therapy manual, but the act of writing itself became a way to process what had happened.
For her, art was healing. Publication also changed the meaning of the experience. Hearing from women who felt recognised in the story turned part of her grief into something useful and connecting rather than purely private.
The broader lesson is not that everyone should write a novel. It is that grief needs expression. Relinde recommends finding some form that fits:
The method matters less than the fact of expression. When grief is denied, it can become more isolating. When it is given language, it may begin to feel more bearable.
The first step may be allowing yourself to call it what it is: grief. Not ingratitude. Not failure. Not overreaction. Grief. That shift can be important for people who have spent months or years minimizing their own pain because they believe they should be thankful and therefore silent.
It may also help to think in two tracks at once. If another child is still possible, hope does not have to be abandoned. Relinde puts it plainly: only one egg and one sperm are needed to create a life.
If another child is no longer possible, the task becomes different. Then the work is not to force quick acceptance, but to let the loss be real enough to process. In de Graaff’s account, acceptance came gradually rather than all at once. It comes not from pretending the pain was small, but from giving it attention.
Secondary infertility can leave parents feeling invisible precisely because they already have a child. But the existence of one child does not erase the loss of another hoped-for child, or the grief of a family’s future that never arrived. De Graaff’s story offers a more honest framework: love and grief can exist together, and neither cancels the other.
There is no easy version of this experience. It can involve treatment, uncertainty, strain within a relationship, guilt, and the slow process of reshaping a life that looks different from the one once imagined. But there is also relief in naming the loss, asking for support, and refusing to treat this grief as something that does not count. For many parents, that may be the first step toward carrying it more lightly.
Secondary infertility deserves space because the grief is real. Losing the possibility of a second child can be deeply painful, even when you already have one child. That pain is often dismissed with comments about being grateful, which can make people feel even more alone. Putting this experience into a novel created room for that grief and helped others feel recognised.
Many people with secondary infertility are afraid of being seen as ungrateful or as complaining because they already have one child. That makes it harder to speak openly. The grief is also widely misunderstood, including by people who assume it is somehow less valid than primary infertility. It is not helpful to compare the two. Secondary infertility and primary infertility involve different challenges, and grief should not be ranked.
It can feel like being torn between love for the child you have and sadness for the child who is not there. That tension can be very isolating. Ordinary family moments such as birthdays, school events, and milestones can become painful reminders that these experiences may not happen again with another child, especially when your family feels incomplete.
It can feel as if your body is abandoning you and no longer working as it should. After giving birth at 31, then having a miscarriage and not becoming pregnant again, the final ICSI cycle at 37 ended with no eggs to retrieve. Blood hormone levels were equivalent to those of a 55-year-old woman. That can create the shocking feeling of suddenly having an old body that does not feel like your own. The grief is not only for another child, but also for the large family you once imagined.
Invisible boxes are the family pictures people carry in their own minds and the expectations society places on women. There is still strong pressure to follow a certain path: be partnered, get married, have children. Women are often asked when they will have children, or when the next child is coming, as if these things are simple and guaranteed. Those assumptions can be painful. Open questions are kinder than assumptions.
There is still a taboo around fertility, even in The Netherlands. Many people do not feel able to tell colleagues or others that they are going through treatment, and that silence adds to the burden. During research for the book, it became clear that 1 in 10 couples have trouble having a second child. Even when some of those couples eventually do have a second child, they still go through uncertainty and emotional struggle. Talking about it helps people feel less alone.
Yes. Writing can be a powerful way to heal. Turning the experience into fiction helped give shape to the grief, and hearing from women who felt seen in the story made that grief feel transformed into something meaningful. The book is a novel, not a therapy book, but it can still help readers feel recognized.
Partners do not always grieve in the same way or with the same intensity. A couple may once have imagined a big family, but one partner may later feel that one child is enough while the other continues to long strongly for another. That difference can make the grieving partner feel very alone, even in a supportive relationship. Continuing to talk openly with each other matters.
These options can come with very personal boundaries. Wanting a child of the two of you, or possibly a foster child, is a valid feeling. In The Netherlands, adoption is a major process. It is not easy to adopt a Dutch child, and adoption is more intercontinental, which may not feel right, especially in light of recent problems. Caring for children who are in trouble may still feel like a meaningful option.
Acceptance is usually gradual, not immediate. Giving grief attention and processing it can make it lighter, but that does not mean it disappears completely. It can remain like a small scar. Seeing a big family may still bring up the feeling that you would have wanted that too. Acceptance means learning to live with that reality, not pretending it never hurt.
Yes, if support is available and you feel you need it. Fertility treatment can be physically hard, but mentally it can be even harder. It can feel like a roller coaster. Mental support should be offered routinely in hospitals, because medical appointments are often short and focused mainly on the physical side of treatment.
If having a second child is still possible, do not lose hope. Only one egg and one sperm are needed to create a life. Keep talking to your partner and to trusted friends, family, or others who understand. If having a second child is no longer possible, know that you are not alone. More people share this experience than you may realise. Talk about what you are going through, consider speaking with a psychologist or someone else who can help, and find a form of expression such as writing, art, or journaling. Never feel guilty for your grief, and do not deny what you feel.
