Why I'm Writing My Debut Book

When I first sat down to write this book, I had absolutely no intentions of becoming an author. I just needed some sort of medium to express the things I couldn’t say out loud.

At the time, everything just felt so messy and uncertain. I was going through something that completely took over my life,  trying for a baby, and watching month after month go by with no answers, no changes, just more questions and more heartbreak. Infertility, miscarriage… these weren’t things I ever expected to be writing about, never mind living through. But there I was.

And so I started putting it down on paper, not because I had some great plan or because I wanted to turn it into anything, but because I didn’t know what else to do with it all. The grief, the rage, the endless loop of hoping and bracing for disappointment. Writing became a way of holding myself together and to be honest, it gave me a way to let out stuff I’d been bottling up for a very long time. 

Some of the chapters were really hard to write. I’d sit there trying to find the right words for how it actually felt, and sometimes there weren’t any. How do you explain the madness of tracking cervical mucus and waking up at the same time every day to check your temperature, or the way your heart pounds when you see a smiley face on an ovulation test, like it might change your whole life?
My writing speaks on this in a lot of detail. That quiet obsession that takes over when you're trying and trying and nothing is happening. The peeing on sticks before your morning coffee, the Googling, the overthinking, and the looking for signs in everything. It’s not something people talk about much, but if you know, you know.

What I realised as I kept writing was that I wasn’t alone. And if I wasn’t alone, maybe someone else out there needed to hear that too. So that’s why I kept going, not to give advice or answers (God knows I didn’t have them), but to tell the truth. To say, this is what it was like for me, and if you’re going through it too, I get it. Truly.

I hope this book reaches the people who need it. The ones who are in the thick of it right now. The ones who’ve been through it and are still trying to make sense of it. The ones supporting someone quietly from the side-lines.
You’re not overreacting.

You’re not making it up. And you’re not on your own.
Thanks for being here.
Laura 💖