My Dear Daughter,
There is so much that I’m afraid to say in this letter, but I’m going to say it anyway because that’s the relationship I wish we could have had. Open. Honest. Even when it’s hard.
Another holiday season has come and gone while you remained trapped in the Land of What Ifs. I thought I would (once again) spend it grieving your absence but instead the festivities and emotions of the season seem to have bypassed me altogether. ‘Numb’ is the best description for it. Numb to the grief and the stress. Numb to the joy and the hope. The days passed like any other and your father and I entered January without fanfare.
Now it’s 2026. We’re trying to find our footing and prepare ourselves for what life looks like without you. Time changes people and we’re not the same couple who believed starting a family would be easy… an inevitability… the logical next step in our marriage.
The grief of unexplained infertility has altered who we are, how we interpret the world, and what we expect out of life. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, but I also wouldn’t change our story. I believe, and I think your father would agree, that infertility has made us more thoughtful, empathetic people. The harsh reality is our pain and grief is the source of that change. Those who haven’t lived through it can’t understand it. Maybe those individuals gain empathy in other ways… though some other catastrophic, emotional upheaval… but this was ours.
You were a glorious possibility, and I spent much of the last seven years living for that possibility. But I can’t live for it anymore or at least I’m trying not to. I’m taking strides toward a different future and it’s both exciting and terrifying. [Brace yourself because this is where it gets difficult.]
It’s terrifying because I’m finally imagining a different life. A life where I don’t become your mother. A life where I explore my interests, read books, and write Young Adult novels. A life where your father and I live as DINKWADs (double income no kids with a dog) and have money for travel, hobbies, and expensive date nights. I’m wrapping my brain around the potential of this new future and I’m embracing it the same way I embraced the possibility of you in 2019. [Do you see where I’m going with this?]
I know that life doesn’t always work out the way we plan, but your mother is a planner and I usually accomplish the things I set out to do. Unfortunately, there’s a fine line between believing you failed to execute a plan and accepting that you never had any control over it to begin with. That’s the most infuriating part of unexplained infertility and the source of my current fears. If I accept that I don’t have control over my infertility and I didn’t fail at becoming a mother, then I also have to accept that I don’t have control over the alternate future I’m imagining for myself either.
Becoming a novelist was my first dream. You were my second, but I believed that I could have both. I believed I could pursue my dream with you on my knee and demonstrate what it looked like to follow your heart and your passions. I could have it all. I believed I wouldn’t have to choose, but reality is a harsh teacher. Over the years I’ve watched my friends became parents with envy in my heart, and I’ve also felt those friendships slip away as their children consume their lives… their hobbies abandoned, free time depleted, and dreams shelved.
Parenting is hard they tell me. It’s sacrifice, but it’s rewarding.
Money is tight they tell me. It’s stressful, but it’s worth it.
Calendar is crazy they tell me. It’s busy, but it’s temporary.
When I began writing you these letters in April of 2025, I embraced the idea of you and the grief you helped me voice. Reading and writing about the Books I Can’t Recommend to you has also reignited my passion for words and the worlds they create in my mind. The author and novelist I once aspired to become has been clawing her way back into my daydreams and for the first time I’m wondering if fate is actually on my side. I’m wondering if perhaps parenthood is the path down which my personal aspirations would have expired, while I focused on you and yours. [You see now why I was afraid to write this to you?]
What right do I have to continue our correspondence when a part of me… the part that is healing, the part that wants to feel whole and hopeful again in a different future… doesn’t want you to exist in that future? For years I’ve carried the guilt of infertility around with me, and now that I want to set it down the ‘unexplained’ part of unexplained infertility has latched onto me. How can the same diagnosis absolve me of my guilt in one instance and then lay it at my feet in another? I don’t have the answer. I wish I did.
But if I found out tomorrow that I was pregnant I think the weight of that guilt would crush me. The joy expressed by my family and friends would ring hollow and I would immediately begin to grieve my DINKWAD future, filled with books and the fictional worlds I long to create. Where does that leave us? And why do I still feel the urge to write to you? I don’t know those answers either.
There’s a reason why millennials like me are choosing to have fewer kids (or none at all). Every hot button social topic can contribute to the argument, but the crux of it is living a fulfilling life these days is difficult and I’m no longer convinced that I can “have it all.” Not when 90% of the mothers I know today still opt to put raising their children before their own personal dreams and aspirations (or risk condemnation). Maybe I’m not cut out to be a mom after all.
The irony of this letter is that I read a book for you that harkens back to a period of my life that was filled with nothing but hope and anticipation for my future.
*****************
Book #4: Sunrise on the Reaping, By: Suzanne Collins
This book was just published last year on March 18, 2025. Compared to my other selections for you, it’s the most recent of the bunch. It’s a prequel to Collins’s original young adult trilogy: The Hunger Games (published September 14, 2008), Catching Fire (published September 1, 2009), and Mockingjay (published August 24, 2010).
The corresponding movies were released in 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015 – the last book was split into two parts – and it was wonderful. Every part of it… the books, the story, the characters, the screenplay, the actors, the music. I would have relished the chance to share this franchise with you and all the life lessons that went with it.
I read the original series when I was a freshman, sophomore, and junior in college respectively… still figuring things out, trying to determine what my life was going to look like. Compared to the main characters in the series who were literally fighting for their lives in the post-apocalyptic dystopian nation of Panem, my existence at the time was (and arguably still is) a veritable cakewalk. I easily identified with the 16-year-old female main character, Katniss Everdeen, and I rode the emotional roller coaster with her until the bitter end.
Fast forward 16 years, and I pick up Sunrise on the Reaping. Now I know how the main character, Haymitch Abernathy, factors into the main series which is set 24 years in the future. What I don’t know is how he made it to that point… which is the entire point of the prequel. Based on his emotional state at the beginning of The Hunger Games, I knew it wasn’t pleasant but trust me when I say I was not prepared for how much his grief and guilt resonated with me.
The story begins with Haymitch waking up at sunrise on Reaping Day. It also happens to be his 16th birthday. The Reaping takes place on July 4th and has for the last 49 years. During the Reaping, one boy and one girl are selected as tributes for the Hunger Games. They must then fight to the death (each other and 22 other children from 11 other districts) in an arena until one victor remains.
It’s a bleak day to say the least but Haymitch has learned to live every minute in the moment and focus on only the things he can control. He spends the day with his girlfriend, Lenore Dove, and he dreams of a future with her beyond the Hunger Games. [Sound familiar? Books are magical windows into our souls.] Unfortunately, the odds are not in his favor, and he ends up in the 50th Annual Hunger Games, which takes twice as many tributes into the arena that year.
Again, we know that he survives because he assists Katniss 24 years later, but outside of the games themselves the emotional destruction he endures is beyond the pale. I cannot and will not spoil it for you (or for anyone else who reads this open letter to you), but his guilt over that which he could not control eats him alive during those 24 years.
I’ve said before that stories have a way of narrating our lives. Depending on where you are in life (or perhaps when is a more accurate descriptor) they can resonate differently. I collect and re-read books over and over again because of how they make me feel in the moment and how they make me feel after. There’s no telling what I’ll learn from the characters who have set up a permanent residence in my mind and my heart over the years.
Reading Haymitch’s prequel story was emotional and enlightening, but when I closed the book I wasn’t thinking about the Haymitch I met in Sunrise on the Reaping. I was thinking about the Haymitch I first met 16 years ago in The Hunger Games, when I was 18 years old, engrossed in Katniss Everdeen’s plotline and hungry for my own life to begin. Despite everything he experienced, I now know how pivotal his endurance and survival was to Katniss’s story and isn’t that the beauty of prequel after all?
I wonder what impact my lived experience from infertility will have on the characters in my life story… or in my novels. Perhaps these letters are my prequel.
Until next time,
Your Fictional Mother