Published for National Infertility Awareness Week 2026 | #MoreThan
You are still the person you were before fertility treatment entered your life. That part of you did not go anywhere. National Infertility Awareness Week 2026 opens that conversation.
When you are in active fertility treatment, the appointments, the protocols, the cycle updates, and the results can take up so much space that everything else starts to feel secondary. Your identity begins to organize itself around the diagnosis. Around what is happening medically. Around the waiting. And the version of you that existed before fertility treatment, the one with a full life, specific preferences, and a particular way of moving through the world, can start to feel like someone you have temporarily set aside.
So before we go any further, I want to ask you something.
Who were you before you knew you were struggling with infertility?
Think about the parts of you that showed up without effort. The way you laughed with your friends. What you wore when you wanted to feel like yourself, the music that took you to a different time and place. The small, familiar moments that had nothing to do with an appointment or an update. The version of you that existed completely outside of treatment.
That person is you; that version of you did not leave when the diagnosis arrived.
Infertility is a medical condition you are navigating. It is one part of your story. The person going through IVF, IUI, egg freezing, or exploring third-party reproduction options like donor conception or gestational surrogacy is also the same person who has a favorite restaurant, a friendship that makes them feel seen, a hobby they keep meaning to get back to, and a laugh that is unique to them.
RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association built the 2026 NIAW theme, More Than, around exactly this. More than one in six. More than a diagnosis. More than a narrow version of who navigates infertility and what that experience looks like across race, identity, family structure, and path to parenthood.
For those of us working in reproductive mental health and fertility counseling, More Than also means: you are more than your treatment history. More than your last result. More than the version of yourself that fertility treatment sees on paper.
What do you do that makes you who you are? What do you love, need, and reach for that existed before this diagnosis and still exists now? What parts of yourself have you been waiting to return to once this is behind you?
Those parts of you do not have to wait. They are available to you right now. And reconnecting with them, intentionally and without guilt, is one of the most grounding things you can do for yourself while navigating fertility treatment.
In practice, More Than looks like remembering that your identity is larger than your journey. Giving yourself permission to be a full person in the middle of something hard. Choosing, even in small ways, to invest in the version of yourself that exists beyond the diagnosis.
You were someone before your infertility diagnosis or before beginning fertility treatments. Infertility does not erase who you are. The diagnosis adds to your story, but it does not replace the person who was already there. You are changed by the experience, but you are still fundamentally yourself.
Dr. Wiyatta Fahnbulleh is a reproductive psychologist licensed in California and Maryland who provides intended parent consultations, donor and gestational carrier evaluations, reproductive mental health services, and infertility counseling.
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