{"id":67681,"date":"2026-03-13T09:58:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-13T13:58:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resiliencyclinic.com\/?p=67681"},"modified":"2026-03-17T09:59:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T13:59:26","slug":"essayer-de-concevoir-canada-grief","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/resiliencyclinic.com\/fr\/essayer-de-concevoir-canada-grief\/","title":{"rendered":"Quand essayer de concevoir devient un processus de deuil"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you’re trying to conceive and finding that the emotional weight of it is quietly taking over every area of your life including your focus, your relationships, your sense of yourself, this post is for you. Registered Clinical Psychologist and Clinic founder, Michelle Sorensen<\/a>, shares insights for women at every stage of a fertility journey.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m Michelle Sorensen, a registered clinical psychologist and the founder of Resiliency Clinic. We work with women in Ottawa in person and with women across Ontario and Quebec virtually. Over the years, I’ve heard from women at every stage of a fertility journey whether it be from some a few months in, some years deep, or some processing pregnancy loss. What I notice, almost every time, is how much has been building before they finally reach out. Most already know they need support. They’re anxious, depleted, grieving and they just haven’t had a place to put it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Canada, roughly 1 in 6 women trying to conceive experience infertility, according to the Canadian Fertility and Andrology Society<\/a> \u2014 and that number has been climbing alongside the trend of delayed childbearing.\u00b9 What gets far less attention is the psychological toll: research consistently shows that between 25% and 60% of people going through infertility experience clinically significant anxiety or depression.\u00b2 Many are dealing with both \u2014 and research has compared that emotional weight to the toll of other serious health diagnoses.\u00b3<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why So Many Women Trying To Conceive Don’t Ask for Help<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

If you haven’t reached out for support yet, that makes sense. Most women I work with waited longer than they needed to, and the reasons are almost always the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The calendar is already overwhelming. <\/strong>Between monitoring appointments, bloodwork, ultrasounds and procedures, the idea of adding one more thing, even something helpful, can feel like too much. For women across Ontario and Quebec, virtual therapy removes a lot of that friction. You don’t have to be in Ottawa, and you don’t have to leave the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The “just relax” comments shut things down. <\/strong>When someone says “try not to stress” or “it’ll happen when you stop thinking about it,” the message most women receive is that others can’t handle the real weight of what they’re going through. So they stop sharing it. They get quieter. And the pain gets heavier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nobody calls it, or acknowledges it, as grief. <\/strong>So women keep moving forward, to the next cycle, the next appointment, the next decision, without ever stopping to name what’s actually being lost along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trying to Conceive Is a Grief Process <\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

One of the most clinically useful things we offer is a way to name what’s happening: this is grief.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s true whether you\u2019ve had a confirmed pregnancy loss or not. Every cycle that doesn\u2019t result in a pregnancy is a loss. Every negative test. Every month that passes. The pregnancy announcements, the baby shower invitations, the casual \u201cso when are you having kids?\u201d these land differently when you\u2019re in this. The losses accumulate in real time, without a clear endpoint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes this particularly hard is that the fertility process rarely gives you room to feel any of it. There’s always a next step: the next cycle, the next appointment, the next decision. Before you’ve had a chance to absorb what just happened, your body is already on to the next thing. Grief needs time and stillness, and fertility treatment offers very little of either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Grief also doesn’t move in a straight line. Denial, sadness, anger, bargaining: women trying to conceive can cycle through all of these in the span of a single week, then start again. When that emotional pain goes unprocessed for long enough, it tends to resurface later. Sometimes in a postpartum experience. Sometimes in a relationship. Sometimes in how someone sees themselves years down the road.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What Women Are Often Carrying Alone<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is rarely one clean emotion. Most women describe something more complex, like grief alongside hope alongside anger alongside shame, sometimes all in the same afternoon. These are the topics that tend to come up in our sessions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Emotionally<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n