Companioning for fertility

The road of infertility can be vulnerable, disorienting, and lonely.

It stretches you in ways you never imagined.
It can leave you hopeful one moment and heartbroken the next.
It can surface deep questions about your body, your future, identity, and worth.
Whether you’ve been trying to conceive for months or years; whether you’re undergoing treatment or holding space for other options; whether you're exploring different paths to parenting, or grappling with a possible end of the road: fertility can be a tender and diffuclt time.

You don’t have to walk it alone.

I support women who are navigating the emotional, spiritual, and physical journey of trying to conceive—whether that journey is just beginning or has already been long and storied.

Depending on your needs, support may look like:

  • A safe and confidential space to talk through your experiences, fears, and longings relating to motherhood

  • Gentle care for those experiencing infertility, secondary infertility, or unexplained delays

  • A companion to walk with you through the experience the two-week waits, negative tests, or failed cycles

  • Holding space for the grief that can accompany each cycle, especially after loss

  • A place to wrestle with questions of faith, trust, timing, or anger

  • Support discerning when or how to pursue medical intervention, alternative paths to parenthood, or pauses in trying

  • Support in navigating envy, isolation, or sadness in the face of others’ pregnancies

  • Processing medical diagnoses that may impact your fertility

  • A place to process questions of calling, purpose, or identity amid long seasons of waiting

  • Wrestling with motherhood as an expansive calling that may or may not include pregnancy

There is room here for your whole story—your hope, your heartbreak, your questions, your strength.

Person hiking on a forest trail surrounded by dense green trees and leaves.

How do I know if this is right for me?

Companioning for fertility may be right for you if you’re longing for a space where you don't have to explain or hold it all together.

  • You may just be starting to reach out for medical support, considering fertility treatment like IUI or IVF, or have experienced many months or years of ART (artificial reproductive technology) treatment.

  • You might be waiting, grieving, questioning, or still trying to make sense of what’s next after failed cycles.

  • You may be deciding whether you can afford—financially or emotionally—to go through treatment again.

This season often brings more than just medical decisions. It can stir deeper questions about identity, control, trust, meaning, and what it means to hope when nothing is guaranteed.

Fertility challenges are rarely just clinical—they’re emotional, spiritual, and relational. They ask a lot of you, often in silence or isolation.

This is where companioning can help.

What does your approach look like?

I support people on fertility journeys through two main approaches: companioning and mind-body practice.

Companioning means I’m here to walk alongside you—not direct, fix, or analyze your feeings. This approach recognizes that while you have the inner strength to navigate the challenges of fertility, no one is meant to do it alone. Companioning respects both your strength and capacity to move through grief and tough decisions in your own way, and the very real need for support along the way.

I also bring in mind-body practices because fertility often creates a disconnect from the body after prolonged disappointment, medicalization, and grief. We know that our bodies hold on to the stories and feelings we’re not able to process (“the body keeps the score”). I find that that’s especially true for those on fertility journeys, for whom grief is often more complex, layered, and abstract than for those who are able to mourn a loss that feels more tangible.

Compassionately reconnecting the mind and body through tools like somatic experiencing and mind body awareness can help you move through long-held emotions, reconnect you to your own inner resources, and rediscover a deep trust and intimate relationship with yourself. Bringing in tools like breathwork, polyvagal-informed practices, and Tension and Trauma Releasing Exercises, can go one step further in releasing the stress and tension that words aren’t always able to reach.

 FAQs

  • I use a number of tools for supporting women on a fertility journey, and adust my approach with each person depending on your unique background, what you’re struggling with, and where you need support. Examples of tooling I’ve trained in and use for those walking the road of fertility include:

    • Solutions-Focused Counseling to help clarify what’s most pressing right now, identify what’s already helping (even in small ways), and explore practical next steps that feel manageable. This approach focuses on building forward momentum without ignoring the weight of your experiences.

    • Mindful body awareness and body scanning to help you reconnect with your body after the deep disconnection that can be brought on by disappointment, medicalization, and grief. These tools can be especially helpful when you're navigating disconnect, dissociation, loss of trust in the body, or psychosomatic pain.

    • Spiritual companioning and chaplaincy-informed presence. I draw from my training as a perinatal chaplain to provide nonjudgmental, compassionate space for spiritual questions, faith shifts, and meaning-making—regardless of your belief system.

    • Breath exercises and grounding techniques for coping with grief, disconnect, and difficult feelings. I teach tools in-session and send resources with you so you can continue the journey at home.

    • Polyvagal-Informed Practices like humming and co-regulation exercises to teach you to map your nervous system states and relate to your body with a new sense of groundedness and safety.

    • Narrative practices that support you in exploring the meaning you’re making from your experience, identifying stories that no longer serve you, and reclaiming agency in how you understand and carry what has happened.

    • Holistic Pelvic Care as taught by Tami Lynn Kent, with a focus on (re)connecting to the body and using breathwork to release shame, grief, and areas of stuckness. The focus here is not on treating a physical condition relating to your fertility, but on helping you process and release emotion held in your body in relation to your journey.

    • Therapeutic art techniques to process experiences with the creative, intuitive mind.

  • A perinatal chaplain is one part of a care team during a fertility journey. Where your reproductive endocrinologist or doctor supports you with the medical aspects of fertility, a perinatal chaplain supports you with the spiritual and emotional aspects of the journey.

    Let’s take a look at some of the other people you may have on your care team and how a perinatal chaplain differs.

    A therapist is a trained and licensed mental health professional who supports you with your mental health and emotional wellbeing. They may use tools like talk therapy, CBT, or medication to support you.

    A pastor or clergy person is a church leader who shepherds a congregation and can provide pastoral care to all people throughout the life cycle. They are likely ordained by a specific denomination.

    A perinatal chaplain is a spiritual and emotional companion who provides pastoral care specifically for the perinatal period. They may or may not be ordained, and may use tools like pastoral care, spiritual direction, grounding techniques, birth art, or birth story medicine to support you.

  • Spiritual care can include and encompass religious faith, but it stretches to touch all areas of our lives. Our spiritual life includes not only our beliefs about God, but also our understandings of how we fit into the world; our questions about our life and purpose; the stories we tell about our lives and what matters; and our morals and values. Spiritual care helps process these questions in a non-judgmental and supportive setting.

    I have been trained to provide spiritual support in both Christian and interfaith settings. My 1:1 pastoral care sessions can be offered through a faith-informed lens depending on your background and preference. My other offerings are not religiously-based.

    As a perinatal chaplain, I am above all privileged to walk alongside you in your spiritual journey. My role is to provide you with support within the framework of your own beliefs and tradition.

    If you are looking for a secular fertility chaplain or miscarriage doula, please feel free to reach out; I would be very happy to refer you to someone who might be the right fit for you.

  • Trusting someone and letting them into your journey is vulnerable, and finding the right fit is so important. For this reason, I offer a free 30-minute connection call to anyone considering me for companioning in fertility. In that call, we’ll discuss your journey so far, what you’re hoping to get out of working together, and areas where you’re currently experiencing grief, longing for hope, and feeling stuck or lonely.

    If choosing to continue with me, we’ll start with a pack of sessions (typically 3 or 6, though you always have the option to continue with more sessions after). In each session, we’ll talk about something that’s recently been coming up for you and use one the tools mentioned above to approach it with support and grace. Depending on your comfort level and preferences, that may include guided visualization, therapeutic art techniques, or story work. I often provide a new tool, short reading, or exercise to take home and try out on your own, as well.

    I meet with clients every other week to start. After finishing a pack of 3 or 6 sessions, most clients choose to continue to see me monthly.

    If you’re curious about working together and would like to see if there’s a fit, schedule a connection call below.

See if there’s a fit.

Fertility is incredibly personal, and feeling safe with the right person is so important.

I offer a free, thirty-minute connection call to anyone considering companion care for fertility. You can share the basics of your story and the care you’re hoping to receive, and ask me anything you like. Together, we’ll see if my approach is the right fit for you.