What kickstarted my novel after sitting with the idea for 6 years.

TW: Infertility & Pregnancy Loss

In June of 2016, I experienced one of the happiest months of my life. It was a fairytale, I was actually doing it, I was getting married to the Frenchman, the whirlwind romance that I had met only eight months earlier, with whom I didn't even speak the same language.

In August of 2016, I experienced one of the most shocking months of my life. At 21 years old, I was diagnosed with "Unexplained Infertility." It wasn't possible, it couldn't be. I had been told throughout my teenage years, that if you just look at a boy, you'll get pregnant, that's how fertile you are. Well, for me everything on paper suggested that a little bundle of joy should in theory be on its way, for the Franco-American newlyweds, 'twas not the case.

Fast forward to October 2022, we've now moved internationally, undergone multiple fertility treatments, been blessed with one miracle IVF son, who was delivered healthily and happily after six years of unexplainable health mysteries. We now tempt chance once more, on the venture to give our son a sibling.

One October Monday, in late morning, I received the call. Our treatment had failed and I was going to lose the baby that had been snuggling into its new home for only a mere two weeks. Devastated by the news, even though I had an inkling of the outcome hanging over my head for the past four days. Nothing was at all like the last time, when I went on to have a successful pregnancy with my son. I grieved but was still determined to make us a family of four so I jumped back into another treatment, tweaking protocol slightly, adding a few more needles to boot.

The day was a Monday in early January, another phone call when upon answering it, and hearing the tone of the nurse's voice on the other end, I knew the outcome. Yet another failed treatment in a "near perfect scenario." phrases like "We just don't understand, you should be pregnant with triplets by now..." are thrown around at will.

I fell into a most dire state of mind, I was drowning in the loss of control over what my life was to look like. Everyone talking around me, about what my future steps would be like, but no one speaking to me. I decided it was time for a break, financially, emotionally, and physically, it was needed.

I need something that the only guarantor is myself.

The seed for the idea had been planted years prior when I experienced an ectopic pregnancy that ended in a rupture and emergency surgery. How I cried over the unrealized hopes and dreams I had laid out in my mind for my little family in the south of France. I mourned the loss of little ones whose names had been written down in journals since I was fourteen years old. "I'm going to write a novel, no...I am going to write my novel." I am going to give myself a year, and I am going to write a story and publish it all on my own.

I had read a quote during that time that said, "You become a mother in your heart, long before you hold your baby in your arms."

I had known at that moment, years before I ever heard my son's first cry, that I was a mother. I knew, even then, that I would sacrifice everything to one day hold my child in my arms. I would undergo any treatment, surgery, needles, hormones, the works, to grow our family.

It was that feeling that seeded the question in my mind, "If a mother would sacrifice anything for her child, how much would a child sacrifice for a parent?"

It started as an image of a girl, that then became Catherine, who then became The Chemist's Daughter. A brilliant protagonist whose love for her father ran deeper than any guilt or sacrifice she would have to save him.

For a long time, I said to myself that I wrote the novel for the reason that I needed something that had absolutely nothing to do with infertility because I was sick of it consuming my life. It took me sitting here polishing off the final draft to realize, that the entire experience rather, had everything to do with how much I was willing to continue on, toward a child who was not yet in my arms.