Hope strong: Navigating the emotions of your fertility journey: overcome the pain and thrive with
hope
By Christina Oberon
‘Hope Strong’ lives up to its title. The author has honestly shared her own fertility story amongst the
chapters that cover the whole range of emotions experienced whilst on this rollercoaster journey.
Her faith was very important to her during this time, and she provides references to psalms and
passages from the bible that help to bring clarity to these different feelings. I’m not a religious
person but I found the inclusion of these age-old beliefs comforting, despite my own infertility
journey ending many years ago.
There are twenty-two short chapters – who knew there were that many feelings associated with
infertility! Who recognises ‘alone’, ‘denial’, ‘envy’, ‘guilt’, ‘loss’ and ‘shame’ to name a few? You may
be thinking it’ll be depressing reading about the emotions you’re living with every day, you want to
get away from them, but Christina has written in such a warm, caring and understanding manner;
each chapter envelopes you in reassurance that how you are feeling is so very normal.
Because the author had her own journey of course she completely understands, and what I really liked about
‘Hope Strong’ is that she has been able to put her experience into words that will bring comfort to
the reader. She’s very aware of how fragile someone is when dealing with infertility, and this shows
from one chapter to the next. This isn’t always easy to do as words can end up being stilted or worse
condescending, but that definitely isn’t the case with ‘Hope Strong’.
There is so much useful information that it encourages the reader to really think about their own
feelings and journey, so there are also blank pages to make notes or to journal.
I definitely recommend this wonderful book for anyone who is struggling to understand why they
are feeling the emotions commonly associated with infertility – it doesn’t replace a counsellor,
therapist or coach, but it’s handy to have close to hand when you’re struggling at 3 am in the
morning.
