In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Rebecca N. Thompson: a family medicine and public health physician specializing in women’s and children’s health, and the author of Held Together, a deeply personal and collaborative memoir that weaves her own fertility and pregnancy complications with the stories of 21 other women navigating infertility, loss, and complex paths to building families. Becca brings a rare dual perspective to this conversation: she has lived this journey as both a physician and a patient, surviving life-threatening pregnancy complications even as she was training to care for others.
Together, we explore the raw and often unspoken emotional terrain of the fertility journey, including the shame, isolation, and identity shifts that so many of my patients experience. We talk about how storytelling and community can be profoundly healing, why healers need healing too, and how grief and hope can coexist on the path to building the family you dream of, even when that path looks nothing like you planned.
In this episode, we cover:
- How Dr. Thompson’s own string of pregnancy losses shaped her both as a patient and as a physician
- Why sharing personal stories about infertility and loss is one of the most powerful antidotes to shame and isolation
- How grief and hope can coexist, and why Held Together is ultimately an empowering book
- The way infertility reshapes identity, and how women can reclaim a sense of power and agency during reproductive challenges
- What it means to “heal the healer”
- How non-traditional paths to parenthood (adoption, surrogacy, fostering, and more) expand and redefine what family truly means
- Practical guidance on finding support: from therapy and journaling to community groups and simply knowing when it’s okay to sit with uncertainty
Resources:
- Dr. Rebecca N. Thompson’s website (book orders, signed copies, audiobook samples, endorsements): RebeccaNThompson.com
- Held Together: available on Amazon or purchase one that supports Postpartim Support International (PSI).
- Postpartum Support International: postpartum.net
