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Sharing My Story
In Turning Fertile, you share your difficult journey through infertility and medical complications as you learned to listen to your body and ultimately became a mother. What made you decide to tell your infertility journey as a memoir?
I chose to write Turning Fertile as a memoir because infertility often happens in silence. During my own journey, I searched for stories that felt honest, vulnerable, and unfiltered — stories that didn’t just describe medical procedures, but the emotional weight behind them. I couldn’t find many.
I realized that if I wanted a book that spoke to the loneliness, the fear, the hope, and the small victories that shape this experience, I would have to write it myself.
Sharing my story became a way to reclaim my voice after years of feeling like my body was being spoken for by test results, scans, and protocols. I wanted women to see themselves in a narrative that doesn’t shy away from the difficult parts, but still finds strength and meaning in them.
How did you decide how much of the medical experience to share?
I included the medical details that shaped my emotional reality — not every number or chart, but the moments that changed how I understood my body.
Repeated IUIs, the unexpected IVF cycle, ovarian hyperstimulation, surgery, and the tubal pregnancy were not just medical events; they were turning points in my life. Each one carried fear, confusion, and hope, and leaving them out would have made the story incomplete.
My goal was to strike a balance: enough detail for readers to understand the physical intensity of infertility treatments, but not so much that the memoir felt like a medical textbook. I wanted readers to feel what I felt — the waiting rooms, the injections, the ultrasounds — without overwhelming them.
Who did you imagine speaking to in the “Dear Reader” passages?
Whenever I wrote “Dear Reader,” I imagined someone sitting across from me who was going through the same emotional storm — someone exhausted, scared, hopeful, and unsure of what tomorrow might bring.
I pictured a woman who had just received a difficult test result, or who was silently grieving a failed cycle, or who was trying to stay strong for her partner while feeling fragile inside.
Those passages were my way of reaching out and saying: You are not alone. I see you. I’ve been where you are.
They became the emotional heartbeat of the book — a conversation between two people who may never meet, but share a deeply human experience.
What do you hope partners, family members, and friends will learn from your experiences?
I hope they learn that infertility is not just a medical condition — it is an emotional landscape that affects every part of a person’s life.
Partners may see the procedures and medications, but they don’t always see the quiet moments of grief, the self‑doubt, or the fear of disappointing the people they love. Family members and friends may offer advice or encouragement, but sometimes what people need most is simply understanding and patience.
I hope my story helps loved ones recognize that support is not about fixing anything — it’s about showing up, listening without judgment, and respecting the emotional complexity of the journey.
If this memoir teaches anything, I hope it teaches compassion.
Author Links: GoodReads | Instagram | Amazon
Sonali carried hers like a locked diary. Then, one ordinary morning, her seven-year-old son lifted a violin to his chin, drew a single trembling note into the air — and something she had kept closed for years finally cracked open.
Turning Fertile is the story of the woman behind that note.
A girl whose ambition burned so brightly she stopped hearing her own body. A diagnosis that named years of quiet signs she’d ignored. And then the long, unmapped country of waiting — where time is no longer measured in days, but in heartbeats, held breaths, and prayers whispered in bathroom silence.
This is a book about hope that refuses to die. About the question every woman has asked in the quiet of a waiting room — why not me? — and the slow, hard-won discovery that the question itself is a form of love.
Written as an intimate conversation — Dear Reader, yes, you — it reaches straight to the woman sitting somewhere right now with her own version of that silence, and tells her the one thing she most needs to hear.
This book will not be gentle with the truth. But it will be gentle with you.
Turning Fertile: The hardest roads lead to the most extraordinary arrivals
Sonali Sheetal Appikonda’s Turning Fertile is an intimate memoir about infertility, marriage, and learning to listen to a body she once treated as an obstacle to ambition. The story begins with her seven-year-old son performing at a violin recital, then circles back to her teenage years, when irregular cycles, facial hair, PCOS, and thyroid problems first entered her life. From there, Appikonda traces a demanding path through repeated IUIs, an unplanned IVF cycle, ovarian hyperstimulation, surgery, an excruciating tubal pregnancy, and finally the birth of her son. Framing the memoir with the recital gives the journey a satisfying shape: the child onstage is both the ending readers already know and the reason the story can finally be told.
What makes the book memorable is its attention to the ordinary details surrounding medical ordeals. A pharmacist understands a failed attempt when the husband returns for sanitary pads. A nurse protects Appikonda’s privacy after an uncomfortable scan. A handmade picture bought on a cold evening becomes a symbol of the life she and her husband nearly forgot to enjoy. Her husband is especially important to the book, not as a faultless rescuer but as the person who cooks after surgery, sits through appointments, carries hope when she can’t, and grieves privately when he thinks no one is watching. Their marriage gives the memoir its emotional center, while the costs, invasive procedures, workplace pressures, and family questions show how thoroughly infertility can occupy a couple’s life.
Appikonda writes as though she’s speaking across a table to someone living through a similar experience. The recurring “Dear Reader” passages make that intention explicit, blending memoir with reassurance and plain-language explanations of fertility treatments. Concrete numbers, including twenty-one retrieved eggs, twelve IUI cycles, and four brief days of pregnancy, keep the physical and emotional stakes from becoming abstract. Her repeated images of doors, waiting rooms, seasons, stitches, and bodily “messages” give the book a meditative quality. Some phrases and reflections recur often enough to slow the narrative, and the medical explanations occasionally interrupt a tense scene, but that repetition also mimics the exhausting cycle of hoping, waiting, and beginning again. The glossary at the end reinforces the book’s role as a companion as much as a personal history.
The readers most likely to appreciate Turning Fertile are people navigating infertility, PCOS, assisted reproduction, pregnancy loss, or the strain these experiences can place on a relationship. Their partners and close family members may find it equally valuable because the book shows forms of grief and support that patients don’t always voice. It will also speak to readers drawn to candid accounts of Indian family life, career ambition, migration, medicine, and marriage. Appikonda’s successful pregnancy gives her story its conclusion, but the book’s deeper subject is the life that continues during the waiting: work, love, travel, disappointment, and the gradual recovery of a self larger than any diagnosis.
Pages: 142 | ASIN : B0HFCD2YSW
Strong and Loving Connection
The Gift of Parenthood is a heartfelt and personal memoir that takes readers on an emotional journey from infertility struggles to the joys and challenges of open adoption. Why was this an important book for you to write?
It was important to share my parenthood journey. There is a stigma surrounding infertility and adoption, and society tends to shy away from these topics. By shedding light with a very personal experience, I hope to enlighten and inspire others.
What were some ideas that were important for you to share in this book?
Infertility is one of the most challenging things I’ve ever gone through. Being unable to have a child of your own can be devastating, but with time husband and I were able to heal and consider adoption.
Adoption has granted us the gift of parenthood and a bonus family. It’s been an unbelievable blessing for both sides.
What is a common misconception you feel people have about open adoptions?
That open adoption is unhealthy… our experience has been far from that. We put in the work to build a strong and loving connection with my son’s birth family and are respectful of each other’s needs.
What was the most challenging part of writing your memoir, and what was the most rewarding?
At first, I couldn’t figure out how to get the word out while respecting my teenage son’s wishes for privacy. But, he was comfortable with me writing under a pen name and even suggested using my phone’s memoji as my picture.
The actual writing part came naturally. Hearing how our story has touched others has been the most rewarding part.
Author Links: GoodReads | Facebook | Website | Amazon
Emaline Ashe’s memoir shares an intimate look into her emotional journey to become a mom. A few years into their marriage, she and her husband Liam were young, healthy, and ready to have several kids.
Life had different plans in store for them when unexplained infertility hit like a ton of bricks. After many years of medical treatments, Emaline and Liam embarked on an alternate path to become parents. This new path led to an unexpected open adoption and a bonus family.
Emaline’s true story is one of hope, loss, and resilience. It captures the devastation of infertility and shows just how life-changing adoption can be for all involved.
Energy Medicine: A Collective Approach
Energy Medicine – A Collective Approach: This book provides a consolidated approach to healing the body on a mental, emotional and physical level. It includes five healing systems: Neo-light healing, Reiki, Chakra healing, Color healing, Crystal healing. When combining all five systems, one is opened up to a powerful energy force and healing occurs in the metaphysical, spiritual and physical dimensions. This book is set out in a way that allows one to also access a collective healing approach to specific weaknesses or disorders in the body. It contain an A-Z list of diseases/ailments, giving a collective healing approach for each. This book provides the metaphysical benefits of crystals, listed in alphabetical order for easy reference. Neo-light is a new healing system and, to date, information on this energy healing technique can only be found in this book. It describes how to use the healing technique, the Neo-light symbols and how to create a Neo-light healing box. Reiki is usually passed on from teacher to student, which hampers those who are unable to reach out to a Reiki master. Whilst not discrediting Master to Student attunements, this book offers the gift of self-attunement to all. ‘Hon Sha Ze Sho Nen’ removes time and distance, and the attunement has been channeled into the script. It describes how to perform Reiki, and has pictures of the hand positions. Learn how to create healing boxes for healing, manifestation, weight loss, fertility, abundance and much more.
