Letter to My 14-Year-Old Self: The Devastating Diagnosis

Dear Fourteen-Year-Old Elyse,

I'm writing to you on one of the worst days of your young life. You're sitting in that sterile doctor's office, still a child in so many ways, as he delivers what feels like a death sentence with the casual indifference of someone commenting on the weather: "You'll never be able to have children."

The words hit you like a physical blow. Your chest tightens. Your eyes fill with tears you're too shocked to shed. The room spins slightly as you try to process what this means for the future you've already imagined—the one where you're surrounded by children who call you Mom, where you get to love someone the way you love the neighborhood kids you babysit.

I see you sitting there, trying to be brave, trying to understand medical terms that feel too big and too final. PCOS. Polycystic ovarian syndrome. The words sound foreign and frightening, like a foreign language designed to exclude you from the club of women who get to grow families in their bodies.

I need you to hear this: She was wrong.

Devastatingly, life-altering, completely wrong.

I'm writing to you from thirty-five years in the future, where I'm watching your daughter—yes, YOUR daughter—get ready to graduate high school. Where your son—yes, YOUR son—is finishing his sophomore year. Where the impossible has not only become possible but has become the most beautiful reality of your life.

But I know you can't possibly believe that right now. How could you? An authority figure in a white coat has just told you that your body—the same body you've been taught to criticize and control—has failed at something you haven't even tried yet. It feels like another confirmation that you're broken, that the messages you've been receiving about being "too much" extend even to your most fundamental desires.

Here's what that doctor didn't tell you, what he couldn't have known in 1990 when our understanding of PCOS was still so limited:

PCOS doesn't equal infertility. Yes, it can make conception more challenging. Yes, it affects your hormones in ways that can complicate the journey to parenthood. But "challenging" and "impossible" are completely different words. The research will evolve. The treatments will improve. And your body will prove to have its own timeline and its own miracles.

What that doctor also didn't tell you—what she couldn't possibly have predicted—is how PCOS would actually prepare you for the kind of parent you were meant to be. The years of feeling different, of navigating medical dismissal, of advocating for yourself in systems not designed with your body in mind—all of this is developing in you a fierce protective instinct and an intuitive understanding of what it means to be marginalized.

When you do become a parent, you'll recognize immediately when someone tries to apply limiting labels to your children. You'll spot body-policing from a mile away because you've lived through decades of it yourself. You'll know how to advocate for your kids in medical settings because you've learned, through painful trial and error, how to advocate for yourself.

Your daughter will be born after four years of trying, of hope followed by disappointment, of medical interventions and emotional roller coasters. But she'll be perfect—absolutely, completely perfect. And two and a half years later, your son will arrive, another beautiful contradiction to that doctor's certainty.

But here's what I really want you to understand about this devastating moment you're living through right now: this diagnosis, as painful as it is, will eventually teach you something profound about the difference between medical opinion and medical fact. It will plant the first seeds of the advocate you'll become—not just for yourself, but for everyone who's been told by someone in authority that their dreams are impossible.

That doctor's pronouncement was based on limited understanding, outdated assumptions, and a medical culture that often mistakes correlation for causation. Yes, PCOS can affect fertility. But you are not a statistic. You are not a case study. You are a unique human being whose body will write its own story, on its own timeline.

But you'll also develop resilience that serves you well beyond reproduction. You'll learn to listen to your body's signals when medical professionals dismiss them. You'll research your own condition and become more knowledgeable about PCOS than many of the doctors treating you. You'll discover the power of finding healthcare providers who see you as a whole person rather than a collection of symptoms.

The path to parenthood won't be the straight line you imagined, but it will be yours. It will include moments of profound grief when your period arrives after another month of hoping. It will include medical interventions that feel invasive and dehumanizing. It will include well-meaning friends who accidentally wound you with their casual comments about fertility and family planning.

But it will also include the moment when you see that first positive pregnancy test after years of negatives, when you realize your body has done exactly what that doctor said it couldn't do. It will include feeling your babies move inside you, knowing that the womb he dismissed as dysfunctional is nurturing new life. It will include holding your children and understanding, with every fiber of your being, that some miracles are worth waiting for.

Your PCOS will also connect you to a community of women whose experiences mirror your own. You'll learn that hormonal disorders affect millions of people, that irregular periods and insulin resistance and unexplained weight gain aren't personal failings but shared struggles. You'll discover that the shame you feel about your body's responses to PCOS is manufactured by a culture that pathologizes natural variation.

Most importantly, this diagnosis will teach you something crucial about hope. Not the toxic positivity kind that insists everything happens for a reason, but the deeper kind that refuses to accept limiting narratives as final truth. The kind that keeps trying even when the odds seem stacked against you. The kind that insists on second opinions and research and alternative approaches when the first answer is unacceptable.

By the time you hold your daughter for the first time, you'll understand that this moment of devastation was the beginning of a different kind of education. You'll have learned to question authority when it doesn't align with your inner knowing. You'll have developed the research skills that will later save your life when you advocate for a thyroid ultrasound. You'll have built the emotional resilience that allows you to support other women through their own fertility journeys.

And when your children are older, when they face their own challenges and limiting labels, you'll be able to tell them with absolute certainty: "Medical predictions aren't prophecies. Your body is capable of things that no one can fully predict. And even when the path is harder than you expected, it can still lead exactly where you're meant to go."

I know none of this feels possible right now. I know you're sitting in that doctor's office feeling like your future just got smaller, like another door slammed shut before you even had a chance to walk through it. I know you're wondering if this is punishment for some unnamed crime, if your body's rebellion against social expectations extends even to its most basic functions.

But your body isn't rebelling—it's teaching. Teaching you that medical authority isn't infallible. Teaching you that challenging diagnoses isn't disrespectful but necessary. Teaching you that your timeline doesn't have to match anyone else's expectations. Teaching you that the most profound joys often come through the most circuitous routes.

So while I can't spare you the pain of this moment—and I wouldn't if I could, because it's preparing you for something essential—I can promise you this: the doctor is wrong about your future. Your body will surprise everyone, most of all yourself. And the children you'll eventually hold will be worth every tear you're about to shed, every month of disappointment, every moment of wondering if parenthood will forever remain a dream deferred.

Your story is still being written, sweet girl. And the plot twist that's coming will be more beautiful than anything you can imagine right now.

Hold onto hope. Trust your body's wisdom. Question limiting narratives. And know that sometimes the most devastating pronouncements become the most profound catalysts for discovering what you're truly capable of.

With love from your future self, who is listening to the beautiful chaos of your children (and bonus daughter) laughing from the next room.

Your 49-Year-Old Self

P.S. - To the woman reading this now

If you're facing your own fertility challenges, your own devastating diagnosis, your own moment of medical despair, please know you are not broken. Medical predictions are based on populations, not individuals. Your story is still being written, and it may include plot twists that no one can predict.

Whether your path to parenthood looks like mine, leads to different destinations, or takes you on journeys I couldn't imagine, your worth isn't determined by your reproductive capacity. You are whole and valuable exactly as you are, regardless of what your body can or cannot do.

And to the healthcare providers reading this: words matter. The casual pronouncements we make to young women can echo through decades of their lives. When delivering difficult news, please remember that you're speaking to a whole human being with dreams and fears and resilience you may not be able to see. Offer hope alongside honesty. Provide support alongside statistics. And remember that what seems medically straightforward to you might be life-altering to the person sitting across from you.

This blog post is adapted from my memoir "Beyond the T-Shirt: A Journey from Labels to Liberation," available now. If this letter resonated with you, I'd love to hear your story. Share in the comments below or reach out to me directly. Sometimes the most healing thing we can do is remind each other that we're not alone in our struggles—or in our capacity for surprise and resilience.

Resources:

• PCOS Awareness Association

• Resolve: National Infertility Association

• The PCOS Nutrition Center

• Fertility discussions in the Health at Every Size community