On December 29, 2022, I got a text message. It read: “Hi mum I’m texting you off a friends phone I’ve smashed mine and their phones about to die, can you WhatsApp my new number x.” I was in a rental car when it came through, my partner driving beside me as we traveled along a nondescript stretch of highway. The sky and the road were both a dull gray. It was that hazy time between Christmas and New Year’s when the days blur together—a period when teenagers meet up to shop, hang out at each other’s houses, share Snapchats, and swap holiday gossip while pretending not to vape. It was a time of waiting—for whatever came next, for the excitement of New Year’s Eve and stolen kisses under leftover mistletoe. So the text itself wasn’t especially unusual, especially with its characteristically teenage lack of punctuation and grammar.
There was just one thing.
I wasn’t a mother.
Not yet.
Because I was waiting too, suspended in a fragile thread of hope. Three days earlier, my husband Justin and I had flown to Los Angeles for our latest round of fertility treatment. This time, we had chosen to try using an egg donor. We’d had the embryo transferred the morning after we landed.
Until then, I’d spent a completely sober holiday season, sipping non-alcoholic wine with Christmas dinner. My cocktails had been a carefully measured mix of estrogen and progesterone, not the kind I usually prefer—ice-cold martinis with extra brine.
Justin and I hadn’t planned for this to be our Christmas, but when you’re going through fertility treatment, you realize that other people’s timelines don’t apply to you. You’re at the mercy of hormone levels, the thickness of your uterine lining, and the unpredictable nature of menstrual cycles.
So, caught in that uncertainty, I began searching for a different kind of logic—one that existed outside of reason. I started looking for signs. Call it superstition, spirituality, or just plain foolishness, but I saluted pairs of magpies and avoided walking under ladders. I visited a shaman in south London who performed rituals with feathers and stones. I wrote a letter to my future child. I tried to meditate, manifest, think positively, and speak kindly to my own body. I found meaning in everything—a dream, a drifting feather, a robin that appeared in the garden on an unseasonably warm day in July. I told myself all of it was a message. The universe was signaling that I was meant to have a child.
Some part of me knew this was irrational. I understood that, in my sadness, I was clinging to anything that might keep me afloat. In an uncertain world, certainty—like hope—can be a powerful, addictive placebo.
Like many women who carry misplaced shame, I quickly internalized the sense of failure as my own.
I held on. I told myself that receiving a text calling me “mum” was the clearest sign yet that I was on the right path. I remembered listening to a podcast that said successful manifestation meant acting as if you already had what you wanted most. This was a test, I decided. I had to show I was capable of maternal love.
So I replied with extra care and kindness to that unknown number on WhatsApp. I said they had the wrong person, but I hoped everything would work out.
As I put my phone away, I thought back on the years of unsuccessful fertility treatments and repeated miscarriages. I remembered the slow, heavy grief they brought—the belief that I would never feel complete without a baby. I thought about the difficult choice Justin and I had made toI decided to pursue egg donation. I thought about the embryo now inside me and felt that everything had led us here for a reason. That would turn out to be true, though not in the way I expected—it wasn’t a baby, but a psychic, who would change my life forever.
For the past 12 years, I had tried and failed to have children. During my first marriage, I went through two unsuccessful rounds of IVF, followed by a natural pregnancy that ended in miscarriage at three months. I was in the hospital for it and still remember seeing the remains of my much-wanted baby in a small cardboard tray the nurses handed me.
A few months later, that marriage ended, wrapped in a strange kind of sadness—grieving what was, what might have been, and what never even existed. I thought I was coping, but really, I was just numb. Back then, miscarriage and infertility weren’t openly discussed, and it felt impossible to convey the depth of that loss. Someone close to me suggested treating it like a heavy period. Another person wondered why I’d told anyone I was pregnant before three months, as if staying silent would have made it less real.
Like many women who feel misplaced shame, I took the failure to heart. Doctors called my infertility “unexplained,” a term so vague it was easy to fill with my own self-blame. I decided it was all my fault.
In my late 30s, I tried egg freezing at a different clinic. Again, the results were disappointing—only two eggs retrieved, when most women my age could expect around 15. By the time I met Justin, I was 39 and he was 43, with three children from a previous relationship. I tried to accept being happy without a child of my own. But then, just after my 41st birthday, we got pregnant naturally. That ended in miscarriage at seven weeks. We were both so heartbroken that we decided to try again.
We traveled to Athens to a new clinic with different protocols. I had surgery to remove a uterine septum, and within a month, I was pregnant again. At seven weeks, we saw and heard a heartbeat on the scan. By eight weeks, it was gone. This happened during the UK’s first Covid lockdown, so I took medication to miscarry at home. The pain was unbearable—the worst of my three miscarriages.
I took a break from trying to reconnect with my body and remember who I was when not flooded with pregnancy hormones or being examined by strangers. When restrictions eased, I booked a sports massage through an app. The masseur was Polish, and when he pressed the left side of my lower stomach, I gasped. He’d found the exact spot where I felt the deep, aching tenderness of my pregnancy losses—a specific sensation that started in my womb and spread through me. I thought I might pass out.
“You have a lot of sadness here,” he said.
“Yes,” I replied, eyes closed, fighting back tears.
As lockdowns ended and vaccinations rolled out, fertility clinics reopened. Friends recommended a clinic in LA, known for being at the forefront of fertility medicine—partly because, as one cynical friend put it, “Hollywood stars hit their late 40s, roles dry up, and then they decide they want a baby.”
The clinic’s website was impressive, promising several cutting-edge treatments unavailable elsewhere. In October 2021, Justin and I joined a Zoom call with one of their top consultants, who apparently had a legion ofHe had no children of his own. His manner was robotic as he listed all the ways he could guarantee above-average success rates. He suggested using an egg donor.
It felt surreal scrolling through pages of beautiful donors, filtering them by height, education, hair, and eye color. The doctor made it sound simple: we just needed to find a suitable donor, and he recommended hiring a fertility consultant to help. This person would review medical histories and physical traits to ensure compatibility.
In the UK, paying for eggs is illegal, though donors can receive up to £985 in expenses per cycle. Donor-conceived children also have the right to access identifying information about their donor when they turn 18. In the US, however, the rules are different—donors are paid a fee, typically between $5,000 and $10,000, sometimes even more. There are hundreds of websites with detailed profiles and photos. It felt both surreal and a little dystopian, browsing page after page of women you could sort by attributes like height and education. They answered questions about their favorite books (The Alchemist and Harry Potter came up often—which, for me, were instant deal-breakers), along with their preferred foods and hobbies. It was like a strange form of speed dating.
It took us over a year to find our donor. We came close a few times, but then an incompatible medical issue would come up, or the donor would change her mind and back out. To make things worse, the consultant we hired turned out to be a fraud, and the clinic’s communication was shockingly poor. The whole process cost an enormous amount of time and money, and I’m aware of the privilege it took to afford it. Still, it was one of the most stressful periods of my life.
Eventually, we found an amazing young woman—her favorite book was Plato’s Republic—who wanted to help us. We remain incredibly grateful to her.
The egg retrieval was scheduled in LA. Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, my cycle was synced with hers. Her eggs were fertilized with my husband’s sperm, resulting in four embryos. Two were graded AA—like premium hotels—with good cell numbers, minimal fragmentation, and optimal symmetry. These two had the best chance of implanting in my womb (and probably came with late checkout and in-room spa treatments, I joked).
Justin and I flew to LA on Boxing Day 2022. The weather was awful—one of those rare heavy rainstorms that sometimes hit the city—and our windshield wipers squeaked and slid as we drove to the clinic. I changed into a surgical gown, lay on a gurney, and was wheeled into the operating room to have the embryo transferred via catheter into my womb. Before I was sedated, the doctor projected an image of our chosen embryo onto a screen high on the wall.
“An absolutely beautiful embryo,” he said.
I squeezed Justin’s hand tighter.
This time, I told myself, I had done everything right. I took all the medications, underwent every necessary procedure, and was closely monitored by top medical professionals. I went to acupuncture and yoga, followed nutritional advice, ate loads of protein, took the right supplements, and did all the spiritual work I could. I followed everyone’s advice. All the signs were there. This time, I tried to believe, it was going to work.
During the 10-day wait that followed, Justin had to return to London for work, and I stayed in LA with a quiet, growing sense of cautious optimism. I had all the pregnancy symptoms: afternoon exhaustion, nausea, sore breasts, vivid dreams. One afternoon, I walked along Venice Beach and wrote the name we’d chosen for our child in the sand.
On the scheduled morning, I went into the clinic for the results.I had a blood test and was told I’d get a phone call with the results that afternoon. Instead, they emailed me. They had analyzed my blood, and I wasn’t pregnant. “Cease all medication immediately,” the email said. Those symptoms I’d been having? They were just from the hormones I’d been taking. And all those signs I thought the universe had sent me? They didn’t mean anything either.
Justin canceled everything and flew back to LA so we could be together—a true act of love. But I felt untethered, exhausted, and terribly sad. I remember FaceTiming my best friend, Emma, right after we got the news.
“What’s wrong with your eyes?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Why?”
“They look a bit… funny.”
I glanced at my reflection on the screen and saw exactly what she meant. My eyes looked shiny and distant, as if I were watching the world from the bottom of a deep ocean. I didn’t recognize my own face. I didn’t recognize myself.
Back in London, I wasn’t sure what to do next. We still had one embryo left. The clinic suggested we try again right away, maybe with a surrogate, but I just couldn’t face it. Well-meaning strangers would bring up adoption, not realizing how complicated and lengthy that process can be. I was already 44, feeling lost and let down. I was angry with our doctor, angry at the clinic’s cold email, angry at the whole fertility industry, and angry at anyone who’d ever had an easy pregnancy that ended with a healthy baby. But most of all, I was angry at the hopeful stories I’d believed—all the beautiful lies I’d told myself.
I went for breakfast with a friend who had recently split from a long-term partner. She mentioned in passing a psychic who had given her an eerily accurate phone reading, detailing a future romance.
Even though I thought I was done with that kind of thing, I couldn’t resist.
“Could I talk to her?” I asked.
My friend gave me the psychic’s number and some advice: text to set up the appointment, don’t give your full name (so she can’t Google you), and when she calls, don’t ask any questions (it might lead her).
I followed her instructions exactly. The psychic, who I’ll call Alexia, called me at 7 p.m. on a Wednesday. Her voice was warm, with an American accent.
“Is Elizabeth your real name?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, let’s see what’s here for you.” She paused. “Well,” she chuckled, “you love words.”
I did! I loved words so much! During the hardest parts of my fertility journey, I often felt incredibly lucky to have a writing career I was passionate about. I had written eight books by then, and my ninth was about to be published. She said a few other things that were right on, like that my partner’s name started with a J and what he did for work. Alexia asked if my mother had been having neck pain lately (I checked later—she’d just booked an osteopath appointment after straining her neck).
“Okay, so you write books, but do you…””Are you doing something else too?” Alexia went on. “I’m getting… it’s almost like, I don’t know… you’re a life coach who helps people through their failures or mistakes?”
I didn’t feel sad—I felt relief. Because sometimes the bravest thing you can do is to quit, not keep pushing.
Since 2018, I’ve hosted a podcast called How to Fail, where I talk to guests about three times they’ve failed in life and what they learned from those experiences. It’s not exactly life coaching, but it’s not completely different either. To be clear: Alexia didn’t know my full name, so she couldn’t have looked me up online. Could she have recognized my voice from the podcast? I doubted it, since she’s American and most of my listeners are in the UK. Besides, if she had been able to research me, wouldn’t she have just come out and said I was a podcaster? Similarly, even though she could tell right away that I was a writer, it took her about half an hour to figure out whether I wrote books or screenplays—again, without any hints from me. She never mentioned journalism, even though that’s one of the first things that comes up if you search for me. All of this made me trust her, even in my newly skeptical frame of mind.
Then, after about 40 minutes, Alexia said, “I feel like you’re struggling with letting go of a lifelong dream. You’re not sure whether to give up on it or not.”
“Uh-huh,” I replied from the other end of the line. “That sounds right.”
“I don’t know if it’s about children, but if it is, I want to tell you—and I don’t always talk about past lives, but with you I get a very strong sense that you were a mother in a past life. You had six children, and it almost melted you.”
That phrase was so striking that I wrote it down afterward. “Melted” was the exact word she used.
“And I feel this life has been given to you to live on your own terms,” Alexia continued. “Which might be why, if you’ve tried to have babies before now, you could have faced fertility issues or miscarriages.”
I was speechless. The number six was especially meaningful. I’d had three miscarriages and three unsuccessful rounds of fertility treatment, each ending after an embryo transfer. In essence, I’d had six failed pregnancies.
“Be careful what you wish for,” Alexia went on. “Sometimes, when we push really hard for something we think we want, and there seem to be a lot of obstacles in the way, it’s because we’re being protected.”
She told me a story about one of her relatives whose child was in a car accident and is now in a persistent vegetative state. It was a living tragedy, Alexia said, and really, there’s no guarantee that having a child leads to the happiness we long for.
“I hope you don’t mind me sharing that,” Alexia said.
“No, not at all.”
Honestly, I was grateful. For the past 12 years, I’d told myself countless fairytales about how complete I would feel as a mother. But in a world where the best-case scenario exists, the worst-case is also possible: a child who is sick, or unhappy, or who doesn’t love you back. Alexia gave me permission to imagine that. She gave me permission to stop trying so hard without feeling like I was weak. When she gave me that permission, I didn’t feel sadness—I felt relief. Because sometimes quitting, not persisting, is the bravest thing you can do.
And the truth is, I’d always had a deep, secret feeling that I knew what it was like to be a mother. I felt like I’d held babies in my arms, taken a toddler’s chubby hand in mine, and smelled that milky, biscuity scent from the back of a sleeping child’s neck. It was as if my soul remembered. So maybe I wouldn’t be a mother in this lifetime. But maybe I—I used to be a certain way in the past. Maybe I’ll become someone else in the future.
I know some people reading this won’t believe that Alexia was tapping into some kind of spiritual energy to give me exactly the message I needed. They’ll say she kept things vague so I could read into it whatever I wanted. And that’s okay—I’m not here to convince anyone. If you haven’t had an experience like mine, you can’t understand how completely real it felt to me.
After talking with her, I began to wonder if all those signs from the universe—or whatever you want to call them—really were guiding and protecting me. Maybe I just misunderstood them because the destination wasn’t what I expected. And part of me—the bruised, defensive part—thought, even if none of it is real, isn’t it easier to believe it is?
I started asking myself: What if my purpose in this life wasn’t to be a mother? What if it was to speak for others going through similar pain and reassure them that there is hope on the other side? What if I chose to focus on the love I already had in my life, instead of what was missing? We can’t all have everything.
The next day, I passed a woman pushing her child in a stroller. I smiled at her. All the bitterness and anxiety I’d carried for so long had vanished. It felt magical, almost miraculous. At first, I didn’t think it would last. But now, nearly three years later, that same peace is still with me. Of course, I still feel grief sometimes—it surfaces unexpectedly—but I’ve learned to let it come, knowing it will pass. I’ve also learned that feeling sadness for the life we didn’t live doesn’t mean we made the wrong choices in this one.
Although I haven’t felt the need to see Alexia again, I’ve booked sessions for loved ones facing challenges. Each time, they’re amazed by her accuracy and the comfort she provides. She says something different every time. One friend, who didn’t believe in psychics and used fake names, was deeply changed by what she revealed about his sick relative, his career, and his relationship.
A few months after my session with Alexia, I started writing a new novel. The plot and characters came to me in a joyful rush. I wrote as if the brakes were off, no longer pushing a boulder uphill. I wrote as if being myself was enough. It was the most fun and creatively fulfilling experience I’ve ever had writing a book. It will be published just after what would have been the second birthday of the baby whose name I wrote in the sand.
And that text from the kid with the broken phone? I recently Googled it—it’s an internet scam. Maybe it was a sign to stop believing in false promises. Or maybe it wasn’t a sign at all. Maybe our task is to build our own meaning—like lighting fires from the kindling of many lives.
One of Us by Elizabeth Day is published by 4th Estate (£18.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs based on the topic designed to be helpful and easy to understand
General Beginner Questions
Q What is this story basically about
A Its a personal story about someone who after years of struggling to have a child and experiencing miscarriages had a pivotal conversation with a psychic that provided new hope guidance or a shift in perspective that ultimately led to a positive outcome
Q How can a psychic call help with something medical like infertility
A Its not about medical treatment The help often comes in the form of emotional support spiritual guidance or a new mindset It might reduce stress provide a sense of hope or offer a different way of looking at the journey which can be incredibly powerful
Q Was this a replacement for medical advice or fertility treatments
A No not at all This type of experience is typically seen as a complementary form of support that works alongside traditional medical care not as a substitute for it
Q Im skeptical about psychics Is this for real
A The experience is subjective and personal You dont have to believe in psychic abilities to appreciate the value of a conversation that offers profound emotional comfort clarity or a renewed sense of hope during a difficult time
Deeper Advanced Questions
Q What kind of specific information or guidance could a psychic provide in this situation
A It varies but it could involve things like reassurance about the future messages of comfort regarding past losses suggestions for reducing stress or even practical advice about timing or lifestyle changes that align with a persons intuition
Q Isnt this just giving false hope
A For the person in the story it was real hope The difference often lies in the framing A reputable psychic guide focuses on empowerment and possibility rather than making guaranteed promises The shift from feeling hopeless to feeling hopeful can be a real catalyst for change
Q How do I find a legitimate and ethical psychic and avoid scams
