I honestly don’t remember if it was 2015 or 2016.
I was in New Mexico visiting a friend who introduced me to an artist named Robbi Firestone. We sat together in two chairs in front of a large window overlooking the New Mexico desert. It was one of those breathtaking landscapes that makes you instinctively become quiet.
At the time, I was your typical mom. Whenever I met another woman, one of my first questions was always, “Do you have kids?”
I never thought twice about asking.
It wasn’t meant to be intrusive or insensitive. It was simply how I started conversations.
Robbi smiled and told me she didn’t have children.
As we kept talking, she shared that she couldn’t. She had gone through IVF. It hadn’t worked.
Then I did what so many of us do when we’re faced with someone else’s pain.
I said all the wrong things.
“You’re lucky.”
“Kids are crazy.”
“At least you have your freedom.”
The kinds of things we say because we don’t know what else to say.
I cringe when I think about that conversation.
Every sentence I offered was another reminder of something she desperately wanted but could not have.
What amazes me now is the grace she showed me. She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t defensive. She knew I wasn’t trying to hurt her, even though I was.
Instead of shutting down, she gently explained why comments like mine could be so painful. She helped me understand that many women carry this grief in silence because it often feels easier to smile politely than to explain a wound no one else can see.
I apologized.
But I also realized something important.
Robbi was incredibly brave.
Most of us hide our deepest pain. She chose to speak about hers.
She told me about an art installation she was creating that explored her experience with infertility. It was about grief, rage, longing, identity, and the slow process of finding herself again after losing the future she had imagined. She described it as an emotional exorcism.
As she spoke, I knew I wanted to document it.
Writing and filmmaking have always been the ways I make sense of the world. I asked if she would be willing to make a short documentary with me that could accompany her installation and allow audiences to hear, in her own words, what infertility had really been like.
She said yes.
Over the course of a couple of weekends, we created The Empty Womb.
The film was always meant to live alongside Robbi’s installation. It gave voice to the artwork and to an experience that so often remains hidden. It eventually premiered at the United Nations on International Women’s Day.
Since then, Robbi has continued creating extraordinary paintings, multimedia works, and installations. Her work has continued to evolve, but what first inspired me about her has never changed. It is her willingness to tell the truth.
A few weeks ago, I received a phone call letting me know that parts of The Empty Womb installation would be exhibited again. They asked if they could also share the film.
Of course I said yes.
That was always why we made it.
Before giving permission, I watched it again for the first time in years.
I was just as moved as I had been when we made it.
Today I don’t simply see a film about infertility. I see a woman who chose to reveal the most vulnerable parts of herself so someone like me, a mother who had unknowingly taken so much for granted, could better understand another experience of womanhood.
That conversation in New Mexico changed me.
It changed the questions I ask.
It changed how I listen.
It expanded my understanding of what it means to grieve something no one else can see.
I hope Robbi’s story does the same for you.
About
The Empty Womb
The Empty Womb is a short documentary centered on fine artist Robbi Firestone’s installation exploring the expectations placed on women as creators while confronting the grief, jealousy, rage, and heartbreak that can accompany infertility.
Part emotional exorcism and part testimony, the film explores difficult truths about loss, courage, identity, and recovery. It invites us to reconsider what it means to create, to nurture, and to belong.
You can learn more about Robbi’s work at www.firestoneart.com
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch it.
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