Every year, Elul comes with the same language of return. Teshuva.

Depending on who you are, what you’re potentially returning to can feel a little different. Return to God. Return to ourselves. Return to our people. Return to the lives we want to be living.

It’s beautiful language and it can also feel a little complicated when you’ve spent the year trying to build a family. Okay okay, it can feel a lot complicated.

Because maybe you don’t feel like the same person you were last Elul.

Maybe the past year included procedures, losses, medications, decisions, pregnancy announcements you didn’t know how to respond to, or long stretches where absolutely nothing seemed to happen.

Maybe you feel exactly like the person you were last Elul. Maybe instead of feeling different in the wonderful ways you hoped for, you are still waiting.

So what exactly are you returning to?

You may not want to go back to who you were before

Infertility has a way of taking up more space than anyone expects it to.

You can start out thinking, We’re trying to have a baby, and somewhere along the way your life becomes organized around appointments, cycle days, insurance calls, test results, medications, treatment decisions, and whatever comes next.

You become very good at things you never wanted to become good at.

And sometimes other pieces of you get harder to hear.

That’s one of the questions we kept coming back to while creating Yesh Tikva’s Elul Reflection Journal:

Who am I beneath what this year has asked of me?

Not, “How do I get the old me back?”

You may not be the old you anymore. Returning to that person may not feel possible. It may not feel helpful.

But there is still a whole person underneath the patient role. There are things you care about that have nothing to do with fertility. There are relationships, interests, values, needs, and parts of yourself that may have gone quiet because something else needed your attention.

Maybe Elul can be a time to notice them again.

What if your relationship with God is messy right now?

This one can be hard to talk about. This relationship is already so personal to begin with.

There are people who feel deeply held by their faith during infertility. There are people who feel furious with God. There are people who pray more. People who stop praying. People who do both in the same week. People whose connection feels confusing, whether because of the journey they’re walking through or for a thousand other reasons.

That does not make for a nice, neat spiritual story, but it does make for a very human one.

One of the sections in the journal asks you to write to God from wherever you actually are.

That might mean gratitude.

It might also mean, Where are You? Or I’m tired. Or I still want this so badly and I don’t know what to do with that.

Wherever you are with God, we want there to be room to explore it safely.

Community can be complicated too

The High Holidays are communal by nature. We gather. We sit with family, neighbors, friends and strangers. We go to shul. We see people we haven’t seen in a while.

That can be comforting and, when you’re struggling to build a family, it can also be a lot.

Maybe someone asks a question you don’t want to answer. Maybe you notice every pregnant person in the room. Maybe the language around family and children lands differently this year. Maybe you love your community and still need some distance from parts of it.

Those things can all be true.

Returning to community does not have to mean forcing yourself to show up everywhere. It might mean choosing one person who feels safe. It might mean leaving something early. It might mean asking someone not to bring up treatment at the holiday table. It might mean finding a smaller place where you can exhale. Belonging should not require you to pretend that something does not hurt.

And then there’s the word “resilience”

People like to tell those facing infertility how strong they are.

Sometimes that feels like a supportive compliment. Sometimes you want to say, I actually don’t have a say in the situation.

But strength in the endless push forward or the ” wow, you know how to put on a brave face while injecting hormones in your aunt’s half bathroom while your little nieces and nephews pound on the door” way is not always the same as resilience.

Resilience can look like continuing treatment, or it may also look like taking a break. Changing plans. Asking for help. Saying no to something. Letting yourself grieve. Admitting that you’re having a hard time. Resilience can look like finding something tiny that helps you hold onto yourself when the unthinkable continues to be your reality.

At the same time, you can notice what has helped you survive this year without calling the year a gift. You do not have to be grateful for the pain in order to recognize what carried you through it.

You don’t have to enter Rosh Hashanah with everything resolved

There is something appealing about the idea of a clean slate. A new year. A fresh start. This language is everywhere at this time of year.

But most of us do not actually arrive at Rosh Hashanah that way. We bring things with us.

We carry questions in our mouths. We hold our grief in our lungs and hope in our hearts. We wrangle our anger in the pit of our stomachs. We carry our love in our chests and our exhaustion in the heaviness of our limbs. We manage armloads of plans no one else sees.

For someone going through infertility, the calendar year we are holding may change while very little else does.

You may still be waiting on Erev Rosh Hashanah. You may still not know what comes next.

The final section of our journal is built around that reality. It asks three simple questions:

What is something I want to set down, soften, or carry differently?

What has sustained me that I want to remember?

What is one question, prayer, or intention I am carrying into the new year?

Not answering. Carrying. Because there is a difference.

Sometimes preparation for a new year is not about tying everything up neatly. Sometimes it is just being more honest about what you are bringing with you.

Our Elul Reflection Journal

We created the Yesh Tikva Elul Reflection Journal for people facing infertility or a complex journey to parenthood.

It moves through five parts of Elul: returning to yourself, returning to God, returning to community, noticing what has sustained you, and deciding what you want to carry forward.

There are Jewish texts, reflection prompts, writing pages, and a simple ritual for Erev Rosh Hashanah.

You can do one section each week or do it at whatever pace feels right.

You can answer every question or skip half of them. Write one sentence. Come back to it next year.

It is not homework. No one is checking and marking your progress. It is simply a place to put some of what you are carrying.

Start with the page that feels like yours.