Tara Lipinski is opening up about her journey with infertility, and the miscarriages she has experienced along the way. In an exclusive interview with People, the 41-year-old Olympic figure skater shared that she and her husband, sports producer Todd Kapostasy, have been "on the fertility journey from hell" for the last five years.
"I have never really publicly spoken about it," the former competitive figure skater told People during the interview. "So it just felt like at this point I finally felt ready."
"I grew up as an Olympic athlete and at a very young age I was in the spotlight and sharing my life publicly," she continued. "This was just the first time in my life — and it's gone on for so long — that I felt like I was living this lie or living with this big secret."
"It's been five years of my life and my husband's life and not speaking about it. I just wasn't emotionally or mentally able to," Tara shared. "I was so overwhelmed and struggling day-to-day that I wasn't in a place to bring other people in and that thought really scared me." She went on to talk about how she really wanted to share her story all along in order to connect with other women experiencing the same thing.
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"I feel like when you're going through infertility, it is a very lonely place, and not everybody has gone through it, not everyone understands how to support you or how to be there for you," she explained. "I think for us, infertility, this journey to build a family became a full-time job. It consumed my life. Every waking moment was somehow circulating around fertility and the next appointment and the next doctor, the next cycle and grief and loss and it was a never-ending journey."