Read: The miscarriage taboo

What I didn’t know then is that my experiences were not unique. At lunch following my third miscarriage, a friend noticed my sullen expression and asked me what was wrong. I finally and unexpectedly opened up and talked about what was happening. She put her arm around me and welcomed me to the club. She’d had two miscarriages. And two healthy kids. And like me, she’d also felt completely alone, her self-worth degraded.

We do not talk openly about miscarriage and fertility in America, and yet miscarriage is more common than the flu. One in six women will miscarry during their lifetime, and there isn’t a singular reason. Most often, the cause is a chromosomal abnormality—something goes haywire as the embryo divides—that has nothing to do with the health or age of the parents. For women who know they’re pregnant, nearly 20 percent of their pregnancies end in miscarriage. Sometimes it happens during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy, and sometimes it happens much further along.

I’ve been pregnant nine times, and I have one child. For years, I never told anyone about my miscarriages, because as a professional American woman, I’d been indoctrinated to mute the implications of my gender. I should never hint at the idea that my body is capable of reproduction or that I might someday want to start a family. In a business setting, I learned that the mere mention of pregnancy could mean losing a potential client, or being passed over for a promotion or project. This wasn’t merely anecdotal. I observed it firsthand, many times.

Last year, riding the Acela between New York and Washington, D.C., I was seated at a four-top table with the head of human resources from a large investment bank, and he spent the entire commute working with his colleague on ways to legally fire a co-worker because she had the gall to take parental leave. Never mind that she was eligible for 12 weeks and only took three. There would be no way for her to catch up to the rest of the team, he argued. And what if she decided to have another baby? Best to “pull the weed now before she spoils the whole garden,” he said.

While I was waiting in line to collect my winter coat after a professional event in New York, two men behind me were trying to decide on a new hire. The woman under consideration had an incredible track record at her previous job, had won a prestigious industry award, and fit in very well with the culture of the organization. But there was a big, insurmountable problem in their eyes: She was in her mid-30s and recently married, which obviously meant she was actively trying to get pregnant. She’d get that “fuzzy pregnancy brain,” and then her productivity, no doubt, would wane. Before I’d even handed over my ticket to coat check, they’d decided on the male candidate, whom they’d described as less impressive—but also less inclined to reproduce.