Life coach Mark Fennell on infertility: ‘You can be happy and fulfilled when you don’t get all the cards you want in your deck’

The life coach opens up on dealing with the trauma of unexplained infertility, coping with chronic anxiety and following his own rules

Life coach and author Mark Fennell. Photo: Steve Humphreys

Liadán Hynes

When Mark ­Fennell was working on his new book Breakthrough, the hardest part to write about, more than the extreme anxiety he experienced in his early 20s, was the story of his and his wife Fiona’s efforts to have a child.

“That was hard, because the anxiety, you can get rid of, but you can’t make a child. That’s a fact. So you have got to adjust to that. [Writing about it] it’s like revisiting a traumatic experience. It wasn’t traumatic, but it was something close to it. I think it needed to be said because I don’t think many men talk about it.”