A note before you read: this piece discusses infertility and the loss of an expected path to parenthood.

Before Gigi Gorgeous was anyone’s idea of an icon, she was a kid putting her little brother to bed. Still a baby herself, only two years older, she would tuck him in and swaddle him. “I’ve always been motherly from a very young age,” she says. “It has always been in my blood.”

That instinct never left her.

She is the friend who takes care of everyone, generous with her time. Some people, she figures, are simply meant to be mothers and caretakers, and she has never doubted that she is one of them. So when she talks about where she is now — thirty-four, a decade into being one of the most visible trans women in the world, and not yet a mother — she does not pretend to be at peace with it. “I thought I would be on my way to having children at this point,” she says. “But sometimes relationships don’t work out.”

The dream, and the detour

Gigi has wanted a family for as long as she can remember, and for a while the plan seemed to be in motion — fertility treatment was underway, with all its hope and heartbreak, and a partner on the path beside her. Then the relationship ended, and that particular path to a family closed with it.

“That is something I never got to see through, even though we went through the whole process.” She says this plainly, without asking for pity.

What Gigi did with the loss is what she has always done. She turned it outward.

“Sometimes it doesn’t work out,” she says, “which is why I’m so excited to be partnering with Fertility Friends Foundation and supporting my own Gorgeous Grants to help alleviate some of the stress for couples who are looking to have a family.” The pivot is so fast you could miss what it costs her. She is not done wanting the thing. She is just refusing to let the wanting curdle.

What it actually takes

Almost nobody tells you in advance that sometimes building a family asks for everything.

I use the comparison of a home renovation. It usually ends up costing twice the money and takes twice as long as you expected going into it.

“I use the comparison of a home renovation,” she says. “It usually ends up costing twice the money and takes twice as long as you expected going into it, and that rings true for the fertility process as well.” The sticker price is only the beginning. “What people may not know or realize until they are in it,” she says, “is all the extra and additional costs that are incurred. You have to be able to read between the lines.” The real total ends up far more than the typical family can take on.

And then there is the non-financial cost. “The biggest thing was time,” she says. Bloodwork, sometimes every other day, the constant monitoring. “They are really monitoring your insides,” she says, “and that is not a casual thing.” The estrogen, the testosterone, the endless driving to appointments, the sitting in waiting rooms. “It truly is a complete lifestyle switch. That is something I was not prepared for, and something that isn’t as widely known about IVF. The process is weeks and weeks of constant appointments.”

“I never saw anyone go through this.”

The money and time were only part of the equation. The other thing Gigi was missing was proof that someone like her could do it at all.

“I never saw anyone go through this process previously,” she says. When she started sharing pieces of her own journey with her audience, something opened up. People wrote back — some who had done IVF, some still looking into it, some who had no idea how any of it worked, and wanted to learn. “It was a conversation opener,” she says. “I felt emotionally supported within my own community, and it made me feel inspired, because I felt like I was helping people learn, even though I was figuring it out at the same time.” Talking about it, she says, is what kept her from feeling alone.

That is the quiet engine underneath the Gorgeous Grants. Gigi is building what she most needed but never fully had. The money: “making it just that much more financially accessible,” she says, “which is such a barrier for so many people.” And then the part people don’t think to build for: “It’s also a great built-in support system.” She wants to fund as many families as she can, and she explicitly points out that LGBTQ+ families aren’t an afterthought — they are central.

The part she wants screamed from the rooftops

For the most part, Gigi lets being a trans woman sit quietly inside the story, one thread among many. But when asked directly, she doesn’t hedge. “The trans experience of navigating family-building needs a lot more exposure and recognition,” she says. When she and her partner went looking, there was almost nothing documented. “I had never seen a trans couple go through IVF the way I experienced it. Since then, I have, but at the time I really hadn’t. My biggest takeaway is it should be spread much larger, be more documented. I just want to scream it from the rooftops.”

I just want to scream it from the rooftops.

This, it turns out, is a central reason the Gorgeous Grants exist. “I have lived it,” she says, “and I want more eyes on it, so that maybe another trans couple will take that leap and see that it is possible to begin this journey, and you have resources to do that.” The through-line of her whole life clicks into place here: the girl who came out publicly so that others wouldn’t feel alone is now the woman building the map so that others won’t be lost. She is trying to give the thing she never had.

There is one piece of advice she returns to, and it is specific enough to change a life. “Before anyone decides to transition,” she says, “freeze your DNA if you can, before the interference of hormones, because that was a big challenge for me. For all those trans girls starting out, untouched by hormones… You never know if you may want the option to start a family, and it is a nice security to have.” Nobody told her that in time. She is telling everyone she can, in time.

Access, and the gap that remains

For all the progress, one barrier still towers over the rest. “The biggest gap I see, without a doubt, is access.” Visibility, she thinks, is finally on the incline, partly because people like her keep talking, and every time one person does, it gives the next person permission. “Keep talking about it, keep posting about it, and it will become more normal in people’s minds, which is the ultimate goal.”

It is the same argument Michelle Obama and Serena Williams made from a very different stage: that the silence around fertility does more damage than the facts ever could.

Her hope for the grants is almost startlingly simple, given how much machinery it takes to make it real. “I would love to increase opportunities for parents who really want to be parents,” she says. “It makes my heart full knowing someone is fighting for a child.”

In September, the grants expand to couples living and seeking treatment in the United States, a widening she calls organic and overdue. “There is so much going on in the world right now,” she says, “and this is coming at a time where it is so needed.”

What she’s still walking toward

It would be easy to file all of this under generosity and leave it there — the celebrity who turned her disappointment into a good cause. But that would miss the truest thing about it: Gigi has not stopped wanting the family for herself.

“I do still want to have children at some point,” she says. “I have mine frozen now, so there is still a possibility for me to have a family, which is very exciting and something I still really want.” She pictures it, a little: maybe a few kids, no more than three. She grew up one of three, and can’t quite imagine bigger. She says that what she’s focused on is health, happiness, and safety. “The world is a crazy place,” she says, “and more than ever I worry about the safety of children.” She already runs protective. Motherhood, she suspects, would take that to another level entirely.

Imagining the families the Gorgeous Grants will build, Gigi says, “I hope that they feel a sense of family.” The exact thing she went the whole distance for and hasn’t reached, now held out like a gift to strangers. She talks about the children and the lives “built out of true love and desire,” and about wanting them “to be acknowledged.” She brightens, imagining it all. “I am so excited to see where these families end up.”

Gigi does not know when her own turn will come. She has made a kind of peace with not knowing, and it is not a resigned peace so much as an open one. “I don’t know when that is going to start or happen, but it is very exciting.” And then, because Gigi Gorgeous has never met a moment she couldn’t lift, she reaches for Natasha Bedingfield to say the rest of it. “The rest is still unwritten, baby.”

Related reading

Fertility Friends Foundation offers grants, education, and resources to help people navigate the costs of fertility care and family-building, including LGBTQ+ families. If you’re struggling with infertility or the emotional weight of this journey, RESOLVE: The National Infertility Association offers free support and helplines.