Despite 'Heartbreak,' Sophia Bush’s Fertility Journey Was the 'Most Clarifying Experience' of Her Life
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Anyone who’s been through a fertility journey knows it’s a rollercoaster, with flashes of exhilarating hope followed by the lowest pitfalls of disappointment. And while many people reach the end of the process with a new baby on the way, not all fertility journeys have a happy ending. For Sophia Bush, undergoing fertility treatment was a uniquely painful and difficult journey — but one that ultimately shed light on some major changes she needed to make in her life.
In an essay for Glamour, Bush described how she experienced “the depths and heartbreak of the fertility process” just after her wedding to Grant Hughes in June 2022. Bush, who has emerged as an outspoken advocate for women’s healthcare, stated that she decided to keep the process private, though she noted that “it feels like society is finally making space for brutally honest conversations about how hard and painful any fertility journey is.”
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For Bush, that journey entailed “months of endless ultrasounds, hormone shots, so many blood draws that I have scar tissue in my veins, and retrieval after retrieval.” She underwent the arduous process even as she came to the terrifying realization that “the person I had chosen to be my partner didn’t necessarily speak the same emotional language I did.”
After six months of fertility treatments, Bush “knew deep down that I absolutely had made a mistake,” she said. “As I lost track of how many examination tables I had lain on alone, I felt something in me seismically shift.” That revelation led Bush to accept a stage role in a play in London — “I had to get out of the house” — and she ultimately divorced Hughes in August 2023.
Despite the heartache and physical pain of her fertility journey, Bush called it “the most clarifying experience of her life,” tied as it was to her decision to go to London, which solidified the choice to end her marriage.
It’s not the first time Bush has spoken about her health at that time in her life. The One Tree Hill alum spoke to Flow Space last year about the “really severe” viral illness she contracted while in London, which Bush described as “terrifying.”
The actress went from “having the time of my life” in her theatrical debut to “literally not being able to go back to work despite the weeks of trying and in and out of doctors offices,” she said. “Having to truly shut down for the first time, I’m not accustomed to that. It really taught me some lessons about how to take care of myself.”
Now 41, Bush is in a new relationship with former pro soccer player Ashlyn Harris and seems to have found the peace that the last two years lacked, from her fertility journey to her health issues and divorce. “I feel like I was wearing a weighted vest for who knows how long. I hadn’t realized how heavy it was until I finally just put it down,” she wrote. “I finally feel like I can breathe.”
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