Possibly one of the most successful Australian exports, Kylie Minogue‘s heartbreak – and success – has long felt like our heartbreak and success.
We’ve watched her break records, beat cancer, become a fashion icon, and followed her relationships with more focus than our own.
But after the ending of her engagement to former fiance Joshua Sasse due to alleged infidelity, while approaching her 50th birthday, recently the singer has had to confront a painful realisation.
Motherhood might not be in her destiny.
In a feature in the Sunday Times Magazine, journalist Elizabeth Day asked the 49-year-old whether she still wanted children.
She was candid in her response.
"No, not for me. Been down that road, numerous times, as in 'Can I make this happen?" But no. I mean, if I think about what it must be to be a mother and look into your child's eyes," she said.
"Of course I wonder what that would be like. But your destiny is your destiny and I can't imagine, if by some miracle I got pregnant... at this point in my life, I wonder, could I even manage that? That's not in my life.
"It would be a lie to say there's not a bit of sadness there, but I don't get caught up in it. I can't. I mean, what can I do?"
She said with where she's at, there's a high probability that if or when she meets someone, they will have children anyway.
"So I could imagine being a stepmum."
As a woman who wants children, realising that you might not be able to have any due to any factor is hard.
It's a confronting reality media personality Sami Lukis has also had to face recently.
Listen: Sami Lukis on being single and told her fertility was declining. Post continues after audio.
In the latest episode of No Filter podcast, Lukis told host Mia Freedman of the moment she was told her fertility was in rapid decline.
"I'd turned 41, I was single again having just come out of a relationship with a man I thought I was going to marry," she said.
"I'd got to 40 and I was like 'Finally! I've met him, this is wonderful, he's the one, we're going to have a kid, and then I write about it in the book, it wasn't what I thought it was.
"And so I found myself single again, my grandmother had just passed away and I was in a terrible working situation, I was out of a job, and I just thought oh my god, this is the life changing moment for me at 40. I'm having my mid-life crisis."
After going to a gynecologist to have her ovarian reserves tested she was told her fertility was decreasing quickly, but until she actively tried to get pregnant, they couldn't tell the quality of her remaining eggs.
IVF was no longer an option, she was told, as the trauma would only further deteriorate the levels of her eggs.
"I'd always thought I would have a kid but I never felt that urge in my belly to grow one until was told you might not be able to have one. And then it changed everything," she said.
"At the end of the day, right now do I want to have a kid? Yeah, but there's nothing missing in my life. I see other people with children and I think 'Uh, I don't know'. But on the other side of the coin, am I going to wake up in 10 years time and think 'Shit. Should have had a kid.'"
Sami Lukis' book, Romantically Challenged is out now. Available now via Viking, RRP $32.99.