It's common knowledge that 2024 was a lost year for Charlotte Flair, as the WWE star spent all of the year on the shelf recovering from a torn knee. What many may not know, however, is that rehab and recovery wasn't the only thing the former WWE Women's Champion had to endure, and was instead just part of a year that left Charlotte's personal and professional life in disarray.
In her "Players Tribune" article, Charlotte described how great everything was prior to her injury, stating she was having some of the most fun of her career, and was preparing for her then husband Andrade's return to WWE after several years in AEW. Her injury would be the first blow to Charlotte's psyche, despite the support she received from the locker room and WWE, and it only got worse a few months later when, while in rehab, she took the first attempts towards trying to start a family.
"In February, I started my fertility journey," Charlotte said. "That's a complicated topic......and honestly it's a topic that society doesn't make very easy to talk about. But I'm going to try to be open about it here, as much as I can, because it's not something I'm ashamed of. I'm not ashamed to say that I feel the pressure of being a female athlete who has 1) a biological clock (one I'm constantly reminded of), and 2) a "happy ending" in mind that involves love, and marriage, and a family of my own. I'm also not ashamed to say I went through four rounds (five tries) of fertility last year, with no luck. And I'm not ashamed to say that that process gutted me, and spiritually exhausted me."
Already dealing with a long recovery from injury and her struggles with fertility treatment, Charlotte and Andrade's marriage also became strained as 2024 went along. But it wasn't until that summer when all three issues collided into one another, and unfortunately left Charlotte feeling as though she was at an all-time low.
"I think my rock bottom moment was probably sometime last summer, when I was flying around the country for second opinions (Chicago, San Francisco, New York, I went everywhere)," Charlotte said. "Around this same time, I developed tendinitis in my knee from going too hard in my rehab, which of course set my rehab back more. And then also around this same time, I went from trying to save my marriage to facing the fact that I was getting a third divorce.
"And it's like each thing just fed into the other. Like: I couldn't do jumping exercises because of my fertility...but those are exactly the exercises I needed to rehab my knee. Or: It felt like the stress from my fertility had harmed my marriage...but then it felt like the stress from my divorce was now harming my fertility. It was like for an entire year, I just couldn't win. I was trying so damn hard, at all these things...but it's like the harder I tried, the worse everything got."
A year later, Charlotte's situation has largely improved. She returned healthy this past January, winning the Women's Royal Rumble match, though her WWE Women's Title feud with Tiffany Stratton heading into WrestleMania received mixed reviews. She's also set to compete on the upcoming all-women's WWE Evolution PLE, teaming with Alexa Bliss in a four-way match for the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships. But none of that is why she told her story, which Charlotte explains is something she felt she needed to do for herself, even if some of her detractors would take glee in her suffering.
"I'm sure some people will read this and have jokes about it and that's fine," Charlotte siad. "I know how some people see me...and I know how mean they can be about what they think they know about my life. But I'm not writing this for those people.....this isn't for my haters. Honestly, this isn't even for my fans. This is for myself.
"This is for the version of me that's spent so much of my personal life needing to be liked, and so much of my romantic life wanting to be loved, and so much of my professional life trying to be hated...that I think I've lost my own compass sometimes in the middle of all of that. So I guess I'm working on finding it again. And I think putting this out there...owning what's happened to me...is a pretty good start."
