It was the loneliness of facing an experience such as this that inspired Steel to write this show, and while it is of a highly personal nature, 19 Weeks was something that she felt she had to do. "When you go through something like that, it can make you feel very alone. And then it feels like you’re not supposed to talk about it, which makes the isolation worse. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted people with similar experiences to feel less alone. As a playwright, I’m particularly interested in challenging stories and complex female characters. This is one of those stories. If I hadn’t told it, I wouldn’t have been doing my job."