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The "So Now What?" Podcast


I am a Fertility Survivor.  The kind you enter into treatments hoping you will never be... childless.  After several rounds of IUI and IVF, at some of the leading Fertility Centers, I was told I was no longer a candidate for fertility treatment.  It left me asking myself...

So now what?

For the years that followed, I tried to put myself back together and tell myself I would be OK, but I wasn't.  I was shattered - I felt alone and failed by the whole process and especially, my body.  I yearned for others that felt the pain I felt and someone that could help me navigate a life without a child. 

I didn't find it, so I decide to create it.  

Fast forward to today. I am still childless, but my beliefs about my life have changed.  I decided that I can create meaning and purpose in my life even though I am not a mother.  I've learned to love myself and the body I felt failed me as a woman.

If you've been on this journey, hop on and join me as we create something we were not offered.  Let's create a sisterhood for the bravest women I know.  We brush ourselves off and don't let terms like: Failed, Unexplained, Miscarriage, Not-viable or Advanced Maternal Age define us anymore.  

 

Oct 12, 2022

We launched Thrive after Infertility last week. We had our first class on Wednesday, and can I just tell you, it was magic. It was magic for me. I know it was magic for the women that chose to go on this three month journey with me, and I'm just so proud of the women that have chosen.

To make change in their life because I know what it feels like to feel stuck and feel like there's just nothing worth trying because women like us and women who tried to become moms and couldn't become moms, Don't have an option to live a life that feels good. Again, we just have this belief that this is just the sentence that we've received and we're just gonna try to white knock all our way through life, but not these ladies.

These are some amazing women and we're doing great stuff together already in week one. We've been keeping in touch. We have our own little text group and we keep in touch and check in with each other, and I am just, Beyond ecstatic that the tools that I can teach have such an opportunity to change lives.

So if you thought about Thrive and chose not to choose us, chose not to join us this time, I have a feeling we're gonna do it again. So keep on the lookout for more announcements about that. But what I wanna talk about this week is challenge. And before I got. Fertility, infertility diagnosis. Before I found out that I was diagnosed with unexplained infertility, I was the challenge queen.

There was very little that I feared. There was very little that had me ruffled. There was very little I believed I was not capable of, and once I got my diagnosis of unexplained infertility, My whole vision about challenge changed. I started to think that challenge was not fair. I started to believe that I was not up for a challenge, that I couldn't be successful because I did not have the optimal.

Result that I sought in this challenge of infertility. So let's talk a little bit about why challenge is scary to us. Challenges are scary to us because we are humans. Okay. That's like as simple as it can get. So you've heard me talk before about how we have this primal brain and we oftentimes, Are so used to believing a certain way, thinking a certain way, feeling a certain way when things come upon us because our brain is just wired for repetition.

So it, Here's the story. The story plays in our mind. We see challenges, we see obstacles. We see things we possibly might not be good at, things that we might need to work a little bit harder. To achieve and our brain automatically goes and freak out loud because it's like, Oh shit, I'm gonna have to work really hard to figure this one out.

So I'm gonna trick this person into believing that we should just stick with our routine, stick with what we do, stick with what is kept us safe all these years. So when we use our prefrontal cortex, which is the more developed part of our brain, the brain that. Has the capability to put us in a place where we can navigate things that we might not have a routine down for yet.

We can do more critical thinking. We can believe from a place we've never existed before, so we can see ourself in this place that we feel abundant and we feel full, and we feel proud, meaningful, purposeful. Even though our challenge of infertility did not end up with us having a human child. So challenges simply are an opportunity for you to get comfortable with having your own back and training your brain to think new things and believe new things.

Cause like, let's be honest, like of course it sounds fun to never have a challenge in your. But when is the last time you were presented with something that you weren't sure the outcome of, or you weren't sure how to figure it out? You had to be resourceful. Like you guys heard me talk about that day. I went to go turn my car on and it was dead as the door.

Now all of a sudden I had to figure out how the hell I was gonna get my car out of the garage, get to the dealership, get my battery changed, like all that stuff. Like those little challenges, if we sit there. And we are just idle and telling ourselves like, This is too much. I can't figure it out. We think we're just gonna ride this wave of not being resourceful, and we just become this helpless person.

And if you can start to show yourself that there is such opportunity for you to face challenges in a way, That you can be the victor in your story. You can be somebody that you're proud of. You can be somebody who evolves even though you've had the hugest challenge. So think of somebody that you've met.

I know we all have these people that you meet someone and you hear their story, or they may have something physically that has happened to them as a result of an accident. Health condition a disease, and you think, Oh my gosh. Like how could they have gone through that and still be so positive? I mean, there's so many people I can think of that I've met and I'm like, How do they wake up every day with a smile on earth, on their face, or this willingness to believe that they can make it another day despite all that they've been through?

and I wanna offer you that you have that same opportunity. The only difference between them and you is that they've decided not to be stagnated by their challenge. And that doesn't mean that they're anymore gifted. They don't have any more faith in God. They don't have any more brilliance that you weren't born with.

They have just decided that even though. They may have had a shit sandwich at some point in their life. That shit sandwich does not have to turn into the feast that is in front of them. So when you think about challenges, think about the fact that they are gonna be there, whether you want them are not, and that the more you're scared and the more you tell yourself.

That you won't be good at something or that it's not fair that this challenge has come upon you. You are gonna sit there idle and not looking for ways that you can be resourceful, not looking for ways that you can feel pride for yourself or feel meaningful or feel like your life is full. Because you're constantly beholden to that story that challenges are just too much for you.

And I know we feel it's often times, I know I felt this at some point where I was kind of like, Okay, my challenge bucket is full. What else could I possibly be challenged with if my ultimate fear of not becoming a mom became my reality? Like, Life isn't fair if I have any more challenges beyond that. And the challenges kept coming and I decided that I could have them keep coming and navigate them in a way that I was the most badass woman in my life.

So I want you to think about what challenges might be coming up for you, Decide that you might feel uncomfortable, you might not know the right answer. You might have to ask for help. You might feel weak. You might feel helpless sometimes. But that is part of our human experience. And the more that you just let yourself open up to that opportunity, and I call it an opportunity, I don't wanna think of challenges at setbacks.

I think of them as opportunity because every single challenge that I have had in my life, including my inability to have a child, has created the most magnificence in my life right now. And there is so many years that I dreaded. Becoming the person that ended up going through seven years of IVF and didn't have a child.

I dreaded that I, I lived my own biggest fear of who I could have possibly ended up as when I started my infertility journey. And I am here and let me tell you. I have never felt fricking better with all the challenges that I've endured and the emotional roller coasters and the thousands of dollars and the start and stop of cycles and the canceled cycles, the heartache, I mean, all of that stuff that you are feeling, I have felt it too, and I am such a greater person because of that.

And I know that might sound cliche to you, but it's because you haven't allowed your. To lean into your challenges, and I wanna tell you that if you just allow yourself to not live in fear and. Tell yourself that if you just hold out and you just give it time, you'll get to the other side of it. You're really doing yourself a disservice because you are not allowing yourself to evolve to the most amazing version that you can be.

That's my soapbox for this week. I love me a good challenge. I want you to know that you can love a good challenge too, and not be fearful of. I am going to be opening a couple more spots in my one-on-one coaching. I have not done this in a while cuz I have had some folks that have graduated from one-on-one into group coaching.

And if you're thinking about all the things that I talk about every week and saying that you're not sure it's possible for you, I invite you to join me on my one on one coaching. It's a three month. I mean, it's the most amazing transformative time you can have. Hit me up. Let's chat. Let's see if we're a good fit for each other, and let's do some magic together.

Let's challenge some shit. All right. Have a great week. Remember that I love you and it's never too late to discover your meeting. I'll talk to you next week.