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IVF Failed You - 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 19, 2021

I mentioned in last week's podcast that  I recently graduated from The Life Coach School with my Coach Certification. I am excited to celebrate it with all of you that have been cheering me on. It was a huge time commitment, a huge step for me to take and a huge investment that I took in myself.

Since enrolling in The Life Coach School, I've had so many people have asked me ;What is a life coach? To be quite honest with you up until I started working with one for myself, I didn't have a clear understanding either. 

On today's podcast, I will give you my insight on what I believe life coaching is. Depending on who you talk to, who your coach is, where they've gotten their certification, or if they've even gotten certified, they might have a different opinion of it. 

Additionally, this is what I interpret as life coaching. I'm sharing it with you because learning to manage my mind though skills taught to me though life coaching changed my life. There are many people who hear the words life coach, and maybe don't have an awareness of what they can gain from working with a life coach. Previous to working with a Life Coach, I thought it meant hiring someone to tell you what to do. If you had a major goal in your life or looking to achieve some sort of career milestone to work towards you would hire this person to spell out what steps to take and how to achieve it.  I can tell you that is 100% not what life  coaching is -  at least the type of life coach I am, or the foundation for the certification that I received. 

As I begin, if I were to explain Life coaching in terms of sports; a team Doctor will lead with a diagnosis and treat you if you break your leg in a game. A coach is on the sidelines, giving tactical strategy to win the game. Let me be clear as we begin, that by no means is a life coach, a replacement for a therapist, a psychiatrist for a psychologist. There is 100% A line that must be understood is that it is not the job of a life coach to diagnose or to lead clients that are better suited for a professional who is degreed. We are trained to never overstep those boundaries. 

A life coach offers their client a mirror into their thoughts. They offer their clients an opportunity to question their thoughts and feelings and see the results that they are creating.  

The type of coaching that I'm trained to do is called causal coaching. Simply said, we help our clients understand and identify the cause and effect of our thinking  and what it creates in your life. To offer an outside perspective to patterns in one's life. So if a client comes to me and says, I'm continuously feeling disappointed in this setting or, I want to go after a job and I noticed that I just never do it. I tell myself I can't. Or want to explore a new career and there's something in me that just doesn't have the confidence. Or possibly strengthen a relationship you have with someone, but you just don't know what is holding you back.   

A life coach can work with you to help you understand yourself;  ask you questions and offer you tools to carve a path to the results that you're wanting to create in your 

life. What I want for my clients should not be relevant.  I dont believe in judging my clients or swaying them to do something I would do in my life because it’s not my life, it’s theirs.  They know what results they want and what is important to them and I would never want to sway them from being authentic to who they are and what they want to accomplish in their lives.

The type of life coach that I strive to be teaches my clients that your past no longer exists anywhere, but in your mind.  You don't need to have your past dictate your future. So you “failing fertility treatments” (which btw I so dislike the work “failing” being used to describe a cycle, but that is for another episode).  You failing a cycle doesn't have to define who you are as a person.  If your body wasn't able to reproduce, that doesn't mean you are a broken individual.  It just means you didn't respond to fertility treatments in a way that resulted in having a child.  What you make that mean about yourself now is up to you, and it is never too late to choose a new thought about yourself.  There’s not a day that goes by that I am glad I couldn’t have children or that IVF didn't work for me.  We will always wonder what kind of parents we would be and what amazingness a human we created would accomplish, but as unfair as that may seem, that wasn't intended for us.  So when I do my own work with my coach, I practice the thoughts I do  have about myself as a woman without children.

A Life Coach can help us understand and make sense of what we are creating in our lives and help build some awareness of it.  Help us create the lives that we want to create, but maybe they just haven't really asked ourselves the questions that will allow us to understand what's really going on in our mind. 

I believe that life coaching helps you look at your mind. It helps you explore options. 

Look at our patterns and teaches us to maintain a sense of empowerment and meaning in our lives.

Oftentimes we go through our lives reacting to what happens to us. Who can relate to me on that? We tell ourselves that as much as we want something to be different, it just won't be because that's just how it was. Life has it out for me, I’m cursed.  I have bad luck.

That was me before I learned to manage my mind. I told myself that I wasn't going to be a mom. I tried fertility treatments, I followed protocols and timed schedules and  I did exactly what my doctors told me to do, but it didn't work for me. And  because of that, I was just going to be. Ho‑hum and  just going through life and just taking it at the chin. Not being the trailblazer I yearned to be or discovering the meaningful life that I wanted to live. 

I want to serve my clients and serve my students and allow them to learn how to be independent.. I don't want someone to be reliant on me as their life coach to get through the rest of their life.  I want to do, is teach them skills that they can then continue to apply into different parts of their life and create big action for themselves. 

They know how to manage their mind. They know how to understand that their thoughts create their feelings and their feelings, then fuel actions that give them the results that they want to have in their life. 

If you reference back to episode 2, where we spoke of building awareness, When we notice our thoughts and Beliefs, we are able to see how they create our feelings. And when you become aware of your thinking, It becomes easier to see that the way you feel is directly related to your thoughts or beliefs you possess. 

When you decide that you're going to look inside your brain, and decide that you're going to thought-lead or create thoughts, your life becomes better because you're doing just that, you are leading it and choosing your thoughts. Remember - It is your version of “better”, not someone else's.

Me not being able to have a child means nothing, until I have a thought about it. I could either think my life is never going to be abundant and never be meaningful, or I can 

think: This is my opportunity to find my meaning in my life; to decide if I'm not going to be a mom, what is it that I want to be? What mark do I want to leave behind? 

You're the creator of your life. And you don't  have to ask anyone for permission to create it. 

When you go all in and do the work with a life coach, you'll be amazed at how you're able to get unstuck and start changing your life in ways that'll blow your mind. 

And I only tell you this because I am able to do it. I am no anomaly. What I share with you every week is solely my opinion based on what I have done and what I've experienced through life coaching and mind management. 

I was able to start to understand my brain and understand why I was doing what I was doing without having to beat myself up in order to motivate myself to make any kind of change. Starting with becoming aware of things and not having judgment for myself because of them. 

I discovered my true potential and I began to notice amazing results in my life. I know that is available to you, too

When you work with a life coach, You'll be amazed at the clarity, the insight and the help  you can get from working through your problems on a coaching call. 

Whether you're being coached directly during a 1 on 1 session or listening to others being coached on a group call, it will help you experience life‑changing breakthroughs. 

There's not one specific definition of a life coach, I'm just telling you my definition of the type of life coach that I expect myself to be. 

I am extremely proud to be a graduate of The Life Coach School. Brooke Castillo and the Master instructor that led me through my certification are absolutely magnificent.  The training was rigorous with a high level of expectation of me as a student, the understanding and skill I had to demonstrate had to meet specific high standards was no easy task.  There were tests I had to pass, and hours of coaching I had to submit to become evaluated in order to achieve my certification as a life coach.  Most importantly, I'm a believer in the training I got, because I see how it changed who I am today. I was the greatest recipient of my coach training.  I have the skill to realize that there’s nothing that will stop me from achieving a meaningful life, but my thoughts. 

Not having a child is solely a circumstance in your life; until you attach a thought to it. Of all thoughts available to you, what thought do you want to have about it? 

It’s yours to choose.

I hope this offered you some insight and understanding that if you're interested in working with a life 

Coach, roll up your sleeves and be ready to do the work and don't expect them to tell you what to do. 

They will be your mirror and offer you an opportunity to look at your own thinking. Look at the results that you want to create in your life and help you achieve them. 

Speaking of working with a Life Coach, I am going to be working on a topic with my clients 

around handling the holidays. I know for me, historically  the holidays were always a very tough time because I didn't have children. 

Next month with my private clients we are starting a 4 week program addressing The Holidays. We will be working on creating Meaningful holidays and learning how to enjoy the 

Season and celebrations, even if we don't have children. 

 

So be on the lookout for that. And as Always, I'd love to hear any feedback you have. 

Please check me out on instagram at Stitch Coaching. @stitchcoaching

And remember, never stop believing YOU have the ability to discover your meaning.