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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.  

 

Mar 8, 2022

Hello, my beautiful people. I am recording today in the midst of moving boxes and bubble wrap and all kinds of things to prepare for our move.

 In Episode 25, we talked about clearing the clutter and how I went through all the closets and went through all the things in my life that I have that I'm just not using anymore. Almost every day, I have been going and dropping things off to local charities, I have been putting things up on our neighborhood Facebook group, and I feel so happy that sharing things with others brings joy to them. For example, on Saturday, I posted an art easel, my husband in his free time does some oil painting. And we found this easel that was shoved away under our stairs and I posted on our neighborhood Facebook group. And a few hours later, a woman came and picked it up. She was so excited because she has a young daughter who's very interested in art. And they were so excited to have this easel to take home for their daughter. So things like that just it feels really good. Instead of saying, Oh, maybe I'll use that, again, four years from now just to pass that on to somebody else feels really good. And I feel very grateful to do so. And I've known for months that we were going to be moving since we put our house up on the market. But it's really been intense these last few weeks with all the purging and packing and coordinating of all the things that go along with the move. We're just really excited to start this new chapter and this new adventure. Once we sell our house, and we are moving into a rental so we're gonna rent and we decided to look at it as a 15-month vacation. And just really enjoy these next 15 months of renting this condo and enjoying living in a new neighborhood. We're staying in Chicago, but we decided that since we don't have kids, and we don't have to worry about uprooting them and moving schools and coordination of you know, logistics with children, we decided that we wanted to try and live somewhere that we'd never lived before in the city. We have signed a lease that an awesome apartment that overlooks Millennium Park, and there's concerts in the summer at the park and we just really made a commitment to ourselves that we are just going to enjoy these next 15 months and be adventurous. If we see a concert going on in the park, we are going to pack our picnic basket and we're just going to head our butts down there and enjoy these next 15 months. But when we first bought our house in 2015, and we moved in here, I was in between chapters in my treatment, I had gone through a few rounds of IVF here at a local hospital at a local teaching institution. And I was sort of in this lull of not knowing if I was going to pursue IVF again, it was as you know, very emotional, a very hard thing to prepare myself to go through again. And I honestly just was not sure that I had it in me. But we wanted to buy a house that if we did grow, to have a family, we would be able to have room for a nursery and kids to grow. When we bought this house. There were two rooms in our house. Sorry I'm gonna get a little emotional on this that I considered for a nursery. I always envision bringing a baby home from the hospital to this home.

When we bought this house, it was my dream house. When we moved in, we did a lot of remodeling and picked out the wallpaper I picked light fixtures I picked paint colors and draperies and it was a big house in more space than we would ever need. And so when we found out that we weren't going to be able to have children, my husband wanted to downsize, and I found myself to be really opposed to it. I remember us having some kind conversations and I was just very adamant that we weren't leaving this house that we, you know, love this house - it has everything that we needed. And I was just really opposed to it. And it was scary for me to think about moving and saying this now I've that have worked with a coach, and I'm now certified as a coach. I've been so interested to know why us moving was scary to me back then. And how could moving out of this house actually scare me. So after doing a tremendous amount of paper thinking on this, I realized that I used to believe that this house gave me validation. It was big, it was spacious, it was impressive. And not having a kid I thought that having a beautiful home would give me a validation to be admired. And it's easy to judge myself or to not want to admit that here as I'm saying it to you publicly, because it seems really shallow. And when I say it, I am almost thinking gosh, are the people listening are going to judge me. But when we can get curious about what it is that we're thinking and feeling without judging ourselves, without embarrassment for ourselves, and worry of what others are thinking we can learn so much. And I know I've talked about that before that a lot of the feelings that we have and the thoughts that we have about not having children and about our lives we don't talk about because it seems so embarrassing to actually admit that we think in a certain way, and believe in a certain way. So here's what I learned that I never dreamed I'd live in a house I loved like this, or that a house that was this big or decorated in the way that it's decorated. And so when my husband would suggest selling, I was really fearful of letting go of it because I didn't believe that I would ever have something this great again, because of that I held on to this house, out of fear of scarcity. 

It's very common for us not to want to change in our life, because we really don't believe that we could ever achieve something greater. So we stay where it's safe. We don't want to rock the boat because we feel lucky to have what we have. But when we keep ourselves stuck in circumstances out of fear, and we often misinterpret fear for gratefulness. We can move forward in our lives and feel grateful not for material possessions. But for what we have accomplished what we've achieved. What we've worked hard for that got us to the halving of something. In this episode, I'm talking about my dream house, but maybe for you, it's not your house, maybe it's a job that you have a relationship that you're in an environment that you desire. And so many of us give our dreams up out of fear that we can never do or have something again, or a belief that, oh, I just got lucky this time. And we rarely allow ourselves to recognize the role that we've played in the act of the achievement, we overlook the things that we bring to the table and the talents that we have, and the work that we've put forth to achieve and accomplish what we have right now. So this house wasn't a gift that plopped into our laps, my husband and I saved, and we planned and we worked to achieve and build the life that we have. And so, I've been practicing the thought

"No one has given me anything that I am not worthy of receiving."

So this week, I'd like you to start thinking of 

  • What you have in your life that you don't believe you're worthy of? 
  • Is there something in your life that you fear losing? What is that thing? Is that a feeling?
  • Do you believe that you don't feel worthy of happiness or joy? 

Maybe it's a material thing you don't feel worthy of having nice things, or going on nice vacations, there's so many things that our mind plays tricks on us with and really tells us that this is it folks, this is what you came for. This is what I'm going to give you. And don't you dare shake that boat because this is your climax of what you are destined to have in your life. And it's so not true ladies, you are destined for so much more if you just allow yourself to see how much you're really capable of achieving and the life that you're capable of having if you allow yourself to feel the feelings of gratitude for yourself and gratitude for what you get up, and do and accomplish, and strive for each day. And that doesn't mean that we don't have great people in our lives that have offered us opportunities, or maybe shown us the way to try something that we haven't tried before. I'm not saying that we don't show a sense of gratefulness to others, we absolutely do. But let's not give all your power away to others. Take time to observe what it is that you truly bring to your life every day. So, as I'm wrapping up the final few days here in our house, I am going through and really trying to recognize that this house and not having this house anymore cannot cause me fear. And that there's just so much out there for me that I just know is going to come to me and come to us and it is something that I'm truly excited to embark upon. The things we talked about in this week's episode are really some enlightening opportunities that you can have on where you are in your life, and possibly what's holding you back from moving on to the next version of you and what's available to you. 

Have a beautiful week. And remember... it is never too late to discover your meaning!