Welcome to IVF This, episode 200: Five years of IVF This

Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends.
Welcome back to IVF This.

I can’t quite believe I’m saying this out loud, but this is episode two hundred.
Five years of IVF This.

And every time we hit one of these big milestones, it never feels right to do a highlight reel or a recap of episodes. That’s never really been what this space is about.

So today isn’t a celebration in the traditional sense.
It’s more of a reflection.

A naming of what this show has quietly become —
and what it has become for me.

When I started IVF This, I thought I was creating a podcast about infertility.
About IVF.
About the logistics, the emotional side, the coping tools.

And yes — it has been all of those things.

But five years in, I can see that this show has always been about something deeper.

It’s been about grief.
Not just the obvious kind — the losses we can name — but the quieter, ongoing griefs that come with waiting, uncertainty, changed identities, and unmet expectations.

And lately, I’ve been thinking about a parable that perfectly captures what’s been sitting on my heart.

There’s a woman walking down the sidewalk, and she falls into a hole.
The walls are steep. She can’t climb out.

A priest walks by, and she calls up,
“Father, I’ve fallen in this hole. Can you help me?”

The priest writes a prayer on a piece of paper, tosses it down into the hole, and keeps walking.

Then a doctor walks by.
She says, “Doctor, I’ve fallen in this hole. I can’t get out. Can you help me?”

The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down into the hole, and moves on.

Finally, a friend walks by.

The woman says, “Hey, I’ve fallen in this hole and I can’t get out. Can you help me?”

And the friend jumps down into the hole with her.

The woman says, “What are you doing? Now we’re both stuck down here.”

And the friend says,
“I know. But I’ve been here before — and I know the way out.”

That story has been living in my body lately.

Because the priest and the doctor aren’t bad. They offer something meaningful.
But they never enter the hole.

And grief — especially infertility grief — doesn’t need to be fixed.
It can’t be fixed.
What it needs is to be witnessed.
What it needs is company.

Grief reshaped me.

Not all at once.
Not dramatically.
And not in ways I could see while it was happening.

Grief made me more authentic.
It stripped me down to the studs.

For a long time, grief was leading me without me even realizing it.
It led my moods.
It led my relationship with myself — most of all.
And it quietly shaped my other relationships too.

In my grief, it felt like the worst things I believed about myself were suddenly true.

That I wasn’t enough.
That I wasn’t strong.
That I wasn’t worthy.
That my pain didn’t even have a proper name — so it must be a me problem.

Grief marked me.
In excruciating ways.
And in beautiful ones.

It slowed me down.

And I want to say this clearly — none of this was alchemy that happened overnight.
This was years of work.
Intentional work.

Sometimes I knew what I was doing.
Sometimes I didn’t know the what or the why at all.
But the work was always there.

Grief took away my urgency to make things make sense quickly.
It took away my need to tidy pain or rush toward meaning.

And in that slowing, something else began to take shape.

Grief gave me purpose.

I’ve always known I was meant to be of service — I’ve felt that my whole life.
But grief brought that truth into the light.

It gave me the capacity to love more deeply.
To bear witness to other people’s pain without trying to fix it.
To understand what real kindness is — toward others, and toward myself.

My grief shaped how I create.
How I write.
How I speak.

It helps me give you language — for things that once felt unspeakable.
Language I didn’t have for so long.
A way of understanding myself.
A way of understanding other people’s pain.
And a way of holding space for both.

Because you can only write about something like grief
after you’ve lived with it.

You know… it’s funny.

Now, here’s a random “Emily” fact.

I took Latin in college — because what eighteen-year-old doesn’t want to learn a dead language — and that’s where I first heard the phrase amore fati.
Love your fate.

It’s a principle from Stoicism — the idea that everything that happens to you, the good and the bad, isn’t random or meaningless, but part of what shapes you into who you become.

That idea has followed me ever since.
Sometimes loud in the foreground of my life.
Most often quiet in the background.

Just waiting.

And it wasn’t until I stopped merely tolerating that idea — and allowed myself to embrace it, without resistance — that it really took root.

Would I wake up and choose character growth like infertility or IVF?
No. Of course not.

But I wouldn’t be who I am without it.

And for that — I am immensely, and eternally, grateful.

So much so that amore fati is now tattooed on my arm.

There’s something else I’ve been thinking about lately.

Sherpas.

They come from the Himalayan regions — they’re guides who help climbers navigate some of the most difficult and dangerous mountains in the world. They walk alongside others, carrying knowledge of the path, the conditions, and the risks — not to guarantee success, but to help people move through terrain they couldn’t navigate alone.

People whose lives have been shaped by the land itself.
By altitude.
By weather that can turn quickly.
By terrain that doesn’t forgive ignorance or bravado.

What’s always struck me about sherpas is this:

They don’t conquer the mountain.
They don’t pretend the climb is easy.
They don’t promise safe passage no matter what.

What they offer is something quieter.

They know the terrain.

They know where the air thins.
They know where people tend to lose their footing.
They know when it’s safer to rest than to push.
They know that turning back isn’t failure — sometimes it’s wisdom.

And most importantly, they don’t walk ahead, shouting instructions from a distance.

They walk with.

They’ve been shaped by that landscape.
Their bodies know it.
Their nervous systems know it.

And because of that, they can say, honestly:
I know this part.
I’ve been here before.
I know how disorienting this can feel.

That’s how I think about grief now.

Not something to be overcome.
Not something to be fixed or outgrown.

But a landscape — one that changes you the longer you live inside it.

And over time, without realizing it, I stopped trying to lead people out of their grief.

I learned how to stay with them inside it.

To help them orient themselves.
To remind them where they are.
To help them trust their footing again — slowly, imperfectly, in their own time.

Because when you’re in grief, what you need most isn’t someone telling you where you should be by now.

You need someone who understands the terrain well enough to say:
This part is hard.
This part makes sense.
You’re not lost — you’re just here.

Most people don’t actually need someone to tell them what to do.

They need someone to say:

Your feelings make sense.
This really is as hard as you think it is — you’re not imagining it.
You are enough. You’re doing enough.
And it won’t always feel this way.

And maybe most importantly:

What you are doing takes courage —
to keep loving something deeply
when heartbreak is part of the story.

So this part is for you, my beautiful friend.

None of this is your fault.

There was no way you could have prepared for this journey.
There was no way to predict what it would ask of you — emotionally, physically, relationally.

There was no choice you made or didn’t make.
No single decision.
No “thing” you did or failed to do
that caused you to be here.

This journey is messy.
Chaotic.
Painful.
Isolating.
Demoralizing.

It is all of those things — and more.

But you know what it is not?

It is not your fault.

You have always been enough.
You have always been worthy.
Not because of how well you’ve handled this.
Not because of your optimism, or resilience, or strength.

Just because you are you.

Even on the days you feel hollow.
Even on the days you don’t recognize yourself.
Even on the days you wonder if this has changed you too much.

Nothing about this journey gets to rewrite your worth.

And however this story continues — however it unfolds —
you are allowed to meet yourself with kindness,
especially in the parts of the terrain you didn’t choose
and don’t yet know how to navigate.

Thank you for walking these five years with me.
I’m really, really glad you’re here.

I’ll see you next week.