Hello, hello, hello my beautiful friends. I hope you are all doing so, so well! I know it’s been a bit since you heard from me. It’s been a super busy summer. I think I mentioned in my last episode that we were moving. Not far, only about 20 min or so from where we were. So we did that, and I don’t think I will ever do that again. I told my husband to just bury me in this house, so that’s my plan for the next 40—50 years, God-willing! Then we went on a cruise to Alaska. It was mine and my husbands 15 year wedding anniversary at the beginning of August and we went to Alaska for our honeymoon. We’re not really beach people. Well, my husband is a redhead, so he absolutely married outside of his SPF, so it’s the mountains and forests that call to us. It was great to get to re-experience Alaska together and show it to the kids. Probably one of my favorite moments was when we were in Ketchikan, and we found the waterfall that Hubs and I took a picture in front of 15 years prior, so it went from just the two of us to the five of us. It was such a beautiful moment, and I can’t stop smiling when I think about it.  But that’s the update!

But now we’re back! And today is a special day on the podcast bc I am finally sharing with all of you something that I’ve been working on for almost a year now. 

There are moments in life where you realize you've been doing the same thing all along...

you just didn't have language for it yet.

And I think that's what has happened with IVF This.

For years, I thought this podcast was about helping women survive infertility.

Then I thought maybe it was about grief.

Then trauma.

Then hope.

Then resilience.

Then nervous system regulation.

And if you've been here for any length of time, you've probably noticed that we cover a LOT of shit around here.

We've talked about grief and resentment and jealousy.

We've talked about trauma, hypervigilance, the Window of Tolerance, and what happens when your nervous system stops believing you're safe.

We've talked about self-gaslighting, perfectionism, self-abandonment, and the ways we slowly stop trusting ourselves.

We've talked about boundaries and relationships and asynchronous grief—what happens when two people can be going through the exact same infertility experience and somehow be living in completely different emotional worlds.

We've talked about the Just World Fallacy, moral injury, survivor's guilt, worthiness, and the stories we create trying to explain why this happened to us.

We've talked about control and uncertainty.

About symptom spotting and body surveillance.

About waiting.

About decision-making when you're exhausted and overwhelmed and fucking terrified of making the wrong choice.

We've talked about hope and hopelessness.

Hope hangovers and happiness boundaries.

The weird rules we create around how hopeful we're allowed to be, how happy we're allowed to feel, and whether letting ourselves believe something good might happen will somehow make it hurt worse if it doesn't.

We've talked about identity and purpose.

About who you were before infertility, who you've had to become to survive it, and what happens when you don't particularly recognize the person staring back at you anymore.

We've talked about performative coping and the pressure to suffer correctly.

We've talked about acceptance, active surrender, emotional flexibility, self-compassion, and learning how to offer yourself compassion without abandoning yourself in the process.

We've talked about how it was supposed to go.

We've talked about the baby you desperately want—and all the things having that baby won't magically solve.

And hell, we've even talked about absurdism and what it means to live in a reality that may never give you the explanation, fairness, or closure you keep searching for.

So yeah...

we cover a lot of shit around here.

And sometimes I have wondered...

What exactly ties all of this together?

Because I didn't start IVF This with a framework.

I wasn't sitting down five years ago saying, "Here are the pillars of IVF This and here is my theoretical orientation."

I knew what I wanted this podcast to do.

I wanted to talk about the parts of infertility that weren't being talked about.

Because everything I found—both when I was going through IVF myself and later, when I was branching out into IVF This coaching—focused almost exclusively on the medical aspects of infertility.

And that wasn't what I needed help with.

The medical part is only half the battle.

And honestly, half is probably being generous.

Because yes, I needed to understand medications and protocols and procedures and what the hell all these acronyms meant.

But I could find that information.

What I couldn't find was help with what all of it was doing to me.

The emotional experience underneath all of the appointments and medications and procedures and outcomes.

The waiting.

The uncertainty.

The grief.

The jealousy.

The fear.

The way infertility was changing how I saw my body, my relationships, my future, and sometimes even myself.

THAT was where I saw the gap.

And that's the gap I've been trying to fill ever since.

But I also wasn't intentionally building some larger system.

I was just following the questions.

Every week, I would ask myself:

What are women actually struggling with?

Not what are they Googling.

Not what supplement are they taking.

Not what medication are they on.

Not whether pineapple core helps implantation.

But what is happening inside them?

Why can't I stop checking my symptoms?

Why am I so angry at my pregnant friend?

Why am I terrified to feel hopeful?

Why did that pregnancy announcement absolutely fucking wreck me when I thought I was doing okay?

Why do I feel guilty when I'm happy?

Why am I constantly waiting for something bad to happen?

Why can't I stop thinking about the life I thought I would have?

Why don't I recognize myself anymore?

Those were the questions I kept following.

And what I didn't realize at the time was that those questions weren't random.

They were connected.

There were patterns underneath them.

The same emotional experiences kept showing up in different forms, at different stages of infertility, in different women.

And somewhere along the way...

without realizing it...

I stopped collecting podcast episodes.

I started drawing a map.

I just didn't know that's what I was doing yet.

And before I explain what I mean by that, I want to talk about something that I think we've gotten fundamentally wrong about coping.

Why Coping Advice So Often Fails

One of the things that has always bothered me about infertility coping advice is how incredibly general it is.

It's ambiguous.

Almost amorphous.

There's nothing you can actually sink your teeth into.

Give yourself grace.

Protect your peace.

Feel your feelings.

Practice gratitude.

Stay present.

Take it one day at a time.

Let go of what you can't control.

Be gentle with yourself.

And listen...

are any of those things inherently wrong?

No.

Some of them are probably good advice.

Hell, I recommend some of them.

The problem isn't necessarily the advice itself.

The problem is that so much of it gives you an idea without teaching you how to actually do it.

"Give yourself grace."

Great.

How?

What does giving myself grace actually look like when my best friend gets pregnant?

What does "stay present" mean during the two-week wait when the entire fucking point of the two-week wait is that I'm waiting to find out what my future looks like?

What does "let go of what you can't control" look like when I'm pumping thousands of dollars, months of my life, and every emotional resource I have into trying to influence an outcome I ultimately cannot control?

And my personal favorite:

Feel your feelings.

Okay.

How?

Because most of us have absolutely no fucking idea what that actually means.

We say "feel your feelings" like it's an instruction. Like we've just given someone a concrete thing to do.

But most of us were never taught how to sit with ourselves in a moment of emotional distress.

Hell, most people can't even sit with someone else who is experiencing intense emotion.

Someone starts crying and immediately we're reaching for:

"Don't cry."

"It's going to be okay."

"Everything happens for a reason."

"At least..."

Anything that might make the feeling stop.

Not necessarily because we don't care.

But because we don't know how to be with distress.

Theirs or our own.

So telling someone to "feel your feelings" without teaching them what it means to actually stay present with themselves while they're hurting is just another throwaway line from pop psychology.

It's catchy.

It sounds emotionally evolved.

It looks great on an Instagram graphic.

But it has no teeth.

What does "feeling your feelings" actually look like?

What do I do when the feeling gets bigger instead of smaller?

How do I know I'm allowing an emotion instead of ruminating in it?

How do I stay with myself when every instinct I have is telling me to escape, fix, suppress, intellectualize, distract, or make the feeling go away?

That's something we can work with.

Because "feel your feelings" isn't a skill.

Learning how to stay with yourself while you feel them is.

And I think there's another problem underneath all of this.

Even when we are given actual coping tools, we're often handed the tool before anyone has bothered to figure out what we're actually trying to address.

We see distress and immediately move toward intervention.

You're anxious?

Let's regulate.

You're sad?

Let's practice self-compassion.

You're overwhelmed?

Let's reduce your stress.

You're jealous?

Let's work on gratitude.

You're spiraling?

Let's ground.

But hang on.

Why are you anxious?

What kind of sadness is this?

What's underneath the overwhelm?

What is the jealousy touching?

What is your brain trying to accomplish with the spiral?

Because two women can both say:

"I'm anxious about my transfer."

And be having two completely different emotional experiences.

One might be terrified because she's had three failed transfers and her nervous system has learned that transfer equals danger.

The other might be terrified because this is her only euploid embryo and she's staring directly at the possibility of a future she desperately does not want.

Same sentence.

Same emotion, at least on the surface.

Completely different experiences underneath it.

And potentially completely different needs.

This is where I think we've become obsessed with intervention without first establishing orientation.

We're constantly asking:

What should I do?

What coping skill should I use?

How do I calm myself down?

How do I stop thinking about this?

How do I feel better?

And I think there's a question that has to come before all of those:

Where am I?

What is actually happening here?

Because you cannot choose the right intervention if you don't understand the environment you're trying to navigate.

Imagine someone hands you a life jacket.

Fantastic.

Life jackets are incredibly useful.

Unless you're standing in the middle of a desert.

Or someone gives you hiking boots.

Wonderful piece of equipment.

Not particularly helpful if you're drowning.

The tool isn't bad.

The tool isn't ineffective.

And this part is really important:

You didn't fail because the tool didn't help you.

Maybe it just wasn't the tool for where you were standing.

Because I think this is one of the reasons so many women eventually start believing they're bad at coping.

You've read the books.

You've listened to the podcasts.

You've gone to therapy.

You've journaled.

You've meditated.

You've tried gratitude.

You've taken the walks.

You've done the breathing exercises.

You've learned the coping skills.

You've done all the things you're supposedly supposed to do.

And somewhere along the way, you've probably also developed an idea of what all that work is supposed to look like.

How you're supposed to feel if you're "healing."

How you're supposed to respond if you're "doing the work."

How much something is still allowed to hurt before you decide you're clearly not coping very well.

And then one random Tuesday somebody announces a pregnancy and you completely fucking fall apart.

And your brain goes:

What the fuck?

I thought I was doing better.

I thought I'd worked through this.

Why does this still hurt this much?

Why am I reacting like this?

Why am I back here again?

And then, on top of whatever you're already feeling, comes the judgment.

I shouldn't still feel this way.

I should be better at this by now.

I've done so much work.

Why isn't it working?

And now we're not only experiencing grief, or jealousy, or fear, or whatever the original emotion was.

We're experiencing shame about the fact that we're experiencing it at all.

We've taken the difference between how we thought we should feel and how we actually feel...

and turned that gap into evidence that we're failing.

But maybe you're not.

Maybe you were doing better.

Maybe the work you've done hasn't disappeared.

Maybe you're not back at square one.

Maybe the fact that something hurts isn't evidence that all of your healing somehow got erased.

Maybe this isn't evidence that you're failing at coping.

Maybe you've simply walked into different terrain.

And the tools that helped you where you were...

aren't necessarily the tools you need where you are now.

Different terrain requires different tools.

And before we can figure out which tool you need...

we have to figure out where the fuck you are.

And that's where I realized something.

We've been talking about infertility like it's one emotional problem.

It isn't.

Infertility Isn't ONE Emotional Problem

We tend to talk about infertility as though it's one emotional experience.

Usually we call it "stress."

Sometimes anxiety.

Sometimes grief.

But infertility isn't one emotional experience.

It's dozens.

And sometimes they contradict each other.

You can be hopeful and terrified.

Grateful and grieving.

Excited and resentful.

Relieved and devastated.

You can desperately want your transfer to work and simultaneously be terrified of what happens if it does.

You can love your friend and not be able to attend her baby shower.

You can be genuinely happy for someone and deeply sad for yourself.

And those aren't contradictions that need to be resolved.

They're different emotional experiences happening at the same time.

And one person can move through wildly different emotional experiences during a single fucking IVF cycle.

You can start a cycle hopeful.

Then become consumed with anticipation as you wait to see how many follicles are growing.

Then grieve when fewer eggs are retrieved than you expected.

Then become hopeful again when you hear that several fertilized.

Then you're right back in anticipation waiting for blast results.

Then grief.

Then hope.

Then uncertainty.

Then suddenly you're wondering what any of this says about your body or your future or who you even are anymore.

Same woman.

Same cycle.

Different emotional experiences.

And if those experiences are different...

why would we expect them to need the same thing?

What grief needs is different from what anticipation needs.

What hope needs is different from what identity needs.

And that's when it finally clicked for me.

Infertility isn't one landscape.

It's a series of emotional terrains.

And every terrain asks something different of us.

That's the IVF This Framework.

Not:

How do I make this feeling go away?

But first:

Where am I?

Because once we understand the terrain...

then we can begin to understand what we actually need.

There are four terrains that I see again and again.

Grief.

Anticipation.

Hope.

And Identity.

And these terrains overlap.

You can move between them incredibly quickly.

You can be standing in more than one at the exact same time.

This isn't meant to take the complexity of human emotion and shove it into neat little boxes.

It's meant to give us orientation.

To help us look around and say:

Oh. This is where I am.

So let's walk through the map.

The Terrain of Grief and Loss

This is probably the terrain we most readily associate with infertility.

But even here, grief is so much bigger than we often allow it to be.

There is grief after miscarriage.

Grief after a failed transfer.

Grief when an embryo doesn't make it.

Grief when a cycle gets cancelled.

Those are the losses people can usually point to and say:

This happened. I lost something.

But infertility is also filled with losses that are much harder to name.

The pregnancy experience you thought you would have.

The family size you imagined.

The age you thought you'd be when you became a mother.

The space between your children that you thought you'd have.

The ability to have sex and believe it might result in a baby.

The innocence of believing that a positive pregnancy test means you're going to bring home a baby.

Time.

Money.

Trust in your body.

Sometimes even trust in the world.

There can be grief for things that existed only in your imagination...

and were still completely fucking real to you.

That's why so much infertility grief is disenfranchised.

There isn't always a funeral.

There isn't always an event other people recognize as a loss.

Sometimes you're grieving a future that never happened.

And then wondering whether you're even allowed to call it grief.

This terrain isn't asking you to fix anything.

It's asking:

What have I lost?

And can I allow that loss to matter?

The Terrain of Anticipation

Then there's anticipation.

And infertility involves an absolutely obscene amount of it.

Waiting for your period.

Waiting for your cycle to start.

Waiting for follicles to grow.

Waiting for fertilization reports.

Waiting for blast reports.

Waiting for PGT results.

Waiting for transfer.

Waiting for beta.

Waiting for the second beta.

Waiting for the ultrasound.

Waiting for the phone to ring.

Waiting for the next piece of information that will determine what happens next.

And underneath all of that waiting is uncertainty.

Because waiting wouldn't be nearly as difficult if you already knew how it ended.

The agony is:

I don't know yet.

And our brains fucking hate that.

So we try to escape it.

We Google.

We symptom spot.

We calculate probabilities.

We search Reddit for someone with our exact numbers and our exact circumstances who can tell us how their story ended.

We replay conversations with our doctors.

We analyze every word in the embryologist's report.

We create plans A through Q.

We reach for certainty anywhere we think we might find it.

Not because we're irrational.

Not because we're obsessive.

And not because we're incapable of "just relaxing."

We're trying to solve the unbearable discomfort of not knowing.

Sometimes we even decide we'd rather know something terrible than continue sitting in uncertainty.

Because at least then we'd know.

This is also where hypervigilance can creep in.

Your nervous system starts scanning for information.

Every sensation becomes potential evidence.

Every phone call could contain news.

Every trip to the bathroom becomes an opportunity to check.

You're not just waiting anymore.

You're watching.

Trying to find the answer before the answer actually exists.

And this is why telling someone in anticipation to "stay positive" or "just distract yourself" so often misses the point.

The problem isn't that she needs to think better thoughts.

She's being asked to live in a space where something extraordinarily important to her is happening...

and she has almost no control over the outcome.

The question underneath this terrain isn't:

How do I make sure everything turns out okay?

Because you can't.

It's:

How do I live inside "I don't know yet" without abandoning myself while I'm here?

That is the work of anticipation.

The Terrain of Hope

Hope is different.

Hope and anticipation often travel together, which is probably why we tend to lump them together.

But they're not the same emotional experience.

Anticipation says:

I don't know what's going to happen.

Hope says:

I know what I want to happen.

And there is enormous vulnerability in wanting something when you have absolutely no guarantee you'll receive it.

Especially when you've wanted before.

And lost before.

After enough disappointment, hope can start to feel dangerous.

So we start negotiating with it.

Maybe if I don't get too excited, it won't hurt as much.

Maybe if I expect the worst, I'll be prepared.

Maybe if I don't calculate the due date...

maybe if I don't look at baby names...

maybe if I don't imagine telling my family...

maybe if I don't let myself picture the nursery...

maybe if I don't really believe this could work...

I'll somehow soften the blow if it doesn't.

We start creating emotional rules around hope.

Don't get ahead of yourself.

Don't jinx it.

Don't get your hopes up.

We brace.

We protect.

We create happiness boundaries.

We experience hope hangovers.

We convince ourselves that pessimism is preparation.

Because somewhere along the way, we start believing that the amount of pain we'll experience later is determined by the amount of hope we allow ourselves now.

As though grief works like some kind of emotional math equation.

If I hope 30% less now, maybe it'll hurt 30% less later.

Except that's not really how grief works.

Restricting hope doesn't guarantee less pain.

It just means fear gets to make decisions about how much of your present you're allowed to experience.

And none of this means you need to "stay positive."

That's just another version of telling you how you're supposed to feel.

Hope isn't positivity.

Hope isn't certainty.

Hope isn't manifestation.

Hope isn't you declaring that everything is going to work out.

Hope is much simpler—and sometimes much more vulnerable—than that.

Hope says:

I want this.

That's it.

I want this...

and I don't know if I get to have it.

So the question underneath the terrain of Hope isn't:

How do I stay hopeful?

It's:

Can I allow myself to want something I cannot guarantee I'll receive?

And can I let hope exist without asking it to protect me from grief?

Because that's not hope's job.

The Terrain of Identity

And then there's identity.

Because infertility doesn't just threaten the future you imagined.

Eventually, it can start fucking with your understanding of yourself.

Who am I now?

Why don't I recognize myself?

Why am I so angry?

Why am I jealous of people I love?

Why can't I just be happy for her?

Why am I avoiding everyone?

Why does everyone else's life feel like it's moving forward while mine is standing still?

Why can't I handle things the way I used to?

And very quickly, those questions can turn into something much more painful:

What does this say about me?

Maybe I'm selfish.

Maybe I'm bitter.

Maybe I'm ungrateful.

Maybe I'm weak.

Maybe I'm doing infertility wrong.

This is where shame lives.

Worthiness.

Comparison.

Self-gaslighting.

Resentment.

Performative coping.

The Good Infertile Woman.

The Bitter Infertile Woman.

All of those invisible rules about the kind of person you're supposed to be while something extraordinarily painful is happening to you.

Because infertility doesn't happen in a vacuum.

It happens inside a culture that has very specific ideas about motherhood.

About womanhood.

About bodies.

About productivity.

About what a "good" person looks like.

About how we're supposed to respond to other people's happiness.

About how long we're allowed to grieve.

About when we're supposed to move on.

And when your actual human experience doesn't match those expectations, it is incredibly easy to decide that the problem must be you.

You stop saying:

I'm experiencing jealousy.

And start saying:

I'm a jealous person.

You stop saying:

I'm angry about what has happened to me.

And start wondering:

When did I become so bitter?

You stop saying:

I don't have the capacity to attend this baby shower.

And start saying:

I'm a terrible friend.

We take temporary emotional experiences...

and turn them into character assessments.

And infertility can slowly become evidence in a case you're building against yourself.

This terrain asks us to separate:

What am I experiencing?

from

Who have I decided this experience means I am?

Because experiencing jealousy doesn't make you jealous.

Feeling resentment doesn't make you bitter.

Needing boundaries doesn't make you selfish.

Struggling doesn't make you weak.

And having a human response to something extraordinarily painful doesn't tell us anything about your worthiness.

The question underneath the terrain of identity isn't:

How do I get back to who I was before infertility?

Because I don't know that going backward is the goal.

It's:

Who am I while this is happening to me?

What do I believe about myself?

What have I made this experience mean about my worth?

Which identities have been handed to me?

Which ones have I created because I was trying to survive?

Which ones still belong to me?

And which ones am I ready to put the fuck down?

Because infertility may change you.

I think pretending otherwise does a disservice to how enormous this experience can be.

But change is not the same thing as damage.

And you still get to have a say in who you become inside of it.

This Is What IVF This Has Always Been About

And this is where I want to zoom back out for a minute.

Because I don't want this framework to become another complicated system you have to learn.

That would be pretty fucking ironic after everything I just said.

The goal isn't for you to walk around thinking:

Okay, which terrain am I in?

Which tool goes with this one?

Am I doing this correctly?

That's not what this is.

From the very beginning of this podcast, I've said some version of the same thing:

I'm going to help you say "IVF THIS" to how we think about, talk about, and experience infertility.

That has always been the mission.

Before I had a framework.

Before I had protocols.

Before I had language for half of the concepts we talk about now.

Because I knew there were ways we were being taught to think about infertility that weren't serving us.

There were ways people talked about infertility that caused more harm.

There were expectations for how we were supposed to experience it that left us feeling like we were somehow doing this wrong.

And IVF This has always been about challenging those things.

Looking at something we've accepted as truth and asking:

Is that actually true?

Is hope really dangerous?

Does expecting the worst actually protect me?

Does jealousy mean I'm a bad friend?

Does acceptance mean I have to be okay with what happened?

Does being devastated by a pregnancy announcement mean I haven't healed?

Does my inability to "stay positive" mean I'm somehow making this harder on myself?

Do I really need closure in order to move forward?

Do I need to stop feeling this way...

or do I need to understand why I feel this way?

That's saying IVF THIS.

It's stopping long enough to question the assumptions we've inherited about what coping is supposed to look like.

And then deciding whether we want to keep them.

The framework doesn't change that mission.

It gives us a way to organize it.

Because what I've realized after years of doing this work—week after week on this podcast and day after day with my clients—is that although every woman's infertility story is different, I keep helping women orient to the same kinds of emotional experiences.

Grief.

Anticipation.

Hope.

Identity.

The details change.

The circumstances change.

The treatment changes.

The losses change.

But those terrains keep appearing.

And one of my biggest goals in creating this framework was actually incredibly practical.

I wanted to understand:

What am I doing with my clients every day?

Because after years of coaching, there are things I do almost instinctively now.

A client tells me what's happening, and I'm listening for what's underneath it.

I'm orienting.

What are we actually dealing with here?

Is this grief?

Is she trying to escape uncertainty?

Is she afraid of allowing herself to hope?

Has this experience started becoming evidence about who she is?

I'm not trying to figure out how to make her feel better as quickly as possible.

I'm trying to understand where she is.

Because once we know where she is, we can understand what is happening there.

And I wanted to make that process replicable.

Not just for me.

For you.

Because I don't want the insight to live only inside a coaching session.

I want you to be able to catch yourself on that random Tuesday when something knocks the fucking wind out of you and, instead of immediately going to:

What is wrong with me?

or

Why am I back here again?

or

I thought I was doing better.

I want you to have another option.

I want you to be able to re-orient.

Where am I?

Oh.

This is grief.

Or:

This is anticipation. I am desperate to know something that I cannot know yet.

Or:

This is hope. Wanting this feels incredibly vulnerable right now.

Or:

This is identity. I've taken something painful that I'm experiencing and turned it into evidence about who I am.

And maybe just knowing where you are doesn't immediately change how you feel.

That's okay.

Orientation isn't the same thing as resolution.

Sometimes knowing where you are is simply what allows you to stop fighting with yourself for being there.

And that is what I want this framework to give you.

Not another set of rules for how to cope correctly.

Not another emotional checklist.

Not another thing you can somehow fail at.

A way to understand your experience.

A way to find your bearings when infertility knocks you sideways.

A way to say:

Oh. I know where I am.

And then, from there, decide what you need.

Because that is what IVF This has been about from the beginning.

Changing how we think about infertility.

Changing how we talk about infertility.

And ultimately...

changing how we experience infertility.

Not by making infertility hurt less than it's allowed to hurt.

But by helping you stop adding unnecessary suffering to something that is already hard enough.

Ok, that is what I have for you my friends. I hope you have a wonderful week and I will tlak to you soon!