The Key Learning Points:

1. That it is okay to change industries and have an unusual career path

2. The importance of providing proper support to people undergoing IVF and surrogacy processes

3. Some suggested coping mechanisms for if you have sadly been told you are unable to have children, from the perspective of someone who has been through this themselves

This week on the remote Risky Mix Podcast we’re joined by Ella Harper, Executive National Vice President with the health and beauty brand Arbonne. Ella has a varied career background, as a designer, entrepreneur, coach and counsellor. Amongst many things, Ella works as a counsellor for women who are undergoing IVF treatment and/or surrogacy.

Ella explains that she’s had somewhat of a wiggly career: “My career journey is really more of an adventure than a straight path in one particular chosen field.” She started working at 11 years old, clearing tables in a restaurant, and explains that she has a very high work ethic. She was led into graphic design after studying it in university and later moved into the production side of design and advertising. Ella was a session singer in the music industry for a while, exchanging her graphic design background for music theatre school. Then after realising that there was a limit to the success that she would see in any of the companies that she worked for, Ella decided to become her own boss and set up an interior design business, a marketing strategy business and an Arbonne ‘franchise’. When asked where she found the courage to take the steps that she has in her career, Ella explains that there’s an element of her life that gives her courage to step into new situations, which is that she became a foster child after her parents died when she was a teenager: “I’ve been the incomer, I’ve been the guest, for the majority of my life.”

During this time Ella was also trying to start a family and went through IVF and surrogacy, adding “they were life experiences!” Ella explains that she naturally fell into a counselling role, supporting other people who were going through the same IVF and surrogacy processes. “My forte is helping people come through the other side of things when there was no baby. What happens next? Because I’m living proof that actually there is life beyond IVF.”

Ella adds that when she was having her own treatments, the only counselling offered was quite generic, often focused on grief, there wasn’t any specific IVF support. Ella explains that men and women respond quite differently to fertility treatment because of different coping strategies: “A woman just expects, that at one point, she is going to have the choice to have children. That’s what we’re brought up to believe because that’s what most people do.” She continues: “The idea that a woman can have a baby is inherently female. It’s also a part of my female identity that I am able to conceive a child… and be a mother. When you find out that you can’t do that, there’s a part of you that dies.”

Ella wasn’t able to have children and understands the impact that this can have on women’s and couple’s lives. Ella embraced her position as an aunty and lives by her core regime to “create a magnificent life” as “There are all kinds of wonderful creative ways for women to enable themselves to live fulfilling quality lives.” Ella advises women to find their “things” - maybe that’s a change of career or embracing certain hobbies. “It is much easier to blame than take charge of your own life” to which Ella advises that when feeling completely out of control, you just have to find ways to build your armour.

Anybody listening in who is looking for some additional help around fertility treatment, please do contact Ella on [email protected] for free support.