I am so excited to have you here again for another week of the podcast. I just can't tell you how overjoyed I am to know that my story of becoming childless, not by choice and my journey of navigating my path to childlessness has allowed me an opportunity to connect with you every week.

I got the most beautiful direct message on Instagram from a new listener of the podcast this week. There's so many mornings I wake up and when I look at my, my messages on my inbox, I'm  motivated to do so much more because of the people that reach out and tell me that they stumbled upon the podcast and it's just what they've been waiting for.

It's allowing them to feel connected.  So for the person who sent me a message  on Monday, thanking me for creating the podcast and being brave enough to tell my story, I want to tell you, thank you for listening to my story and feeling brave enough to say yes to want to learn how to love your life after infertility leaves you childless, not by choice.

So if you have listened to the podcast and you have not yet reviewed it, I'm going to ask you to please help me out.  This podcast is going to turn two in September.  If you could do me the hugest favor ever. Could you please rate and review the podcast? No matter where you listen to the podcast, even if you're watching it on YouTube, if you could forward it to somebody or give me a thumbs up?? What it will do is these algorithm gods that pay attention to all this stuff.

The more there is interaction and more reviews  and ratings that we have of the podcast, the more likely somebody who is searching for this message will find it. When they search infertility, there's a higher chance that they will come across. This podcast and my goal is to help every woman realize that she can thrive and feel fulfilled without the children

she always dreamed that she would have.  If you do rate and review the podcast, if you could just screenshot it, send it to me, I would love to send you an other's day tank top. I don't know if you can see mine. I have mine on today. I will send you a free tank top from our in person event of the 2023 others day.

So  please help me out, help me build more awareness and help me welcome in the second year of the podcast, which will be coming in September. Okay. Now that we got that out of the way, I am going to talk about a topic that is really hot in our community.  I was recently on a girl's weekend and I did a live while I was in Siesta Key, Florida talking about saying yes to traveling, saying yes to making plans, committing to things.

And there are so many people that responded and reached out after my live to say, I feel that same way.  I want to start doing things again. I want to say yes to girls weekends and cruises and family vacations that are being planned months ahead of time. Let's talk a little bit about why that might be a hard thing for us. 📍 

Why people you see around you all the time saying, yes, planning, committing to things. And you might feel like I'm not there yet. You don't know why.  I'm going to take you through a bit of a coaching session I did with one of my students this week who was kind of feeling that same way. So let's first talk about that.

Why is it that we're finding it hard to commit to plans? Even if it's two weeks away on a Saturday,  what is it that's coming up for us?  You might find that you've spent a lot of time during your fertility journey thing, no to things because you weren't sure where you were going to be in your cycle.

Maybe you thought, what if I'm in the midst of a cycle and I've got to go to my monitoring appointments and I'm going to buy a ticket to. This weekend away with my college friends, and what if I have to cancel? So that was what I was working on with my student this week. She has a class reunion coming up,, with her sorority sisters and they are  planning this amazing trip.

They're going to wine country. They're going to do this  long weekend kind of thing. And she really wants to go, but she's finding herself not wanting to , buy the ticket. And put the down payment, you know, for the rooms and all that. So we talked about like, Why do you want to go understanding, like, why don't you want to go and really paying attention to what is coming up?

 What is it that in this point in your journey, you're not in fertility treatments anymore. You don't have to worry about being in the midst of a cycle. You don't have to worry that you potentially might be pregnant or be a mom already. So what, what is it that's coming up when your girlfriends send that text message and say, Hey, Let's get together.

It's been 15 years since we finished college. It's been 20 years since we've seen each other or something like that. Maybe you're just in the habit. Of saying no, and if you're in the habit of saying no, that is not a problem, but listen to yourself for the reasons why you're saying no. Maybe it looks something like they all have kids.

Maybe it looks something like, what if somebody asks me what's going on with my fertility journey? What if there's an opportunity for bonding  for example, the woman I was coaching this week,  she was so close with her sorority sisters and they shared everything.

And what if somebody starts asking about why she's not a mom or how things ended up with IVF or if she's going to adopt and she was really nervous about having those intimate conversations.  First allow yourself to tell you why you don't want to say yes. I think we automatically just say, I feel like I'm missing out.

I'm going to have FOMO and for some reason, I don't know why I don't want to say yes. So what's coming up. Listen. Your mind is so ready to tell you what you want to know, but we just don't allow ourselves to ask those questions. We just go to the quick answer of no and we don't understand why no is coming up for us.

So my advice to you would be do some paper thinking,  what's coming up.  There might be multiple things. Maybe you don't know who's going to watch your dog. Maybe you're worried about telling your partner, your spouse, that you're going away for a weekend because you're so used to being together and being each other's support system.

So just listen. Don't tell yourself that anything's wrong for the way you're feeling, but just get curious about what's coming up and then understand what it is you might be seeking in going in this trip. Maybe it is that you're really wanting to reconnect with people that you felt so out of touch with.

Maybe there's friends and friendships there. That really feel good to kind of reintroduce at this point in your life.  Understand, what are the things that make you want to go? What are the things that are telling you don't want to go and how can you overcome that? The way that we can overcome it, this is an exercise I worked on in my coaching session was to decide what answers. Do you want to have ready? You don't want to feel rattled when somebody says,  Hey, I know you might not want to talk about it, or you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but curious, are you planning to adopt?

And what answer do you want to have ready? I think a lot of us get scared to be put in these circumstances where we might be uncomfortable by question about questions, but we haven't decided what our answer is going to be. The most mind blowing thing about it is you can choose any answer you want to choose.

Maybe you don't have to get into the nitty gritty of why you chose not to adopt or why egg donor wasn't a right decision for you. And if you choose. Not to have a response that you think that they're wanting to hear. Can you like in a response that you've chosen to come up with better?  That is where this work is, this coaching that I do and these classes that I hold with my students, I help them decide  what is the story you want to tell?

What is it that you want to divulge? Is divulging that you didn't want to adopt something that you're embarrassed about? Maybe you're really embarrassed to tell your friends who have kids and tell you that,  motherhood is so good. And it's so fun and all this stuff. And for you to publicly admit to them that that just wasn't.

Where you wanted to go with your motherhood journey. Can you decide that there's nothing to be embarrassed about, and can you be proud of yourself for respecting what was right for you and what felt good to you on your journey and on your path during your fertility treatments? And if ending up childless, not by choice.

Is a choice. Can you allow yourself to like your choice? And that is the mind blowing stuff. Like, how do you decide that you can like your choice to not adopt or not get an egg donor or to end your cycles and end your journey there? And that's the part about being childless, not by choice is you actually did create choice for yourself.

Maybe take ownership and say, you know what, I had a choice and I chose the answer that was right for me I chose the path that felt most in alignment with who I am. So when you think about saying yes to things and saying yes to plans.

 Can you allow yourself to say, Hey, listen, my start and stop of my life, my halt that I felt on my life is no longer necessary. I don't have to carry that I know that I don't have to carry that weight around, what is it that I want to do with my time. Do I want to say yes to this long weekend in Colorado? Do I want to say yes to this college reunion in California? And if it's a matter of understanding that you might feel a little bit uncomfortable, can you say yes anyway and practice how it is you want to respond to things and how you can prepare yourself?

For the times when they might be talking about their kids and things that you just don't feel like you have a connection to or much in common with, is it possible for you to create tools, an armory of canned responses, an armory of things that you want to believe about yourself or statements that you want to continue to recite to yourself when you're feeling as though you're not connected.

 That's all the glorious stuff that I help my students do because they want to feel connected. They want to travel again. They want to say yes to the family cruise, the girls weekends, romantic getaways with the partner. I mean, there's a million and one things that we have been accustomed to saying no to for way too long.

And when you allow yourself to bring more of that back into your life, you'll start to decide, like I can do anything I want and I can prepare for it ahead of time. And the more I do it, I bet you, I probably won't have to be as prepared because I will have lived those moments that I've been fearing about going away.

I can decide that I don't have to worry about showing up for monitoring appointments anymore and my schedule can be mine again. If you are feeling like you need a little bit of help with this. And maybe a little bit of like deciding where this freedom can come from, I'm going to do a live all about this this week.

If you miss the live, I'm sure I'll have it on replay. Check, Instagram, YouTube and maybe even my Facebook page, but whatever it is, allow yourself to start saying yes again. To start bringing in these things that you know, you're yearning for, but they just might feel a little bit scary for you.

So if you need any help, you know where to find me. Have a beautiful week. I love you. And remember it is never too late to discover your meaning. I'll talk to you next week.