Resilience + Infertility

Resilience + Infertility 

While navigating infertility, I found that suffering was inevitable. What I did not know was that I was learning resilience skills all along the way. Being resilient doesn't mean we forget about our pain or pretend everything is okay when we suffer. 

 I created this home to share my heart and what it means to be resilient. I have found that loving and supporting yourself will help you navigate some of the difficult seasons of your life. To help you do this, I share tips on mindfulness, living with intention, and using affirmations.

Take the Resilience Quiz to find out what your resilience score is

https://www.conceivabledesigns.com/resilience-quiz-1. 

Connect with me on Insragram: https://www.instagram.com/the.resilience.mentor/

Transcript

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Hi, everyone, welcome back to the how we get through Podcast. I'm super stretta and I'm going to catch you up on what's been going on. I kind of left you in a lurch after my first episode. But I decided to make a podcast at the worst possible time I could possibly make a podcast which is November and December, because there's so many things to do. And we also traveled a little bit. We went to South Carolina in November for Thanksgiving. And then we went to Chicago the first week in December so we got to visit the family that we haven't seen in a while and it was really refreshing to get to see people that you know we hadn't seen prior to the pandemic so kind of, you know, leaving the holidays even extra special. So if you follow me on Instagram at the resilience mentor, you know that I'm currently in a boot since my ankle probably has a stress fracture. Or something else going on. And basically what happened was for months, my ankle and my foot have been swollen and sore, mostly due to an old injury, but that old injury was compounded by my overuse of the peloton and clipping out which, from what people tell me is pretty common. But basically, the week before Christmas, I wasn't able to walk for a few days and they put me on a medication, but I don't want to be on a medication so I wanted sort of feeling better. I stopped taking it and was able to get an MRI of my foot, which showed that I have a little arthritis in my toe which was causing the the pain that was you know, causing me to not be able to walk. We still don't know what's going on with the ankle and essentially I'm going to stay in the booth for a few more weeks. And then if I'm still having pain and it's still swollen, then we'll do an MRI of that area, my ankle. So since I am not currently able to work out or go for walks I'm currently using the time that I would have used to exercise and I'm journaling and I'm reconnecting with a part of me that you know, this time of year kind of gets lost in the holiday shuffle. I fall behind on my daily practices. You know, and I've been I've been kind of okay with that lately because I've been telling myself that, you know, there's other things to focus on sometimes more important things to focus on on a daily basis and you know, the last few months giving my daughter my undivided attention is really important to me. She's someone that needs a lot of attention and support. And it may not always be that way. You know, eventually she'll be independent and able to do these things on her own. But right now that's where we are and so taking a step back from social media is so important because it gives us the time together and gives her my undivided attention. Which you know is sometimes it's hard for me to you know, get pulled away because I want to do things here I want to create an episode I want to make a post but my priority is and always will be that she has my undivided attention. So if you see me fall off for a couple of days or a week or so, know that you know it's not because I don't have anything to say well could also be because I don't have anything to say because sometimes it's hard finding things to say. But it's also because I want to be there for her. But nevertheless, I am happy to be back and happy to get some medicines out to you so that we can really talk about you know how we get through these things these difficult parts of our life, because it doesn't end with having a baby. And the truth is life is hard. It can feel like one thing after another and it can really make you feel overwhelmed. Now had somebody told me what I'm telling you right now 10 years ago that through this journey I needed to build resilience, I probably would have told them no I need to be a mother and then my internal voice would have recited a litany of four letter words. That wouldn't have been so nice. But now looking back I realized through it all I was building resilience, and I didn't see the connection. But you know, when I think back to sitting in the waiting room, I would bring my journal and I would write out what I was feeling what I was going through. I would meditate before my procedures. And I also only watched funny movies to reduce my stress because I just felt like the whole process of fertility treatments and going through was very low vibration. I guess it's a word I can use. And for me to be able to just watch stuff that was funny. Just really brought my vibration a little higher. So it's also become apparent in the past few years that I began to understand what resilience really means. And for me, it's the capacity to prepare for adapt for adapt in and recover from adversity. And when you're preparing yourself for an IVF cycle. You can prepare yourself by asking questions or getting organized. And in the same way you can prepare yourself mentally for the cycle by asking yourself some questions and having a resilience plan in place before you start the cycle. So knowing you know what are the things that you can do to maintain your resilience throughout your cycle? So let's talk about capacity. Capacity is how much you have something and I like to think of a cell phone when I talk about capacity because we all have an inner battery and somedays the batteries fully charged and you can easily deal with what is coming your way. And other days that internal battery is running really low and you don't have anything to charge it up. So cultivating resilience is similar to charging a cell phone when it's drained we plug it in and you know the days that you feel worn out or overwhelmed, you can do stuff that helps you feel recharged and when we recharge our battery will have the capacity to take on what comes our way. And you know, resilience can be built over time. Lee can you know, build it so that when situations arise, we don't feel so trained. And we can adapt when things don't go the way we want or the way we expected. And we also gain the ability to recover after a challenge. And all of those things are so important when we're going through infertility. So you know, from a cycle being canceled, or you know, we transfer we you know, switch a IVF cycle to an IUI cycle. You know, those are things that can, you know really affect us mentally and if we are not prepared and have resilience or a plan in place. They can really, you know, affect us. And I just think back to you know when we had our chemical pregnancy in 2018 I was I was ready to just jump into a new cycle in 2019 but I knew that I needed to recover after that I knew I needed to give myself the space and the time to heal. And you know, we don't ever fully heal from these things, but I couldn't just jump into a new cycle without giving myself the space for healing. And you know, it was complicated when we first started to have fertility treatments and we had little control of the outcome. And you know, while people think that IVF is going to be a cure all for infertility, it's not and it felt very isolating, but with resilience on board. I was able to withstand the overwhelm and the setbacks without feeling like a failure. Now in the moment, and I feel that yes, I think that you know, it's natural and normal to feel overwhelmed and feel like we're failing. But I was able to get through that, you know, get through the muck of it, and start showing myself compassion and compassion is really where it started for me. I was always a silver linings glass half full kind of girl and I noticed that I really wasn't acting like myself. I was more jaded and cynical than I had been in the past. And if you've gone through infertility, yourself or you're starting your journey, you may understand the variety of emotions that you can experience through a cycle. You know, you get all of your work medication and you'd make all of your appointments. And then month after month, you're still getting negative pregnancy tests. It really just starts to wear on you. And when I noticed that I wasn't acting like myself and I needed to make some changes. I turned to a meditation practice. And I learned about it through another podcast by Dan Harris called 10% happier and he was talking about a loving kindness practice of metta practice. And it was the perfect meditation for me to increase compassion. Since going through infertility and going through IVF can really sometimes make us feel less than compassionate to ourselves and others. This meditation was really one of my favorite and really simple ways to direct loving kindness to myself and others while I was going through infertility, and so I'd like to share that practice with you right now so that you can start practicing it yourself. It's it's pretty simple. There's only a few phrases that you would need to remember but, you know, even now I find myself reaching for that meditation when I'm walking or if I'm waiting in line for something. I'll just start sending loving kindness to people as I'm standing there, because it definitely helps you to be more compassionate and maybe not react so much to your emotions that are kind of flowing through your brain. So the first thing you want to do is feel the sensation of your breath and that can be by your nose or on your chest. You can feel the rise and fall of your chest and focus on your heart and once you start breathing in a smooth and comfortable way, you can begin by offering loving kindness to yourself. And to do that you're going to repeat the following phrases. May I be happy? May I be safe? May I be healthy and live with ease. Once you repeat those phrases, you're going to offer loving kindness to somebody who is dear to you someone that you love and that you're grateful for and you'll repeat the phrases may I be happy May I be safe May I be healthy? May I live with ease? Now we're going to offer loving kindness to somebody who is neutral. Maybe the checkout person at the grocery store, maybe a neighbor and you don't know their name. You'll repeat the phrases. May you be happy May you be safe. May you be healthy to me live with ease now you're going to offer loving kindness to someone who you may regard as a difficult person. Repeat the phrases may be happy May you be safe. May you be healthy. May you live with ease and now we're going to offer loving kindness to the entire world to all beings. You'll repeat the phrases maybe Happy May you be safe. May you be healthy and may you live with ease and that is the practice. Now in between each of those offerings. You can also offer yourself loving kindness. So you could alternate between the two. But it's a really simple practice that it's something that you can do each morning before you get out of bed. You can offer loving kindness to a place you're going maybe you have an appointment and you want to send loving kindness to the nurses or the doctors. Maybe there's a difficult person that you deal with on a daily basis. That you want to just send them love. When you begin practicing this each day, I really did see a change in how compassionate I was to myself and others. And it showed my actions and the gentleness that I was able to show myself in a tough moment and I really think that when we become more compassionate with ourselves, we're better equipped to deal with the challenges that come our way. So some of the other tools if meditation isn't your thing, I totally get it. It really wasn't my thing. When I first started, I thought that I needed to have this, you know, Zen like appearance and my mind was clear of all thoughts and it's not like that at all. There are some days where I have like a little swirl just kind of like bopping. around my head and there's no no silence in my brain. It's just on a wheel. But the compassion and the ability for me to say, You know what, that's just my mind today. I don't get mad at myself or judge myself. I've learned that that is the practice that reaching out to that part of you that doesn't want to be silent, and just kind of bringing it closer and just saying I see you that you're there and you want to tell me something. Right now I'm meditating or right now I'm breathing and just giving yourself that compassion really makes the difference. But I do want to share some other tools with you that I use daily to help sustain my level of resilience and can help you to I use positive affirmations, exercise and journaling those tools give me a sense of clarity and closeness with myself that I had lost throughout the years of going through infertility. And really infertility really takes over everything in our lives, right like we you know put our worth into the outcomes of our cycles and sometimes it controls who we are, you know, we can't do certain things or go certain places or we need to have our medication with us. So it changes a lot of who we are. And the pain of infertility can also be a lonely journey. You know, we don't talk about it gets private, and it leaves many people in our lives, or in us feeling disconnected. And what I've learned through years of infertility is that having a purpose can be an antidote in difficult times and makes life worth living. A few of the journaling prompts to get you thinking about your purpose. If you struggle to, you know, understand what your purpose is, is who are you outside of infertility What do you do? What do you like to do? What wakes you up? We all have that hobby or the things that we'd like to do that light us up. Maybe you have a pet that you love to take walks with. Or maybe you'd like to volunteer at an animal shelter. These are all things that you can list down as to what lights you up. And the third really prompt is what type of impact you want to make. And I love this question because there's so many answers that you could write, and so many different areas of your life that you can make an impact with other people or an impact in your family or within your friends. There's always a way to make an impact and so listing that I can really help you to get thinking about your purpose. And the fourth journaling prompt is what do you wake in the morning excited to do I know we're not all jumping out of bed to hop on a zoom call with our bosses and do the day to day stuff that we have to do every day. But do you wake up in the morning and you love to work out? Do you love to sit and drink your coffee in silence and read a book, find out what those things are and maybe make a list so that when you're going through a difficult time. You know these things that light you up and the impact you want to have and it keeps us really aligned with your purpose. And developing this practice and making small changes will ripple through all parts of your life. So you can check in with yourself. Am I aligned with what my purpose is? Because infertility is a season and it's not the whole story. So when you know your purpose and you are continually checking in with yourself and aligned with your purpose, it will help give you clarity and the clarity is what helps us get through the muck of infertility. So building resilience is a part of my daily routine. And it starts with the self awareness identifying the emotions that are coming up for me that day. Maybe some days I'm not feeling so resilient. But I definitely can do things on a regular basis to support myself to feel more resilient. So that's getting getting a good night's sleep, moving my body either with an exercise a stretch or taking a walk or, you know a full on peloton, ride which I haven't been able to do but it's still something that I love to do. Meditate, do a self compassion exercise and take breaks throughout the day. If it's a tough day. You know what, just try again tomorrow. That's one of my favorite sayings is we can always be good again. If we have a bad day, or we don't get the news we want or you know there's things going on that we can't control and it's a good opportunity to practice being adaptable, and to additionally keep in mind that unexpected events are going to happen. And it's in those moments that we can choose to show ourselves compassion and recognize that we can control everything. And the last thing I want to share with you is that being resilient doesn't mean that we forget about our pain or pretend everything is okay when we're suffering. Because the reality is that if we got we're not really being resilient, we're just ignoring the tough times and that's going to definitely come back and hurt you even more. But resilient people know that they have skills. They have the tools to navigate the challenges that come to them. And they have a healthy optimism which is balanced with a realistic view of the world. They also can see challenge or change as an opportunity and they have healthy coping skills like exercise or yoga, gardening, meditating, you know dancing, coloring, there's things that they can do to stay calm and nourish themselves when things get difficult, and they're flexible. They can bounce back after setbacks. So with resilience you can face the challenges that like throws your way and especially with the help of a supportive community and patience. It's more attainable than you think. You know, family building and parenting after Infertility can have many unexpected surprises. And I know that you are capable and resilient because you're going through this and if you found this conversation helpful, I'd like to also invite you to my website to take my resilience quiz that will help you to find out what your resilience score is. And once you take the quiz, you can also book a 20 minute conversation to find out what your score means and learn the tools to help build more resilience. So thanks for spending the time with me today. I appreciate you and bye for now.