The truth About: Going Through 9 Rounds of IVF + Surrogacy with Alison Beder Soloway

A positive pregnancy test felt like the start of a familiar story—until Alison Beder Soloway couldn’t breathe at 32 weeks and doctors discovered heart failure linked to HHT. That moment rewrote everything. She was told carrying again would be too dangerous, and the road to the family she imagined would have to bend. What followed was a years-long relay of nine IVF attempts, cross‑border laws, agency vetting, and the kind of paperwork that decides names on birth certificates. Along the way, Alison discovered that a marathon mindset—steady effort, smart pacing, and a refusal to quit—could carry her through fertility’s longest miles.

We dive into the real costs and hidden tolls of IVF, the physical pain of retrievals, and the emotional whiplash of waiting for calls that change your life. Alison explains how clinics differ more than their marketing, why switching doctors can be an act of courage, and how to spot red flags when choosing a gestational carrier. She shares the moment bonding overruled doubt as she watched her son take his first breaths, then traces the beautiful complexity of welcoming twins from the same embryo cohort—“triplets,” born a year and a half apart. Together we unpack stigma around surrogacy, the myths about fraternal twins, and the fierce autonomy families deserve when deciding how to bring children into the world.

As a fitness professional serving women 40+, Alison also breaks down why strength training is essential for bone health, metabolism, and aging well—especially for anyone using weight-loss medications that can accelerate muscle loss. Her take is practical and compassionate: advocate for yourself, ask better questions, partner with your care team, and choose hope on purpose. If your body says no, your resolve—and your plan—can still say go.

If this conversation moved you, subscribe, share it with a friend who needs the reminder to keep going, and leave a review to help others find the show.

Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Alison Bader Soloway
• 3:05 Marathon As Motherhood Metaphor
• 5:44 Building A Fitness Platform For Women 40+
• 6:41 Strength Training, Weight Loss Drugs, And Muscle
• 8:46 Pregnancy Red Flags And Heart Failure
• 11:27 Learning HHT And A Frightening Birth
• 13:33 Advocacy, Bad Advice, And Switching Doctors
• 17:04 Nine IVFs, Clinics, Costs, And Toll
• 20:34 Retrieval Pain, Bloating, And Resilience
• 22:57 Partnership, Marriage, And Mental Load
• 24:37 Surrogacy Stigma And Finding A Path
• 27:32 Bonding With A Baby Born Via Surrogate
• 29:43 Twins, Triplets By Batch, And Siblings
• 32:37 Choosing Carriers, Vetting, And Delays
• 34:44 Cross‑Border Law, Birth Orders, And Paperwork
• 37:34 Financing Family And Career Pivot
• 40:38 Self‑Care, Seasons Of Parenting, Boundaries
• 42:40 Advice: Advocate, Educate, Choose Hope
• 45:37 Journaling, Grief, And Processing Infertility
• 48:08 Joy In Adult Children And Changing Roles
• 50:31 Resources, Websites, And Farewell

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:29

From running actual marathons to running the marathon of nine IVF rounds and running a household of four, this week's guest has done it all. We sit down with Alison Bader Soloway, author of The Miles We Run, Personal Trainer, and Mama Four, whose path to motherhood was anything but ordinary. I mean, aren't they all? After surviving heart failure during pregnancy and bringing three of her four children into the world via surrogacy, Allison learned the hardest and most beautiful truth of all. Motherhood transforms you as much as it shapes your child. She opens up about the marathon that became a metaphor for motherhood, what it really means to advocate for your own body and health, navigating infertility, surrogacy, and self-doubt, and through it all, finding strength and gratitude on the other side of the struggle. It's an honest, really deep conversation, as so many of ours are about resilience, hope, and the miles we all run to become the parents and people we're meant to be. We hope you enjoyed the episode. For those of our listeners who might not have heard of you before, can you give us a little backstory on who you are and how you got into everything that you do as an author, as a parent, everything?

SPEAKER_02: 1:46

Absolutely. Well, firstly, thank you so much for having me on Do You Want the Truth? I love your name. I think it's uh truthful conversations are maybe the hardest, but also the most important. And thank you for doing and leading the conversations that you lead on your podcast. I think it's you're doing great work. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm Alison Beter-Solway, and I have four children. And I just published a book that is my memoir called The Miles We Run, essentially about how I forayed into motherhood and the challenges that I faced. We had three of our four children through surrogacy, and I'm a fitness professional in my everyday life. For my 50th birthday, I decided to run the New York City Marathon. And uh, because of COVID, that got pushed to 51. But while I was training for the marathon, I started to call upon the same qualities that got me through our surrogacy experience and the pregnancy that I had had with my daughter, which was riddled with complications and very challenging. And reflecting on those same qualities, I realized that even though not everybody runs literal marathons, we all run metaphoric marathons. Nobody has an easy path for their entire life. We all overcome obstacles, hurdles. And so the miles we run really became a way for me to tell my story, weave through the narrath, the analogy of marathon training, and really spoke to the resilience that we all have within ourselves that sometimes we don't even recognize that we have until later on, once we've gotten through the hardship. Or sometimes we don't even take the time to recognize that we've gotten through that hardship with strength and resilience. And so the miles we run came to be as a result of, you know, me becoming a mother. And I incorporated uh the marathon training as part of the metaphoric analogy. And it's been wonderful. I just, I, you know, it's been out now since November, and I'm loving being an author, and I'm loving the feedback I'm getting from readers and people who I know, and so many people who I don't. And it's it's been a whole new chapter of my life at this point in my parenting journey as well, that my kids are older and that I was able to dedicate the time to even write a book. Um, so I'm a fitness professional by day, uh, an author in the afternoon and the evening. And, you know, before anything, a mom, first and foremost.

SPEAKER_01: 5:03

A fitness professional, can you tell us a little bit more about that? What is your modality of fitness?

SPEAKER_02: 5:10

So I work with women over 40. I have a studio that I do personal training for uh my private clients. And then when things went uh in a direction that you couldn't see clients anymore personally as a result of COVID, I built a platform online called ABS Fitness, which is geared towards strength training for women 40 plus. Men can absolutely use it too. And I do have a lot of men on the membership. Uh, I just, you know, it's so important for women to strength train and to use weight. It doesn't have to be heavyweight necessarily, but I'm very form-focused and very effective movements and being mindful as you move. So hard workouts, but effective workouts. And yeah, it's it's been wonderful. Like I have membership all over Canada and the US.

SPEAKER_01: 6:10

It's it's been great. That's awesome. Yeah, I did a Zempic last year. I'm going to start doing it again to lose a little bit of weight, but I stopped working out. And that was the biggest thing I've always worked out my entire life. And that was the one thing I really regret is I lost, you know, like I only had 10, 15 pounds that I wanted to lose. But when you stop working out, you don't have that engine once you go off of the medication to keep it off. So I kept it off for a little bit, but I'm like, okay, so I just started joining or I just joined a gym where it is mostly older folks. And it's so fun to go in there because it's these women in the classes who are just so buff and they're, you know, in their 50s, 60s, some clearly in their 70s. And I brought my husband there the other day and he's like, yeah, it's it's fun there. Like it's nice, like that there's it's either teenagers or older people. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 7:01

Well, good for you for starting to show up for yourself like that again. It's hard to get back into a consistent routine, takes a lot of discipline, and uh, but you're doing such wonderful things for your body. You, you, you have as a as women, there's so many things that we don't necessarily think of when we're in our 20s and 30s and how our bodies are going to change into our 40s, 50s, and 60s, going through perimenopause and then postmenopause. And you have to keep your muscles strong, your bones strong. It's so important. And especially if you take any type of drug for weight loss, so important to keep your muscles strong because a lot of the drugs, um, and I'm no expert by any chance, like any modality of uh um, I'm no expert on weight loss drugs. However, I am an expert in fitness, and what I understand from the science of these drugs is that you lose muscle in addition to fat. And that's why it's so important to maintain strength training, especially when you're on uh those drugs. But drugs aside, it's strength training is key to women's health. Weightlifting is key to women's health as they age.

SPEAKER_01: 8:16

Totally. Did you okay? So you had your first pregnancy, you carried your first, you carried your daughter, and you had some health issues. You said it was riddled with health issues. I know there was some heart stuff. And what was that like? Because you have a big family. Well, big in terms of 2025 standards. Right. So, what did that look like? And how did you know you wanted more?

SPEAKER_02: 8:40

I had always known I wanted a lot, not a lot of kids, but I wanted something akin to what I had grown up with. So I'm very close with my brother and my sister. I got pregnant so easily, you know, just blinked and pretty much was looking at a positive pregnancy test. And um the first few months were wonderful. Like I was, you know, every I was hitting the markers and there was no issue. And then I started being coming more short of breath, and my body was telling me that something's not right. I had an obstetrician who kept insisting everything was right. I've never been pregnant before. I was the first of all my friends to get pregnant. So I really didn't have anybody to, you know, look to in terms of what is a normal pregnancy. And everybody has, anyways, such different pregnancies that I don't know even what a normal pregnancy is. However, I I started to really retain water and it became very, very challenging for me to uh breathe normally. And I decided that I was gonna take an early mat leave. And on my last day of work, I I just I couldn't, I felt I couldn't get enough oxygen. And uh this was at the beginning of the eighth month. I was 32 weeks pregnant and I drove myself, I couldn't even take the subway to work. That's how much I was having trouble breathing if I exerted myself in any way. So I was driving downtown Toronto, which is never fun to do on a good day. And uh I actually drove myself right to emerge to the hospital where I was seeing my obstetrician who wasn't there that day, and they admitted me immediately because I was in right congestive heart failure. What does that mean? So it means that my liver was pumping too much blood through my heart, and my heart actually could not keep up with how much blood flow there was in my system. So my heart was slowly starting to fail. And so when a woman is normally pregnant, your blood flow doubles. I was diagnosed with a genetic condition about a month later called HHT, hereditary hemorrhagic telingjectasia. It's a mouthful, HHT, um, which can manifest differently in the people who have this genetic condition. However, I had it in my liver and in my lungs, but the liver component to this, my blood flow didn't double, it quadrupled because I had always had double the amount of blood going through my body, which my heart had, you know, grown adapted to. So it it I never knew that. It never was an issue until I became pregnant. And uh it was a very scary birth. She uh, my water broke the night. They admitted me into the hospital. They told me that I would be induced over the weekend. We just didn't know when. And after that first night in hospital, uh I went to the, I was on bed rest, but I was allowed to go to the bathroom and I came back to my bed and my water broke. And I just, I'm not a panicked person that normally, but I I I was in like such a state of panic, knowing that it wasn't her time yet, or it wasn't in a controlled situation that, and then, you know, it was a very scary delivery. But thank God she was fine, and I, I, my heart settled down after her birth.

unknown: 12:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_00: 12:35

How long ago was this?

SPEAKER_02: 12:36

This was 20 over 26 years ago.

SPEAKER_00: 12:39

And there were just so few resources out there then about prenatal health. I mean, even now there's not nearly enough, but there was really, really a lack of information given to women about how their bodies work up until, I don't know, maybe eight to ten years ago. So I imagine that you just felt lost.

SPEAKER_02: 12:59

I felt lost, but I was angry with myself at that juncture of my life because I knew something was wrong. And I listened to a professional tell me something was not. And and and then going into surrogacy, I I lived the same experience, not being pregnant, but listening to an uh fertility doctor because I was so desperate to have another baby that I did for two years, I didn't really question his tactics or, you know, there there were none of the resources that there are available today. Um, but I I two years I was kind of blind in in that desperation of wanting another child. So I just listened. I didn't ask questions, I wasn't curious. And when I finally that fog lifted and I started asking questions, I was able to pivot in a different direction and find success. But it took me two serious lessons to learn that there's nothing wrong with advocating for yourself and educating yourself as to, you know, whatever situation you may be going through. And if the professional or the person you're dealing with doesn't like it, that's that's on them. You you have every right to be curious and to question and to, you know, partner with as opposed to be told what to do. And um that that's been something that has stuck with me, you know, since our surrogacy experience. I no longer, in any capacity, I ask questions now. And some professionals like that and some don't. And always get a new doctor.

SPEAKER_01: 14:56

That is exactly right. 100%. I think a lot of women, a lot of people in general don't know that you can change doctors. And if they're not listening to you, uh, we've had health issues in my husband's family, and they just, you know, like there's a certain generation that listens to the doctors and whatever they say, and you're like, just because they're saying this doesn't mean that it's true for your body. That is very true.

SPEAKER_02: 15:23

And uh there's nothing wrong with being an active participant, you know, in your health care. You should be an active participant in your health care. It's no nobody's gonna care for you the way you're gonna care for yourself. And nobody knows your body the way that you know your body. Nobody, exactly, nobody knows your body like you do. So when your body women telling you that something's wrong, you listen to your body. Like don't, don't wait. Don't, and if someone's discounting what you're knowing is right, see somebody else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 15:56

So what were some of your symptoms in your pregnancy that I mean, that you mentioned being out of breath and you know, like you couldn't get enough oxygen, but were there other symptoms that were kind of ignored by your doctor?

SPEAKER_02: 16:10

I started to retain water to the point I I actually don't even know how a doctor could think it was normal. You know, she would do, she would press on my skin and it bounced from red back to white. So it looked like there was circulation there. But I got to the point where I was so swollen that my labia, my labia was like a cow's udder. Oh, I am not exaggerating. When I walked, painful, it's waddled with me. That's how swollen I was with raw water. My stretch marks aren't from pregnancy, they're from water retention. Because they're in my calves, a little bit lower on my stomach. They're from have like so much water retention. And then I had terrible noseblees. I've had noseble my whole life, which was then discovered related to HHT, but these nosebleeds brought me to the ER because I couldn't stop them. And they, I didn't know I had HHT and they didn't know how to stop them. So they were shoving tampons up my nose, which made it worse. And I'm pregnant. So all these medications that they may have wanted to give me, they can't give me. And, you know, it eventually they stopped. But they those were very scary too. Did they ever suspect preclampsia? Uh, no, because I was having regular ultrasounds and uh my um everything was attached where it should be. Blood pressure was normal and everything? Blood pressure was normal until I went to the, well, as far as I knew, but when I checked myself into the hospital, it wasn't normal. So maybe, you know, I hadn't seen my obstetrician uh that week yet. So things obviously started to spiral out of control that week when I decided that something is not right and I'm I'm I'm not gonna just think everything, pretend everything's okay when I deep down know it's not.

SPEAKER_01: 18:16

The nosebleeds are weird, right? I had them too. I had one for more than 24 hours and was like coughing up blood clots, and they just tell you it's normal. And it's not normal for anyone who's listening. Yes, pregnant women get nosebleeds, but when they last and they're severe, that is not normal. And yeah, I it's just crazy the things they tell you are normal, as right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 18:39

I I hope things are different now. I I, you know, I don't know. It's been a long time since uh I had my daughter. And, you know, I I'm kind of out of that. Obviously, you know, now my my niece just had a baby. So I'm, you know, one step removed from that now. Um, but I guess a lot is the same because a lot is the same in infertility still, and a lot, some has changed, not nearly enough, if you think about, you know, 26 years, I suppose.

unknown: 19:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 19:14

Yeah. I I'm a journalist in the space. So I cover a lot of prenatal health and reproductive health and women's health. But my take is that a lot has changed, but I think it has changed at the hands of women who are patients more than it has at the hands of the medical community. I think millennial women have done incredible things for women's health, especially around fertility. And unfortunately, I think that, you know, as women, we've just kind of had to do that work ourselves.

SPEAKER_02: 19:41

Right. Oh, I totally agree with you. I I especially now being in the space of having written a book and connecting with so many people who have gone through infertility and, you know, who now are feel okay to talk about it. I still think there's a massive stigma attached to infertility. You know, there obviously it's so much more talked about and researched now than it was when I was going through it. But, you know, we did nine IVF attempts and I didn't think I had a fertility issue. I actually don't think I had a fertility issue. I think that the clinic we were using just wasn't as good as they said that they were. And uh because as soon as we switched clinics and we pivoted into the US, we had no issue. So um I just I I'm not I'm not sure. I can't speak to that for sure, but some something wasn't right because I was getting numerous eggs. They were always good blasts, like they they they they came out as really strong embryos and they just never implanted into the carriers we used here in Canada. Now I'm happy the way everything worked out because I wouldn't have the life that I do now. But going through it, I couldn't understand why.

SPEAKER_01: 21:07

So you went through nine, did you do nine in Canada or eight in Canada?

SPEAKER_02: 21:13

Or like how did that We did seven in Canada and then eight and nine in the US? Okay. When when I say IVF, so there weren't they weren't all fresh, they were fresh from frozen too. But I I I I don't I'd have to count how many fresh cycles I did. Um too many.

SPEAKER_01: 21:35

Was it was that expensive in Canada or is that covered in Canada? No, nothing was covered in Canada. Not much can I ask how much money you think you spent? Well over$200,000. Wow. And that's not even including the gestational carriers, or is that including I'd say that is including the gestational carriers.

unknown: 21:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 21:58

Now it would be much more expensive.

SPEAKER_01: 22:00

Yeah. We spoke with a gentleman who he spent$250 just on one pregnancy, one child, and they used a friend there in the US and just on the medical care and transportation, all of those things, it's so expensive. That takes a lot of dedication. Like I have never gone through fertility medication, but from what I've witnessed, it's really impactful to a woman's body and mental state. Terrible. So biology. Yeah. Okay. So it was awful. It was awful as it sounds. Cause from my where I'm sitting, I'm like, that looks horrible.

SPEAKER_02: 22:34

I speak to this about uh I speak to this in the miles we run because when you're enhancing the growth of eggs on your ovaries, when you're, you know, every month you'll have some eggs that start to develop, but ultimately there's only really one follicle that drops, and then you either get pregnant or get your period. So when you have ovaries that you are essentially getting anywhere between 20 and 30 follicles, your lower half, like your lower abdomen, feels like weights and you're exceptionally bloated. And and this is only part of it. And, you know, they told us, they will, they told me to drink uh Gatorade. I don't know if that's still protocol. And then when I was training for the marathon, like 22 years later, I started drinking. I don't, I've never ever liked Gatorade as a result of using it for when we were going through IVF, but I don't like the gels and all the other things that some runners prefer. So I was um helping build my electrolytes with Gatorade. And those first sips brought me right back. And it was just so interesting how like, just like a smell or anything can bring you right back to your childhood. Gatorade for me brought me right back to, you know, growing my growing the eggs on my ovaries. And it it was hard at first to like consume it for a totally different reason. And it it's just, you know, the whole extraction here in Canada, I it may have changed for some clinics, but there was really no drug usage involved. So I felt like everything. And it was excruciating. Every follicle that they suctioned off my ovaries was really, really painful. You know, he froze my cervix, but it really didn't do anything. I I literally could like I had tears, I remember, tracking down my face when I was going through it. And I have a pretty high pain tolerance, but all I could focus on is what that potential egg was gonna be, you know, and and it kind of makes it worth it in a weird way.

SPEAKER_01: 25:07

How was your relationship? I know you've been with your husband for 33 years, married for 29. How was your relationship during that time? Because I know it can be really challenging and taxing, but I also could imagine it could bring you together.

SPEAKER_02: 25:20

Kenny was unbelievable. We we went into this as a team and he knew how much I wanted more children, and he did too. And I I just I wanted so badly for Hannah to have siblings. And we were, you know, we discussed everything. We had open communication. I I know how hard it is for couples, you know, going through that, how challenging, you know, the financial side of things can be and the emotional toll it takes because you know, it's almost all you talk about because it's so prevalent. And he was my partner through and through. And there was zero dissent. He he he was a wonderful, wonderful partner and teammate. That's incredible. Uh yeah, I I felt very, very lucky because it was hard. Like the drugs you take to you know, uh, they they are they change your the biology of you, you know, while you're on them, or maybe even when you go off them. I I don't know. Is that tattoo a heartbeat? Yes, it is.

SPEAKER_01: 26:33

Whose heartbeat? It's mine and my husband's actually. That's really cool. I we kept the heartbeat. We had to like steal the paper when I was giving birth. They had like were monitoring, and I was like, Oh, can I have that paper? And they're like, no, sorry, we can't give it. And they walked out of the room and we like stole it. And so it's in our baby book. I was like, what do you mean? We're paying you. What is this? This is my paper.

SPEAKER_02: 26:56

This is my heartbeat. Yeah, that's cool. Uh ECG, half is mine and half is Kenny's.

SPEAKER_01: 27:02

That's cool. Sorry, I didn't mean to go on a tangent there. I just couldn't, I couldn't not acknowledge that.

SPEAKER_00: 27:08

Yeah, I I want to talk to you about, I know that there is still a lot of stigma around Sarrogacy. I think when I think it was Lily Collins who just had a baby via a gestational carrier, and she got just ripped to shreds because they didn't explicitly share sort of the road that led them to that decision. But I would love to hear, you know, what the perception was like so many years ago when I feel like most people hadn't even really heard of so many of these things, including IVF and surrogacy. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 27:39

Well, I when I was sitting in my doctor's office and I, Hannah was a month, that's my daughter, and I was getting, I had just been diagnosed with HHT. And I write about this in the Miles We Run. My doctor looked at me because the only thing I was, I started to realize as she was explaining what had actually happened to the biology of my body and why I went into heart failure was like, oh my God, is she about to tell me I can't have any more children? And I just looked at her and she didn't even like I didn't, I'll get emotional. I didn't even need to ask her the question. And she just said no. And so it's like the walls started to close in. And I'm like, how am I gonna figure this out? Like, what is my alternative path? There's adoption, that's very feasible. And then I remember my mother telling me the story of a soap opera star of a series that my mom had watched since I was a baby called Days of Our Lives, Deedra Hall. I love that show. Her she had her family via a surrogate. And so in this doctor's office, I've just been given the worst news possible at that time in my life. I'm like, how do I figure out how to find a woman to carry my baby? And that's all I and then that set off. Like I was dealing with a lot of health complications myself just after being diagnosed with HHT and what that entailed. However, you know, once things settled down and, you know, we got into a routine with Hannah, I the internet wasn't what it is today. So there was no Google search. So finding, you know, an agency in Ontario, Canada, where I live in Toronto, and so it was challenging to say the least. You kind of had to look in the phone book, and then, you know, it it just I finally did find an agency in southern Ontario who helped us find our first two carriers that it never worked with to no fault of their own. They were wonderful, wonderful women. But, you know, there were some people that were in our circle of friends that I had heard used a surrogate before. So you got some of the information from them, but there was really no way to get like today, where you could literally look on ChatGBT and get all the information you could possibly need. To find an agency in your area and all the reproductive lawyers and everything that's involved, and like essentially do a spreadsheet with you. On the information side, that doesn't mean it's going to be an easy haul. So it just means you have much greater access to information that I didn't. And and and then thus started our journey. And so many, many people didn't know what surrogacy was. But until we were six months pregnant, which was three and a half years or three years with Aiden, no, three and a half years, we told nobody. Our immediate family was the only people that knew that I couldn't carry any more children. So, you know, the baby group I was in with Hannah and the women started getting pregnant with their seconds, and it was so hard for me. No, I didn't talk about it. I didn't want to talk about it. It was just too hard. I like I just couldn't talk about it. I I wonder, I truly wonder why I still have trouble. I just think it's something that I grieve because my body didn't function like it was supposed to. But in terms of, you know, the Lily Collins of the world, nobody sh should judge. Nobody actually knows what her story is. Nobody has the right to weigh in on their opinion. It doesn't really matter. And I hope that anybody, you know, whether they use surrogacy because they don't want to put on weight or because they actually can't physically carry a child, you know, it's not our business. So, and people can hypothesize all that they want, but eat to each his own. And if if that's what she needed to do to bring a child into the world and then all the power to her.

SPEAKER_01: 32:20

I think it's one of those things you you asked why you it's hard for you to talk about. I think when your body, there's like, at least for me, there's a lot of like self-blame. I had an emergency C-section, and it's like, why couldn't I just do this? Like, what is wrong with me? And so I think it's a lot of like, yeah, being really disappointed in yourself. Like, why am I not good enough? Because I think we're giving that message so much as women and moms already that it's really easy to internalize. So I've I've worked on that because ChatGPT has helped me work through that because it's like, you know, your kids came in the world exactly how they were supposed to. Right. And that's really all that matters. I imagine too, did when so when you had Aiden, was your second, was that easier, you know, in that kind of like postpartum time, the the first six months, two years, was that like a lot easier for you to kind of get into the flow because you weren't recovering as much? Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 33:19

So having Aiden, I'd say having Hannah shifted my whole life because when, as you both know, when you become a mom, your priorities totally change and there's no longer just you. It's you and your children or child. And um that was definitely life-changing for me. And having Aiden was different because it's it's interesting. I I write this in the book that when he was born, I I watched him be birthed. So that was an out-of-body experience to watch your own genetic child be born. And when the nurses were doing their measurements and they had uh him on this little like warming table, and I am like so panicked that something's gonna go wrong, or that this isn't even real, that maybe I'm like actually dreaming, that I I take my hand and I pinch myself. And I guess the nurse saw me pinch myself, and she looks at me and in the nicest, most beautiful maternal tone says to me, He is real and he is your sweetheart. And I just start crying, like I remember so vividly. And and then all of a sudden it's like the devil that lives on your shoulder that this is never gonna happen for you, or you're you're not gonna get through it, or you know, this isn't real, vanished. And there I am with my son that took a long time. We had a lot of issues, even getting pregnant with Aiden, and then during that pregnancy, Aiden was actually a twin. And um we had to reduce one of the fetuses because it would have overcome the entire pregnancy. The other fetus wasn't well. Um, and uh so after his birth, I I I felt a lightness, like it was like it was so much relief to have been successful, to have a another child, to have a sibling for Hannah. And it was it was such a wonderful feeling, different um than when Hannah was born, but no better, you know, no worse. It was just totally different. I was so blessed that Hannah was okay and that, you know, she was born just very small, but was breathing on her own and all the things you hope for when you give birth to a baby. And Aidan was no different. I just I couldn't believe we had been successful through so much heartache that led up to that birth.

SPEAKER_00: 36:16

Was the bonding process any different with Aiden compared to Hannah?

SPEAKER_02: 36:21

Uh no, I have to tell you, I was I was very involved. Like there was no FaceTime. There was no, I spoke to our carrier every single, I'd say every other day, not every day, but when and you know, we went to all the important ultrasounds. And, you know, every time I was with her, you know, I would put my hands on her stomach and I could feel him kick. I almost felt like he knew. You know, I I can't really explain it. I just felt that, you know, as soon as as soon as he came into the world, I I knew he knew that he was mine and Kenny's.

SPEAKER_01: 37:03

That's beautiful. Was the experience the same for the other two as well?

SPEAKER_02: 37:08

So, yes, you know, the difference between so Rowan and our and Caleb are twins, and uh we had three frozen embryos left at this clinic. And um about a year after Aiden, not even a year, Aiden was born, uh, our carrier had wanted to go, she wanted to know if we were interested in doing it again. And I felt I wanted to at least give these three embryos a chance, knowing very well that our family of four was beautiful and I was gonna be okay if it didn't work because I wasn't going through fertility treatment again. I wasn't gonna go on the drugs again. And she my timeline was a little longer because I had two kids and I, you know, and her timeline, she wanted to start a little earlier, so we kind of met in the middle. And the only thing that I'll say that was different with Rowan and Caleb is I didn't feel the same desperation. The want was there and the need was there, but it wasn't blind desperation. It wasn't that that that didn't guide me. Uh, what guide me was just the hope that you know we'd that one of those embryos would, you know, result in a child, and we were blessed with two. And for the most part, that pregnancy, thank God, was smooth. Just she went into labor before her actual due date, and we had to hurry our asses to uh Pennsylvania because uh it wasn't planned. So that that was, and we did make it.

SPEAKER_01: 39:03

So I have a dumb question, maybe, but okay, so this might be dumb. I I just don't know. Okay, so you went through the process, you got the eggs. The two are twins, but are they all from the same batch? And have got them. And does that make them like triplets? Like, yes, that's exactly it.

SPEAKER_02: 39:24

They're triplets, they're triplets born a year and a half apart.

SPEAKER_01: 39:30

That's wild. Do you notice like the similarities like you do with with the twins? Do all three have kind of like that bond?

SPEAKER_02: 39:38

Um, they they I I I am so blessed to have four children that are very close to each other. I uh yes and no. Like all the kids, like firstly, I've always treated my twins as individuals. I know they were born at the same time, but they're totally different people. I have never, you know, wanted to them even to this day when people say, How are the twins? I will always respond, Rowan and Caleb are great, thank you. You know, uh just because they're more than just born at the same time. And and I to no offense, I just I that's something that sticks kind of with me. But yes, I see so many similarities, and yes, I see so many differences, but you definitely they all all four of them for that matter, they all have you know components of how they look and how they act that are similar to one another.

SPEAKER_00: 40:40

So I have twins also. Yeah, um, yeah, yeah. Well, and also what a lot of people don't realize is that fraternal twins are not any more genetically similar than any other type of sibling, right? I think a lot of people don't realize that. Many people don't realize that. Yeah, I have a boy and girl twin set, and people will say, Oh, they don't really look that much alike. Right. They don't look like twins. Or do you get the question, are they identical?

SPEAKER_02: 41:06

We were just talking about that. I do all the time. Because like they're boy and girl. And then they'll be like, Are they identical? And you're like, um, no. One is a boy, one is a girl.

SPEAKER_00: 41:21

So yeah, all the time. Yeah. Or can you tell them apart?

unknown: 41:25

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 41:26

Yeah. Oh, that's okay. Okay. Yeah, that's funny. That's funny. I, you know what, I Rowan and Kayla came out and they were totally, and then they look different. Now, they look different to me. I know people initially, when a baby is a baby and they're so tiny, you know, I understand why people would have trouble telling them apart. We never had that issue. They looked very different to us, but I I think that's just because we're the the parents. I I, you know, I see how others would think um that they're, you know, very similar looking, even as a boy and a girl, actually, when firstborn. Um, but your question about, you know, them being triplets, that that's very um perceptive of you. Like that many people don't ask that question, and they are triplets, and it's an incredible thing. And we told them from day one, you know, we we were very proud of how they came to be. And the irony of that whole triplet situation is when Maureen, our carrier, was telling us that we were pregnant with Aiden. We were in the car driving home from a wedding, it was pouring rain out, and I write about this in the book, and a car passes us on the right with the license plate triplets. And then is like she tells us she's pregnant. And originally we were pregnant with twins with that pregnancy, but how how you got your triplets or how you know, triplets out of all cars licenses that that's the license that I see right before I find out that we're pregnant, and then we end up having triplets through the same batch of embryos.

SPEAKER_01: 43:22

That's wild. Science is so wild like that, because like if you don't go through fertility struggles, or I know you didn't have fertility struggles, it was other things, but you don't think about all these little pieces and right, and how how much thought care. Did you have a chance to choose your career? Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 43:44

We we were paired, I should say. So, you know, uh in Canada, the agency we were working with, there was someone who the who the woman who ran the agency said, I think I have the right person for you. So now I don't know how many other uh gestational surrogates there were in line to work with a family, maybe none, but I didn't ask that question. She felt that she was the right pairing. Had I been weary of working with them, I I wouldn't have at all. And actually, we worked with a carrier. We didn't implant anything because when we first pivoted to the US and we changed our agency and lawyer and everything like that, we were put paired with a carrier who on paper seemed wonderful. And um we she wasn't able to take everything kept getting delayed. And again, the weight with surrogacy or fertility or infertility when you're dealing with IBF and whatnot, you're always waiting. Like you start uh taking medication to develop your ovaries, you're waiting for those eggs, then you're waiting for those eggs um to fertilize with the sperm, and then you're waiting for them to be embryos, and then you're waiting to implant them, and then you're waiting to hear if you're pregnant, and then if you're not pregnant, then you're waiting to do the cycle again and for the period to come. And it's just all wait. And and we were introduced to this carrier where, for whatever reason, almost a year of delays with this woman, and then we come in for the psychaval that you know, we're meeting her at the clinic for the first time in person. I had already established a relationship with her uh on the phone and you know, and like speaking her a few times a week, and and it she hadn't disclosed a drug addiction, and her husband had a criminal record, and we were back to square one. How did you find out? They were for she was forthright. The uh psychologist was very good, but we were also waiting on the criminal background check. Yeah. There had been a flag that had been raised. I'm just, you know, at the time I was absolutely devastated. I couldn't believe how much time we had wasted.

SPEAKER_03: 46:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 46:19

But again, you don't know, you know, you you hope everything's gonna be okay. And, you know, and we used, you know, the most wonderful agency, and she lied, the carrier. And what can you do? We had to start from square one again. So we did.

SPEAKER_01: 46:38

You mentioned paperwork a couple of times, and I have a friend who just had a baby on his own via surrogate in Columbia, and he will have him on, but he was detained crossing the border and separated because the agency forgot to fill out some paperwork, and so it looked like he was stealing a baby. Oh my gosh. And I know you had to also cross borders. Was that scary for you? Because I can imagine I don't know.

SPEAKER_02: 47:00

He was telling me the story and it is wild, but so yes, it was scary, but we had crossed every T and dotted every I. And Pennsylvania, so every state in the US has different surrogacy regulations. So it's not federally mandated or federally regulated, I should say. Oh. So in Pennsylvania, it's a very surrogacy-friendly state. So at the time, New York has since changed, but at the time, like some of the top-tier clinics wouldn't even implant a surrogate with your embryo. So where we went to a clinic in New Jersey, they would implant the surrogate, but if the surrogate was from New Jersey and giving birth in New Jersey, the parents, the intendant parents, the genetic parents, would have to adopt the child. What? They cannot get their name. Now it may have changed in New Jersey. It has changed in New York. New York will now work with surrogates, but in New, so we had to find a surrogate, a surrogate from a surrogacy-friendly state, and Pennsylvania was and is. And so our surrogate, you know, gave birth in Pennsylvania, and our names were on the birth certificate. So a birth order had to be prepared by our lawyers in advance. So when we crossed the border, as far as customs were concerned, our names were on the birth certificate. There were no issues, but I was still very nervous. But I will say it was, it was seamless. We had everything. We had our contracts, we had everything. They hard, they didn't look at anything. But I was very worried. Once we got through customs, I was able to breathe.

SPEAKER_01: 48:56

I am shocked that that you have to adopt, or at least you did. I don't know. Many, no, many states still. You don't put your I'm guessing that's what happened to my friend. He probably had to as adopt as well. I have to talk to him and find out because this just happened. Um that's terrible. I think that's the other thing you don't think about, right? Is all the paperwork that's involved. Like you think about, you know, you have to go through the drugs, you have to do all of this, but the paperwork, like I hate doing paperwork at all. Was that a lot?

SPEAKER_02: 49:26

You know what? I have to say that's why you have to be duly diligent and hire lawyers, good lawyers that that will do this for you. You don't want to do it yourself. Yeah. Because if you make a mistake, it could be exceptionally costly. So things like I would sign documents, but I prepared nothing. That's I, I, I, I, I, that that is what we paid the agency and our lawyers for. I even the the transfer of funds wasn't done directly through to the carrier. It was all done through the agency. Agency.

SPEAKER_03: 50:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 50:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 50:01

I I didn't want that burden of responsibility. Yeah, too much can go wrong. Did so with finances, if you don't mind me asking, were you all uh were you still working after you had Hannah and Aiden? Or were you stay at home? What did that look like? I I was stay at home.

SPEAKER_02: 50:17

We had family help. We never would have been able to get through the cost of surrogacy if we didn't have help. So family help financially, you mean? Financially, yes, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. Our both our families were very generous. And uh, you know, we we did use our entire savings. Like most people get, you know, a lot of well, I shouldn't say most people, but we were fortunate enough to get, you know, when we got married, we had, you know, a good solid nest egg, and it went everything of ours went towards having more children.

SPEAKER_01: 50:53

So wow. Yeah. I am one and done, and I've I I there I've never had that yearning for a second one. Like once in a while it'll come up where I'm like, oh, that'd be cute for my son to have a sibling, and it is like this this long, and then it goes away. But did your so you mentioned that your husband and you always wanted a, you know, a bigger family. Did you know that you were done after those two, or did you ever have a yearning for more or four kids under six?

SPEAKER_02: 51:21

I was definitely done. And also like it was just so cost prohibitive to have want, like for me to have, you know, gone through, you know, forget the drugs and everything, but it just no. I I four children. We I never and if I never anticipated in my life having four children. Okay, you thought you'd have three, and then you had your triplets. You know, everybody has their ideal. At least I was naive. I had this ideal, you know, I'll get married, I'll, you know, work, and then I'll have a family. And I always knew I was gonna work, but I uh, you know, when I had Hannah, I I actually have an environmental science background. And I worked for an environmental engineering firm for years. And after having Hannah, I just realized that I was going to be traveling and working 24-7 if I stayed in this career. And that's when I pivoted my career to fitness after Rowan and Caleb were born, because surrogacy was like a full-time job, if it truly was. Like I was uh the year after Hannah's birth, I was still contending with my health as well. Um, but surrogacy was a full-time job, no question about it. And um, you know, once we had Rowan and Caleb and they were a little bit older, then I was like, okay, it's I need to get back. And I had to work and uh I pivoted into the fitness industry. It's something that I had always loved for myself. And I figured if I'm passionate about for myself, I think I can help, you know, others become passionate about it for themselves. So um, but yeah, I uh no, after four kids, I I definitely, yes, we were definitely done.

SPEAKER_01: 53:18

Fitness is also really flexible. You can set your own hours, you can set how long you want to work and all of that and work it around school. We're getting into the kindergarten year, and um, Zara knows all about this because I'm like, what is this? Like summer camp and you're out and you have to figure this out. And I'm like, it's just gotten so much busier.

SPEAKER_02: 53:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 53:38

It does, but it gets more complicated.

SPEAKER_02: 53:40

It's much busier as soon as they're walking, talking bodies. It's like all of a sudden, wow, you know, what did I sign up for? So it's uh, you're like I said, you're in the most beautiful way. It's important to carve out time for yourself because you get so busy. And it doesn't matter if you have one or you have four. A child still requires your undivided attention when they're with you. And uh it's hard. It's hard to pivot that, you know, life is about me to life is now about you. Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 54:18

Yeah. So there's so much that you went through. And this is probably a really difficult question, but what is like one thing that you wish you would have known about, you know, surrogacy or a piece of advice that you'd want to pass along to others who are considering it that is a difficult question.

SPEAKER_02: 54:36

I think the most important thing when women are struggling with fertility, whether it's surrogacy or infertility or any aspect of their fertility, uh advocate and educate for yourself because nobody's going to do it for you. And I think you will have a greater chance of success in having a child if you are informed and you are a partner and part of a team when you are working with whether it's lawyers, agencies, clinics, surrogates. You you want to be a part of it. You don't want to be, you know, a bystander or you know, watching from the sidelines. You want to be an active, engaged participant in your fertility journey. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 55:36

I think that's really good advice. I think in in life in general, for any sort of health that you're going through. Not even for health.

SPEAKER_02: 55:43

In life, you you want to be an act, you want to be in the arena.

SPEAKER_01: 55:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 55:47

You know, I you want to be in the arena. You want to be on the floor in the arena. That's where all the magic happens. Doesn't happen in from the cheap seats.

unknown: 55:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 55:56

Yeah. What is it? Are you so you're an empty nester, right? Uh, not this summer. We uh have a full house. I'm loving it. All of my kids are home this summer. How fun working it is, and they're all adults, so it's a totally different dynamic. I have two finishing their fourth year at university. I have one um who is in the midst of about she she's in her profession now. She's a marine biologist, my daughter, Hannah. And um, my eldest son, Aiden, just graduated from McGill in Montreal, and he is he is now employed as well. So, yes, I'm an empty half empty nester. So every except during breaks to come back, you know, which you know is wonderful. And and I'm just excited for them to like carve out, you know, their future. And did your twins sorry, no, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00: 56:55

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Did your twins go to different colleges? They're at the same university. Okay, that's my dream.

SPEAKER_02: 57:03

But you know what? It it it it wasn't because we wanted them to. They they made their own choice and they major in different things. One's in social media film and the others in economics. And they live together with five other, like four other guys in the biggest. I can I swear on your podcast. Absolutely. Oh, the biggest shithole I've ever seen in my entire life. Love that. That's what college is about. Exactly. Well, they're living the dream because in this house that is vile, but they're having the best time. So they have one more year. And yeah, they've they I always put them in different classes in school. I never kept them in the same class because I was worried that the teachers might compare them and I didn't want that burden on them. So I always made sure they were in different classes.

SPEAKER_01: 58:00

Do do your kids are are your kids in the same class or are they separated?

SPEAKER_00: 58:04

Mine are in the same class. Um, I do think it would be different if they were homogenous, though. I think having heterogeneous twins, people just are not as inclined to compare them 100%.

SPEAKER_02: 58:14

You're you're totally, I think that's totally accurate. Just because they're both boys, I, you know, um, listen, they that's the irony is they're they were in different classes, but their group of friends is the exact same. And they have such a wonderful friend group. And my house is definitely a hub where you know I've gotten to know all their friends over the years, and these are the same friends that they're living with at school. And oh, that's my dream to have all the same people like throughout your whole life. Yeah, they they have a beautiful friend group, they really do, even from being in separate classes. So it's it's just interesting. And and they would they they had the privilege of going to summer camp growing up, and uh, they were in the same cabin. That I unless they had wanted to be, yes, at slepaway. If they had told me they wanted to be in different cabins, I would have totally respected that, but they wanted to be together.

SPEAKER_01: 59:11

So all their camp friends are the same as well. I have so many questions about camp. We don't do sleepaway camp over here. The only people I know who went to sleepaway camp are Jewish people who know of a Jewish camp in California, and they have like lifelong friends from that camp. But I'm so fascinated by that because, and you know, we read books to my son about sleepaway camp. I think I went like one day when I was little and I was like, take me home, like I couldn't handle it. It's a lot, but it's fascinating because it seems like there's like lifelong bonds that are formed during that time.

SPEAKER_02: 59:45

There are. Uh, you know, I was very privileged to go to sleepaway camp as well. It's um, you know, there's a lot of non-Jewish sleepaway camps as well on the East Coast, right?

SPEAKER_01: 59:56

Because we're I'm on the West Coast and there's like not a lot here. It's not like a right. It's not a thing there.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:06

But it's interesting because you guys have such good weather, yeah, all year round. You know, I know it's a little cooler in the winter, but not bad. Whereas, you know, we get a brutal winter here. So the summer at the camps allow the kids to do like all the water activities and canoeing and sailing. And skiing and all the things.

SPEAKER_03: 1:00:29

You want to go to camp.

SPEAKER_02: 1:00:30

Yeah. It it it was such a wonderful experience. And it's so such a part of mine and my husband's childhood that, you know, we wanted our kids to experience the same thing. But every kid experiences camp differently. So just because two kids love it, don't mean the other kids are going to love it as well. So, you know, it's it's listen, parenting each kid is you're a different parent for each one of your children. So you you show up differently for each of the kids. At least that's been my experience.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:05

I think that's true. It might be different with you, Zara, since you're the same, you're raising, they're both your firstborn, but I don't know if it's different with boys and girls.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:14

It is a little, I mean, it is different. I do feel like I'm kind of split into on that because I do kind of parent them the same way because they're such a unit as twins, but they do, I mean, they respond to different things, they have different needs. Even in that first year, they had different sleep needs and food needs. So old are your twins now? Six.

SPEAKER_02: 1:01:35

Six. Oh, wow. Oh, that's such a great time.

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:38

Yeah, it's been fun.

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:40

Yeah. Do you have we I know we have taken so much of your time and you have so much to get to, and you are an author, and I imagine there are you have speaking engagements in another book that you might be working on at some point. But we do like to ask a couple of questions to wrap up. Sure. And I already asked one, but I am gonna rephrase it because I want, I am curious what advice you would give yourself if you would have like what you would have wished that you knew as you were starting your parenting journey. That could have helped.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:14

Well, to invest in Apple, that would have been a good start for all of us, right? Many six years ago. Uh no, I'm just joking. Um what advice would I have given myself?

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:28

Or what do you wish you knew? And it might be nothing.

SPEAKER_02: 1:02:34

I I wish that I you know what, I don't know if I wish anything would be different or if I knew I I think I've always carried with me a little voice inside that has made me feel on a very subconscious level that everything will work out the way it's supposed to, good or bad. So that has kind of been an undercurrent for me. And I I think if I could share any words with myself or feelings, rather, they would be more that continue to hold on to hope. So, and and I'm such a firm advocate about you know hope being a brave and deliberate decision. We get to choose hope. So if you can continue to hope for whatever it is that you want, that doesn't mean you can't you can't not take action, but just hold on to that. And I did. So I I think that I did what I would have told myself to do regardless.

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:55

So kind of trust yourself and hold out hope. Those so if you had a friend who was going through it, those are probably the two things you might tell them.

SPEAKER_02: 1:04:02

Yeah, it's again infertility, it's a hard, hard road. It's um unless you've experienced it yourself, and it it's it's a really hard thing to process to get through. Um, there's a lot of shame involved. There's a lot of gr, especially when somebody's body is broken and not able to do what it's supposed to do. There's a lot of grief and acceptance that you need to work through. Like I journaled my entire experience. So that was the basis of my book, that I was able to go back and the journals essentially were um made to for the future child that I didn't know when I would have, but would hopefully have, for them to know how much we love them before they were even conceived. And these journals that started as like one journal and then two journals, and then three full journals of streams of consciousness of me just totally like being very open and raw and truthful and explaining my feelings and my anger and my jealousy and my everything, the full gamut of you know, emotions that you go through. That when I reread my journals when I felt that I wanted to consider writing The Miles We Run, I realized that I never even looked back. Like when Rowan and Caleb were born, I never even looked back. I just wanted to move forward. I never processed anything that we had been through. It was so cathartic reading my journals because I was like, holy shit, whose life is this? You know, and and then and then it brought everything to the surface. So it it's a hard thing, infertility. It's uh it leads with desperation a lot of the time. And it's hard to sometimes get that under control when everything you see around you and the w women, your friends and strangers who are pregnant, who seem, who seem not everybody has it easy. You don't never know what's going on or how difficult somebody else had it unless they've told you. But how easy it seems for other people to have what you desire so desperately. And it's it's it's a very, it's a very hard thing.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:41

Yeah. What's the part of parenthood that has brought you unexpected joy?

SPEAKER_02: 1:06:49

There there's been different aspects of being a parent throughout my 26 years, 26 and a half years now, that have brought different components of joy. Right now, it's sitting at the dinner table and being able, you know, my kids are all over 20. So, you know, talking about the stock market and, you know, concerts we go to together. And they're they're adults. We're having like discussion around politics and and, you know, it's not, you know, did you forget your to do your homework or make your lunch or, you know, um grab your hockey bag? Do you have your skates, your helmet? I I had to logistics. Yeah. It's it's I I'm I'm loving the adult stage um of our relationship, but I also feel that I'm coming to a point in parenthood where, you know, they are adults, so I'm I'm going to be not necessarily losing them, but as they move into their lives, it's going to shift for me. So, yes, I've experienced all my kids being at school and nobody home, but you always know that they're coming back. Now, once they start their jobs and their lives in in wherever they land, it's like, I don't know, and I don't think they're coming back. So the whole relationship changes. So I'm trying to work through that now because, you know, I'll miss it.

SPEAKER_01: 1:08:36

I will say from the other side, my husband and his brother go to his mom's every single Wednesday with my son and they watch Survivor, and it's been happening for 10 years. And so that's beautiful. Just because they're out of the house doesn't mean, you know, they're gonna be gone. And I think that's something, you know, we we hear a lot uh with young kids is you only have 18 summers. Oh, and savor this moment, enjoy this. And I think if you're doing it right, they're gonna come back and they're gonna fill up your house like they are right now on the summer or Wednesday night or what whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00: 1:09:06

So yeah. I bought a house two doors down from my parents. So that's that's so nice.

SPEAKER_02: 1:09:11

You see, it's funny. I I also am very close with my parents, and my kids are very close with my parents, and same with Kenny's parents, and uh they don't live too far from us, and my siblings, we all live around the corner from one another. How cool generation is a little bit different. I don't know if my kids will be able to afford houses in Toronto. Um, I, you know, I truly I don't. So I I don't know if they're gonna end up around the corner from me. Or in your basement, or in my so yeah, but uh I there the things that I think I have driven the most joy from in parenting aren't the big milestones. They're the tiny moments where someone will just give me a hug and a kiss, or you know, uh sitting and reading a book or watching a show, holding hands, things that, you know, might seem boring to an average person, but you know, just fill my heart with joy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:10:19

I love that. I agree. Those are my favorite too. Yeah. Well, Allison, thank you so much for taking the time and thank you for sharing your story and being so open and honest and vulnerable. We really appreciate it. And where can our we'll link everything in the show notes, but for those who are listening, where can people find you?

SPEAKER_02: 1:10:39

So the mileswerun.com is a great way to connect with me or to find book. My book is available anywhere you like to buy books. Um, and then on the fitness side, if you're looking to strength train, it's absfitness.ca. But I want to thank you, Sam and Zara, so much for having me. It's been a great conversation. And I I just really appreciate you uh allowing me to be a guest on Do You Want the Truth?

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:08

Well, thank you for joining. And again, we'll link everything in the show notes and thank you for listening.