Episode 58: Transcript

You are listening to episode 58 of the Path to Motherhood podcast.

Welcome to the Path to Motherhood podcast.

I'm your host and fertility life coach, Sarah Brandell.

Join us each week as we walk through navigating your trying to conceive journey.

My mission is to share the skills of managing your mind, processing emotions, and living a full life to create a more authentic path to motherhood.

Hello, hello, welcome to this week's episode.

I had kind of an idea of a topic that came to me, honestly, from my own experiences, and I thought I would share it with you guys.

I don't know that this is going to be a super, super long episode, but that's okay.

Sometimes we need some quick episodes to, you know, share some stories that maybe you can relate to, maybe give you some ideas of how to approach something and then we'll move on to next week.

So I hope you all are doing so well.

It is a beautiful, beautiful fall day here in Ohio where I'm at.

We are well into October and that's what brings up today's topic.

So I was actually looking through something that had pictures from last year and I looked back and it was a picture of me and my husband and my daughter trick or treating with his family.

And the truth is, is at the time we had just gone through our agri-truvil last year in September, and we transferred the embryo, our first embryo, our first embryo on October 27th.

I don't know why, but that just really sticks with me.

I know that day.

And so we actually went up up to a different town that, like I said, my brother-in-law lives in and went trick-or-treating with them.

And I saw the picture of all of us, and it just brought me exactly back to that day, to that moment where we had transferred the embryo.

I had gone back and forth on, should we stay home and not go, or should we go.

Do you wanna do no activity.

Is it okay to do light activity.

You're questioning everything.

Obviously, we decided to go.

I decided, you know, these are toddlers, they're not gonna do that much trick or treating.

We'll do a little walk and that will be no big deal.

So that's really what happened.

It was all fine.

But yeah, so we went trick or treating and I just remember thinking, you know, my last miscarriage lined up almost perfectly with their son.

And so every time I see him, I think about what could have been, that's never gonna go away.

For the rest of forever, I really, I hate to put that pressure on someone and it will never be something I share with him, but forever in my life, when I look at him, I will think what could have been with my own child because it just is a perfect reminder of the timeline of things.

So there was that and we're sitting there hopeful with our embryo transfer And little did I know at the time they either were or were about to be pregnant with their second.

They now have and that's great.

That's awesome for them.

But I was so, so hopeful that that transfer was gonna work and it didn't.

And Halloween is one of those times that's already a difficult time.

I bet some of you can relate to this just because families are doing what.

They're posting all about their children, their children's joy, excitement.

It is not 100%, but it's basically a children's holiday.

And I think about times like that, times like back to school time, where it's just, it's really a heavy reminder of what you don't have.

And I say that as someone who has a daughter.

And I can put myself back into those years where I didn't.

And we were so desperately trying for our first.

And then even once you had one, I sometimes think that people think if I've gone through infertility and I get that first baby, then all will be okay.

And I'm just here to tell you that that's not the case.

I do think there are people who are able to come to terms with the fact that infertility has been a long hard road.

They don't want to keep going down that road and they have come to terms with one child.

Now that does not mean that they don't grieve, not having more children.

That does not mean that they don't have moments where it's hard.

They totally do, and that's totally possible.

But also, I think that the women who are going for more children with infertility, whether that is secondary infertility, whether that is primary infertility that you've been able to conceive and have a child and now you're going for another, it doesn't matter.

At the end of the day, that's all painful.

You know how many times I talk about on here about how it's not useful to compare.

This is really what I mean.

You can't put yourself into someone else's shoes.

Like I could think about, hey, I have this baby and she is amazing and I love her to death and I called her a baby even though she's four years old and there's someone over here who's been trying for six years and never had a kid.

Absolutely and I am empathetic to them and I feel for them and I could never be in their shoes because I'm not in their shoes.

but I also can be in my own pain.

So that's just a topic that I've been talking about with a handful of people recently, actually a couple clients, but also at my recent support group.

So I wanted to mention that, that's really not the focus of this episode, but I just think that's important to acknowledge that our stories are all different.

And yes, you could rank them and try to do all this hoopla of who's story is worse than someone else's.

But at the end of the day, that doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter.

It's what matters is who is the person living the life and their shoes, what pain are they going through and are they in pain.

That's it.

It doesn't matter about anything else.

And so I just wanna remind people of that if you're feeling like your pain isn't valid enough, isn't important enough, isn't bad enough, just throw all that stuff away and acknowledge your own pain.

So anyways, really what I wanted to focus on But this episode is those moments where you are in these children's surrounded environments and how to deal with that.

Whether that's you at home passing out candy to all the cute kids that come to your door, whether that is you seeing all the back to school photos posted on your feed, whether that is you like walking your dog at a park with a bunch of moms and their kids, whatever it is, I just think Halloween is a great example of that and it can be a really hard time.

And I can reflect on the years over the past six, seven years where I've struggled on this holiday where it's been really hard.

Honestly our first miscarriage lined up pretty perfectly with Halloween.

And if I remember right, I think we skipped it.

What do I mean by that.

I think we went out to dinner.

I think we might have just thrown a bowl of candy out the front door, hoped that people or behaving with it and left because I just couldn't handle.

And if that's where you are, that is okay.

Like that is totally okay.

And if you're having pain come up, if you're having feelings of frustration and anger come up when you see photos of kids and costumes, photos of back to school or school photos or whatever, it's okay to have pain.

It's okay to feel frustrated.

It's okay to be jealous.

Nothing is wrong with you for feeling that way.

Nothing, nothing at all.

And that is just so important to hear, so important to believe, so important to understand.

And I do believe, as I'm sure those of you who have listened to this podcast for a long time will not be surprised to hear that if you allow for those emotions, you allow for them to be there, there is room on the other side.

So what do I mean by that.

I had a tough day last year on Halloween and I had many other tough Halloween.

This is just the most recent one that I can think about.

I remember crying on the way home.

I remember allowing the pain and the frustration of not having what others have be there.

I remember wondering what this little child would have been like on this beautiful Halloween evening if they would have not been a loss.

I remember feeling so guilty that I had not provided my daughter a sibling.

I remember honestly questioning, like what did I do to deserve this.

Why do others get to have joy and I don't.

And it was, it was a tough night.

And I'm grateful to myself that I allowed myself to struggle.

I could have easily told myself, Sarah, you just had an embryo transfer, you're supposed to be positive and hopeful and happy.

And you can't think about the past and you can't be negative and just be hopeful for the future.

But that wouldn't have been real.

That wouldn't have been authentic.

That wouldn't have been what I was actually feeling.

And so there was really such beauty and allowing my humanness to just feel what I was feeling, to not beat myself up because I was jealous, to not be angry at myself for being upset.

I encourage you, whether it is Halloween, which is if you're listening to this live tomorrow, whether it is a back to school season, a holiday season, Whatever it is, the step one is just let the real emotions be there.

And you don't have to share them with people.

I didn't tell my brother-in-law and sister-in-law how I was feeling.

I don't expect them to understand how I'm feeling honestly, because they haven't been in my shoes.

Now I talked about it with my spouse and he was able to, you know, talk through it with me and understand what I was going through.

but I didn't share that with people who just wouldn't understand.

And what I think sometimes happens is people feel unable to share what's going on in their head.

And so they do open up about it, but maybe they open up to someone who just does not have the capacity to understand.

And then they feel judged for what they were thinking.

And then they beat themselves up for what they were thinking.

And then they question, what's wrong with me.

Why am I having these thoughts.

What we talked about in the support group this past month was you have thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of thoughts a day.

You are not your thoughts.

Your thoughts are just things that are happening in your brain.

So there is no point into tying your morality or your kindness or anything to the thoughts that come out of your brain.

We all have thoughts that we regret having.

And I will even say that when I'm feeling jealous, I don't regret that.

To me, I think jealousy as an emotion has gotten vilified for no reason.

Jealousy is just a sign of an emotion telling you what you really want to have.

It's not saying you don't want them to have it.

Maybe in the moment there's a twinge of that, but I'm willing to bet the majority of us after we let the emotion process through would never be on that side of things.

As a whole, jealousy is not as mean of an emotion as we've made it out to be.

Honestly, it's a really good symbol, right.

If I see someone who's super successful in growing a business and I'm jealous of her, that tells me, "Oh, I really want to do that.

"Let me go after that.

" It's more of a direction sense of what you're wanting in your life than anything else.

So I really encourage you this Halloween season, whatever season you're going through, If those emotions are coming up, one, let them be there.

Two, don't judge them.

Three, open up to someone who can understand.

Whether that's your spouse, whether that's a support group, whether that's me, message me, let me know.

I'm here.

That is my favorite thing about being a coach, is it doesn't matter what you could tell me.

My job as your coach is to have zero judgment.

And I love that relationship.

It's amazing.

You know, I've been on the other end where I've been coached by someone and to open up and be able to say whatever comes out of my mouth and know I won't be judged, just such an amazing feeling.

And it just, it takes like the weight off of your back.

It makes it feel comfortable to share.

It makes it feel comfortable to open up.

And so that's what I want for all of you is I want you to have someone in your life that you can do that.

I'm thinking about all of you this Halloween season, if it's a tough time.

Yeah, I get it.

I hear you.

And I really, really hope that you can honor whatever the heck is coming up for you when it comes to your emotions and let them be there and have no expectation that like after you let them be there that you're gonna just be positive Polly.

That's not necessary.

Like I told you, one year I just totally skipped Halloween.

Totally fine.

Last year, I participated.

I wanted to do that for my daughter.

It was hard.

I cried on the way home.

I had my moments of joy and I had my moments of disappointment.

I had my moments of happiness and I had my moments of pain.

And that's real life.

Talk about often.

Life is not 100% happy and 100% sad.

It is a mixture of both.

And opening up to both makes life more authentic.

So I just wanted to do this short episode to say I'm thinking about you.

I know that we're going into a season of a lot of hard times.

a lot of triggering times.

We will talk more about a handful of those triggering times over the next few weeks, but we wanted to kick it off with just acknowledging that these children focused events, whether it's a birthday party, a holiday like Halloween, whatever it is, can be tough and I see you.

And it's okay to be struggling, totally okay.

So I hope you guys have a great week.

Hopefully you get to enjoy a little bit candy for yourself.

And I will talk to you all next week.

We will be going through a big topic next week that I think is really gonna set us up for success going into the holiday season.

And that is discussing boundaries.

So have a great week and I will talk to you all soon.

- Hey there, Inspired Mama.

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honored to help you.

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