Feeling Independent After Fertility Treatments Fail

This podcast is gonna be coming out on July 4th and in the United States that is Independence Day. And what I really wanna talk about is feeling independent or free through your fertility journey and maybe the years that have followed since.

So, in full disclosure, I recorded a different episode yesterday. I had my hair and makeup done. I looked glorious. And then when I went to go edit the podcast, I realized that I had my microphone. On mute. So if you're watching me on YouTube, this is me, fresh outta bed, no makeup, just a little bit of moisturizer.

If you are listening in and you didn't know that I have a YouTube channel, um, please subscribe to it. It's Lana dot Mankowski the YouTube channel's a little bit different than if you listen to the podcast on audio only. It's a little less edited,  maybe some more outtakes than you might hear on the podcast. But either way, if you have an opportunity to subscribe to the YouTube channel and you're watching this on YouTube, thank you so much.

If you, um, have a friend that you think would like to listen or watch, please send them the podcast or my YouTube channel to subscribe. So  independence Day,  I'm not  gonna talk about Independence Day in the United States, but just this sense of feeling independence after your fertility journey ends and you realize that you're not gonna be a mom.

There is a really common thing that I work  on  with my students, where they're feeling very, almost like stuck. Because for so long they were in this waiting pattern, and maybe you feel that like maybe you know what it feels like to be in this holding pattern of trying to figure out what your life's gonna be.

Maybe in the short term it's trying to figure out if you can say yes to a girls' weekend or get tickets to a concert.  Maybe in the long term it's deciding where you want to purchase your next place of living, whether you wanna get a house with four bedrooms or stay in an apartment with two. There's a lot of the fertility journey that.

As us not feeling like we are independent and that we are free to live life the way that we want to. So let's think about how we can pay attention to that and maybe start to regain some of our independence back now that our journey has ended and we know that we're not gonna be parents, we know that egg donor wasn't right for us.

We know that adoption isn't the thing that we were seeking. So if we want to start to feel like we're living again and feeling independent again, we can start by doing a couple things that I'm gonna talk about and teach you about. I also talk about this a lot in my Thrive After Infertility Mastermind is listening to your brain and not trying to change the way that you think right away.

Or change the way that you thought things were going to be or should have been, but just listening in, paying attention, telling yourself, I'm not gonna judge you, but I just wanna hear what comes up for you when I think about feeling captive in my story, or I feel  captive in making a decision on what I want to do next.

Before I get into that, like I just want to really normalize the fact that many people feel captive. It's nothing wrong with you or nothing that that is unique to you. It's that for so long we were on a plan to become parents, to become a mom, to get pregnant, to go through a cycle, to follow a protocol.

So for a long time, by choice, we were following this protocol. We knew what we had to do next. We knew a waiting period. Whether it was, a two week wait or whether it was waiting for your next period to start or waiting for your medication to get in and knowing what day you were supposed to start your medication.

There were so many parts of our fertility journey that we didn't need to be independent because we had the support of our fertility clinics. We have the support of our I V F nurses. We have this time trial of sorts that we knew, a general sketch of how long it would take until our next cycle started.

Okay. So I just wanted to take an opportunity to say that if you're feeling like something's wrong with you, that you just don't feel independence in your own life. That is so normal. I work on that all the time with my students and thrive. What I'd love to offer you is doing paper thinking. You all know if you've listened to me for a while, that to me, listening to your brain, not changing what it's telling you, but just paying attention to what it's telling you and maybe jotting it down is probably the most effective form of starting to create difference in your life, not change.

Maybe I would even say to create awareness in your life because when we are aware of why we're feeling as though we are not able to make a decision or say yes to a vacation or go on a cruise with our family, even though we know that our journey has ended, let's pay attention to what our brain is telling us, and maybe our brain is telling us that.

It's scary. Maybe our brain is telling us that having this freedom again means that our journey through fertility treatments and our journey to motherhood is over. And when we hear that it feels scary because it's almost like this rag that like slaps you in the face to say Hey,

it's up to you now. And we may think that that should feel easy and that should feel freeing, but for you, it might just be a reminder that what you wanted so badly is not available to you and things are gonna look different for you. So take some time to pay attention to what are the things that are coming up when you feel like you don't have authority in your life, or this independence, or this freedom or a desire to feel that way.

Okay. And then when you understand what it is that's going on for you. Understand do you wanna take some independence back in your life? Do you want to be somebody who takes authority back in their life? And my guess is you probably do, but There is a lot to unravel to get there, and so the paper thinking will allow you to, to pay attention to maybe what scenarios are coming up for you, where you feel like really stuck in making a decision that you think should be so easy to make and you think, my gosh, like, why is it so hard for me to decide if I want

to go and book a vacation with my husband, or why is it so hard to decide if I wanna get theater tickets with my mom and my sister?   Your mind, is just really used to being on hold with a lot of things. And so if you've decided that you want to try to start taking that independence in your life again and taking.

Steps to feeling like you want to be in control of your future again. Then maybe pick a couple things that you noticed were hard for you to decide to say yes to, or maybe some things that you've been wanting to do and you've just been finding yourself not saying. All right, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna book this.

I'm gonna call this person and make plans.  I'm gonna sign up for this class. I'm going to start working out again. I mean, there's 1,000,001 things that might have come up in your brain that you've been wanting to do and you just haven't said yes to. And I don't want you to pick all of them. Maybe just pick one item at a time, one thing at a time, and start.

To work on saying yes to that thing and understand, why do you want to say yes? Why do you wanna go to the theater with your mom and your sister? Maybe it's that you wanna start bonding with them again. Maybe it's that you wanna start creating activities that enrich you, or maybe you're somebody who loved musicals and you haven't gone seen a musical for so long and you know that that will bring joy to you.

Maybe if you understand why you haven't booked a vacation, maybe you and your partner have been wanting to  go do something fun for so long and you just find yourself  talking yourself out of it. Understand. If you went on that getaway, what would that do for you?

What would it do for your relationship? What are some things that you could dream about experiencing when you and your partner say yes to this long weekend or this road trip.  It's really a good place to start to gain your independence in your life back and maybe in the activities that you wanna partake to understand where you're feeling stuck, when you're finding yourself saying, no, what types of things are they? Are they picking out groceries at the grocery store or are they like saying yes to things that are like more commitment date on the books. I'm doing this on this certain date. And my guess is it's probably the latter. It's probably committing to something that is concrete, something that you have to say yes to ahead of time.

Buy tickets for,  Coordinate with other people, like something that's not easy for you to back out of. I'm guessing that's it cuz that's commonly when I'm working with my students, that's where they're finding themselves getting stuck. So understanding that and then picking a couple easy things. Maybe it's not booking a month long sabbatical in the mountains of man Montana.

Maybe it's just saying yes to a weekend jaunt. Or maybe yes to a, a girl's weekend somewhere or something that you can just dip your toe in the water a little bit. And when you say yes, you'll start to say, wow. Like, these are the things that I want to start doing again now that I know my journey is over and I know that I'm not gonna be a mom.

I wanna start experiencing these things that give me so much fun and so much joy, listen to yourself and not judge yourself and not tell yourself, like it shouldn't be so hard for me to make these decisions. Just come at yourself from a place of grace. So I hope that helps you this week and in anticipation of Independence Day, you can start to create more independence in your life.

And if you have yet to download the Guide to Loving Your Life again, it is a free resource that I created. I talk about it every once in a while and I feel like I don't talk about it enough cuz the people that have downloaded it and reached out to me have found so much movement. By just taking themselves through the exercises I offer in the guide.

So you can download it at lana mankowski.com/guide. If you follow me on Instagram at lana dot mankowski, the link to download it is in my bio, but whatever it is, know that you can love your life. Again, you can feel independent again. You can thrive again. You can be excited about your future again,  if you are newly out of treatments, it might not be your time yet to reach that.

But if you've been listening to me for a while, if you have listened to multiple episodes of this podcast and you hear things resonating with you, and you think to yourself , you know, I'm good, but. I'm okay with just being good.  Cuz I don't know that my life will ever be great. I want you to just  stop that talk, listen to yourself and know that good is not good enough for you.

You deserve great. You deserve a life that just feels so magnificent. And I know that I try to talk myself in for so long to just like feeling, okay, my life's good. So, I'm in a loving relationship. I make good money. I have family and friends nearby and you know, that'll get me through. And when I realized how fabulous life could be, again, I get so disappointed for letting so much time go by that I didn't want more for myself or that I talked myself out of my desire to want more.

So, Don't be one of those people. Don't be Lana two years ago who just thought average was okay and that this was as good as it was gonna get. And if you're interested in doing something more to create a life where you can thrive and feel fulfilled, I invite you to join Thrive after infertility. It is the most transformative

path you can take yourself on and to watch the many students that I have coached and continue to work with and the women that have said yes to themselves to see how magical and to be able to watch them grow and continue to flourish and find their independence is.

My greatest achievement, to be able to have worked on that for me and want others to have it for themselves. So have a beautiful week. I love you. And remember, it is never too late to discover your meeting. I'll talk to you next week.