When You've Been Through So Much, How Do You Begin To Feel Like You Again?

Walking Through The Fire

"Healing is walking through the fire and then coming back carrying water for the women still trapped inside."

When I first heard that quote, it stopped me in my tracks.

In this episode, I'm exploring what it means to be changed by experiences we would never have chosen.

Not because infertility, loss or heartbreak are gifts.

Not because everything happens for a reason.

But because sometimes the experiences that ask the most of us also shape what matters most to us.

I share reflections from my own journey through infertility, miscarriage, IVF, pregnancy loss and the year I lost my voice, and how those experiences ultimately became the foundation for the work I do today.

If you're in the middle of the fire right now, this episode is a gentle reminder that you don't need to have everything figured out.

You don't need to find meaning in it.

You don't need to know how your story ends.

For now, you're allowed to simply take the next step.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Staying Silent – the episode where I share the full story of losing my voice https://www.buzzsprout.com/2510470/episodes/19373675

• Free fertility meditations
• Additional support through The Fertility Sanctuary and The Fertility Nurture Hub CIC

Visit:
www.thefertilitysanctuary.com

www.fertilitynurturehub-365.com

And wherever you are on your journey today, please remember:

You don't have to carry it all alone.

Staying Silent Episode Link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2510470/episodes/19373675

If this episode resonated with you and you'd like a little extra support between episodes, you'll find my free fertility meditations and resources at https://thefertilitysanctuary.com/innersanctuarytw

And if you know someone who might need to hear this today, please feel free to share this episode with them.

Until next time, take care.

Transcript

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host 1:43

today's episode began with a quote for me, one that stopped me completely in my tracks when I came across it Healing is walking through the fire and then coming back carrying water for the women still trapped inside. I'll say that again. Healing is walking through the fire and then coming back carrying water for the women still trapped inside. I've been thinking about it ever since Before I go any further, I just want to say something clearly I really am not saying that fertility struggles are a blessing. I'm not saying that everything happens for a reason Because I know firsthand how painful this journey is The waiting and the heartbreak, the uncertainty, the loss, the feeling that your life is completely on hold while everyone else's seems to be moving forward. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, and I don't think we need to be grateful for our pain in order to be changed by it. But here's what I have been noticing. Over the last few years, I've been meeting and connecting with women whose lives have been profoundly shaped by experiences they would never have chosen Women who have walked through loss, grief, infertility, heartbreak Other experiences that asked everything of them, and yet somehow those experiences have quietly influenced who they've become, what they care about, what they can no longer look away from, what they feel called to create or offer or to say. Not because the pain was a gift, but because it changed what mattered to them I am thinking of a woman I connected with recently who had spent years experiencing pregnancy loss She had experienced 18 losses before she finally became a mom She told me what she had gone through, and it made her completely unable to let other women feel as alone as she had felt. So she started showing up in community spaces, in conversations, in ways she never had before. She didn't choose her losses, but she chose what she did with what remained i've walked through my own version of this, infertility, miscarriage, IVF losing my twin boy. And during that time, a, a virus that partially paralyzed my vocal cords and left me unable to speak properly for a year I've shared the full story of that experience in a previous episode called Staying Silent. I'll link it in the show notes because I think it's worth hearing in full. But the short version is this: losing my voice physically was also the moment I began to find it emotionally. It forced me to stop, to listen. Something we rely on and take for granted so much, so simple as being able to talk to someone, was suddenly taken away from me, and I couldn't communicate at all, and I couldn't work. I couldn't ask questions. I couldn't ask the questions I'd been too busy, too frightened, or too exhausted to ask before and that interruption, painful as it was, became the beginning of everything I do today. The Fertility Sanctuary, the Fertility Nurture Hub, this podcast, the work of supporting women who are carrying things they often feel they have to carry alone and their partners who feel they have to carry them And not seek support themselves. I didn't walk through that fire and emerge unchanged. The fire changed me, but perhaps that's exactly the point. I used to think healing meant returning to who I was before, getting back to normal, feeling like myself again, recovering what had been lost, but I don't believe that anymore because the woman I was before infertility, before loss, before the year I couldn't speak, she didn't know what I know now. She hadn't yet developed the capacity for the depth of compassion I feel now. She hadn't yet asked the questions that changed her life, and she hadn't yet understood in her bones what it means to carry something this heavy and what it feels like to finally put some of it down. Healing, I think, is less about returning and more about becoming, becoming someone who has been through something and deciding imperfectly, slowly, in their own time what to do with that. Not because they owe the world their pain and transformed into their purpose, but because sometimes meaning is what helps us move forward If you're walking through that fire right now, and I know many of you are, you don't need to have it all figured out. You don't need to know how your story ends. Just know that this isn't how it ends. It's not over yet, and you don't need to find meaning in this yet, or possibly ever Sometimes all you need is just to take the next step and trust that one day you will understand more than you do today The water comes later. Right now, you are allowed just to survive the fire if this episode reached something inside you today, I'd love to continue the conversation with you. And if you haven't listened to Staying Silent yet, the episode where I share the full story of the year I lost my voice, you're welcome to listen to it. I'll link it in the show notes alongside today's episode. The two feel like companions to me, and I think you might find something in both of them. My free meditations are also there for you, a quiet place to land whenever you need it Thank you so much for spending this time with me today. Be gentle with yourself this week. I'll see you in the next episode