Dr. Molly Burrets

Going through infertility is one of the hardest, most poignant stressors a marriage can face.

Boy, you know, my story is a long one.

So I'll kind of select the highlights.

I was working, so I specialize in my practice in two types of issues.

I specialize in couples and I specialize in women's reproductive health and the mental health challenges that come along with that.

And I was doing that before I ever experienced any issues with infertility myself.

And

And it's just really pretty shocking how my life sort of transformed to meet my work where I needed to meet it.

And now how I work with women experiencing infertility and going through IVF and other assisted reproductive technologies is so different because I know what they're going through.

I've experienced it.

But I had my first child on the late side.

I had him right before my 40th birthday.

And it was easy.

And it was very little effort.

And I know that experience.

And I'm grateful to have known that experience.

I didn't know at the time how lucky I was and how fortunate I was.

And I kind of just assumed, oh, like I beat the odds.

Like I'm just one of those people that can have kids late in life.

And I didn't really worry too much about having a second kid.

And, you know, maybe 18, 20 months later after my son was born, we tried again and I got pregnant again right away.

And again, I told myself, wow, I've hit the jackpot.

I'm just one of these lucky people.

But that pregnancy ended in a miscarriage.

And I didn't have a ton of experience or expertise in people who were able to get pregnant but not stay pregnant.

More of my practice had focused on people who have difficulty conceiving, right?

And I didn't have difficulty conceiving.

A second time very soon after, we conceived again without much effort.

And I thought, okay, so, you know, I had my miscarriage.

Odds are that's over.

Now I'm going to have my baby.

And a really, really sad thing happened, which was that I lost that baby in the second trimester.

And I lost that baby because that baby had a chromosomal abnormality.

So that baby was really sick.

And that was, at that time in my life, the hardest thing I had ever gone through.

I don't think a lot of the community is familiar with the term TFMR, which means termination for medical reasons.

And this is the really heartbreaking experience of finding out that the baby that you have is extremely sick and may not make it to birth.

And if they do make it to birth,

will have an extremely compromised life of suffering or won't live very long.

And so many people make the choice to save their baby from that kind of suffering and terminate the pregnancy for medical reasons.

That's called TFMR.

And I would say that that's probably the most taboo topic still in infertility.

Yeah.

And there's a reason why you haven't heard it because people don't want to talk about it because it feels very shameful.

The choice to terminate a pregnancy for a baby that you very much wanted is very traumatizing.

Yeah, and going through that with my baby in the second trimester, what I thought to myself was, I can never do that again.

I can never go through that experience again.

And so I went through IVF not because I couldn't conceive, but because I wanted to have the process of testing my embryos to determine if there were any genetic abnormalities before becoming pregnant with them.

And I'm so glad I did because I'm so glad I did do it.

I'm so glad I was able to make it happen.

And it requires a lot of resources and privilege, right?

which is a whole other thing that I can get on my high horse about.

I retrieved overall 40 eggs and two of them were genetically normal.

So my first one, the first transfer that I did resulted in a chemical pregnancy, which was devastating because I knew I had one chance left.

And

And that's why I felt for you so, one of the reasons I felt for you so much when you were going through your transfer and all the uncertainties, because I watched that line on the stick get lighter and lighter and lighter.

And it was like being given something and having it taken away was horrible.

Brutal.

You know?

I know you know what that feels like because you were in that space.

Yeah.

I felt like I got it because I have been there.

And I just think you're such a special person.

And I was really honored that I even got to play a little role in it, you know.

Um, so I was in this position where I was left with one embryo and that was sort of, you know, my, my husband calls it a Hail Mary, which apparently is a football term, whatever.

Is it really?

It's like when the top, the clock is running out, you have nothing left and you throw the ball all the way from one end of the field to the other end of the field for a touchdown because it's your last thing.

It's the only thing left.

So she was our Hail Mary and I knew it was a girl.

And I waited a long time to do the transfer because I didn't want it to be over.

And I knew that if it didn't work for me, it would be over.

I wasn't going to do anything more.

I was so cashed and out of bandwidth.

I wasn't going to consider donor egg.

I just couldn't do it.

Yeah.

It ran my life.

Yeah.

It ran my life.

And on top of it, I know this is going to sound so wild, but I was commuting to Mexico to do the IVF.

Yeah.

So I did a round in Los Angeles and it was pretty dismal.

I got very few eggs.

I did the retrieval.

In the retrieval, none of the eggs that I got actually made it to the blast embryo stage.

So it was like $25,000 worth.

to me, completely thrown down the drain.

And the doctor was basically like, I mean,

It's stats, and this is your age.

And overall, even if you really see this through and do multiple rounds, like I ran the data analytics, and you probably have an 8% chance of being successful through IVF.

And that's another thing I want people to know is IVF is not a cure-all.

It's not like if you're not having kids now, you can be like, oh, I'll just do IVF later.

It is so far from a guarantee.

It's not a guarantee.

And for many people, it does not work.

So that's just, I think, a misconception is that IVF is the insurance policy.

And as long as you have that, you'll be OK.

And that's just not true.

It's not.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I was like, man, like, I'm looking at my son and trying to save for him to be able to go to college.

And you know, the way I grew up was very financially unstable.

And I'm just like looking at the big picture.

And I'm like,

I have some really hard choices to make here because I don't know how many times this is going to take.

She's telling me like, I might have to do this like seven, eight, nine times.

I'm looking at the money and I'm like, I cannot do this.

And it just felt like throwing money away, you know?

And I started doing some research online and I found out about this doctor in Tijuana, which is about a two and a half hour drive from my house when there's no traffic.

Yeah.

That's actually not bad.

Yeah, it wasn't bad.

It's not great, but... Getting there wasn't the problem.

It was getting back across the border and waiting at border control that was really, really hard.

My longest wait was 14 hours.

Oh my God.

And you know how many appointments IVF takes.

Yeah.

That was my longest one.

Interestingly, our very last trip, usually I would go alone, but on my transfer days, my husband came with me.

And on the very last transfer, when we transferred my daughter, Aurora, we waited at the border for 14 hours to get back home.

14 hours, no place to pee, no place to get anything to eat, just waiting.

And you have no idea it's going to be 14 hours.

You don't go into it knowing, okay, it's 14 hours.

You just are waiting and waiting and waiting, and you don't know what's going to happen.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, so I could do four rounds in Mexico for the cost of doing one round in the States.

Wow.

So it's a quarter of the cost, even more than that.

There are two reasons why I did it.

The first, what got me looking was the cost.

But then I found a doctor down there.

She's a female doctor named Dr. Isabella Martinez.

And she is like a very young, cutting edge doctor.

very involved in research and international research presentation.

She knows what's up.

And her attitude, she told me, I asked her, who's the oldest woman you've ever been successful with?

I think when I started, I was 43.

And she said, 41, but you're going to be my first 43-year-old.

And like, so her positive mindset, I was like, okay, this person believes that I can do this and I'm going to do it.

Yes.

And she didn't lie to me.

She said, yeah, those stats, 8%, yeah, that probably is about right.

But there's no reason why you can't be one of the eight out of 100.

And let's go for it, Molly.

And the other thing is that she was able to use medications with me that are not FDA approved in the US.

And I took that risk and I did it.

When I followed her protocol, the number of eggs I got tripled.

So these were women who were like literally going to work from nine to five at their real job and then going to work at Amazon lifting boxes in a warehouse for four hours, five days a week, just so that they could get IVF benefits.

And can you imagine going through IVF and having to do physical labor while you're like, it's just wild.

Wild.

It's wild.

So your transfer worked.

Yeah, my transfer worked.

Our Hail Mary.

Wow.

is my daughter, Aurora, who is almost two years old.

And she's...

The best.

It was really, really hard.

Like it nearly destroyed me.

Like going to...

Mexico, you remember, I'm still taking care of another kid, you know, and was talking to him about it.

And, you know, mommy's going to the doctor in Mexico.

Sometimes I would spend the night at like a cheap motel near the border.

I mean, I look back at what I did.

I'm like the love of a mother, man.

We can do anything.

Yeah.

motivated by that feeling.

You know, I don't speak Spanish.

And so I didn't understand the parking signs.

And apparently I parked illegally and my car got booted in Tijuana.

And I was by myself in Tijuana with a boot on my car and I had to figure out what to do to get home.

And like, I look back at what I did for my daughter and like, it's just like, wow.

Wow.

You can't believe your own strength sometimes.

No, it's incredible.

You know what I mean?

Do you think you'll ever tell her?

Oh, yeah.

Well, what I did was I kept a little, I have a little private Instagram page that tracks my IVF process from beginning to end that like, I mean, literally has like 30 followers or something like that.

So someday when she's old enough, I'll show her.

Yes.

And there is a lot of updates.

As you know, every three days, did it make it to blast?

Did this happen?

It's like there's constant waiting and then news, waiting and then news.

And I just did not have the capacity to tell everyone all the time, to answer all the texts.

Yeah.

So I created a little Instagram page.

I only invited people that I wanted to know everything going on.

And I just said, guys, please don't text me and ask me what's going on.

If there's news, it will be on my page.

And then I didn't have to tell everyone.

And then when it didn't work, I didn't have to tell 30 people.

You know what I mean?

Such a good method.

I feel like the...

Yes, yes.

Yeah.

I can't even imagine being in your position with like literally millions of people thinking of you on your transfer day.

And like, that's just too much.

I saw some posts actually, when you went to Nairit, people were posting, oh, she's so pregnant.

She's definitely pregnant.

And I'm like,

That's so insensitive.

I know.

No, it's wild.

I know it's coming from a place of wanting you to be pregnant.

I know.

100%.

The other one is when are they going to impregnate you?

I'm like, okay, it's good.

It's a transfer.

They're going to transfer the embryo into my uterus.

Like, are you getting impregnated this week?

And I'm like, just one, babe.

Just one.

You're like, no, that's... If people aren't doing genetic testing on their eggs, sometimes they're putting in more than one.

But if you're doing genetic testing, you're just putting in one.

Do you know what I mean?

Right, right.

You know, that question makes me sad because it makes me think in a way that I hadn't before, that there was a way in which I was very alone in all of it.

You know, I was very resourceful and I always have been my whole life.

I know how to get my needs met.

I know how to take something small and turn it into what I need, you know?

And the internet was very helpful with that.

I found the clinic in Tijuana through a Facebook group.

Yes.

So honestly, some of the best support that I got, because I actually...

Obviously, I can't talk to my clients and get support from them.

I didn't know a lot of people in real life who had gone through this.

Or they just didn't say.

That's right.

Exactly.

So I didn't have a lot.

And the people who were in these groups, these support groups on Facebook, honestly, they were the ones that I got the most information from.

Yep.

But I was doing a lot of like figuring it out on my own, you know?

Yeah.

So I think boundaries are extremely important and you're allowed to change your boundaries as frequently and as often as you want.

So if it feels good to connect with people who are going through what you're going through, or it feels good to connect with someone who's pregnant because they make you feel like, okay, if that happened for her, it's possible for me too, then enrich that relationship, you know, and stay engaged.

But if it starts to feel bad, you can take a step back.

And I think you really have to pay attention to yourself and what you're feeling and let yourself respond accordingly.

If you pay attention, you will know how you feel.

And if you know how you feel, it is your job to then act accordingly.

So if you're hanging out with a friend who you know it makes you feel bad,

You know that.

It is your job then to have a boundary and maybe say, I love you so much.

I'm so happy for your success.

It's hard for me to be around it right now because it just brings up so much sadness in me.

I'm happy for you, but I'm already dealing with so much that I just need to take a temporary step back and take care of myself.

And I so hope that you will be there waiting for me when I'm ready again.

Because a real friend will.

No question.

A real friend will.

Yeah.

Someone who is not a real friend will be like, well, she can't even be happy for me.

And, you know, that's going to tell you a lot about that person's role in your life.

I'm the pregnant one.

Yes.

The mute button exists for a reason, babies.

Yeah.

And use it.

You're sharing your life, Mari.

You're authentically sharing your life.

That is what has drawn people to you from the get-go.

I don't know if you know this, but I started following you like 10 years ago.

I didn't know that.

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

I was doing, at the time it was called BBG.

Yeah.

And I started following you and you were such an inspiration to me just because you shared the real you.

And I was like, if she can do it, I can do it, you know?

So I've been a fan of you for so long.

That's crazy.

I have the chills.

That's so wild.

I mean, it's crazy to me that like I'm sitting with you because...

I've known you for so long.

I think we were meant to meet.

Yes, absolutely.

But you have gotten the level of success that you've gotten by being your authentic self.

And you need to keep being that.

And people will take care of themselves.

They can leave the space if they need to and come back if they want to.

Yeah.

Yeah.

that's up to them yeah you just keep doing you because you know your your life is changing yeah so your brand and your work and what you talk about is going to change yeah and it does just it is my whole world right now I've waited such a long time for this and it is like I'm so excited about it obviously and you should be thank you

Yeah.

I would start from a place of grace because I'm sure there have been times in my life, I know there have been times in my life when I didn't know what I didn't know.

And I probably said some things that were at minimum insensitive and at worst very harmful.

And I think this is an example of that.

When you don't know what you don't know and you haven't had an experience, but then you speak on that experience, it is...

the least insensitive and at most very harmful.

And I think from what I have seen online, that it has been very harmful to people who are already going through the most suffering of their lives.

There's not too much information out there.

It's wonderful that there's a renaissance and that we are finally, just for the first time, starting to get information about

from women to women.

So if it feels like it's burgeoning, it is.

And that's wonderful because we have been waiting so long to stop being in the dark about this.

So if it's not your struggle, I can really, with grace, understand how it seems like, oh my gosh, people are talking about this everywhere, shoving it down.

Well, people are talking about it because so many people need it.

And just thank your lucky stars that you don't.

Just hold that gratitude and keep it moving.

If it's not your pain, I don't think it's helpful to comment on other people's pain.

And I think it's really important that women be educated about their reproductive health across all domains, whether that's natural family planning or assisted reproductive technologies.

There's lots of ways to get pregnant.

And there's lots of ways to have babies.

And you can have babies without getting pregnant.

So I just want there to be room for all of it.

It's not a competition.

And I want us to be sensitive to the pain and struggle that people are going through because I can promise you this.

We are not going through all of this just because we don't have a positive mindset.

Thank you.

I didn't spend my life commuting to Tijuana, Mexico and shooting myself up with drugs and going through the heartbreak and pain of waiting loss and disappointment just because I wasn't thinking positive enough.

And hey, I'm a psychologist, so I understand, appreciate, and respect the value of a positive mindset.

It's something I'm working on all the time and teaching my clients.

And so it's not all or nothing.

A positive mindset is super important, but a positive mindset does not change your body's chemistry.

And I think at the heart of every woman who's experiencing infertility is

maybe this is too generalized, but I feel like every single one of us, there's a voice in us somewhere that says, what did I do wrong?

Or I'm doing something wrong.

Or like, what's wrong with me?

And I think it's different for everyone, but I think that that's like a core experience.

And so we don't need other people who aren't suffering through this or

also telling us there's something wrong with you.

And if you would just think positively, you would be through this.

So I honestly, I would love to speak to that woman from a place of just like grace and compassion and see if there could be a conversation just to have a little bit more perspective.

People are getting pregnant everywhere.

Like having babies in general, conception and planning and all of that.

Yeah.

Have a direct conversation in the group about, hey guys, how do we want to manage this?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because, you know, gosh, I don't know if your life is like mine, but my friends are my soulmates.

Yeah.

And I just need them so much.

Yeah.

And

you don't have to figure out, you don't have to be a mind reader and figure out on your own how you should be with your friends.

You can just ask each other, you know, guys, you're going through this, you're going through this, I'm going through this.

What are the ground rules?

How do we want to respect each other around this?

How can we make this like a really supportive environment?

What do we need?

I'll go first.

Here's what I need.

Like, what did I do wrong?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think that conversation creates space for people to have different boundaries.

Yeah.

It creates space for someone to say like, for me, I just, I don't want to share as much.

Like I'm totally open to hearing everything that you have to say, but I probably won't share as much.

I'm just not quite as comfortable.

yes period or you know this whole thing is hard for me to talk about i totally want you guys to be able to support each other i just put it on a different thread because i just can't right now yeah you know yeah i think that's great and i wonder if a lot of people experience this honestly also this might sound like a crazy question do you ever find that women okay like groups of women yeah

Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

Is that a real thing?

It's a real thing.

It's not a crazy question.

They do get competitive about who can get pregnant first.

And let me tell you what's going to happen for you in a couple of years, Mari.

Oh, God.

Then they're going to get competitive about who can have the next baby and who's going to have more babies.

I can't.

I know.

I know.

It took me so long to get here.

I know.

I know.

It's like a real thing.

There's something so deep within us that our value is so tied to reproduction and fertility.

Yeah.

It's just like we can't help ourselves.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

My experience was after – so after I had my son and I developed a whole new group of friends, my mommy friends, you know.

Does that happen?

Yeah.

100%.

Okay.

Yeah.

You got to have friends that have kids.

Yeah.

And it's especially helpful if you have friends that have kids that are the same age as your kids.

Okay.

It's very important.

Nice.

And –

I'm really lucky because my mommy friends are my real friends.

Like, I would be friends with them even if they didn't have kids my age, the ages my kids, because it's a true friendship.

I really love them.

Shout out to Katie.

Love you, girl.

Katie!

I hope Katie's listening.

Bye!

What happened for me was my mommy friends then started having their second kid.

And sometimes even their third kid while I was going through IVF and like, you know, I would just see my kids, my friends having more and more kids.

And it was like it was so hard.

Yeah.

And there was this weird thing that happened for me where I felt like I wasn't a real mom if I only had one kid.

Oh, yeah.

Can you believe this?

Yeah.

It still shocks me to this day, but I really felt that.

I'm not like a real mom.

Real moms have more than one kid.

And I'm like, where did I learn that from?

That's so weird.

Yeah, but I felt like an imposter.

I'm like, oh, I just have one kid.

I'm not a real mom.

And now I can look back and I'm like, it's just not true.

No.

Like I was a mom from the moment he was in my womb.

You know?

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

You want to be free.

You want to have peace.

My gosh.

And you deserve it.

Yeah.

And enjoy it.

And you know what?

You deserve to just enjoy having a baby.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Rather than thinking about having a baby.

Yes.

You deserve to enjoy having your baby, Mari.

Yeah.

And let me tell you, as someone who has a big age gap, you know, and it wasn't, I didn't want to have a big age gap, but I have one, like a five-year age gap.

There was something really, really special about having all that time with my son, just the three of us, me and my son and my husband.

Still, I would go back and change it.

I would not want to have had to go through IVF.

Like, don't get me wrong.

I would never choose that.

But you do try to see the good.

And for me, part of the good was I had a lot of uninterrupted time with my son.

And now I know what it's like to have two kids.

And it's a lot.

And it's a big juggle.

And you don't get as much individual time with your second child as you do your first because you're having to take care of two of them.

So I just want you to like revel in being a mom.

I think that you be direct and honest with your friend about not knowing what to do

and not knowing what they need, and then assure them of your availability.

So that might sound something like this.

I know that there's no way that I can possibly empathize with what you're experiencing right now.

I don't know what it's like, and I can only imagine how hard it is, but I will never know.

And I don't know what to say and I don't know what to do that would be helpful.

But I want you to know that if there were something I could say or do, I would do it in a heartbeat.

And if you have feedback for me about what I can do, I want to hear it.

That's one approach.

Just go ahead and do it.

Drop off a big tinfoil thing of spaghetti and meatballs at the doorstep and text and say, hey, spaghetti and meatballs on your doorstep.

Pick things that everybody wants and needs and loves.

Who doesn't love spaghetti and meatballs?

Or just send over a...

gift certificate for a laundry service or for a house cleaning service, you know, just do something and be like thinking of you.

I know it's a really hard time and let that just do it.

Don't ask them necessarily what they need, you know, because then that becomes a burden for them to think about and tell you how you can be helpful.

Totally.

Think about yourself and what would be helpful to you if you were going through a hard time and then give it to them.

I love that.

Yeah.

I think that's fantastic.

And don't get so hung up on the details.

You don't have to get the perfect gift.

You don't have to find the perfect flowers.

Just like do something.

Okay.

Yes.

The very first thing is for people to know that going through infertility is one of the hardest, most poignant stressors a marriage can face.

Yeah.

Okay.

So baseline, what I want you to know if you're out there and you are having a hard time in your marriage because of infertility, that is to be expected.

It's really hard for me to imagine how a couple could go through infertility and IVF without having the stress impact the relationship.

You're not at your best.

You're constantly waiting on answers that are life-changing.

You are so out of control.

Any illusion of control that you thought that you had is totally gone.

And on top of it, there's this weird thing of like, now we have to time our sex at this time.

And sex goes from hopefully being something that was enjoyable and organic to like this very high stakes endeavor.

Yeah.

It's stressful.

It takes something that the purpose of it is supposed to be connecting and fun and turns it into this high stakes endeavor that is very stressful.

So a lot of couples lose that way that they used to feel connected, right?

It takes something that used to be fun and is now not fun anymore.

So I guess the baseline that I want to start from is you're not alone.

Every couple going through this is having impacts on their relationship.

You might not see it from the outside, but it's happening.

The other piece is that, look, when you're going through infertility, if the infertility is due to a female factor, right?

Sometimes infertility is due to a male factor, right?

We're talking to a lot of women right now.

If it's due to a female factor, what's happening if you have a male partner is probably that he's feeling a lot of the same losses that you are feeling, except he's not the one going through them.

So it's like he doesn't have... I know my husband felt like the things we're going through are so hard, but...

but it's worse for you.

And so I have to be the strong one.

I can't really have my feelings about it because yeah, I'm going through it too, but it's worse for you.

And I think for my husband over time, two years,

That really takes a toll of always having to center your partner in their experience and kind of swallow your own experience to be the strong one.

For sure.

That really can really chip away at someone.

So I really recommend that men try to find like groups, support groups, people that they can talk to what they're going through because their experience is not centered in all of this.

And then it becomes really, really hard to show up in the relationships.

So people don't think enough about how this impacts men, you know, and it's very real.

Yeah.

And there's so many ways that the stress can show up in your marriage.

I'll share with you something that happened for us just to kind of give a hint of there's so many different ways that your marriage can be impacted based on your circumstances.

So I am seven years older than my husband.

Right.

And my infertility or my difficulty maintaining a pregnancy was due to age-related factors.

And it was the first time in our relationship that I really ever thought about our age difference because it never mattered before.

It was the first time that I started feeling like, man, I'm a liability.

Right.

And it made me feel bad about myself.

And it made me have these like, you know, I would tell myself these lies in my head like, you know, he could do better.

He wouldn't have to be going through all this if he had just married someone his age or younger.

My husband could be with a 30-year-old right now, you know.

And it really started the cycle of lies of like, I'm not good enough.

And that can, that really, if you let that go and you let that spiral, that can really infiltrate a relationship.

So we really had to deal with that head on.

And he was able to, until I told him this is where my mind is going, he didn't know to tell me, I would choose you 100 times out of 100.

If I could be with a 30-year-old, I would never want that.

But he had to know what I was thinking.

I had to be vulnerable and admit that.

in order for him to give me what I need, which is, Molly, I would take you 100 times out of 100.

I wouldn't want an easier journey with a younger person.

And that's how it was solved.

But it was really scary for me to say that to him.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I know Greg was very involved.

And I love that for you.

I think there's another presentation where the woman's just kind of taking it all on herself.

And the guy's like, well, I can't do anything about this.

So and that's a very isolating experience for both people.

Yes.

So you have to find ways to connect over it.

Yeah.

But you also have to have boundaries that allow you to have a relationship outside of infertility and IVF.

Not every conversation can be about that.

You have to find ways to say, you know what?

We're out to dinner.

We're not going to talk about that tonight.

There is more to life than our struggle having a baby and find each other in that again.

Oh my God.

Yeah.

Okay, here's why it's so complicated.

Because when you are in that space, you don't know that you're in that space.

Yeah.

This is why it is so important to have...

people around you that can be a mirror for you and reflect back to you what they see.

So somebody who can say to you, Mari, I love you so much.

I know you.

how you're showing up right now, it's different.

And I think that I'm seeing something in you that isn't consistent with how you normally are.

And I really, really, really want you to feel well.

And I think you might not be seeing like what we're seeing, you know?

So you need mirrors around you that are paying attention to your well-being.

Yeah.

And are willing to reflect to you what they see.

Yeah.

And then there are these guidelines that it's like, if you're depressed for six weeks, that's called the baby blues.

But if it goes beyond six weeks, that's depression.

Okay.

I don't know, man.

Like having a baby is the single most transformative experience of your life ever.

It's going to take some time to adjust and your hormones are on a roller coaster.

Yeah.

So...

I just say give yourself time, but you also don't have to be in it completely by yourself.

You don't just have to be on the roller coaster with absolutely no agency.

Be talking to your doctor about how you feel.

Every time you go into the doctor, they should be giving you a mental health screener that asks you how often you're having difficult feelings.

Yeah.

And they'll count up your score and they'll tell you if it reaches a level that is something where you might want to consider a different type of intervention, like an SSRI or something.

But I'm, of course, totally biased.

I'm a big fan of therapy.

And if you can set yourself up to have a therapist with you as you go through this transition...

that will be another mirror for you.

Someone who can say, here's what I see in you, Mari.

Here's what I think you might want to consider.

It's like, this is the person who's supposed to help you.

And it's a person who's hopefully an expert in this.

So they would know.

Yeah.

You have your own therapist?

Oh yeah.

I love my therapist.

Love that.

Shout out to my therapist.

Well, I'll share what I experienced and I know what I experienced is different than what you experienced.

So maybe you can share a little too, but I was afraid of getting pregnant because of gaining weight and how it was going to, everyone told me it was going to change my body.

I was very afraid.

And I went, it was like a part of the reason, like even when I got married, I like didn't want to get pregnant right away because I was like, oh my God, I know it's going to be so hard.

Losing weight is going to be so hard.

I don't want my body to change.

And so it was something I very much dreaded and really like,

There was energy around this that I was like dreading my body changing.

For me, when I got pregnant, I never felt more beautiful in my life.

I...

Just let myself eat whatever I wanted.

And for me, the experience of pregnancy really freed me from a lot of my body dysmorphia because I started really thinking more about what my body was doing.

Yeah.

Rather than what my body looked like.

I shifted from becoming an object to becoming embodied.

And I was no longer looking at myself and judging my body.

It was more just like I was like, wow, look at what my body's doing.

And I don't know.

It's like the growth of my body and my boobs getting so big and my butt getting big and my stomach getting big.

Like it felt so feminine to me.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

that it was healing to me in a way.

Because I started seeing my body as more than just an object for men to look at.

I was like, oh, I'm so much more than that.

Like I'm God's child.

And my body is doing this incredible thing.

So for me, it was very healing.

But I know it's not that way for everyone.

I love that mindset though.

Like that is really therapeutic to even hear.

That's my advice.

See if you can start thinking and tapping into what your body is doing rather than viewing yourself as an object.

Because you should just be grateful.

Yeah, that's real.

Abortion is also a loss.

Yeah.

But it takes on an extra layer because it's a loss that you chose.

Yeah.

But please don't forget that it was still a loss.

It's different for everyone.

And not everyone experiences abortion as loss.

But if someone feels that they need to forgive themselves for an abortion, then that tells me you experienced your abortion as a loss, right?

And a loss that you chose.

Maybe you would make the same choice over again.

Maybe you wouldn't.

I don't know.

But I think that you need to grieve the loss.

talk to yourself like you would a friend with compassion.

So you can say things like, you made the best choice you could with the circumstances and the information that you had at that time, right?

And, you know, it's hard because some people have no regret whatsoever about their abortion, and that is completely valid.

This woman sounds like there's a piece of her that, you know, at least has a part of shame and regret around it.

And I think grieving the loss and then being compassionate with yourself about you did the best that you could with the information, resources, and knowledge that you had then.

Because we're all just doing the best that we can.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you can't go back and make a different choice from a place of being the person you are now.

You have to give yourself grace that you did the best that you could with what you had then.

And grieve the loss.

No.

I felt that way.

Yeah.