93. Doula Journal Entry: When Everything Is Working… Except the One Thing I Want Most

Before you listen, please know this conversation includes pregnancy loss, miscarriage, and the emotional realities that come with it.

If you’re in a tender place, protect your heart first. You can come back to this when you’re ready.

I’ve been a bit quiet for a reason.

Not because I didn’t have anything to say…but because I was in the middle of something I couldn’t rush to make sense of.

In the last year, I’ve experienced two missed miscarriages.

The first came with waiting...waiting for answers, waiting for my body to catch up, waiting in this space between fear and trust while making decisions I never thought I’d have to face.

The second… was different.

I knew.

Before the ultrasound. Before anyone said a word.
There was a quiet, undeniable instinct in my body that something wasn’t right, and I tried to override it.

This episode is about that knowing. The grief. The jealousy, guilt, and thoughts I didn’t want to admit out loud. The experience of moving through a system that felt cold and disconnected from something so deeply human.

And the identity shift that comes when you can’t “fix” or control the one thing you want most.

This isn’t a lesson.

There’s no neat takeaway.
No polished ending.

This is me… in it.

Processing what it means to hold both abundance and devastation at the same time.

To build a life and business that’s expanding, while navigating something that feels completely out of your hands.

To trust your body again… and to become someone who can hold more, even when it hurts.

If you’ve experienced loss…
If you’re in a season that doesn’t make sense…
If you’ve ever felt alone in thoughts you didn’t think you were allowed to have.. you’re not alone in this.

And you don’t have to rush your way out of it.

Thank you for being here. <3

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And this experience hasn't pulled me away from this work. If anything, it's actually rooted me deeper into it because nothing about this has been transactional for me. Like not birth, not loss, not the identity shifts that we move through as women and as humans and mothers. I don't ever want to build something that forgets that. So if there's anything that I'm taking with me as I move forward, it's this commitment to stay in my truth and to keep showing up as my most authentic, unfiltered self, even when it's hella uncomfortable or it doesn't fit into what's expected, when it would be easier to, you know, make it look pretty and more palatable. But this type of honesty and humanity is what actually creates real connection. Welcome to the six-figure doula podcast. This is where confidence becomes currency. If you're a birth worker who's ready to stop overthinking, stop undercharging, and start leading like you mean it, then you're not here by accident. Every week we talk sales without the ick, money without shame, and building a business that actually holds you and your clients. Welcome home, Dula. Hello, my beautiful friends. Welcome back to the podcast. Today's episode is definitely something that I've had on my brain and on my heart for quite some time. I've been alluding to it. I've been mentioning that it's coming. Not 100% sure if that was even gonna happen, but we are here. And I just hit record, and this is happening. And I will tell you that the disclaimer today is that this conversation includes pregnancy loss and miscarriage and some of the emotional and the physical experiences that come with that. So if you are in a tender place, if this is something that feels close to home for you, I want you to protect your heart first and foremost. Feel free to pause this. You can come back to it later. You do not owe me your ears at the expense of your peace. And I have really kind of gone back and forth on how I want to express this because I feel like this is not just a story that I'm telling you today. This is something that I am absolutely still inside of. And I think that the last two years of my life have really shown me something that I didn't fully get before. And that is that life can be incredibly abundant and incredibly painful at the exact same damn time. And there has been so much growth and so much expansion and so many moments where I have felt aligned and clear and deeply in my purpose. And at the exact same time, there has been a level of challenge and emotional weight that I honestly could not have prepared for. And I think that's how it always goes in business, right? Is we don't rise to that occasion until we're in it. And that's why entrepreneurship is the deepest, most insane, incredible, expansive self-development journey we will ever take. So I want to start by backing things up to last June, where I experienced my first missed miscarriage. Not my first miscarriage, but my first missed miscarriage. And what made it so heavy wasn't just the loss itself, it was the waiting. I felt like I was constantly waiting for my body to catch up to what my heart already knew and what the science was telling us. I was waiting in this really weird space between fear and trust. And there were decisions that I had to make that I didn't even understand before being in that position, which was also bizarre being the work that I'm in. There were options that I never thought I would have to weigh. And I remember feeling just so out of my depth while also trying to stay grounded in myself. Um, and I also physically was extremely ill. I got the flu hours after we found out that the baby was no longer alive and that the pregnancy was no longer viable. And it made for a very intense experience, not being able to get out of bed, dealing with incredible body aches and chills, like a sickness I had never ever, ever experienced. So I did choose to have a home birth. And as painful emotionally as that experience was, there was something deeply peaceful about it that was so incredibly sacred. And it allowed me to process and honor that baby in a way that felt so aligned for me and for my family. And after that experience, which I was very, very vocal about online. So I feel like I've already shared that story with you all. And I really want to like put it back on the shelf in its beautiful um glass container where I have this like mental picture of forget me knots and just um magic in a jar. Um, so after that experience, I gave myself space and I gave myself time to heal, come back to my body and find a sense of hope again. And eventually I did. And I got to a place where I felt very ready for this next, this next layer, this next journey in in growing our family. And I was very excited and super optimistic and very open about the situation. And it just felt like the next chapter. Maybe this was the moment that things would kind of shift for me, and you know, we were able to really bring some positive things out of that heavy experience. And I got pregnant again and I let myself feel it more fully this time. Like I had gone into that last pregnancy in the previous June with some guards up, right? Because I was, I was protecting my emotions. I was protecting my husband. I was like in this protector phase. So this time I really, I really let myself feel it fully. The anticipation and the joy, and I didn't hold back or guard it. I really let myself be in it. And then we found out recently, um, weeks ago, that I was experiencing another missed miscarriage, but it felt so different this time. And it wasn't because it was like happening again, it was just how deeply I knew in my bones. Um, an instinct in my body that something was not right and I wasn't panicked and it wasn't anxiety. I just knew. And I did try to override it. I told myself to stay positive and to not go there, but my body had already gone there. So I do want to just touch on what added to the grief because I think it's relevant and it's just part of the story. And that is the experience of moving through the medical system this time, which was something that I'm still trying to put words to. So I want to put a pin in that for one moment and just kind of talk through where I live locally. There are very few out-of-hospital options. So I had my son Enzo at the only freestanding birth center in the entire Buffalo area. And that was run by a unicorn of an OBGYN who 100% followed all the midwifery practices to a T. Um, I would forget that she's an OB because of this fact, and she was a pure angel. And that couldn't have been a more incredibly empowering, beautiful experience out of hospital. And that ended up shutting down when she retired. And since then, the um only other out-of-hospital experience aside from free birth is to work with the one and only home birth midwife in the area who I also adore. And so I have been very much like putting myself on her radar because as you can imagine, with one, it's incredibly hard to lock her down. And you've got to hope that she has space in the calendar. And, you know, there's some serious logistical um craziness that goes into that. So the moment I find out that I'm pregnant, I'm reaching out to this woman. And so we were able to, for the second time, get her, get on the list, like become her patient. Like that was a huge, huge part of my the birth team that I wanted. Unfortunately, when you need something routine, like an ultrasound, that equipment, because of the setup locally, that equipment isn't as readily available. So you go to like one of those chain um medical establishments, like a wind song or like the big name chains, where they can do um a ton of ultrasounds and things like that. And so I found myself going to one of these for the dating ultrasound. And the only reason I even went for a dating ultrasound was because of our history. And I really felt like that was going to be an important piece for us to kind of make sure that things were growing at the right rate. Um, and it was really just like for peace of mind. And, you know, that's that's not an uncommon decision. Um, but there was such a lack of emotional intelligence in that room and the clinical detached nature of something that felt so human and so devastating in the moment made me ill. Like the way that you are just left to read the cold room and the way that you can feel the shift before anyone actually says anything, the avoidance of it all, the weight of knowing what they're about to confirm before before they, you know, even look you in the eye. In this particular situation, um the ultrasound tech came into the room to tell me that there was no doctor on site. Despite the fact that when I booked this appointment, I asked specifically to make sure there was a doctor on site so that I wouldn't have to wait on those results because the way that this business runs, the tech is not allowed to tell you the results. And if the doctor is not able to consult with you right then and there, then your only option is to let them send that report to your care provider, to my midwife in this case, and wait to get those results, which felt extremely gatekeeping to me. And it felt like I was being held in a room without my own medical information against me, even though it's my body. And that brought up a lot of anger. And so it was, it was horrific. It was horrific in a way that had nothing to do with the physical pain, because apparently this ultrasound also didn't know how to use uh a probe or perform a transvaginal ultrasound, uh, because there shouldn't be pain with that. But it had everything to do with how unseen it made me feel. Maybe it's selfish, but I needed a place to process. I've done a lot of journaling. I've met with my therapist, I've talked to my husband and my family and my closest friends, but I also wanted to name some of the darkness and honor what's happening here in my life in a different way. And that's that's why I'm here. I went back and forth a lot on like, is this something that I should be bringing to you all? Like, is there a reason outside of my own healing? And I thought on that for quite some time, and I'm just I'm realizing now that the sharing is my way of also giving other women a voice, and I'm hanging on to that. So I'm just gonna start with the jealousy. I have caught myself feeling jealous in ways that don't really make sense to the version of me that I that I'm trying to be right now. Jealous of women who may not know that they're even pregnant yet, jealous of women who, for whatever reason, I keep telling myself, like, get to be careless with something that I feel like I'm gripping on with both hands. And then immediately after those thoughts run through my brain, I have an intense wave of guilt that pours over me. Because what kind of person feels that way, right? Like what kind of woman who already has so much still feels like something is missing so deeply that it shows up like that. And there is so much shame in that. And it's hard to confess that, but it's reality. It's the kind of shame that I try to carry really quietly and I and I try to outgrow it on my own, but I'm here to just say it out loud. And I've also been writing a lot and having moments where I don't trust my body. And that one is harder to admit than probably anything else, because I have built so much of my identity on trusting my body, like on teaching other women to trust their bodies, to listen, to lean in, to believe that their body isn't broken, you know, not failing them, not something that needs to be controlled and submission. And and now here I am. And there's this betrayal that is surfacing from my past and very, very likely my disordered eating past and all of the work and therapy and and and healing that I've done around that, and it makes me struggle. Struggle that I can't out mindset this. I can't outwork it, you know, and I and I just am arguing with it constantly beneath the surface. And I do not want to become someone who sees herself like that, but sometimes I do. I also recognize right here and right now that there is this pressure that I've put on myself that I don't think I fully saw until now, even though there's been so many moments that when you piece it together all at one time, it starts to become impossible to not see. But it's like I need to make everything mean something. I've got to turn pain into purpose. I need to extract a lesson. I have to make it useful. Like as if I can alchemize it fast enough. And then I won't have to sit in the part that feels pointless and unfair. And I don't love that about myself. I'm realizing because not everything needs to be turned into something, I don't know, consumable or understood, right? Not everything needs to serve someone else immediately. Sometimes things are just fucking devastating. And there's like this lack of permission before those things change you. And that makes me feel really uncomfortable. And then there's the other side of that, the side of me that knows without question that this work I do was never even about strategy. Like it was never just about sales or messaging or revenue. It was truly always about the woman who sits alone at night, replaying her life, you know, convinced that she's the only one who feels this way. The one who has made mistakes that she really can't forgive herself for, the one who feels like she's too much in some rooms and not enough in other rooms, and the one who wants a different life but feels like she's disqualified from having it because of who she's been in the past. And I know that woman intimately because there are still parts of me that have not outgrown her. There are still days, especially over the last 30 days, that I am her. And this time, this everything that I'm walking through right now, it doesn't separate me from her. It actually brings me closer to her, like closer to the unfiltered, ugly truth of what it means to be a human in a way that absolutely no polished version of success ever could. And there are some things that I keep circling, one of which is quitting. Like quitting for me doesn't even register as an option. And it's not because I am strong or disciplined or built different. It's because I've already lived the version of my life where I abandoned myself and I stayed quiet, made myself smaller, chose comfort over truth, lied to myself every morning when I woke up and every single night when I went to bed. And I know what that costs. So this, this grief, this uncertainty, this not knowing is painful, but it's also really honest. And I know deep down I would choose an honest life over a comfortable life every single time, even when it hurts this bad. And I also want to name that I've been writing a lot about what feels cruel about the timing of this. Like my business is expanding and things are clicking in ways they never have before, in ways that I truly found myself thinking would never happen. And I feel sharper and clearer and more grounded in my voice and my leadership than I ever have, ever. And at that same time, the one thing that I can't control is the one thing that I find myself wanting the most. There is no strategy here. There is no formula, there is no timeline. We can lie to ourselves about that fact, but there isn't. I can't make it happen. I can't force it into reality. I can't work harder to get there. I can't think more positively and guarantee an outcome. And that really has humbled me in a way that nothing ever really has, because I've built so much of my life around creating results. And this right here, right now, is asking me to sit in an uncertainty without trying to solve anything. And I've let my mind go to some dark places, you know, in those super quiet moments when I'm the only one awake in my bed. And like, what if this keeps happening? What if this story doesn't end the way that I thought it would? What if I have to grieve something bigger than I'm ready to admit right now? So I have to pull myself back because truthfully, even thinking those things feels really dangerous for me because it's like giving it more power and betraying hope. And I have to recognize those thoughts when they come in. I can't pretend they don't exist, but I also can't make them disappear entirely. And then there are moments like right now where there are other things that are present, and maybe it's not relief at this stage, but it's steady. It feels like trust, even if I can't really explain it. It doesn't override the grief or answer all the questions, but it's like sitting right there underneath everything, like a quiet knowing that I'm not being punished, that this isn't random in the way that it feels. Maybe there's a reason, like it's a season that's shaping me into someone who can hold more depth and love and life and responsibility. So I have to ask the other set of questions. Like, what if I'm not being denied right now? What if I'm being prepared? And let's make sure that I go on record. Like, I don't mean that in a toxic positivity way. I mean it in a way that acknowledges how uncomfortable growth actually is. The stretching, you know, the stripping away of things, forcing you to meet parts of yourself that you would have avoided otherwise. And I think the reason I chose today to bring this to you is because I've decided over the last few weeks that I don't want to rush past this version. Even the super friggin' dark parts of it or the thoughts that make me pause and think, what should I even admit that out loud to my audience? Because there's something honest here that I don't think I've ever really. Allowed, and it's a kind of truth that I don't know how it's gonna land or how it'll be received or whether it fits into a narrative that makes others comfortable or not, and I don't care, and there's some bravery in that, and maybe it's not the kind of courage that gets praised, like probably not. It's the kind of bravery that feels really personal, fucking terrifying, and where I have to actually tell myself the truth and then let it be. So I really wanted to share some of these thoughts. It may have sounded like pure chaos, it may not feel complete in any way, shape, or form. In fact, no, it's it this is not closure. It doesn't feel resolved, but I feel like I'm sitting in the middle of something and I'm choosing not to run away. And I'm being intentional about those decisions around not rushing to the next version of myself to escape the weight of what's going on here in this version. And so this is me letting it all stay. The grief, all the doubt, the questions, those tiny moments of trust, all of it, all of it together. And I'm not going to make it make sense too quickly. So I'm just gonna let it be a part of me for as long as it needs to be. And as I sit here and attempt to close this out, I keep coming back to this one thing, and that is gratitude. Not the surface level type of like, I'm so gracious that you are supporting my podcast. No, this is like gratitude that comes from being really exposed and realizing who's standing there with you. And the women who have held space for me in this season who didn't try to fix it or rush me or didn't need me to be anything other than exactly where I'm at, that has meant more than I can fully put into words, and you know who you are. But to be seen like that in something this raw really has changed me. And it has made something so crystal clear. And that is that my doulas, my birth workers, my women who choose to sit in the depth of life with others around them, that's where my home is. Not even just professionally, not just because of the work that I do, but because of the way that you all show up, the way that you hold, the way that you don't look away from the hard things. There is a level of emotional intelligence here, of presence that you can't just find everywhere. And I feel it and I feel it deeply. And this experience hasn't pulled me away from this work. If anything, it's actually rooted me deeper into it because nothing about this has been transactional for me. Like not birth, not loss, not the identity shifts that we move through as women and as humans and mothers. I don't ever want to build something that forgets that. So if there's anything that I'm taking with me as I move forward, it's this commitment to stay in my truth and to keep showing up as my most authentic, unfiltered self, even when it's hella uncomfortable or it doesn't fit into what's expected, when it would be easier to, you know, make it look pretty and more palatable. But this type of honesty and humanity is what actually creates real connection. It what it's it's this that gives other women permission to exhale on their own and quit performing and stop feeling like they have to carry everything all by themselves. So if something in you feels seen with this episode, then just know it's not by accident. Like you are allowed to take up space in your own life, you're allowed to feel what you feel, you're allowed to want more and go after it. Even if parts of you feel messy, unsure about that, or people are giving you side eye, like you do not have to have it figured out to be more powerful. You just have to be more honest. And I think that's that's how I want to end this. Um, and it's it's actually not with any closure, but it is with truth. I'm still in this, I'm still healing, I'm still becoming whatever it is that I need to become. And I'm just really fucking grateful that you're here while I do this. I love you.