IVF This Podcast Episode 203: IVF & Happiness

Join me today as I introduce the new IVF This Framework! A way to understand and navigate the four emotional terrains of infertility: grief, anticipation, hope, and identity. Because before we can figure out what we need, we first have to understand where we are.

Join me today as we explore absurdism through the lens of infertility and IVF. We talk about why humans desperately search for explanations when we're suffering, why closure may be more myth than reality, and how peace might begin when we stop demanding answers from a world that never promised to provide them. If you've ever found yourself asking, "Why is this happening?" this episode is for you.

 Join me today as we talk about performative coping during infertility and IVF—the exhausting pressure to look okay, stay strong, and keep moving forward. We explore self-gaslighting, emotional honesty, and why coping has more to do with telling yourself the truth than pretending you're unaffected

Join me today as we talk about symptom spotting during IVF through the lens of hypervigilance — why the nervous system becomes obsessed with searching for "signs," how body surveillance takes hold during infertility, and why healing may begin with learning to experience the body as a home instead of a project.

Join me today as we talk about "happiness boundaries" — the invisible emotional rules many people develop during infertility and IVF around joy, hope, and feeling okay. We explore why happiness can start to feel unsafe after repeated disappointment, and why withholding joy doesn't actually protect us from grief.

Resentment is one of the most common and least talked about emotions in infertility and IVF. In today's episode, we unpack why resentment develops during fertility treatment, how it impacts relationships and identity, and how to move toward emotional flexibility, softness, and healing without bypassing grief or pain.

Join me today as we talk about asynchronous grief—when your grief unfolds on a different timeline, in a different way, or at a different intensity than your partner, your family, or the culture around you expects. If infertility, IVF, miscarriage, or loss has ever left you feeling misunderstood or "behind," this episode is for you.

Five years into IVF This, I'm reflecting on what this space has truly been about — grief, courage, and staying with ourselves through terrain we never chose. This episode is a love letter to anyone navigating infertility, IVF, or a life that didn't unfold the way they expected.

What if one of the most honest emotions in IVF is also the one we judge the most? Today we're talking about relief—why it shows up, why it feels so wrong, and why it doesn't mean what you think it does.

Sometimes the hardest part of IVF isn't just what's happening to you—it's what's happening to the people around you. In this episode, we're talking about survivor's guilt: the complicated mix of joy, grief, guilt, and love that shows up when outcomes don't match.