Erica Hoke shares how she stayed motivated through infertility by rejecting all-or-nothing thinking and taking small steps: journaling, better sleep, cutting caffeine, scheduling tests. She acknowledges the grief while pushing back against isolation through her group Infertility Empowered.
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How are you today? Thanks for joining me. Happy Monday. Hope you had a great weekend. I am here to talk to you a little bit about my journey and how I kept going, um, how I kept taking action during my infertility journey, even on really hard days. So I think, um, what prompted me to get on here and talk to you about this is, um, I have a good friend Lauren and she's a boundaries coach. If you're in my group, Infertility Empowered, and watching this, there's actually a really great interview that I did with her in the guide section. Anyway, she got me thinking from a post that she did last week, and that post had to do with the mindset of all or nothing and how often that holds us back. So I kind of wanted to talk to you because I started thinking about it and how that really affected my infertility journey personally. And how it might be affecting your infertility journey too. So basically the question that she posed is, what do you not do because you don't have whatever the predetermined amount of time in your own head? Um, what do you not do because you don't have that time set aside? So for instance, if you can't really afford or you can't prioritize, um, getting up 30 minutes early to do journaling or meditation or prayer time, can you get up 10 minutes early? Instead of saying, well, I can't, I just can't do 30 minutes, can you get up 10 minutes early? Can you prioritize it that way instead of having this mentality of all or nothing? And I think looking back when I was going through my infertility journey, those are the kind of things that kept me going and kept me taking action, is not having an all-or-nothing mentality, realizing that even on hard days, the small things that I could do to honor my emotions, maybe on those hard days that, that just means doing something nice for yourself, like getting yourself a treat, you know, taking it a little easy around the house, going to bed a little early, binge watching your favorite show. If Aunt Flo has shown up and you're in the throes of grief. So having that not all— let me start over. Let me make a full sentence. Not having that all or nothing mentality, I feel like goes such a long way in the infertility world. And for me too, you know, some people are like, oh, I can't, I can't fill in the blank. I can't give up alcohol completely during my infertility journey, or I can't give up caffeine or coffee during my, you know, while I'm going through this. So I'm not going to do it at all. So cutting back on things that we know might not be helping us or might not be the best for our bodies. Some is better than not doing anything at all. The same with supplements, the same with sleep, the same with water. Just swapping out for healthier choices and making those small changes. Maybe the thing for you today is maybe you need to make that phone call that you're putting off to a second opinion. Infertility clinic or for some additional testing or to schedule that surgery appointment that you, you know, have felt a little bit hesitant about. Just taking the next step, um, instead of, uh, closing in on yourself and just feeling really, um, alone. I think that, you know, a lot of us feel really alone on our infertility journey, and instead of feeling alone and isolating yourself, And, um, I don't want to say this because I don't want to, I don't want this to come across the wrong way. Um, there's definitely periods when I wallowed in my grief and threw plenty of pity parties for myself. Everybody going through infertility is going to do that, but then we have to move on from that too, right? We have to say, okay, I'm really angry, sad, sad, P.O.'ed that this month was not the cycle. I'm going to sit in those emotions, feel those emotions, and then what can I do to move forward? So again, whether that means, you know, you're— are you on cycle day 1? What can you do this cycle to make changes? Can you get some additional testing? Can you commit to for just today and do it one day at a time, you know, eating more vegetables, swapping out your morning coffee for some herbal tea, drinking a glass of water in the morning with some lemon in it, which is a huge, huge reset to your whole body, but is especially important when you're going through infertility. What are those changes that you can make? So that's kind of how I got through, just baby steps. It's still how I get through every day, honestly. It's a lot. I love my children and I'm so blessed and it can still be a lot for me to deal with. So it's still how I get through my day is just not having that all or nothing mentality. All right. Health and blessings to you guys. I hope that wherever you are that you have a fantastic week. I will see you here Wednesday and Friday this week at noon Eastern Standard Time. Bye-bye.
