Infertility Success Author Chat, Nancy Powell "One Precious Life"

Hello, thank you for joining us this afternoon for Infertility Success author chats. I'm here today with Nancy Powell. She is the author of the chapter One Precious Life, and she's going to talk to us today about her chapter, where she's at in her life, and why she chose to share this part of her story with you, the reader and the watcher, the viewer.

Hello, I'm so happy to be here.

Okay, hold on, we're having some technical difficulties right here. All right, Nancy, sorry about that. Hold on just one second. Okay. We— there we go. Okay, I need to be able to see you. So sorry. That's okay. All right, technical difficulties. Um, I was able to hear myself, and you can't talk when you can hear yourself. All right, so I'm Erica Hoke. If you don't know me, I'm an infertility mentor, empowerment coach. I was, um, the publisher and lead author on this book. And I'm so honored and privileged to have Nancy here today. Nancy, tell us a little bit about where you're at now in your life and what's going on with you currently.

Okay. Thank you for letting me share this and actually letting me share my whole story through the book. But yeah, I am right now where I always wished that I would be when I was going through the struggles that I write about in my chapter. I have been married to Mark for 22 years and we have our one precious life, our daughter, and she is 16 and a half years old.

Oh, wow.

Yeah. And I am working. I have started a couple of different businesses. I work at home. Ansley goes to school. We're just, you know, we are enjoying life. Taking advantage of all the opportunities we can to go on adventures and just enjoy life together.

That's incredible. Congratulations on your 22 years and all that time with your, with your daughter. That's, that is precious time. So thank you. For the people that are still out there that are struggling through infertility, who are in need of hope and they want to be sitting where you're sitting in 16 years. Tell us, take us back to the beginning of your story and what that looked like for you and where you were kind of body, mind, and spirit, um, at the start of your infertility journey.

Oh gosh, I feel it. By the way, if you're going through it, my heart is with you. I am cheering you on. My prayers are with you because I understand like wanting to become a mom was the most visceral desire like I, I had ever experienced. Like, I had done all kinds of adventures and already had all kinds of dreams come true in my relatively young life back then. But when I wanted to do this, and then it looked like it was going to be a real challenge, I mean, it, it was really hard. So I definitely understand. Um, I I never gave up hope. So spiritually, it was hard, but I, I just, I have a strong faith. I knew that what was meant to be for our family was going to be meant to be for our family and that things would work out how they were supposed to. So spiritually, although there were hard times, I was hanging on. Mentally and emotionally, days, it just depended on the day. I was all over the place. I am fun-loving, so some days I could compartmentalize and like really like enjoy my days. And, you know, then there were other days that were— it was just hard. It was all about like knowing exactly what day it was, like how long was— how much time was going by, what my body was going through. And then that leads me to physically. Physically was the hardest part of where I was. My body was not in great shape. I mean, I mean, I was, I was thin and I probably looked like I was in great shape, but I didn't pay attention to what I was eating, what I was using. I didn't try, like my nutrition wasn't very good. I loved my life and could get so busy and like my roommates at the time, like right before I got married, even my roommates would always be like, How can you just forget to eat dinner? Because I'd be like, oh, forgot to eat dinner today, you know, and, you know, and then maybe grab a bag of chips or something like that. It was so crazy. So nutritionally, I wasn't doing well. And then that was not helping with the struggle that I had brought into my young adulthood of very irregular periods. So, yeah.

So you're a young newlywed. Yeah. Okay. And you're having, you're having really irregular periods, um, some couple of times a year, 4 times a year.

Well, let me tell you, by the time I was a young newlywed, I was having them 0 times a year. Um, and that is like the big part of like what pushed my story into real infertility is I had been having them irregularly, sometimes just skip a month, sometimes skip a couple months. But the birth control choice that I made as I was getting married, um, was a shot. And it meant to take your cycle away for 3 months so that you didn't have to worry about like daily choices or a daily pill or whatever. Um, but when you're already having very irregular cycles and your body is not in good nutritional condition, Taking a shot to get rid of your period for 3 months is a bad choice. I did not know that. Um, I didn't have people like you, you know, like writing these books and telling these stories. So I made that choice only a couple times, only 2 shots, and I didn't have a period for 2 years.

I don't know if I've ever shared this with you. I took that shot too, a few times.

Oh, wow.

So I can relate. Wow. You know how you forget little pieces of your story? Yes. I think, I think that I took that shot sometimes, like maybe 4 to 6 times. Wow. Because my cycles were really, really bad. And so that was the cure for it, right? At the time.

Yeah, that's what we thought, right? Just throw extra stuff at it, like, oh my gosh.

Right, right.

I'm sure there's people out there that it might have helped, but it didn't help me. It hurt me a lot.

Yeah. So did you, when you got married, did you want babies right away? Were you guys trying or you didn't get a cycle and then you were like indifferent about it because, oh well, like it's not important to me right now anyway.

So yeah, like right when we first got married, not I didn't want to like instantly, like, you know, kind of have a honeymoon baby or anything like that. So that's what kind of why I was willing to like do such a 3-month-at-a-time type of birth control.

Yeah.

Cause I thought like, oh, well let's, let's get, you know, let's get a couple of years under our belt. So even though, even though I quit the shots and still didn't have one, I wasn't too worried about it. Because if you're picking up, like, I just don't like overly stress out on details. I was just like, okay, so I don't have my period. Great.

I don't have to worry about that.

But when we got past those couple years, um, I was like, wait a minute. I like, you know, we'd been married a couple years and we decided maybe it would be a good time to start, you know, heading down that road to adding to our family. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute.

Wait a minute. What do I, what do I do now? Right. Yeah. So it's not, it wasn't important to you until it was, and then you realize you didn't have any control or have— did you have any idea how to get your period back or what? No. What you could even do?

No, I had no idea. I was just like, as a matter of fact, my very first plan, um, was wait. I don't even think that ended up making it into the book, cuz I kind of went into like the plan that like did end up helping. But my first plan was just wait and see. I think because I'm that kind of optimistic, you know, I'm like, oh, it's going to work out, right? So I don't have to do anything. And that plan didn't work.

Right. So no period. So what's— how did you end up getting your period back?

That's what I talk about in my chapter.

Okay. All right.

Yeah. And it wasn't— it was not hard. Like, once I found what it was like, I finally found a community, finally found some people that had something similar. And I think you'd be surprised, like, yeah, you read and you see, like, knowing what I've already said about myself and then what it was.

Um, yeah, you've got to read, you gotta go read, you gotta read the chapter.

Yeah.

All right. Well, I put the link, the Amazon link here in the description below. So if you are interested in getting a copy of Infertility Success: Health and Hope for Your Journey, then you can click that link and go on over. Nancy, thanks for being here today to share your story. Why did you want to share your story now? Why was it important for you to help other women in this way now?

Yeah, thank you. A couple of reasons made me finally share it now. Like, for example, like realizing what a simple change that I made that allowed me to become fertile again. I finally got to a point that I couldn't hold that back is one of the reasons I wanted to finally step up and start sharing my story. But it took me all this time. You know, my daughter is 16 and a half. It was really painful for me because my story still, even though I have my beautiful daughter and I am so grateful for her, I still had a couple losses in my story, and, and though— and those never leave you. And it was really painful for me to bring up, like, even all these years later, it's like there's still a little broken part of my heart. And, you know, some babies that are missing, you know, some lives that are missing. And so it was really hard. I've always, like, kind of just shared this with a very few people, like you know, on a what I thought was like a need-to-know basis. Focus on the fun.

Yeah.

But as I realized, like, I'm starting to help people— like, this year I became, um, a life coach, and I, I talk a lot about like also living your one precious life. So one precious life has a double entendre for me. And I realized that the reason I'm so passionate about living fully your one precious life had to do. And I love adventures with my family and seizing every opportunity. I realized as I went through the journey of this year that that story started because it was such a struggle, such a fight to get to my family. And yeah, like, I don't take it for granted. And so that these two pieces, these are two parts of like one long connected story and just some healing and processing I did this year. Um, kind of made it evident. And so when I saw the opportunity to publish with you, at the beginning I was still in that place where I was like, no, this isn't for me. I'm pushing it away. It's going to be painful. It's going to be painful. And then I just, I kept, I kept seeing it and I couldn't leave it. And I was like, okay, That's why I'm telling it.

Yeah. That's amazing. You cut out for just a minute there. If you want to just repeat that last sentence.

Oh, I just, I realized that these stories were connected. And so I knew that telling my story would help others, but it would also help my healing. And it did. It did a lot going through, like telling the story, shedding the tears as I was on the typewriter, you know, on the keyboard. And just telling the full story and reliving it and seeing the pain and the beauty and processing it, like, really brought me a lot of healing. And if it can do that and help one other person make this simple change— somebody else has got to be struggling with what I'm struggling with, right? And that might not be everybody's solution, but it will help somebody. I'm sure it will help somebody. And so, um, It was time. It was time to share.

So the book is a collaboration of 20 authors, and I know that we were all in 100% agreement that if we wrote our chapter and it literally only helped one person, we would do the whole project all over again. And so that's where our heart is. You can actually connect with Nancy. We put access to each of the authors via video. In the back of each chapter. So you can connect with Nancy and she has a free gift for you. Um, if you'd like to connect with her otherwise, Nancy, what, um, what else, what other ways do you have to help women now? Um, you mentioned that you're a life coach and you have other projects going on. If somebody wanted to get in contact with you, connect with you, how can they go about doing that?

Um, the best way is to go to my website, which is with withnancypowell.com, and it's spelled just like it sounds, withnancypowell.com. There's ways to contact me through there, um, to get some resources I offer, or to email me. And, um, yeah, I would love to be part of cheering people on as they live out this life. I mean, that is, that is my passion, is to help people fully live. And, um, yeah.

Well, thank you so much for not only being on here today, but believing in the project and writing your chapter and kind of ripping that band-aid off for yourself, like, all those years later. I, I appreciate, um, I appreciate that, and it's been a really humbling experience just to, to walk alongside each and every one of the authors, um, in the book. So Thank you.

I'm so grateful for you for providing this opportunity. So grateful. And this has been a fantastic experience.

All right, well, thank you so much. So we will be back here. Um, you can watch the channel for, um, other author interviews. There's 20 of them, so we'll be back here a lot. Um, hit that like and subscribe if you're interested in getting notified when we're live again. And thank