Ep. 55 - Embracing a Childfree Life after Infertility with Emilie Chuong

For this year's National Infertility Awareness Week, we wanted to give the spotlight to a beloved friend, fan, and contributor to our podcast. Joining us today from her usual behind-the-scenes role is Emilie Chuong, the gracious Japanese/Chinese American photographer who took our podcast photos and headshots to help us launch Season 2!Emilie walks us through her infertility journey with her husband, which entailed all the tests and a year of IUIs before attempting to try IVF. But literally just before they were going to do their first IVF round, the pandemic shut down everything and "elective surgeries" like IVF were put on hold indefinitely. Two years later, they attempted again and Emilie walks us through the outcomes. We talk about what a huge financial burden IVF is and how Emilie decided she couldn't gamble yet another round, knowing what her chances might be. We discuss what other options they considered like adoption, fostering, surrogacy, along with the rare chances of getting an Asian-identifying child in some of these scenarios. Ultimately, Emilie explains that they arrived at the decision to embrace a childfree life, even though it was not truly by choice.Emilie shines a light on how being childfree can be abundantly joyful even while holding space for the grief of a life they once envisioned. On the other side of the journey to find peace in their life path, Emilie continues to find joy in capturing and preserving beautiful life moments of others. Thank you to Emilie for being vulnerable with our listeners in this episode about her personal journey. And an equally bigger thank you to her for taking some wonderful photos for our team!More about Emilie:Emilie is a professional photographer based in the Bay Area, specializing in portraits, couples, family, and event photography. She is 4th generation Japanese American, as well as 5th or 6th generation Chinese American. With a Bachelor's in Graphic Design from California College of the Arts in San Francisco and Oakland, she has always had a deep passion for visual storytelling. After Covid, Emilie made the intentional decision to fully dedicate herself to building her own photography business, capturing meaningful moments in her work. When she's not behind the camera with a client, you'll likely find her and her husband exploring a new corner of the world together, where, of course, she's still behind the camera, capturing it all.Find more of Emilie:Instagram: @emiliechuongWebsite: https://www.emiliechuong.comSend us your thoughts! Hey Healing the Tigress listeners! This is Dr. Jenny Kim from episode 45. You may remember my story about losing my baby Joey before he was 7 months old and how I grew through the grief. Last year, I wrote and created a customizable picture book called "Look to the Sky," reminding loved ones that their love lives on through every day signs. Now we are trying to make this book more accessible to the community. So from now unt Support the show✨ If you'd like to subscribe to our podcast for access to more bonus episodes, please click here for Buzzsprout Subscriptions! Once subscribed, you can use an RSS feed to listen from any of your podcast platforms. Thanks in advance for your support, as this really helps us keep the show going! ❤️ (Think of it like buying us a boba...to share! 😉🧋)