In All The Wrong Places

We are all actively looking for guidance from other people in our shitty clubs  Whether thats the infertility club, the pregnancy/early child loss club, the sober club, the dead parent club, the divorced club. Whatever the club is we are trying to understand what we are going through by hearing about other people going through it And I am not saying that’s wrong, because heck it literally have gotten me through some of the darkest days. I just mean it shouldn’t be the one and only place to look for the illusive guidance you are seeking. Your guidance shouldn’t come from the mouth of someone just sharing their feelings. Take what you need and move forward.  This week I am diving into how I have come to realize just how often I seek guidance/answers from other people. So much so that it distracts me from experience my own grief/sitting in my suck for fear of not being enough. Let's talk about ways to stop doing this to ourselves and focus on a slower, more steady pace of experiencing our grief/pain. If you like this episode please leave a review! And follow along on social with my @shannonbellisle

It's reverse week. What does that mean? It means this week the title of our episode is not stating where or how we are looking for something in the wrong place, but how we should be looking for healing/hope in music lyrics. Music has such a powerful way of expressing feelings or thoughts we havn't been able to find the words for ourselves. I am always drawn to certain songs when it comes to anything heavy in my life, breakups, life changes, fertility. Music gets my through it. This week I am diving into the lyrics of a few songs I have come across recently that speak to me when it comes to my fertility journey. And I would love to hear from you! if you have a song that the lyrics just understand what you're gong through, connect with me on Instagram @shannonbellisle and I will include your song in a future episode of the Podcast!

After a short hiatus I am coming back with a personal update on our recent FET (frozen embryo transfer) and our most recent miscarriage. My feelings have been heavy over here, and to say I have been feeling lost is by the far biggest understatement of the day. But, my hope with this podcast was to open up those heavy and hard conversations, not just after we have healed from them, but rather while we are healing through them. No larger topic this week, just the update and story. Appreciate you all being here, always. xx Shannon

We all want change, but we don’t want anything to actually ever really change that drastically. So we fight to find out why we feel stuck or unhappy while simultaneously fighting to keep the same friends, lifestyle, job, hobbies, routines, etc. We hang on to familiarity like its our life line because it makes us feel safe and comfortable. This weeks episode of In All The Wrong Places is talking about Looking for change in things that never change. I put a lot of pressure on on my happiness/fulfillment on other people/situations. Thinking that relationships, old friends, familiar hobbies, the things I am are good at, will change save me. But then when things don’t change I don’t blame the things I thought would change me, I blame myself. All that negative pressure gets put on me rather than the outside things I thought that love and acceptance was going to come from.  And in the spirit of pushing to change things for ourselves I want to encourage you to make a small change this week. It can be big or small. But if something comes to your mind right away it might be the thing that needs changing. I am excited to hear what you get up to. Share your change this week with me on social @shannonbellisle. I can't wait to hear from you.

Have you ever gone through something so heavy and knew you needed/longed for support but also refused to ask for help, refused to go outside of yourself to tell your story or connect with others for fear of rejections, failure, sadness, or something else? I think we all think that we can do it alone, and while throughout my fertility journey I have come to love and accept myself and my alone time the deeper I am able to connect with my emotions and my needs, I also know how important community and connection is especially when seeking out support/healing. Today, Erin Fordham is joining us to open up more about her 10 year fertility journey, her success story and how everything she has been through has pushed her towards building a community of support for other people going through similar & different experiences. We both open up about how sometimes when we are going through something we think we have to heal and suffer alone. I spent a good portion of my first few years struggling trying to put on a brave face and only feeling my feelings in private, including around my husband and closest people, not burdening people with my story because I had this fear of being annoying/a broken record/Debbie downer. Fear has a funny way of holding us back from things greater than what we expected. In the beginning I had a hard time opening up about my fertility struggles because I was afraid I had failed. Failed myself, failed my body, failed my family, failed these expectations I had for my life. But opening up actually allowed me to find all of those deeper connections I didn’t even realize were waiting for me. One of those deeper connections was meeting Erin through social media and her Fertility Support Network "Oasis" that she is the co-founder of. Oasis has such a beautiful meaning behind its inception, and holds incredible space for those going through all different kinds of fertility stages. You can follow along and get involved with Oasis Fertility Support Network Instagram @oasisfsn https://www.instagram.com/oasisfsn/ Website https://oasisfsn.com/ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/groups/5879134272169152

This week we are diving into how sometimes helping others can be a distraction from our own feelings and emotions. I know for me I have used Fostering dogs as a distraction/coping mechanism for my own pain and feelings throughout our fertility journey (and I am sure this stems back farther than that). The idea that helping someone else gives you this sense of purpose, belonging, validation, acceptance - its makes you feel needed/wanted which is a powerful thing. I think a lot of us can get caught up in this need to go out and do things for others to feel something more, to be granted love and acceptance from others, but ultimately we are then left with an extra empty cup and a lot of heavy emotions that we don't know how to deal with because we are so used to avoiding our own pain.

We've all heard the statement "it gets better with time". But does it? And what if it doesn't, are we all then left feeling broken/damaged like something is wrong with us because time didn't heal us the way they said it would. Even taking that statement and rephrasing it to "it doesn't get better it just gets easier". But again, I say, does it? I think we all try so hard to fix things when they feel broken or sad, and we want so badly to find a solution to grief and hurt, but the truth is shitty things just happen. Pain doesn't happen to us, it just happens and the only thing we can do about it is accept it. Stop making it feel unwelcomed, like it doesn't belong, like its bad, stop being afraid of it, stop feeling guilty about it and stop making it a shameful experience. Because by doing all of that, what you are really doing to yourself is making yourself feel unwelcomed, bad, and shameful. Your grief doesn't have feelings. Your grief isn't a thing. But you are. And how you experience your grief/loss is the only thing you have control over. You cannot make it go away, you cannot prevent it from happening, this is not a scrape on the knee that will heal in a few days with some polysporin and bandaids people, this is real trauma. Learning how to honour it, accept it, welcome it, hold it, stroke it's freakin' hair and hold it's hand is the only way you can truly heal with it.

The Oxford Dictionary defines vulnerability "as the quality or state of being exposed to the possibility of being attacked or harmed, either physically or emotionally." Essentially saying vulnerable people are easy to attack. Vulnerable people are weak. But I disagree with this and have so many thoughts how how opening up and being vulnerable can change your suffering for a more peaceful & beautiful life. I think a lot of us think that being vulnerable will give us the safety we are looking for, when in fact looking for safety in the act of being vulnerable is the wrong place - because for me being vulnerable means shedding your skin a little, open up your wounds to allow in healing in ways you never could have experienced being shielded. Vulnerability is putting aside your fears and insecurities and stepping into the firing ring to expose the truth of your pain and suffering. There is no safety after vulnerability, you are already safe and therefore vulnerability can happen. I hope you enjoy this weeks episode and cannot wait to hear what you think!

Imposter syndrome. We all experience it, whether it is with work, with peoples home life, with others travel experiences. Watching what other people are doing, seeing other people succeeding/living, has a tendency to make us feel less than. It can sometimes come out in negative feelings towards that specific person, or it can make us harder on ourselves or the people in our lives. But more often than not that feeling os "less than" is coming from something lacking in our lives, something that we have the control/power to fix and give ourselves. It's easy to sit there and wallow and feel like an imposter comparing our lives to the lives of someone else, but there is so much beauty in checking in and figuring out what you need, and then giving yourself the grace and space to go after it.

I'm solo again this week! And talking about sympathy - how it can be a positive and negative experience when dealing with your struggles. For me, my ego can often make sympathy feel like pity which brings up a whole bunch of negative emotions that are sometimes hard to work through. So let's chat about that, why we feel we need sympathy, what we can do to give ourselves the things we think sympathy from others gives us and open ourselves up to experiences we have been straying away from.

It's Fertility Awareness Week, which felt like the perfect time to bring on a very special guest to talk more about our journey together in fertility over the last few years. Travis and I share a small snippet of our struggles over the last 5 years, an overview of where we started to where we are now. Travis opens up about how difficult it is for guys to talk about their feelings, especially in the fertility world, and what helped him in our journey the most. We also spend a little time reading things you should say and you shouldn't say to someone who is struggling and our honest thoughts on them. We hope you enjoy this small part of our story, and encourage you to reach out if you have any questions or are struggling yourself.

This week I am chatting with Laura Morrison, Energy Alchemist, Psychic Medium & Intuitive Card Reader. At the very beginning of our fertility struggles I was desperate to hear from something bigger than me that everything would be okay, that we would get a baby, I wanted to know my future. I was constantly looking for answers and direction in my own journey in all of the wrong places, and not because the mediums/energy workers I was working with weren't "legit", but at first I didn't see/realize that they couldn't actually give me the answers I wanted to hear, but after working with Laura I very quickly was able to connect with myself and understood how powerful I was in knowing what I needed/needed to do, always. This week Laura and I are chatting about how we can often seek comfort/insight into our lives when we are struggling from some higher power, debunking that entirely and talking about how we should instead be learning our own powers/energies and how to work with our struggles not against them. To learn more about the Rainbow of Emotions, click here: https://view.flodesk.com/pages/642af9628775122e26ba322c

We've all been there; worrying about something we did, said, how we dressed, something we liked, didn't like, in order to fit in/be liked/be accepted by others. It is especially true in the creative/solopreneur industry when you are navigating trying to fit in and stand out all at once. This episode I chat with my friend Evelyn Barkey, who in my opinion has spent time working on herself to grow, and shift, and express herself in a way that truly reflects who she is, for the right reasons, steering away from "trying to be something/someone to fit in or be accepted by others". We talk about how much growth she has gone through, and the areas where she still feels like she struggles with this concept. Whether it is in business, personal affairs, or the fertility industry, looking for acceptance in the approval of others is something we are both working on. We hope you love the episode. As always if you have any stories or relate to anything let me know, you can follow my journey on Instagram @shannonbellisle.

This episode is talking about life during our ttc journey and after our miscarriage and how easy it is to fall into avoidance methods to cope. Society has trained us to look for silver linings or positive alternatives to our hard/heavy struggles. Thinking about Samantha from Sex in the City "I don't have a baby, everybody drink", implying that the benefit to not being pregnant is you can still drink alcohol. This has been something I have had to deal with throughout my journey. So let's chat about it, let's dive into this idea of avoiding our hard feelings and ways that might help us heal better.

This week I am chatting about the idea that we are looking for love IN something. That something might be different for everyone, my something is that I was looking for love in a baby, in getting pregnant. So let's dive into that a bit more. I am going to talk about my recent miscarriage, and how since I can remember I haven't truly been happy where I was because I was always looking for love in that next thing. I thought getting what I want, having a baby, would fix me/make me happier, and sure I will be SO happy when we finally have a baby - but it doesn't change my level of happiness, it doesn't change how loved I am.

We've all done it, gotten mad at our friends for not showing up how we think we need them to, but what if you are expecting to find friendships in a relationship that will just never give you what you need? This month we dive a little bit into the world of friendships, how our friends can change over the years and how real life situations like infertility can change who your friends are. 

This week I am chatting about how fertility issues in couples and individuals is portrayed, or not portrayed, in main stream movies & tv. I feel there is a lack of realism in this situations, where sometimes when it is mentioned they still end up with a baby in the end. Four Christmases, Virgin River, even characters like Amelia from Grey's Anatomy, they all ultimate end up with a baby in the end as if suddenly their lives are more important or fulfilled. Let's chat more about this and how as someone actually dealing with this struggle in my day to day it can be hard and confusing to relate to these characters. 

Diving right into what this podcast is going to be about. My own personal journey through fertility struggles had opened up this topic of conversation for me that we are all looking for [love, joy, happiness, success, etc] in the wrong places. Constantly feeling like we can find more of what we are after in relationships, hobbies, substances, work, accolades, clothing, family, etc. My personal journey has allowed me to dig deeper within to see that none of those things were ever going to give me what I wanted, because I don't have control over anyone or anything but myself. The second I started to wake up and live life for me, love me for me, I started to truly see the people and things around me that were there for the right reasons. It was a game changer, and I am hoping to open up that conversation for all of us, no matter what our struggle is.