So, Now What? Embracing a Childfree Life with Lana Manikowski
Have you ever wondered what will happen if your fertility treatments don't end up working? If at some point you decide to stop treatments and live a childfree life?
I believe deeply that we need to consider these questions much earlier in the process. It does not mean that we are giving up, but rather that there are many meaningful ways to live this life, both with and without children.
Lana generously shares her journey with us, in terms of the following:
her IVF journey which did not yield children
her decision to stop treatments and not pursue adoption or third party reproduction
the lack of closure with her REI and how childfree should be offered as an option moving forward
her identity crisis and lack of grounding when the goal of motherhood was no longer present
her journey towards authenticity
navigating feelings of failure/shame/blame
how to have meaningful relationships with family and friends who are not childfree
how awareness of the stories we are telling ourselves is crucial to reframing our experience and choosing stories which serve us and allow us to live the best, most meaningful lives possible
Guest Details:
Lana Manikowski is a certified life coach, author, and infertility advocate who helps women thrive after infertility. After a seven-year fertility journey that ended without children, she created the support she yearned for but was never offered. She went on to write the bestselling book So Now What?, founded The Other’s Day Brunch, an annual event honoring women without children, and hosts The "So Now What?" Podcast.
Through her coaching and community, Lana guides women to release shame, heal their relationship with their bodies, strengthen their marriages or partnerships, and reconnect in meaningful relationships with friends and family who have children. She helps childless women create purposeful, joyful lives beyond motherhood.
She holds advanced certifications in grief and post-traumatic growth and is a proud member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine (ASRM) and an active volunteer with RESOLVE.
Her signature message: Your story isn’t over. It’s just beginning.
https://lanamanikowski.com
As always, please keep in mind that this is my perspective and nothing in this podcast is medical advice.
If you found this conversation valuable, book a consult call with me using this link:
https://calendly.com/loveandsciencefertility/discovery-call
Also, be sure to check out our website: loveandsciencefertility.com
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Please don’t let infertility have the final word. We are here to take the burden from you so that you can achieve your goal of building your family with confidence and compassion. I’m rooting for you always.
In Gratitude,
Dr. Erica Bove
Transcript:
Hello, my loves, and welcome back to the Love and Science podcast. Today we are going to have a very beautiful conversation with my friend and colleague, Lanna Menakowski. She is a beautiful soul. She is a certified life coach, an author, and an infertility advocate who helps women thrive after infertility. After a seven-year fertility journey that ended without children, she created the support she yearned for but was never offered. She went on to write the best-laying book, So Now What, founded the Others Day brunch, an annual event honoring women without children, and hosts the So Now What podcast. Through her coaching and community, Lanna guides women to release shame, heal their relationships with their bodies, strengthen their marriages or partnerships, and reconnect in meaningful relationships with friends and family who have children. She helps childless women create purposeful, joyful lives beyond motherhood. She holds advanced certifications in grief and post-traumatic growth, and is a proud member of the ASRM and an active volunteer with Resolve. Her signature message is, "Your story isn't over. It's just beginning." Lanna, thanks so much for joining us today. I cannot wait for our conversation. Same here, Erica. Thank you. So I think in terms of getting started, I'd love to know, your journey was seven years long. Can you share a little bit about what that journey was like for you, especially what it was like towards the end?
Sure. Well, I got my diagnosis of unexplained infertility at 37, and I had worked in the medical field for 20 years, and I went into IVF just believing that it was going to work for me. I didn't really question what if it didn't happen. So I felt like I had done really great research. I started off my fertility journey here in Chicago, started off doing IUIs. In hindsight, I don't know if that was the right decision, but my husband really wanted there to be some sort of natural conception. I don't know, no alarm bells went off for me that maybe I was a little behind the eight ball to start with IUIs at my age, but I did it. When those didn't result in any positive pregnancies, we then moved on to IVF. I had one fresh transfer, so this was back. My journey started in 2011, so I think it was more common then to do possibly fresh transfers. After that didn't work, and then another retrieval resulted in no viable embryos.
After day five, we took a break, and it was about a year and a half break of just really not being sure. At this point, I was in my 40s. I'm not sure if I could really endure the emotional turmoil of going through it again. Then it was a friend who had gone through IVF here in Chicago who looked at a clinic remotely and encouraged me to say, "Hey, maybe it's just a different change in environment. Maybe if you're not dealing with the daily struggles of working and going through IVF, you might have a little bit more relaxation because I would stim here and then fly out there for the second half of my cycle if it was looking like things were advancing." We decided to do that. Although it was not covered by insurance, we said, "We're going to do this. We're going to go to a place that we feel feels right energetically with us and had really good stats, if you will. That was important to us too." That yielded one viable embryo that in the end we had tested and it had Trisomy 16, and we chose to end our journey there. At the end, I was seven years into it. Of course, it wasn't back-to-back seven years. There were gaps in time, but I just looked at the calendar and I realized I'm not getting any younger. Do I want to continue doing something that wasn't yielding the outcomes I was hoping for? Frankly, I had a conversation with my doctor who at the end said, "We can continue on with more, but I don't anticipate any changes in what we are getting as far." In my retrievals, I would maybe get four max during a retrieval and not obviously many healthy embryos.
It was really that honest conversation with him that made me think, "Okay, maybe this is where I stop." We can talk more as we get into the episode, but just not knowing who I was and where I was if I stopped was probably the hardest part about stopping. Right. Because it's so much of your identity, being a patient and being on this path and having this singleness of purpose, this goal. The goal post, first of all, keeps moving. It keeps moving. Then when you're finally like, "No, not this. We're taking this away out of the equation," then there's all this whole host of questions, which is why your book and your podcast are called, "So Now What?" Because it's like, that is really hard. When I wear my doctor hat, I think helping people decide if they want to move forward with any more treatment or not, I think that is one of the hardest conversations that we have because we don't know that there is a 0% chance that it's not going to work. We don't know that it's futile. We don't know that. There might be a chance, but I think every person and every couple has their own threshold in terms of, "Okay, how many more emotional reserves do I have? How many more financial reserves do I have? What is my actual age? What are the actual chances? What's beyond this for me?" I'd love to talk a little bit more about that in terms of in your work, Helping People Thrive After, how much do you get into that conversation when people are discerning? Is this the end of this chapter? Is it not? How do we help people better in those situations?
I see a lot of people come to me in that, "I'm not sure what's next," I call it, stage of treatment. I think in their heart, they want to stop. They want to have an endpoint, but they're not sure how to move forward. I think that's really where I pick up the conversation and pick up the support for women to say, "There is a way forward. There are people who have been where you are and found the meaning and the fulfillment in their life, even though it looks so different than you thought." But I think we don't have that conversation enough with patients, and patients don't know that it is possible. They think that they're only route to a life that they feel proud of and feel connected to is if they seek some form of motherhood. Maybe it's not biological motherhood. If they move forward with adoption, if they move forward with a surrogate or with a donor, they think because those are the only options that are presented to them, that even if those don't feel right to them or feel connected to them, they feel that there is this obligation to continue a pathway in some form of seeking motherhood, because many people have told me, and me being the first person who felt like that, if I chose that decision to move forward without kids, did I really want to be a mom bad enough because I left options on the table? I think there is a big fear of judgment when you say, adoption didn't feel right for me.
My husband and I, we did look into it. That was something that I thought, "Well, that's what good people do. That's the next best thing to becoming a biological mother." When we really did a lot of soul searching, we realized that wasn't our calling. There was a huge fear of judgment that people would say, "Well, gosh, there's kids that need a home, and you wanted to be a parent. Why would you not do that?" Back to your initial question, I think there are so many people that are sitting in that limbo and wanting some sort of closure or next decision presented to them in a way that they feel connected to, but they fear that they're not going to be seen as trying everything or wanting motherhood bad enough. That makes so much sense, and I've not quite thought of it that way before, so thank you for framing it that way. What I'm really hearing you say is that people need permission to stop. They need permission to stop, and if that's what's in their heart, and they do the soul searching and that is what's right for them, that that permission can help people make that decision to enter a different chapter. I think, yes, permission, but also knowledge that there is some sort of guidance. There is some sort of established guardrails, if you will, because it's scary.
Whether it's finding another patient in your practice that you can connect them with or a resource of some sort, I think that there's this fear that they have to do it alone, and it's a big upheaval of life that you thought was going to be to find the way to do it alone. I know it because I did it, and I realized how much in my life I sat in limbo and fear of not knowing how to get started, where to get started, who was going to help me. That's really what brought me to the work that I do because I want to create that bridge for other women like me. That's absolutely amazing. When I heard about the work that you were doing, I was like, "This is what we need," because I think, and I was a guest on your podcast, that will be released. Please go listen to that episode too. We'll put that in the show notes because I think many, many, many people have come to me saying, "I got to that point in my journey, and I feel like my REI just dropped me." Again, this is no judgment against any REIs because I know personally how hard it is to keep these conversations going. If the system doesn't allow for these closure appointments, always, I think sometimes people can truly get lost in this process. It's like, "Oh, well, you decide and let us know what you're going to do." If somebody hasn't decided and then the loop hasn't been closed, then there's this nebulous non-closure, non-ending. Can you share a little bit about how you navigated that time in your life and what you've created for women in terms of a resource? I will tell you, I found out about you. I'm trying to think about, I found out about you because I was helping a coaching client navigate the possibility, transferring the last embryo. We didn't know if it was going to work. Then not wanting more fertility treatments beyond the embryo that she had frozen. I was truly like, at this point, a decade into my career, I was like, "I don't know what to do from here. I don't know how to support her."
That's when somebody said that you were doing the work that you do, helping women with unsuccessful or child-free despite fertility treatments and what to do from there. If you could share a little bit about your journey, how you navigated it, and what you created, because I think we need to share the knowledge of this resource so that anybody listening can then tap into it. At the end of my journey, my last conversation with my REI was that conversation, "We can do more if you want," but warned me that the results might remain the same. Also, if you want to move on with adoption or a donor, we can help you and assist you in that. Think about it. Let us know. I know it's a big decision. I did just what he said. I thought about it, and neither of the options that were offered to me felt like the right decision. I had no reason to call back. In hindsight, the change that I would like to impart in maybe that conversation in the options that are available are, if you decide to remain childless, which I know is not what you came to us for, but if that's a decision that feels right to you, call us back and let us know that too, because we want to support you with that decision as well. That's when a referral to someone like me or a podcast or a book or whatever the case is, but as the patient, if you don't hear that mentioned, you just think that there are no resources out there. I realize that there are not a lot of resources out there, and that's really what has opened my eyes to really motivate myself to do this work as fully as I do, because I'm just so shocked that there aren't more people out there that have established resources.
That's really the loving place that I come from to the doctors. I am not here to judge how you practice medicine or how you communicate with patients, but I'm coming here saying you probably never knew something like this existed, and really from a loving place giving you an option so that you can show up as the doctor that I know you want to be to your patients. Really, I would love the conversations to include childlessness as something that you are okay with as my doctor to say, "Hey, I know you didn't come to me for this outcome, but I care so much about how you move forward. Know that you can call me no matter what your decision is." That is the conversation that I would love patients to hear when they come to that journey of what's next. Yes, it wasn't something that I was ready to embrace. I sat alone in question, like I mentioned earlier, of like, are people going to think, "Gosh, they're awful people. Why would they not want to pursue parenthood in a different form?" I am at the point now where I feel so proud of myself that I went in all in on what felt right to me because I have been able to now lead my life knowing that I did everything that felt right for me. My husband and I were on the same page, and our connection to each other and trust in one another is so much bigger because we said no to things that we questioned whether we were good people to say no to.
Those are just very scary things because it seems like so much finality when you're not a parent. There is this dream that was never tangible, but it felt so real. It's something from the time I was a young girl, I just always thought I was going to be a mom, and I did all the things in the right order, in air quotes. But there is this judgment that you have of like, "Did I focus too much on my career? Should I have married that other person who I could have started popping out kids in my 20s instead of waiting till 35 to get married?" So there was a lot of judgment in those years that followed leaving my journey that I was the reason that I ended up like this. That I should have thought about it sooner. Why would I wait till 37 to get a diagnosis? How naive was I? Really, there is so much self-judgment. Like you said in my bio, a lot of shame that comes with not being able to do this thing that you see people doing whether they want it or not, or whether they're trying or not. You hear these stories and you're like, "Gosh, why did I have this body that didn't work right? What thing did I do bad?" There were so many things. I was like, "Oh my gosh, I shouldn't have been so mean in high school to so-and-so." All these things that I was trying to point back to me as a person, almost if you will, being cursed by infertility and my inability to have a child. It was 2021. I enrolled in a life coaching program in 2020.
I remember I was doing a session where I had to get my hours of coaching in and I was coaching a woman who was a realtor and she had a podcast. She knew a little bit just through our discussions about what I was wanting to do with my coaching work. She said, "You should really start a podcast." I thought to myself, "Oh my gosh, that seems like a big left." I had that same feeling too. Yes. I remember it was Labor Day weekend. I was talking to her on the Friday of Labor Day weekend and I said to myself, "By Tuesday, I'm going to have my first episode uploaded." I just went all in and I figured out how to create a hosting site, all the things you got to do to create a podcast. The first probably 20 episodes of my podcast, I sometimes get embarrassed because the quality of sound and whatever, but that first podcast was really the turning point in my life where I talked about the things that I had never shared out loud, the things that I had been suffering with. Even though I was working through them with a coach, just to verbally say them out loud. I remember my father-in-law, my husband's dad, who was my number one listener of my podcast, I swear, if I get one listen, it is always he is the first one. They never became grandparents. I remember my husband and I being what I saw as their last chance for grand parenthood. On my first podcast, I talked about how I felt like I had betrayed them and taken away that opportunity for them to be grandparents. I'll never forget after that first episode, he texted me and he said, "We were always so proud of you." That podcast really has been the thing that has allowed me to create connection with other people. Women now from all over the world have reached out to me and randomly have found my podcast. I don't advertise it. I don't post it anywhere for marketing. It's just organically people find it. That really was the turning point in talking more openly and without chain about what I had endured in the knowing that there is other women out there that need to hear that message. Whoa, Lana. There's just so much there.
What a process of being in coaching school, seeing somebody who was a vision board for you, taking the leap. This whole thing about shame, shame only exists in isolation. Once we speak the shame out loud, it can't grow anymore. It's like a bacteria with a good antibiotic. Shame only exists in isolation. When you were able to share your truth and put it out there and connect with other people, that's when it melts away. That validation from your father-in-law, I think, is so beautiful. Maybe some people don't get that. Maybe some people do have judgmental family members. What I hear in your story is shedding the layers of self-judgment, first of all, but then also the judgment of other people who might see you as a bad person for making a certain choice. Yes. I did sit in a lot of that isolation that you talked about. I remember showing up in my work and in my workplace of being like, "I have to be perfect. I have to just come in like I own the place. I have so much self-confidence and I really didn't feel that way inside. I would go to work events or corporate events. I had to have the best outfit and the Chanel handbag and all the things so people would look at me and be like, "Wow, she didn't have kids, but my God, look at her life seems amazing." Then I remember coming home and I would just be exhausted because I was such an actor in my life. There was this pressure I put on myself to seem invincible and seem as though I was unaffected by my inability to have a baby. I didn't really talk about it much in my workplace either because I worried about was I going to be overlooked for advancement opportunities because people knew I was going through fertility. Would they say, "Oh, well, she might get pregnant. She might be out." There was all these things that I kept secret.
Also, a couple of the surgeons that I work with that were my trusted colleagues, I shared with them what was going on. But as far as my direct, the manager that I reported to, I really didn't want her to know because I didn't want her to see me as somebody who wasn't successful. If she knew that I was seeking motherhood and wasn't able to achieve it, I thought that that would be a thing that they saw me as an overarching employee as somebody who couldn't figure out motherhood. I think what you mentioned there is just the inauthenticity being exhausting. When we feel like we have to have one front out there in the world, but then inside we're feeling very different, that's to start contrast to you and your husband being on the same page and really sitting with, "Are these options right for us? Third part of your production, are they not? What about adoption? Is that right for us? Are they not?" Then when you can connect with that truth, that inner truth, what's right for you, and actually allow it to bring you closer together because trust me in my work, I see all the body language. I see people say, "We have these embryos, but this couple is getting divorced over this." We all know how that ends. Those embryos are never used.
I think that it's just such a testament to alignment and authenticity and honoring your truth because it's so hard, but I think when you realize how exhausting it is, this inauthenticity, which is not like we're meaning it. It's not like we start out and say, "Oh, I'm going to be a chameleon today. I'm going to put on this mask." It happens because we think other people expect something and we're all recovering people pleasers here. It's how we adapt and how we were successful before, but it absolutely does not work in this environment. I think the more we can speak our truth and more that we can have safe spaces to do that and in community, I think that really is the combination to reduce the shame, to help with the self judgment, and to really find a way through. Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say, it's almost like you're in survival mode, and I never really stopped to say, "Who am I surviving for?" There was so much more of the wanting to show up in a certain way to the outside world and not considering how I was feeling as me and really not me because I would look in the mirror and I would be like, "I don't recognize you." I had gained weight from my treatments and then gave up on my body.
I quit working out. I was just sort of like, "Whatever, my body just doesn't work right. Who cares?" Having intimacy with my husband was just sort of like it felt like nothing exciting because everything that came with the intercourse I always attributed to, "Oh, maybe this will be the time that we're going to have a baby and it's going to be this miracle story." Then I was like in the back of my head, I was like, "Oh, that's so silly. Just don't even bother having sex because of that." Then there were as bonded as my husband and I were in our decision processes, I wouldn't be truthful if I told you, if I didn't tell you that there were times we would sit at the dinner table when we knew that this journey was over and I'd think to myself, "Are we going to have enough to last us the next 50 years of marriage? Is there enough meat on the bone here that we can find fulfillment with just the two of us?" Then I would be like, "Oh my gosh, what an awful wife. Here's this guy who stood by you through all of this and you're questioning the strength of your marriage." So there was just so much that I wasn't prepared for and didn't feel as though I had any roots really. It was just sort of like I was floating on top of the water and there just was nothing to ground myself in because I had this beautiful home. I wrote about it in my book of having this home that I thought I was going to bring my babies home to. There was just this question about whether my marriage was going to be rooted, where we were living. Was that the right place? Was my job going to be the thing that kept me grounded? I just was looking to grow some roots somewhere.
When you don't have those milestones of motherhood where you're, at least as a childless person, this is how we often see motherhood or the benefits of somebody who's a mom, you have these predetermined milestones. Your kid's going to go to school at a certain age. There's going to be a high school. There's going to be potentially college. Maybe there's going to be a marriage. Maybe there's going to be grand parenthood. So when you don't have those pre-established mental milestones of at this, I'm going to make a decision. Are we going to move? So the kids go to a different school system or they have this. So you feel as this childless person, you're just floating and you don't know how or know where to really put your roots somewhere. Yeah, that makes total sense. I think about it. I got divorced unexpectedly and I think about that experience of my own and how very similar that was. I just imagine this life with this one person and then when that changes, then everything changes and then everything feels unmoored and then where do you go from there? So I think it's so relatable. Can you share how you navigated it? So when you were like, "Okay, I'm not grounded." You might not even have that concrete thought, but you might have just been a feeling. I just unsettled or just floating around, unmoored, whatever the term is. How did you start to find ways to get through and then enough so that you were like, "Oh, I'm going to build this for others." It was really one of the first principles I learned in life coaching. I was working with Corinne Crabtree. She's a weight loss coach and she was where I went. I had gained this weight and I was listening to her podcast for a long time when I drive to and from work, I would listen. And then finally I joined her membership, not even knowing that I wanted to be a life coach, but it was really the work that I learned from her is like, what's the story you're telling yourself? And I really didn't know that I had a say in my story. There was this story that I think society lays out for us of when your life turns out this way, people see you this way, you see yourself this way, you show up this way. And it was the turning point for me was realizing what the story was that I was believing. And when someone would ask me about something going on in my life, did I like the way that I was portraying myself and my story? And realizing that, wait, hold on. I can tell my own story. I can see myself differently than society might or might not. We have this idea that society sees all childless women as the pitiful ones or the ones that didn't get their dreams. Do I have to believe that? And so really it was understanding what story am I telling myself on auto repeat? And is that the story that I want to be telling? If it's not the story that makes me feel the way that I want to feel, what story would? What's the truth about my life or the desired thing that I want to achieve with my life? And can I start my story there and write my own story? Wow.
So can you articulate what those two stories and not that it's that binary, but can you give us a flavor of what that story was that you were telling yourself and then what story helped you bridge to a different reality? Sure. Well, I'll give you, I'll just kind of like rattle off like sound bites that kind of go off in my brain. Really that my life would never have true purpose that I'll always be looked at as like the sad one in the room that I'll always feel jealous when people around me are pregnant or my friends have their milestones of motherhood that, you know, my life will just kind of always feel like it was that 80%. That was really like the thing that kind of always like I went back to is like, I had a good life. Like financially we were in a good place and we lived in a big city and we have loving families, like all this stuff. But I just always felt like my life was at 80% and I wasn't used to being a B minus person and really seeing that I was creating all of that for myself. Like I was telling myself that B minus wasn't good enough, but I didn't know what a plus was. I just, I didn't, I didn't give myself the opportunity to say, well, if this is not the life that I'm going to have, what is the life that I want? And I think that's really where the floodgates opened. And we ended up selling our house back in 2022. We've been renting ever since we've moved. This is the second place that we've lived since 2022. And instead of being like, Oh my gosh, I'm a renter in my fifties.
It's like, Oh my gosh, like I've lived in neighborhoods in the city that I probably wouldn't have ever explored because I always thought that I had to own something. When it comes to my relationships with my friends with kids, there was a time when it wasn't a comfortable place for me. And instead of being judgmental, that I didn't go to baby showers or first birthday parties for their kids. They never told me that I was a bad friend. They're still in my life. So being like, you know what, like how lucky am I that I have friends that let me show up when I needed to and let me not show up without judgment. So realizing that I don't have to clean house on people that have kids. You know, I think there's a lot of people that think like when you don't have kids, you only hang out with other childless people. But it's learning how to see yourself as the one who doesn't have kids in a conversation. And when they're talking about mom's mom stuff, there was a time when I was just like, Oh my gosh, this is like too much for me. I'd get up, I'd go to the restroom. I, you know, wouldn't make a big deal out of it. Or I'd just say no sometimes to the girls nights when it was with my mom friend groups of girls.
But now I realize like I have really cool stuff going on in my life and that's their cool stuff. Like they get to have their mom stuff that they connect on. And I bring something in a totally different dimension to the conversation where people are like, Oh my gosh, like I love that you're doing that. Like, Oh, I wish I could do that or like whatever, you know, and again, it's not a comparison of like whose life is better, but it's seeing that without motherhood, you can still show up as a meaningful part of the conversation that you can still show up as a success story. You can do things that you maybe never knew were of interest to you. Like, do I love moving every two years? No, but I love that I get a different view that I get to see Chicago in different lights. So I hope I addressed your question there. I don't know if I want to change it, but there's just so much sense. Go ahead. Yeah. There's just so much that I thought was pre-written for me and had my life turned out with motherhood. I probably would have loved that story too, but I just didn't want to see myself as always like the sad one and the one who felt disappointed because that wasn't who I was in my core. And that's really what I help women figure out, like how to be excited about your future. Like what are you, like what is it that's going to come to you or what is it that you're going to seek that might be that next connection point to something that opens up a whole new door for you?
That is so beautiful. And I'm so grateful that you were doing this work and that you were able to figure it out for yourself so that you can then offer it to women who are in these situations. I mean, I think it's just so incredibly powerful. You know, we went to the life coach school, right? So in coaching school, we learned that like when we are a victim, when we tell our stories, self, our story, I'm going to repeat that when we tell ourselves the story that we are a victim in that state, we lose all of our power, right? Because we just, just like the two are synonymous, right? But when we can like take back our agency, you're right. We do need to tell ourselves a different story. It's like, how can I have a meaningful life? Like, how can I view myself in a light that honors, you know, my strengths and my interests and what I have to offer? It's like such a different way to view somebody's life as we think about it. And I, you know, for me, I think it's really important that we start this work on the early side. You know, I think there is this notion in society that the only way to have a meaningful life is to be a mother. Like, I don't know where that comes from. I think it's really deep seated. But I think that what I help my clients do as I work with them, well, I need my patients to, it doesn't come up as much in that setting, but you know, especially when we have the time to really go deeper is like, tell me about your whole life. Tell me about, yes, you're on this fertility journey, but like, what do you do in your free time? You know, how do you like to, do you like to go biking? Do you like to climb mountains? And like one thing we do at Love and Science is we routinely in our WhatsApp chat post pictures of ourselves doing things that are like stunning and beautiful, that are completely unrelated to the fertility journey.
So like one woman decided that she was going to go to Paris and learn how to arrange flowers. And you know, and she's still on her journey. And she's like, this journey is not going to take everything from me. I really, really need beauty in my life. And so I'm going to go to France and do this thing. And I'm going to show you all, all the beautiful flower arrangements that I'm doing. And like one another woman recently decided to take, you know, a month off, quote unquote, from fertility treatments and climb the mountains out West. And the pictures that she showed were just so amazing. And so it's like, you know, one woman's like, I love my husband so much that like, no matter what happens with this, like, we're going to have like, I'm so lucky to have him, like, we're going to have like a great life. And, you know, I just think that when we can zoom out and look at the bigger picture and like who we are as full people, and look at the stories at the same time, I think what part of what I see is my job is like, if this ends up with being child free, that is not the end of the world. Like you say, you know, it might even be a new beginning. And just helping helping us have that more expanded view of like, what a meaningful life is all along the way. I think it's really, really important and crucial. It is. And I'm really proud to watch the clients that I've worked with my coaching program is called thrive after infertility. And I recently it was world child this week in September, and I was invited to host a webinar about rediscovering your identity as a childless woman.
And I, I was tasked with, you know, finding the panelists doing all that. And I thought, well, duh, why don't I just check in with some of the women that I've coached in my program. And I invited them to be on the webinars, the panelists and just hearing them in their own words, knowing where they started out and how they represent themselves in their life. Now, I was just like a puddle of tears at the end because I was like, my gosh, like we are so much more powerful and so much more gifted than we give ourselves acknowledgement for. And I really think it's that, that idea that our identity is really what we choose. And we are in a place where identity is really important to a lot of people, not just in the fertility community and LGBTQ plus. I mean, there are so many people really wanting to take ownership of their identity. So as a childless person, what's your identity and really giving people the power to see that you can choose what your identity is.
And if we're thinking that motherhood is what creates your identity, we're way back, you know, that's, you know, trad mom stuff, you know, was a thing back then. And to some people, it's important now, but we're going off on a definition of what your identity of a woman is based on something that's a really outdated definition. And I think it sells women short, who are moms? Like I think about in my corporate world, the women that had kids at home who made an influence on my life, not because they were moms, but because they were amazing leaders. They were amazing mentors to me. And for me to look at them as whole, because they had a mom or because they were a mom, like that wasn't true. They were amazing people in my life because of how they showed up in a different part of the world outside of motherhood.
So I really want people to explore that of you can't just assume a woman is a whole woman because she has kids. Like she has so much more than a mom. There's so much more to her. That's so beautiful. One question I have for you is, you know, you mentioned being around friends and family with children. I think that's one of the biggest sticking points for my listeners, many of whom have not made the decision to be child free, many of whom are kind of in the throes of treatments, which are often unsuccessful and trying to find that clarity. So there's like, obviously that uncertainty and that identity, it might be harder to come down on like a more certain view of oneself when the outcome is uncertain. And so how do you help people in those situations? You know, we're about to approach the holidays, there's like you said, baby showers, which are technically optional, but how do you help people have relationships with their friends who are having children? Well, I, I write about it actually in my book. I have a chapter about baby showers. I have a chapter about the holidays because you hit the nail on the head. Those are really, they're hard times with, you know, even Halloween coming up and you always thought of, you know, going in the neighborhood trick or treating with the, you know, friends, kids and everyone going and having the parties together.
And you're the one answering the door by yourself or, you know, Coco, my dog and I always dress up together. So we have a little theme here, but there is, what's that? Do you know, you're going to be this year? I am going to be a raccoon. That is my, my easy costume on the seat here. So my, my point is understand like maybe this year at Halloween, you're just going to put the lights out and you're not going to answer the door. I think we, we worry that something's wrong with us. If we don't show up in the way that we always have. So again, back to that old story, that outdated story, that's not who you are. That's not what feels safe to you right now. There's a lot that I do working with my clients with like nervous system and feeling the grief of this loss of a dream and realizing it might not feel good to have little kids trick or treating with you or knocking at your door and seeing them and yearning for that. So being okay to say, you know what, like, I'm going to go do something else. I'm going to go shopping. I'm going to go whatever, get out of the house, go do something or just shut the lights off and just keep it a bowl of candy out at the sidewalk. You know, I've seen people do that too. I think also understanding with baby showers, if you choose not to go or choose to go, do you like your reasons why? And most of the time people force themselves to go because they are worried that people are going to think that they are jealous, that they are not happy for their friends.
They really worry about the judgment people are going to have. If you don't show up because they think, Oh gosh, like Lana, I can't believe she can't even be happy that, you know, so-and-so is having a baby. Let them, let them think that that is not your reason for not going. Maybe you even want to call the, the host or the mom to be and say, I love you so much. This is just a really hard time for me. Or I have a whole strategy. I did podcast episode on it. How to prepare yourself if you do choose to go and segment the event into small chunks. Usually there's an early part where people are just milling around, having a drink and dropping, you know, you say, I'm going to just drop off a present. I can't come, I can't stay the whole time. I just, I really want to show up and I'm, you know, I'm just going to drop off my present. I'd love to see you. And then you check in with yourself and say, Hey, am I okay to stay a little bit longer? Or is this my time to leave? And really look at how the flow of an event usually goes. It's, you know, the presence, the games, the mealtime and say, check in with yourself between each of those. Am I okay to stay or do I need to go? Am I okay? You know, and checking back in with yourself. And I don't think we allow ourselves to kind of segment the event and it feels daunting and overwhelming to think, Oh my gosh, I'm going to spend three hours around a bunch of excited mom to be, you know, people. And maybe my nervous system would just do better if I know I'm going to stay for 20 minutes and get out or give myself the liberty of saying like, I'm just going to see how I feel. If I can stay longer, I will. If I'm not, I've already decided I'm going to leave and be okay with myself. I think that's absolutely brilliant. I think the message is that we need to read your book, all of us, because, you know, it's interesting at Love and Science, we talk about thriving through infertility. And what you talk about is thriving after infertility.
And yes, there is like that dividing line, but I think a lot of the concepts are fluid. I think a lot of the concepts apply throughout the whole, the whole process. Yeah. And then the last thing, I think a lot of people struggle with and, and I'll be cognizant of your time with this is the, the suggestions and the things that people say, like it's really hard to show up in an environment where you tell people you don't have kids and they say, Oh, well, have you thought about adoption or, Oh, you know, God has his plan or you never know. I know someone who got pregnant at 65, you know, whatever they tell these like crazy stories. And I created a whole free resource called the top 27 things people say when you're childless and how to respond, because I would often feel like a deer in headlights and I would be like, Oh my God, like I know I'm going to see so-and-so from high school and they're going to ask how many kids I have. So I created this free resource to help you figure out like what feels good for you to respond. How do you want to practice? And it comes with practice, preparing yourself to just like stand in front of a mirror and imagine someone saying that and, and practice your response. How do you want to respond when someone gives you an idea, suggestion or comment about you not having kids? I think we'll put that in the show notes too. Yeah. We'll put that on the show notes. Is it on your website though? For people who it is. Yeah. Okay. Fantastic. Okay. So my last question for you is for someone listening who is still in treatment, where do you even begin if the path to parenthood does not happen? Well, I think begin by believing that there is something that is going to bring you joy. There is a life waiting for you that you can feel connected to, but you have to allow yourself to seek resources. And I think a lot of times we think we have to do it alone. We think that we're stronger alone. And I just want to tell you that there are people out there who have navigated this who want to help you, who can help you. And it's okay to want to find your people and find your community.
It is so beautiful. And like I've said 5 million times today, I'll say it again. I'm so very grateful for the work that you do, Lana, both as an REI and a coach, you know, I see a bridge, right? I see a bridge for people who are on this journey, who decide to be child free, who really want a soft place to land, who want a community, who want resources. Like I said, I'm going to shout this message to the rooftops from the rooftops to all my REI colleagues, because I think that is a blind spot that I'm not going to generalize, but notoriously we do have as a community that we don't know what to do in these situations. And so then there's this very kind of uncomfortable silence, which doesn't help anybody. Knowing that you exist is so amazing. And I want to point people to you and all of your amazing resources. So can you share? Where can people find you?
So my website, lonamanakowski.com, it's a long one to spell, but yes. And also Instagram is kind of where is my social media home spot, I guess. I share a lot on social media. And then of course my book is available. You can find it on my website as well. It's on Amazon. And hopefully your local bookseller could order it in. If you want to support local bookshops, I always encourage people to go in and ask for it and they can order it in for you. Amazing. Well, thank you for being a guest. Thank you so much for everything you do. Stay tuned listeners for future collaborations. And to my listeners, you know, I love you. Until the next time. Bye.
