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Struggling with “faith” and belief on your journey? In this 3-part series on fertility and faith, we are going to get down and dirty about the topic of faith—particularly when everything seems to be going wrong. If your faith is wearing thin or is in the least bit shaky, you won’t want to miss this.
Transcript:
Hey, gorgeous. If you want success on your fertility journey, you’ve got to have the mindset for it. It’s time to kick fear, negativity, doubt, shame, jealousy, and the whole clown car of low vibe fertility journey BS to the curb. I’m your host, Roseanne Austin, Fertility Mindset Master. Former prosecutor and recovering type A control freak perfectionist, I use the power of mindset to get pregnant naturally and have my baby boy at 43, despite years of fertility treatment failure.
I help women across the globe beat the odds on their fertility journey just like I did. Get ready for a quick hit of confidence, joy, feminine, bad assery, and loads of hell. Yes. For your fertility journey, it’s time to get fearless, baby fearlessly fertile. Let’s do this. Welcome to the Fearlessly Fertile podcast, episode 62, fertility and faith.
Nope. Hey loves. Oh man. I am absolutely thrilled that we are starting this series on faith. This is a conversation that has been on my heart for a long time. And part of my own faith was believing that I would get to it in divine timing. As we get started, I wanted to make a few things clear because this topic can be a tricky one, if you aren’t 100 percent clear about the ground rules.
If you’ve read my book or have been following my podcast for some time, you know that when it comes to the topic of faith, I am not here to proselytize any specific set of religious or spiritual beliefs. I come from the perspective that the relationship you have with your higher power is a deeply personal one.
I am all about relationship, not religion. Now, that doesn’t mean I poo poo religion, not at all. I simply live by the credo, you do you. Our discussion here is going to revolve around my own evolution with faith because my fertility journey, unlike any other challenge in my life, brought it to the forefront.
In a way that was unique and frankly demanded my attention. It was like having someone shouting in my face with spittle flying everywhere saying, woman, you can’t fucking ignore me anymore. I may have been a little slow on the uptake, but when the opportunity for expansion in this area of my life made itself known, I took that shit and ran.
It’s why today I describe myself as someone who has a deep and abiding faith. We’ll get to all of that through this series, how I cultivated it, how I learned to deal with what looks like Gus, and when I say Gus, God, universe, source, you pick whatever word works for you, was giving me the finger and how I continue to build and explore this belief on a daily basis.
Faith and belief. You know, it’s a critical aspect of this journey because the fact is a constellation of things come together to get your baby here. It isn’t just medicine. Anyone who has experienced what medicine calls a quote unquote perfect cycle where everything on the outside looks perfect. Your uterine lining is plush and cushy.
Your follicles performed well, producing beautiful shiny eggs. Your hormone levels were wonderfully within range. Your transfer went off without a hitch. Your energy was good. You ate well and you were feeling strong and confident. Only to have a negative test knows this. In fact, if it just came down to medicine, we’d all get the right treatment and boom, one and done.
We we’d have our babies. Anyone with half a brain knows that isn’t always the case. There is an undeniable X factor here. Medicine, as amazing and wonderful as it is, can only take us so far. Any ethical practitioner will admit that, okay? We bridge the gap between us and our babies through what we believe.
We bridge the gap between our present circumstances and what we know in our heart to be true with what we believe. Your thoughts and your beliefs directly impact your choices and therefore your results. This is not punitive. It’s simply logical and quite linear. We’re not splitting the atom here. Nor are we invoking some otherworldly magic.
Except for how magical it can seem. Because frankly, it works like magic. So consistently, so consistently, it’s ridiculous. And you’ve got to understand that no medicine is going to outrun you and your free will. If you have any question about this, go back to episode eight, the interview that I did with one of my absolute mentors, I absolutely love him, Dr.
Bernie Siegel, he’ll break it down for you, baby. So maybe this is a perfect time to get a refresher on that. And look, I have to confess that when I started my journey and for a significant portion of it, I didn’t believe any of this. Which is why we are starting where we are starting today in this series.
When it came to faith and belief in something higher than me, my position was nope. As a lovably type A control freaky professional, my belief was I alone was the reason for any success I had in my life. I believed that I single handedly through my own hard work, relentlessness and willingness to do what others were too pussy footed to do was the only reason for my success.
That didn’t mean I didn’t have support along the way. It just meant that the way I looked at the world was that I didn’t need to rely on some omnipotent being who is often portrayed as an old man and with a long white beard, whose temperament was mercurial at best and vengeful at worst to get what I wanted in this life.
Back then, I saw the world as a relatively neat and tidy place, where there was a direct correlation between how hard I worked, how perfect I was, and what I received. As my husband and I embarked on this journey, we were consistently hit upside the head with what seemed like rapid fire disappointment.
With my worldview as I described it, I didn’t for a moment consider the state of my beliefs, spirituality, or anything like that. I simply saw the quote unquote failures as an invitation to work harder and be harder on myself. I didn’t look to Gus for comfort or my intuition for any guidance. As the months and years of my journey piled up, I had little trust in either.
If you are in a place today where you feel like Gus has majorly let you down, or you are skeptical of anything outside the current state of human science, statistics, and data, I feel you, sister. I say the current state of science because it’s changing constantly, and half the time those well intentioned but clearly fallible motherfuckers are wrong.
Just look at how catastrophically off the models were about the impact of this pandemic. They are doing their best, and they are often wrong. Think about how many women on this journey beat single digit odds. I’m one of them. My ladies beat the odds on the regular. Anyway, that’s a topic for another episode.
I will get to my main point, but I really am emphatic about this for you to begin to see that there’s more to this than just science and statistics. There’s something more, my love. I grew up with religion. My parents are Catholics. I was raised going to Catholic church. For a dark period of time, I went to Catholic school.
That was until my parents saw that it wasn’t a good mix and put me into a gait program on the other side of town. I guess the lay folks knew better what to do and how to deal with my exuberance and independent spirit. But so much of what I was raised to believe about Gus, was based in fear. If I did wrong or wasn’t precisely obedient, I believed I’d be punished.
If I saw myself as anything other than flawed and constantly begging for his mercy, he would get his revenge. If I didn’t follow the rules, I would surely find myself doing the backstroke in hell with Satan and his minions. There were crucifixes all over our house. And I have to tell you, there were more than a few occasions as a little kid sitting in church, my eyes would well up at the thought of what happened to Jesus.
The church we went to had an enormous crucifix with a representation of the body of Jesus. I mean, by today’s standards, it was fucking gruesome. It was that kind of shit. I mean, I would never let my son see, but this is what I was raised with. Now, by the time I was a teenager, I had turned my back on all of that.
I had a secular education in California, which tended to treat religion and spirituality as the stuff of the small minded and provincial. If you even uttered the word God, it meant that you didn’t believe in science, you were probably an impossible prude, likely irrational, and you thought the Earth was flat.
And I laugh when I say that because this is simply the other side of a deeply judgmental, egocentric coin. This was the pendulum swing I did. I went from fearing Gus to being a Cartesian Gus denier. Talk about whiplash. And that’s how it went for decades. This is how I approach the topic of faith and belief on my journey.
My answer was, nope, I don’t need any of that horse shit. I know the statistics, I will rely entirely on what the lab codes are telling me. If I just get the right diet, treatment, lotion, or potion, my son will get here. I don’t need the universe, divine intelligence, or God’s help. Even as I say that, I marvel at the hubris, self importance, and frankly staggering ignorance.
I was so angry with Gus and what it represented that I thought I was just being punished. You know, at my lowest point on this journey, I was in a weird fucked up mess of wanting to believe, but I couldn’t because all I could see was this trail of misery. So for a significant portion of it, I just gave Gus the finger.
So check it. Here’s where I was on my journey. I was trying to bring life into my life. I was trying to bring a life into my life. Listen to those words carefully. I was trying to bring a life into my life, but I was approaching it like some kind of biological quid pro quo. I was trying to call in a life with zero reverence.
For the universal consciousness that would bridge the gap between our undeniably primitive science. And the divine intelligence that packs the thousands of pages of data that is contained in a single cell, the divine intelligence that tells our skin cells how to heal when we are cut is almost beyond comprehension.
These microscopic cells have the recipe for healing built into them, but we treat this innate intelligence within us like it is secondary, subordinate to the science we know, which only a couple hundred years ago treated illness with leeches and treated mental illness with torture. Do you get that? And look, if you have ever held a newborn baby, you can feel its divinity.
You can feel its divinity. For a long time on my journey, I was completely closed off to the belief that something wiser and higher than me put this desire to be a mom in my heart. Therefore, It was not only mine for the taking, but that a way would unfold for me. There would be a way shown for me, regardless of what the lab coat said.
With the 20 20 vision of hindsight, I can see that I was trying to call in the miracle of life, trapped in my own negativity, my fucked up ego, and zero faith or belief in the power that brought me here, made me my mom’s miracle. Ask yourself if that makes any fucking sense. I know that there may be part of you saying, Roseanne?
Girl, are you high? No, doll. I’m not. I’m sober as fuck. Sober in so many ways. Sober to the reality of Gus, and sober to the reality that everything in you right now is worthy, perfect, and divine. This is why when I say the desire you have in your heart is meant for you, I fucking mean it. But if you don’t have faith and believe in that and the power that put it there, this journey will suck and you will make it 10, 000 times harder for yourself.
I know that when you face month after month or year after year of quote unquote failure, it’s hard to have faith in shit. Believe me, I’ve fucking been there. I am not asking you to join some bandwagon, religion, or cult. I’m sharing this to spark an internal dialogue for you, to really think about what is the state of your faith.
Where are you when it comes to believing what’s going on inside of you? This drive to be a mom. This is an important inquiry because the insanity of not having belief at a time when you’ve never needed it more is kind of crazy. We aren’t talking about believing for a job or that XYZ bill will be paid.
We are talking about a life. We are talking about a critical aspect of your purpose here on Earth. And look, there’s no right or wrong answer here. There’s simply a choice and the consequences that follow any choice. So many women tell me, I mean, literally from all over the world, from so many different backgrounds, so many women tell me they want to believe, but don’t know how.
And frankly, I have yet to meet a woman who overcame ridiculous odds that didn’t believe. This is why we’re having the discussion. This is why we are going there. This is why we’re talking about faith and belief. And look, when it comes to faith and belief, sister, you get to keep your nope. If your position is nope, I don’t need any of that shit.
More power to you. That’s entirely up to you. You can also choose another path of your own creation, my darling. Okay. Of your own choice and of your own creation in the other two episodes in this series on faith, we will move on from the note to how I repaired and built my relationship with belief. And then I’m going to share how I took it to the next level to make it unwavering.
And I can’t wait to go there with you, my loves. This is such an exciting topic, and it is truly from a place of love in my heart that I’m opening this up with you. So here’s an exercise to take our discussion to the next level. One, what’s your relationship with faith in a higher power? Do you have one?
Are you skeptical? Have you guys broken up on terrible terms? Where do things stand? Answer the question. Second, put aside what you may have been raised with or pressured into. What do you want the relationship to be? This is entirely an opportunity for you to really explore here, my loves. And third, the third step in this exercise is to text the link to this podcast to someone who you think could benefit from it.
Screenshot this episode, put it in your Facebook or Insta story, tagging me. Love. There’s one thing I know for sure. As women on this journey, we fucking need a miracle. So if you don’t believe in miracles, how the hell are you going to call one in? And maybe you’re not comfortable with the word miracle yet, but we’ll get there.
We’ll find a word that works for you. Why? Because there’s no question in my mind that there is one for you, my darling, there is a miracle in store for you. Let’s go get it. My fearlessly fertile method program is for women who intend to get pregnant in the next 12 months and say hell yes to covering their bases.
Mind and body, and that involves faith and belief, baby, so that you don’t have to look back on this time in your life with soul searing regret. You gotta cover your bases, mind and body. I work with women who are all about this. They make decisions, not excuses. They go for the hell yes. To apply for your interview for this program, go to my website, www.FromMaybeToBaby.com and apply for your time there with me. My methodology has helped women around the world make their mom dreams come true. You better believe it, baby! Their results speak for themselves. And if you don’t have a mindset for success on this journey, love, you got a gaping hole in your strategy.
Let’s fix that shit and set you up for success. Don’t you dare give up. Until next time, change your mindset, change your results. Love this episode of the Fearlessly Fertile podcast? Subscribe now and leave an awesome review. Remember, the desire in your heart to be a mom is there because it was meant for you.
When it comes to your dreams, keep saying hell yes.