Day 12 of IVF: You contain multitudes, make sure you protect them especially in hard seasons
We become more fragile when our identity gets wrapped up into only one part of our lives, make sure to stay diversified
Welcome to Part Twelve of Lessons in Human Resilience, one post for each day of my IVF retrieval, documented so that we both remember what we’re capable of surviving.
Today is trigger day, which means my egg retrieval is almost here. As I reflect on the last 12 days, and the months of prep that went into getting here, it was important for me to share about a crucial mindset approach that’s helped me through this season.
The Danger of Wrapping Your Whole Identity Around One Thing
We all know a person, or have maybe been this person, who builds the structure of their personality and life around one central pillar. They are so focused on one area of life, whether a relationship, a career, a goal, or a dream, that the other parts of themselves slowly disappear. It’s in times of uncertainty and struggle that you find that everything staked on that one pillar comes crashing down with it, leaving you more vulnerable than you may have intended.
This is not accidental in every case. This is a tactic sometimes used in manipulative relationships. A controlling person who isolates you from your friendships and hobbies isn’t just being possessive, they are strategically eliminating your other sources of stability so that leaving feels structurally impossible. When someone is your only pillar, you cannot afford to lose them. That is a tool of control, and it is worth recognizing it as such.
But it also happens without any external pressure at all, sometimes slowly, incrementally, through the accumulation of hard circumstances that gradually narrow our world without us fully noticing.
That is exactly what happened to me.
How I Lost My Pillars Without Realizing It
Over the last three years, I reckoned with a dark aspect of our family history that shifted my core sense of stability in ways I am still integrating. I lost my cousin suddenly and was left drenched in grief, and I faced, as the stages revealed themselves over time, the reality of my infertility.
Each year, I noticed more of the things that made me me beginning to disappear. I was practicing fewer hobbies. My business had scaled back further than felt intentional. My relationships were shifting in ways I didn’t fully recognize. I was surviving, but I was surviving with less and less of what I thought made me, me.
Then I learned that my major abdominal surgery, the one I had staked so much hope on, had resulted in a complication that meant I couldn’t carry our child, and something in me finally broke.
I hit a rock bottom. I looked around at my life and realized that my pillars of support had collapsed. What I would usually turn to to help me cope and heal was no longer available.
My foundation was compromised, and I could feel it.
The Montage Begins
Here is the part where, in a film, the ‘get you life together’ sequence would begin.
I refused to feel that fragile on what I knew was going to be one of the hardest roads of my life. I understood the assignment.
It was time to rebuild.
I refocused on my work. Streamlined my executive coaching practice until it was leaner and more profitable than it had been before, built around clients I genuinely love working with and work that lights me up rather than depletes me.
I doubled down on my hobbies. The daily journaling led me, organically, to picking up the piano again, which was something I had done when I was younger and had forgotten I loved. I needed creative outlets that had nothing to do with productivity or output or being perceived. I needed to make things just for the sake of making of them.
I booked recurring sessions with my therapist that helps me treat my mental health with the same regularity and respect I would give any other health practice, because I knew I’d need it now more than ever.
I became determined to host. To gather my people in our home with delicious food and meaningful conversations and the joy and fulfillment that only in-person community creates. I have been having the parties that sustain me, and surround us in the community we need right now.
And I learned, finally, to direct my energy toward the people who actually want to show up for me, rather than continuing to fight for the love of people who have consistently demonstrated they are not able or willing to give it.
I rebuilt my pillars. The ones that are holding me up today, on this trigger day, culminating in what we hope will be a successful next step for the future of our family.
What the Research Tells Us
There is a concept in resilience psychology called self-complexity theory, and it echoes what I’ve just laid out.
The more diversified our sense of identity, the more buffered we are from stress in any single area. When one pillar is tested, the others provide support. When one aspect of our identity is under threat, the others remind us of who we are beyond that threat.
The inverse is also true. The more our sense of self is concentrated in a single area, a relationship, a pursuit, a role, or a dream, the more fragile we become because we have reduced our pillars of support. We have put all of our psychological weight onto one load-bearing wall, and when it cracks, everything cracks with it.
Diversified pillars reduce fragility and they give us somewhere to turn. They are the infrastructure that makes it possible to keep pursuing what matters most, even when that pursuit is brutal.
Build Yours Before You Need Them
Whatever the outcome of this IVF round, I know I can face it. Not because I know what’s going to happen, but because I have built a life that is more unshakeable than it has ever been, and I know that if this particular part of it shatters, the rest won’t collapse with it.
That knowledge is everything. It is the difference between facing uncertainty with dread and facing it with something that resembles, on the better days, actual trust.
I listened to my wake-up call. I took the steps. And I want you to do the same. Not after your own rock bottom forces you to, but now, proactively, while you still have the capacity to build from a place of feeling well resourced, and not depleted.
Sit with your journal and ask yourself honestly: what did I love that I am no longer doing? What hobby, what practice, what relationship, what creative outlet has slipped away in the busyness or the hardness of recent years? What would it take to bring even a small version of it back?
And what else could you add in? What new pillar could you begin building that would give you somewhere to stand when the ground shifts under another part of your life?
We all contain multitudes, and we have to fight to sustain them. Every version of ourselves that exists beyond the hardest thing we’re currently navigating deserves to have a chance to be expressed and not forgotten.
Tell me about your pillars. What keeps you supported through the tough seasons? And what are you going to bring back?
Tomorrow is Part Thirteen, the day before my retrieval surgery. We are getting so close!
I’ll see you tomorrow.
With love,
Komal
Your Daily Prompt
Take a moment to write and reflect on the following, in your journal by hand, in the comments, or in your notes app:
What pillars keep you supported through the tough seasons? Which ones have collapsed or been neglected? And what are you going to bring them back? What pillar can you add?
Name it in the comments. Let’s hold each other accountable to bringing it back.
If This Resonated, Let’s Dive In Further Together
On June 16th at 1pm EST, I am hosting a free live virtual Journaling Salon on the topic of OVERCOMING: a guided journaling session and facilitated discussion where we unpack the challenges we are facing in life right now and get clearer on the support we need.
These Salons are a place to process your life with structure and support, and be in the kind of community that wants to see you succeed.
I host them monthly inside our Lessons Learned Community. This one is totally free.
Can’t wait to dive in together.
I Made Something For You
The Resilience Companion: A Journaling Guide to Lessons in Human Resilience is a compliment to this series. Each section distills a lesson and gives you prompts to bring it into your own life.
Lessons in Human Resilience is a series running throughout my IVF retrieval process. Part Thirteen drops tomorrow.
If you missed Part Eleven: Let it suck. Then build your bridge through it , you can catch up here.
People say to do more things to increase the surface area of your luck, in this case, maintain more parts of your life to increase the surface area of your survival.