Why Ignoring Grief Keeps You Stuck in Infertility & How to Finally Break Through
You’ve done it all, right? The diets, the supplements, the acupuncture, the endless IVF rounds. Your Google search history looks like a med school textbook. And yet here you are, staring at another negative test, wondering what cosmic rule you broke. Let me be blunt: it might not be your diet, your womb, or even your age. It might be your unacknowledged grief sitting like a brick on your nervous system.
Grief Isn’t Just Miscarriage
Most people hear “grief” and think loss of a baby. But in fertility, grief wears a hundred disguises. It’s the grief of missed years, of sex becoming strategic, of friendships that faded because you couldn’t fake joy at another baby shower. It’s looking in the mirror and not recognizing the woman staring back. All of that is grief, and pretending it doesn’t count only keeps it stuck in your tissues.
“Unacknowledged grief can block your body’s ability to receive life.”
The Science of Stuck Emotions
Here’s the part no one tells you: grief isn’t just emotional, it’s biological. When you stuff it down, your cortisol rhythm goes haywire. Your immune system tanks. Inflammation spikes. Hormones get scrambled like bad diner eggs. You can eat the perfect diet and still feel awful because your body is locked in fight-or-flight. IVF trauma, failed transfers, D&Cs, all of it can leave scars that your nervous system keeps replaying like an old VHS tape.
The Silent Burnout No One Talks About
Fertility burnout isn’t just being “tired of trying.” It’s being so emotionally maxed out that your body can’t reset. You keep pushing, keep scheduling, keep outsourcing your power to doctors and Google, when what your body really needs is space to actually feel. Radical, messy, inconvenient grief. The ugly crying. The grocery store meltdowns. The conversations you don’t want to have. That’s the nervous system reset no supplement can buy you.
Parenting, Loss, and Breaking the Pattern
When my father died, I saw grief show up in my kids’ bodies—pneumonia, nightmares, anxiety. Their little systems couldn’t hide what mine had learned to bury. That’s when it hit me: most of us were never taught how to grieve. So we armor up, swallow it down, and pass that pattern along. Healing your grief isn’t just about making space for a baby—it’s about breaking cycles of suppression so your future child doesn’t inherit them.
“Grief isn’t weakness. It’s proof you loved something and believed in something.”
Your Next Step Isn’t More Control
You don’t need another protocol. You don’t need to white-knuckle through another round of IVF pretending you’re fine. You need to give grief a seat at the damn table. Start by admitting it’s there. Let yourself feel the waves instead of patching over them. That is emotional regulation. That is nervous system healing. And that is how you start reconnecting with the part of you that already knows how to create life.
Final Takeaway
You’re not broken. You’re not failing. You’re a woman carrying invisible weight no one ever gave you permission to drop. The shift happens when you stop outsourcing your healing and start listening inward. Because deep down, your body isn’t against you—it’s begging for you to feel what you’ve been avoiding.
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE HERE for the raw truth, the science, and the soul medicine that could change your journey.
Let's Do This Together 💚
Monica
Listen up, lovelies: Everything I share about health, diet, or fertility magic is my opinion. Yep, it’s all based on years of trial and error, study, reading, listening, and side-eyeing the nonsense out there. What worked for me might be a jackpot for you—or it might be a total flop. Bodies are weird like that. 🤷♀️
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m not a doctor, nutritionist, dietitian, or any other kind of licensed health wizard. If you need medical advice, run—don’t walk—to an actual qualified professional. Don’t come back here saying Monique told you to eat kale for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, okay?
As for the products I mention, they’re either what I used during my own infertility rollercoaster or what I wish I’d known about back then. No guarantees, no promises, and absolutely no refunds on your hope budget if it doesn’t work out.
Now that we’ve cleared that up, proceed with curiosity and, above all, discernment. You’ve got this. 💪✨
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Full Transcript:
00:00
Hello beautiful and welcome to the Finding Fertility podcast.
00:10
I'm Monica, your mentor in uncovering the hidden layers of your fertility journey. Together, we'll discover the right path for you within the six essential steps to creating the family of your dreams. We'll ditch the overwhelm, tune into your intuition, and build a vibrant foundation for your fertility. Whether it's through gut health, subconscious healing, or energetic alignment, you can unlock your body's natural power to get and stay pregnant.
00:37
Your fertility journey is all about radical responsibility and deeply believing that your body is on your side. It's time to stay consistent, embrace trust, surrender, and create the transformation you deserve. Fighting fertility does not diagnose, prescribe, or treat any fertility issues. What we do is empower you to take control of your health by uncovering the root causes holding you back. Let's do this together.
01:05
Happy Friday, y'all. Welcome back to another episode of Fighting Fertility. I'm your host, Monica Cox, and I'm so honored you are here with me, becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Today, we are talking about grief in the fertility journey. Now, I want you to know that grief doesn't limit the loss of a baby. It can be multi-layered, it can be really quiet, it can be invisible at times.
01:34
And it can feel never ending because you're grieving what hasn't happened yet. So you can have grief around a miscarriage, chemical pregnancy, a stillbirth, a failed IVF, IUI, or egg retrieval. Grief and trauma around a DNC or a DNE. Grief around the years you've lost trying. Grief around your body that doesn't seem to be working.
02:02
Grief of the version of the life you thought you would have by now. Grief over friendships that have drifted, especially when you couldn't show up to that baby shower or you couldn't be emotionally supportive during the pregnancy. Grief over the disappearance of your sexual life becoming strategic or medicalized. And grief over losing the joy during early oh
02:31
pregnancy because you're just so fearful that it's not going to work out the way you're hoping it is. And grief over your own identity as this whole journey has completely taken over your life and sometimes you don't even recognize the person you've become. But we need to recognize it. We need to recognize this grief. It needs to have a seat at the table.
03:01
and understand that this is not a sign of weakness, but a sign that you loved something and you believed in something and really that you're human. Because grief can stay stuck in your system, in your tissues, in your nervous system, in your hormones, and especially in your heart. But most of us were never taught how to grieve, especially over something that...
03:27
maybe not be tangible or physical to them. That embryo that didn't make it was a part of us. And it's not something that you can really explain to anyone who hasn't been through this journey. And that's okay. They don't need an explanation. They don't need to know your pain. We all have our different pains and griefs. What's important is that we take that radical responsibility and start healing.
03:57
and feeling the grief. So here's some kind of science behind how grief can dysregulate your entire system. um Cortisol rhythm, suppressed immune system, tension in the fascia and the womb space. You shut down heart coherence, chronic fight or flight patterns, right? You're always scared of something happening.
04:23
And then obviously you have some increased inflammation. You're gonna have digestive issues even when you're on the perfect diet and obviously some hormone imbalances. So grief isn't just emotional, it's cellular. And unacknowledged grief can really block your body's ability to receive life.
04:48
even when you feel like you're doing everything physically right, you're going through all the medical treatments, it should just happen, but this could be one of your layers that your body, your soul, and your children's soul are asking you to deal with before we can create coherence and alignment in the body to welcome
05:16
a new baby. And if you're an avid listener here, hopefully not for too long, I want you guys pregnant and going to listen to Mama podcast. I lost my father in November, almost when this gets released, almost a year. As an adult and as someone with a lot of conscious knowledge, I knew how to honor the grief.
05:41
and allowed the waves of grief to come and go and be vulnerable enough to start crying in a grocery store, start crying in front of my kids, in front of my husband, taking the space and time that I needed when it was a lot heavier. But what I didn't know really until the signs came so loud was how to help my own children through this grief.
06:10
And my kids were young, seven and nine, when this happened. My eldest is much more switched on and he had a closer relationship with their papa. And so his grief showed up in his lungs. And we were already dealing with the silent pneumonia that was going around. a few months after, both of their symptoms actually showed up around the same time. And I knew it was connected to his death.
06:40
And what I didn't realize was I wasn't giving them space. I still had to be their steward. And this is hopefully this podcast can be your steward to release some of the stuff that you're holding onto either consciously or unconsciously. But my eldest son was in his lungs. His pneumonia came back with a vengeance. We had to do a nebulizer and
07:10
We also on the frequency and emotional side, we had a cert talking about Papa again. And we just naturally fell out of it. It wasn't intentional, but we watched a little episode of Bluey and it was about a bug dying or something. And when it was finished, he looked at me, he said, did you make me watch this? So we have to talk about Papa? And I said, yeah. And he said, I don't want to. We switched on enough. He's getting his father's shut down emotion.
07:40
And he's, don't want to. It makes me sad and it makes me cry and I don't want to do that. And as someone who is a conscious mother and who is raising conscious boys into men, and if I had a little girl, I would do it for her too. I said, we have to. I know it hurts. I know you don't want to do it, but if you don't do it, it's going to stay suck. And right now you're presenting with a physical symptom.
08:09
and we have to talk about it. So we did it gently and gracefully in his own space and his own time. I would talk about stories. He would tell me the things he loved and what he wished he could do and all these things. Within weeks, his silent pneumonia went away. Even after we had the nebulizer, it was still there for a while. My second son, he was dealing
08:39
He is a little bit younger. He's my Earth baby.
08:46
And he started waking up with nightmares, really, but very conscious nightmares. And he would wake up and he would grab either my husband or my face. And he would look us dead in the eyes. He was so serious and he would be like, don't leave me. Don't leave me. And so this one, actually consulted with Abigail on both of them, but I knew my eldest son's issue, but my youngest son, was a little bit like, what's going on?
09:16
And Abigail helped express that he was in the future. He was having anxiety attacks. And because the way my father died, he said goodbye to the boys and they left for school. And when they came back from school, Papa wasn't there. So my youngest thought that was what was going to happen to us.
09:41
And so with him, not only did we have to talk about Papa and the stories and all that, but we also had to talk about the realization that what happened to Papa was not impossible. And we had to talk it out and give them time to both cry and express their emotions. I share this story with you as an example that we as humans all experience this. And because
10:11
As adults, your parents probably didn't have the conscious awareness to help you through emotional things, especially grief. And it just got shut down and pushed away. And you protect yourself and you think that you're being the strong one. I was exactly this way. My first miscarriage I did by myself and it ended up
10:39
I've talked about this before, but I decided not to have a DNC. I was a hundred percent done with people that I didn't know looking at my vagina. And it took over two weeks for the fetus to pass. This was my first pregnancy. That the fetus was big enough for I had to go into labor. I had, my uterus had to contract to pass. And I did that on my own.
11:08
not really knowing what the hell was going on. And I think I took that day and the next day I woke up and I felt fine. I had already been a few weeks into the realization that I had this loss and I just got on with my day. I never really talked about it and I ended up in the ER at two o'clock in the morning because of course I still had lots of healing to do. just...
11:35
The next day, got on with life and went grocery shopping and did all my errands and chores that I didn't do the day before because I was having this really big event. And I looked back at myself during that time and I really just shoved it all down. Yes, there was this immense gratefulness and hope back because it was the first time I ever got pregnant. So I definitely looked at it that way. But with hindsight, I never processed the grief.
12:04
And basically the trauma my body went through and just being really scared going through that all by myself. So the things that we consciously just get on with and protect ourselves and just don't take the time and m
12:23
We don't want to feel that hurt and we don't want to go through those emotions. We don't want to name our children or we don't want to know the sex of the baby. makes it too real. Just giving yourself time and space for all the grief that comes with this fertility journey is just so essential for not necessarily getting pregnant. I didn't deal with all this and I still got pregnant with IVF and naturally.
12:53
But it caught up with me. It absolutely caught up with me. And if you go back three weeks ago and listen to the podcast about the stored trauma, that was the grief that I had over everything that I never expressed and I never dealt with was definitely part of that release when I was doing those breathwork sessions. It's just really important that if you're in a space where you can see
13:22
where you've been avoiding the grief in your journey, start thinking about becoming ready to deal with it. Even if you just do that, even if you just honor there is grief there, I haven't dealt with it and I'm going to, that's a start. And if you're at a point where you're like, I'm ready, doing it by yourself in your bedroom.
13:47
It's a start. If you can't talk to anyone, if you're really shut down, if that's how you've patterned, trust me. Like, ah when I was going through this, like, no way did I want to talk to any— I didn't want anyone to see me cry. I didn't want anyone to see how much hurt and emotions I was going through. So I get it. So start by just being with yourself and doing it for yourself. Start honoring those waves when they come up.
14:16
especially if you're at home by yourself or with your partner and a wave comes and hits you, let it come, let it out. There's never going to be a scientific study to prove this, but I do wonder the impact on your cellular health if grief, like really deep grief is more than any alcohol could be, any cigarettes, any like diet, right? My husband's
14:44
One of my husband's best friends died of meningitis on a snowboard trip when they were teenagers. And his father was a doctor. Very smart man. Never smoked a day in his life. Wasn't an alcoholic. Had a very good diet and lifestyle. And he died of lung cancer. And I think he just didn't have the tools to be able to grieve his son's death. And
15:14
Maybe even a part of him felt that it was his fault. And we can relate that to a fertility journey too. Like you feel like it's your fault, it's your body, you're doing this, you can't do it. And that contributes to the disease as well, right? The disease in your body. So being really graceful toward yourself during these moments.
15:44
that it wasn't your fault. You were doing the best that you knew how.
15:54
And that's all you can control. And really honoring that for yourself. So I hope that this has been supportive. Have a great weekend and I'll see you next week on another episode of Finding Fertility. And next week, I am super excited. This next two weeks episodes kind of were just like divinely brought into my life.
16:22
we have Ainsley who is a conscious mama who went through basically the dreams course. It was called the fertility formula back about two, three years almost when she went through it. But she reached out and she wanted me to talk on her podcast. And when I was putting all the pieces together, I was like,
16:45
Oh my goodness, would you like to do my podcast and just share what you went through, what you learned, and be another wealth of wisdom for other women who are still in the thick of the journey? So I'm really excited for her to share her journey, share what she would wish she would have learned sooner. But as you know, it's all part of the journey that if we can learn from other people, just even a little bit.
17:14
Um, it's probably for the better. So make sure you tune in next week. Thank you once again for tuning in and becoming the conscious mama you were born to be. Remember, I wasn't some magical unicorn who stumbled into fertility success. I stayed consistent. I put in the work and I made it happen. And guess what? You can too. And I have something for my loyal podcast listeners.
17:43
But here's the key. This is only for women who are feeling burnt out, frustrated, and stuck in the cycle of endless research. And you're at a point where you are screaming, I have tried everything. Why isn't this working? This only works for women who are ready to take a radical responsibility for their journey and start listening to their body's innate wisdom. Because deep down, you know you can heal.
18:12
and achieve your ultimate goal. If that's not you yet, that's okay. Not everyone is ready yet to show up with ease, deeply connect to their energy, unlock subconscious patterns, and listen to their body's ability to come into full coherence. But for those who are ready, I'm offering something I only do with my paying clients, and this is a fertility breakthrough session. This is the first thing I do, even before I start.
18:41
really deeply working with someone in a coaching package. It's a deep dive session where we look at exactly where you are right now, what's keeping you stuck, and the easy shifts that can change everything. But fair warning, these sessions are very limited and go fast. So if you're interested in checking out my superpower for uncovering exactly what's been overlooked, jump into one of these free calls. They're deep.
19:10
they're intuitive and they're game changing. The only way you can access this is if you actually personally message me. You can do it on your favorite platform, IG, TikTok, or at my personal email, monica at findingfertility.co, not .com because they wanted $3,000 for the M with just one word and that word is dreams, obviously, D-R-E-A-M-S. uh
19:39
and I'll make sure you get that link right away. Remember, this transformation happens when you stay committed to yourself. Trust your body, follow your intuition, make it possible. The links that you need are down below. And if you are still here and you absolutely love this podcast, please take some time and leave me a review and help other women like you find this podcast to get the support they need. Help a sister out. Leave a review today.
