Hi. Welcome back to Monocycle, a podcast by Manrepeller hosted by me. I feel fiercely humbled,

I must say, by some of the reactions and responses to the episode that went live last week,

which was recorded an hour after I found out

that an IVF embryo transplant failed.

I feel really, really lucky to have you guys in my life.

And more and more, it's beginning to feel like we are an actual sisterhood, an interactive one,

not one where I'm just talking to you,

but one where you're responding. And that makes me feel really proud. The reason I wanted to record a follow-up episode is because it didn't feel right ending the conversation about my fertility struggle on such a dark note.

Now that I've been able to sit on the information, to absorb it, to process it, to develop

mechanisms, to fight against it, I do feel really strongly that it's important and empowering to hear that I've quote-unquote

recovered. And maybe recovery is not really the word, but that things get better. Things are

okay. There was such a candid fakeness in the way that I said everything's going to be okay at the end of last week's

episode. I heard it when I was listening back. Like I was trying to convince myself that

everything would be okay because somewhere deep down I knew that it would and I know that it will

be and I believe that it is. But I

didn't believe it then, and I know I didn't believe it then. I could tell that I didn't believe it,

and I didn't want you to think, because you guys are super fucking smart, I didn't want you to think

that that candid fakeness was going unnoticed by me. Sharing something when it's so raw is really, really special for a lot of the same reasons

that I mentioned last week.

Before you've been able to put the emotions away, give them a title, and then share them

in first-person essay form, you let the world do with them what it wants wants you know we're living through the age of the

first person essay of these authentic stories of i tried the x for a week and why is what happened

...