How to Build the Life You Want (Even When You Feel Overloaded, Exhausted, & Uncertain)

Kellie Gerardi (00:00:17):

We've all seen images of the earth from space. You would think that I would have the words by now, and I just don't. It's a forced perspective shift that you are such a small part of something, so much bigger. Ordinary people can make themselves capable of extraordinary things, and it is never too late for you to do that. You can rewrite your limits. We have astronaut Barbie dolls and American girl dolls, and we want to make sure our girls know they can be anything until they grow up and become mothers with children of their own. And then it's like, how dare you pursue those dreams that we said were so important? What would it look like if you removed every single limitation that is currently in front of you or that you perceive to be in front of you and you take a look at your life and you think in a perfect world where everything went right, what would my life look like?

Mel Robbins (00:01:11):

Oh, well, let's just launch right now.

(00:01:13):

Hey, it's friend Mel, and welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. Kellie Gerardi. Welcome to the Mel Robbins Podcast. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here. Well, we're excited you hopped on a plane, not a spaceship.

Kellie Gerardi (00:01:31):

Yeah, exactly.

Mel Robbins (00:01:32):

Came here and we cannot wait to dig into your story and the amazing things you're going to share.

Kellie Gerardi (00:01:38):

Thank you.

Mel Robbins (00:01:38):

I'd love to start by having you speak directly to the person who is with us right now. Just share a little bit about what might be different about their life if they take everything to heart that you're about to share with us today, and they apply it to their life.

Kellie Gerardi (00:01:54):

Yeah, absolutely. I used to look at people and a success reel of their lives, and I used to look at those accomplishments and those successes, the ones that felt most unrealistic for me and out of reach. And it was very easy for me to dismiss those and to write it off as extraordinary. Things are reserved for extraordinary people. And I think the much more interesting truth is that ordinary people can make themselves capable of extraordinary things, and it is never too late for you to do that. And I think that's something that has helped me adjust the limiter on my imagination. And it might be something that can help you adjust the limiter on your imagination as well to give yourself permission to dream bigger dreams.

Mel Robbins (00:02:39):

Well, let's just launch right now. I mean, first of all, let's highlight that, that ordinary people can do extraordinary things.

Kellie Gerardi (00:02:45):

Absolutely. You're capable of making yourself capable of extraordinary things.

Mel Robbins (00:02:50):

Did you always feel this way?

Kellie Gerardi (00:02:52):

Not always. No. And I think that's the power in training your mindset to think about it a little bit differently because I used to look at that and say that was meant to be for that person that was meant to be for her or for him. These are extraordinary people. Success just falls on extraordinary people. And the harder truth is that you can make yourself capable of that.

Mel Robbins (00:03:16):

I also loved what you said about that you can learn to adjust the limiter on your own thinking. What do you mean by that?

Kellie Gerardi (00:03:23):

Just that you can rewrite your limits. You are capable of taking a look at what your vision board looks like today and then zooming out times 30, times 50 times a hundred, the only one applying the limit on that is you. And so when I say adjusting the limiter on your imagination, what I'm talking about is giving yourself permission to envision yourself in that world as part of that world of doing those things that are so intriguing and motivating and inspiring to you and giving yourself permission to think about, well, what would it look like if I chased that dream or if I tried to find a path to get there?

Mel Robbins (00:04:00):

Well, what's interesting is one of the truths that I extract from your story is that rules are made to be broken. And in fact, when you really think about rules and you adjust the limiter in your own brain, you basically start to ask yourself, wait a minute, who made up the rules anyway?

Kellie Gerardi (00:04:20):

Exactly.

Mel Robbins (00:04:20):

And what I love about your story is that you are one of the very few women who have actually traveled into space. And I just want to start from the beginning because you have an unbelievable story that led you to where you are today as an astronaut. So let's go back to the beginning.

Kellie Gerardi (00:04:43):

I was born in Jupiter, Florida, which is very on brand for someone who loves space. And my parents did joke that I had front row seats to the final frontier right up the coast, Cape Canaveral. I had the privilege of watching human space flight and to have that in the backdrop of my adolescence, I do think it made a big impression on me.

Mel Robbins (00:05:03):

Okay, so let me just make sure for the person who's listening that doesn't know Jupiter, Florida, okay, east Coast. So are you basically saying that you grew up in a neighborhood where you could look out to the sky and see the rockets launching from Cape Canaveral?

Kellie Gerardi (00:05:17):

Absolutely. On a clear day you can see everything. And it's extraordinary. It still is. I've never lost the magic of watching that in awe.

Mel Robbins (00:05:25):

And so seeing that when you were a little girl, were you like, I want to be in one of those one day, or how did that impact you?

Kellie Gerardi (00:05:32):

It hadn't clicked for me yet that I could be a part of that. And it goes back to what we were speaking about in the beginning. It felt like that's extraordinary. Those are extraordinary humans. That is something reserved for extraordinary humans. So while I had an immense appreciation for it, I was incredibly inspired by it. It didn't necessarily click for me right away that I could ever hope to be a part of something so extraordinary as space flight.

Mel Robbins (00:05:58):

Well, one of the things I want to invite you to do as you're listening or watching this right now is

Kellie Gerardi (00:06:24):

Absolutely. And sometimes we don't even realize that we've applied that limit until we start to unpack it.

Mel Robbins (00:06:30):

Do you remember when you went from going, if it happens to someday this will happen? Because as I was getting ready to talk to you, I read this article about how you ended up having a job working in the coat check of the Explorers Club. And so I would love to go back in time a little bit from you're a little girl growing up in Florida. You can see the space shuttle launching up into the sky. You go to university, you then end up having a job at some famous club called The Explorers Club, and you were working in the coat check and you put me at the scene of that moment in your life. How old were you and why did you take that job?

Kellie Gerardi (00:07:18):

Yeah, so this was college and the Explorers Club had stood out to me. It's a scientific organization that is dedicated to explorers, but it's membership is so legacy. The members were first to the North Pole, first to the South Pole, first to step on the surface of the moon, first to the deepest point of the ocean. Just really remarkable boundary pushing. And I was captivated by that. Once I discovered that this club existed and I just wanted to be around those extraordinary people, I was hoping, I don't know, maybe by osmosis that some of it would just rub off on me. I had this intense interest in space and in science, and these were people who were at the head of their fields and the top of their fields. And so in college it was like, yeah, of course I will do coat check. And I will say I was really good at it. I had a system. I took it very seriously. I think that's another sort of just fundamental theme that I keep reflecting on my own career. No matter what the job is in front of me, I'm going to try to give 150% to it.

Mel Robbins (00:08:26):

Why is that important?

Kellie Gerardi (00:08:27):

Because you have to seek the important work and not just the glamorous work. It's like this is the work that keeps the lights on. Being able to show that you are capable of crushing it for 150%, even when it's something that someone else might look at and say, it's just coat check, but it's not. It's your ability in whatever scenario you're in, whatever situation you're in to demonstrate your follow through your attention to detail, your capability to be given more responsibility. That's how I looked at it.

Mel Robbins (00:08:57):

Well, I want to stop and just pause here because I think this is very important. The reason why that is important work is because you made it important by giving it 150%. And this is a life lesson that too many people miss. How you do anything is how you do everything. And what I love about this example, and it's why I wanted you to share it, is that you're in college. This is a passion. You're not exactly following a traditional route,3 but you are putting yourself in proximity to other explorers because you want to be one.

Kellie Gerardi (00:09:32):

Yes,

Mel Robbins (00:09:33):

You take the only job that you can get in proximity

Kellie Gerardi (00:09:36):

And happily,

Mel Robbins (00:09:37):

Happily, and then you destroy it by showing up and giving 150%. And so I need to highlight that because everybody's always looking for the next thing. And you miss the smartest move in front of you, which is get as close as you can to the thing that you're interested in, take anything you can do whether you're getting paid or not, and then do 150%.

(00:10:31):

You know, someone who remembered your name and you made an impression on and then putting in the work to make those behaviors true and reinforcing them over and over and over again to build that reputation for yourself. And so even when the opportunity is not necessarily apparent right in front of you, I do think that I was putting in the work ahead of time to make myself worthy of one of those opportunities if and when it should arise.

Mel Robbins (00:10:57):

Kellie, I just want to stop and really highlight this point that you're making about designing your reputation. This is unbelievably brilliant advice. I want to make sure that you hear it. I also want to make sure that you share this with people that you have in your life that you care about that are early in your careers because this is a genius trick, and I use this in my business and my life too. And I'm going to tell you there are two ways to do this that I do. Number one, I always think in business about the outcome that I want. What do I want a person to feel or to do based on the thing that I'm launching, whether it's a podcast episode, whether it's a book that I'm writing, whether it's the tour that we just did and then I just reverse engineer.

(00:11:41):

So you're designing your reputation by writing down the adjectives that you want people to describe you by, and then that informs you on how to act. You can do the same thing in terms of what you want the outcome to be in business. I do the same thing in meetings. Before I go into a meeting, I will say to myself, what do I want people to say about me after I leave the room? And when you start with the end in mind and you engineer the reputation or the outcome, that now gives you the map for how to behave. And this is such a subtle thing, but it's something everybody needs to know. And the other thing that I wanted to say is that if you're listening right now or you're watching and you're the one working in the coat closet or you're the one working in the retail job, or you're the one who is working a shift job and you think it's a dead end, it is not a dead end.

(00:12:31):

Where you are is a beginning. And if you engage in your job in a different way and you make it important and you take this advice and you write down the things that you want people to say when they describe what it's like to be around you, even in this job in the coat check, even in this job that you're commuting to right now, you now take control. You now are changing your reputation. You now shift everything. This matters so much.

(00:12:58):

And I don't think people understand the importance of operating with this level of excellence with where you are now because where you are now is leading you somewhere and you've got a lot of power in that moment. So thank you for unpacking that with us. So just to kind of keep the story going, you go from the coat check Kellie, and because of the fact that you have now engineered your reputation and you're showing up and you're thorough and you're energized and you remember people's names and you're organized, they then put you in charge of this huge fundraising event.

Kellie Gerardi (00:13:31):

I was asked to chair their biggest ever fundraising event. It's New York City's longest running charity event, the Explorers Club annual Dinner. And the best part of this story is the full circle moment, a decade later, because I went from coat check to being appointed to the board of directors and the executive board of this club. And it was just a remarkable thing for me to reflect on because I think it does validate I can create my reputation, how I can put in the work to make that true and to know that there is a payoff possible in such a big way.

Mel Robbins (00:14:07):

I love that you focused on what you could control. Exactly. So you then go from the coat check to doing this huge benefit and architecting this reputation. You're starting to get all different types of jobs. In the meanwhile, you're getting a master's at the International Institute for Aeronautical Sciences, and this leads you to go on and do 150 microgravity research flights. Can you describe what microgravity research flight is?

Kellie Gerardi (00:14:39):

My dream was wanting to open up access to space for the next generation of scientists, and I thought that scientists can use space as a laboratory to benefit humanity. That was always sort of the north star of my career, and it led me to pursuing a field of research in microgravity, otherwise floating in weightlessness. And how that works here on earth when you're not in space is an airplane flies in this almost roller coaster profile where the aircraft free falls and then it pulls up hard again over and over and over. That's where the nickname the vomit comment comes from. And during those brief bursts of free fall, you get about 20 to 22 seconds of microgravity. Of weightlessness. And my research institute with our partners at the National Research Council of Canada, that's where we and our research teams, we use those 22nd increments to study everything from fluid dynamics to human health. But the dream of a researcher in that field is always getting a longer duration exposure. Your research needs not just seconds but consecutive minutes. This thought of one day, instead of filling out proposals for the research to get sent with someone else, we as a science community, as researchers, as scientists, will get to carry our research to space ourselves.

Mel Robbins (00:15:57):

Well, that's so interesting. That makes me think of another question I wanted to ask you, Kellie.

Kellie Gerardi (00:16:10):

So for me, this was more than a decade in the making. So I get in and I'm like, it's game time. I am ready. I have an entire science team that is counting on me to get the data. This is my one shot, I don't get a do-over. I was so ready and I felt good, and I think I felt so prepared from the science side and I immediately realized that nothing could have prepared me for the emotional side of human space flight and experiencing that and seeing that view for myself. Once I got the data and resecured the experiment and I got to look out the window and I got to really look, it was just awe. It was indescribable. You would think that I would have the words by now, and I just don't this, we've all seen images of the earth from space.

(00:17:01):

The difference for me was experiencing earth as a planet and just this deep and humbling realization that you're looking at something that so few humans in history have ever had the privilege of seeing and feeling both a part of it and being outside of it. And it's a forced perspective shift that you are such a small part of something so much bigger. And then as a mom, this existential realization that in that moment I'm not on the same planet as my baby. It was mind vending and profound and that will be my mental screensaver until the day that I die.

Mel Robbins (00:17:37):

How did it change you?

Kellie Gerardi (00:17:38):

This perspective shift of realizing what a small part you are of something so much greater and bigger. It's almost like a sense of relief in a way. I know the sort of cliche of don't sweat the small stuff, but for me being able to attach that mental image to that message has really helped me unlock just an inner piece. It's like something in my soul clicked. It's like I have accomplished what I set out to do in this life. Did you have any fear? No. I had such confidence in the team and in the engineers and they had transformed the cabin of the spacecraft into a suborbital science lab. It was extraordinary. But test pilot life had been lost in the process years back. And I made sure to take that very seriously. And I think the thing that made it click a little bit more for me is a few months before the space flight, I was rummaging in our team's Google folder and I found good day and bad day press release drafts about my flight. Those were never meant for my eyes, but any big event, usually there are two versions of a press release drafted, one where everything goes right, that's the one you hope to put out. And then there is an emergency version that is drafted in the case that something goes catastrophically wrong. So you have something to put out.

Mel Robbins (00:19:02):

So they have a press release waiting to go in case this mission fails and you're dead.

Kellie Gerardi (00:19:06):

Yes, exactly. And my team,

Mel Robbins (00:19:07):

What was that like reading that?

Kellie Gerardi (00:19:10):

It was never meant for my eyes, but the second I saw it, I was like, of course I'm going to read it. And seeing in black and white, she is survived by and seeing my daughter's name and my husband's name, it still makes me emotional to think about. But that more than anything else crystallized for me finally what this experience might be like from their perspective. But it didn't change. I still felt very confident and comfortable. I wouldn't have flown if didn't.

Mel Robbins (00:19:40):

You could go back 16 years and talk to that 20-year-old that was working in the coat check. What advice would you give her?

Kellie Gerardi (00:19:51):

Yeah, first I would pat her on the back and be like, it is a great thing that you're doing with those coats like, you're crushing it. Good work, good instincts. But I would tell her that when you have big bold dreams in life that the trick is not necessarily figuring it out as fast as possible. It's keeping yourself motivated for as long as possible. Because when you have these big high level dreams that are kind of far out for the vision that you have for your life and they feel very far away from where you are today, you need to be able to have that resilience to power through the ups, the downs, the plateaus, the decades maybe where it feels like nothing happens. To finally earn those moments where it feels like the decades happen. And if you can do that and power yourself through all of that, you will find your way to the other side of your dreams.

Mel Robbins (00:20:50):

What made you want to bring the world along with you online? Because one of the reasons why millions of people follow you is because you bring them behind the scenes of what it is like to go in space, what it is like to do this type of research while married while having a family.

Kellie Gerardi (00:21:09):

For someone like me as a woman in stem, to be able to have this career on earth in research that leads to this lifelong dream that I once thought was inaccessible to me to suddenly live out over and over again and to have this new pathway. I like to show what that looks like because I think a lot of people can look at me and relate to, she was just an ordinary person who was doing this career and had this big extraordinary dream and this is how it happened. And it is unique and it is interesting and different and it is going to represent a new era of access for the next generation of scientists.

Mel Robbins (00:21:48):

So you mentioned that you're married and you mentioned also that you are a mom and you have a young daughter.

(00:21:54):

How have you really managed being a mom, being married and pursuing this career as an astronaut and a researcher and these massive dreams of doing research in space?

Kellie Gerardi (00:22:11):

I feel like being a mom is such a big part of my identity, and I do think that visible representation of embracing those multitudes is important to show. I have been surprised by some of the criticism that I've seen about things that I assumed we moved past half a century ago. This idea that a mother is somehow selfish if she prioritizes both personal passions or career ambitions alongside her family. I was someone sold to the dream growing up that you can grow up and be anything you want. And I did find it a little bit hypocritical with those comments. I'm like, this is the same society that insists that we want more women in stem. We have astronaut Barbie dolls and American girl dolls, and we want to make sure our girls know they can be anything until they grow up and become mothers with children of their own. And then it's like, how dare you pursue those dreams that we said were so important? So I don't feel any shame. I feel really grateful to be able to set that example for my daughter of I hope that she probes the boundaries of her full potential in this life and this one life that I was so lucky to give her.

Mel Robbins (00:23:24):

It was interesting to look at all your social media because it is surprising the criticism that you receive, right? Really surprising the fact that people are like, you should just pick one motherhood or space as if you couldn't do both.

Kellie Gerardi (00:23:37):

Yeah. It was shocking to me too on some days I'm reflecting how far we've come because I do think about the fact that my mom was at my space flight when she was growing up. Women in the US were not eligible to fly to space, but one single generation later she watched her daughter. And in other ways we still have so far to go. And so I do sharing so much of my career and my personal life transparently because I do want to reach women who are wondering if it's possible to both go after those big dreams that they have while building the family they've always dreamed of. And I also want to reassure women who are perhaps made to feel guilty on those days or weeks when the scales don't perfectly balance. And for me, it is a juggle, right? It's like that's the honest truth.

(00:24:26):

It doesn't look perfect. It doesn't look pretty all the time. And I try to be really transparent about that. I think that the one framework that changed my life a little bit with that, the credit goes to Nora Ephron for this, but I use this analogy in my mind on a daily basis, is that she said that it's like juggling balls. And the trick is to understand that some of the balls are made of glass and some of the balls are made of plastic. And the trick is knowing which one is which. And I still don't get that right. There are times where I try my best, but I have assumed that certain balls in the air were plastic, whether it was a research deadline proposal or a book fair at my daughter's school or even an hour sitting on the floor playing Barbie dolls. And those turned out to be so much more breakable of moments than I thought. And then on the flip side, there are things that I have assumed were glass balls in my life, like career work opportunities or family rituals and events that I moved mountains to make work and they turned out to be not that consequential. So it's a work in progress.

Mel Robbins (00:25:31):

One of the interesting things about your story is that you've got to learn how to not let other people's criticism get to you.

Kellie Gerardi (00:26:14):

Motherhood related criticism, I think because I care so much about my daughter, I think it gets under my skin. And when I interrogate it, I disagree and disapprove completely of it. But if I think about, and maybe it's not necessarily the one that scares me the most, but it's definitely the flavor that gets the most under my skin, like the criticism that I would be so selfish to do this or that I am somehow a bad mom for prioritizing all of my personal passions. And it's so interesting because I do feel cerebrally so different and I reject it on its face value. It's like, no, I do genuinely know that I feel very, very grateful to be able to set this example for my daughter. But in the moment when it's something that you care so much about, that's the one that I constantly have a reaction to. And I think that's why I've created so much content about it is because it sparks a reaction in me often. And that's something that I have to, it's probably the one that I have spent the most time digging deep to understand, okay, how do I really feel about this?

Mel Robbins (00:27:23):

Well, how do you personally feel? Because it's interesting. I don't personally feel at all flustered or it doesn't get under my skin. If somebody says, Mel, you work too much, you're selfish. You should never put your own ambition and your own dreams ahead of your children. And to that, I say I disagree because

(00:27:44):

The whole point of raising your kids is to actually raise them so that they can go on and create lives of their own. I mean, they leave. They go build their own lives. And I don't buy into this notion that a great parent, whether it's a mom or dad, sacrifices everything for their children.

Kellie Gerardi (00:28:03):

Agree completely. What I've learned, and look, I think mom guilt is sort of a universal feeling. I mean, you let me know if you haven't felt it, but I think there are so many times where I have gotten up to leave and I feel like this was more of a chapter in my life earlier when these comments were first confronting me where there were mornings where I was getting up to go catch a plane and my daughter is crying and saying, don't go. But what helped me and what I was able to separate was guilt versus regret. Because if I really didn't want to go, I wouldn't go. But I did feel like this was okay for me to give myself permission. I was still crying on the plane because I was missing something that was important to my daughter and she was crying in the morning, but I also knew she's going to be fine the minute that she gets off to school, it's all going to be okay. And I was able to distinguish between feeling guilt over that moment versus feeling regret about going in the first place. And I don't feel regret, and I never feel regret, but the guilt I think is something that is still, and my daughter's seven, and so she's at the age where she can talk and emotionally manipulate and say her piece about, are we going to do this? Are you going to be there for that? Are you going to be volunteering in the classroom? So in those moments, I feel guilt but not regret.

Mel Robbins (00:29:27):

That's interesting. I think the way that I've handled it with our three kids is that I think two things can be true at once.

(00:29:35):

I think you can wish you can be in two places at once and you can choose which one you need to be in. I think you can wish that you were not missing something and recognize that there are decisions that you are making that have a longer term benefit, that are important decisions to make. And I think you can have your kids be disappointed by something and still show up for yourself and comfort them in having those feelings. And I don't think you're human if you don't wrestle with or grapple with which decision is the decision. That is the one that's right for me in this moment. But I have really, I think worked very hard to not take that sledgehammer that society has put in our hands and hammer myself with mom guilt because it doesn't serve me and it doesn't serve my children when I feel bad about the decisions that I'm making that doesn't make them feel better. And so to me, really wrestling that fact that two things are always going to be true. There are going to be things that you do in your life, whether you're a mom, a dad, whether you are, you're not, that disappoint other people.

(00:30:48):

And the more that you create space for somebody to have the feelings that they have and to validate those feelings, but to really double down on the decisions that you need to make that you proud or happy or frankly, there are just years that I had to pay the bills.

Kellie Gerardi (00:31:03):

Yeah, absolutely.

Mel Robbins (00:31:04):

You can cry all you want, but I got to go to work because if I don't go to work, you aren't playing soccer. We don't have groceries on the table. And so if I feel guilty about that, what good does that do?

Kellie Gerardi (00:31:15):

Exactly.

Mel Robbins (00:31:16):

And so I guess I just often ask myself, yes, the feeling may be valid, but does marinating in it serve me? And usually it doesn't.

Kellie Gerardi (00:31:27):

Yeah. And I refuse to marinate in it. I'm susceptible sometimes to being triggered by a comment, even when I know it's something that I reject completely. But in those moments, I either lash out or I move on and I pick one, I'm going to fight or I'm going to close it out.

Mel Robbins (00:31:45):

How do you deal with the criticism? How do you not let it get to you? If people are constantly saying, you got to pick being a mom or an astronaut, why are you doing this? If you have a daughter that's down on earth, why do you keep putting yourself in danger like this that's not responsible? How do you not let that get to you?

Kellie Gerardi (00:32:02):

What I do try to keep in mind is these are not the opinions being shared and the sort of criticism being lobbed at me is not coming from people that I would look to for advice about my career either. And they're not coming from people who have my best intentions at heart. And so I really have to qualify that criticism before I let myself absorb it. And that's been something that, especially in committing to existing online and sharing so much, I've had to draw that boundary and sort of put up my little fence of protection to protect my peace, and I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. That's the other thing. It's like my life isn't a town square. And I think what's been really helpful in recent years is I found my people. And so now I experience actually knock on wood, so much less of that. I have a community that sort of understands me and knows who I am and sees me for who I am and who support me through the ups, the downs, the plateaus, all of it. And so it makes it a lot easier to be transparent. But prior to that, when there was some of this criticism, I really, really had to disengage myself from it and remind myself like, this is not someone who knows me, who cares about me, who is coming from a place of good intent, nor is it someone I would actually be looking to for advice.

Mel Robbins (00:33:27):

Since we've been talking about criticism, the thing that has helped me the most with dealing with it is this let them theory. It was such a game changer for me to understand that it's a complete waste of energy to even engage, especially with people online that are criticizing you because there's a big difference between somebody who's seeking to understand versus somebody who's seeking to tear down. And the more that I started saying, let them say what they're going to say, let them misunderstand what I'm doing, let them make up lies, let them do whatever they're going to do. Because I can't control what strangers online or even people that I care about might say or think or believe about me. As long as I know what's true and I know my intention, I'm good. It's so true. It's so powerful. Has anyone close to you really criticized or questioned the decision to go to space?

Kellie Gerardi (00:34:22):

No, not in a way that was coming from bad faith. I would say there have certainly been concerns, and those were coming from a place of good faith. I think understanding the difference of someone being concerned because they love you so much and they want the best for you and they're scared for you is very different than someone coming at you because they don't like you and they don't like the choices that you've made or the life that you're living.

Mel Robbins (00:34:48):

Does your husband worry about it?

Kellie Gerardi (00:34:50):

He did. I mean, he worried in the sense, of course, it's an anxiety filled day for immediate family, but he was so immensely proud of me and so moved for me because he knew that this was more than a decade in the making. This was my big dream in life that he always, I mean, he is the cheerleader to the point of delusion in my ear, on my shoulder, you can do anything. You could run for president. And I'm like, okay, slow down, but this is someone who just cheers me on.

Kellie Gerardi (00:36:17):

For nearly eight years since my daughter was born, I have struggled with secondary infertility. I have struggled with recurrent pregnancy loss. So the journey of infertility and loss is not new to me, but sharing it in real time certainly is. I think I reached this point where I was sharing so much about my personal life and my work that it felt remiss to not be talking about the 1000 pound elephant that was sitting on top of me in my life. I think that is such an insidious part of IVF is that it becomes so all consuming. I mean mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, no matter how full your life is, this becomes the A Plot

(00:37:06):

And everything else kind of falls into the back burner. And it's devastating sometimes when that happens. This podcast, this episode in particular, I had to cancel two times because of IVF events that were outside of my control first because the transfer timing got moved then because I had a miscarriage. It's just everything in your life falls to the back burner. And when I was thinking about sharing this, I was thinking about the fact that this fertility odyssey is something that so many women navigate invisibly and still show up to everything else in their life because they have to. And I really wanted to de-stigmatize that and shed a little bit of light on this topic. And what it actually looks like for someone that you might not expect is going through this and to show other women who are that they're not alone.

Mel Robbins (00:37:57):

I always think about, and I see this in your story, this truth, that hiding something or suffering in silence isn't a sign of strength. It's a form of self-destruction that the weight of the thing that you're not talking about slowly destroys you. And so for somebody who's not familiar with what it's like to go through IVF, what are the kinds of experiences that you were documenting online and sharing with people?

Kellie Gerardi (00:38:29):

So for me, the first round of IVF and prior to an egg retrieval where embryos are made, you have a round of shots that you're taking every single day where you're sort of mixing your own medications, you're injecting them into your stomach, you are traveling with your medications, you're doing it on a very specific time. Your life is revolving around this and your hormones are completely out of whack. You are at the mercy of the hormonal reactions that are happening as a result of these medications. And so it is just everything is in technicolor in the worst way. And then you go into your egg retrieval and you are hoping to get a high number. And that first time I did, I got 26 eggs retrieved. I'm like, this is amazing, and I felt so great about it. And then the attrition starts, okay, well how many fertilized? How many made it to five days to the blast assist stage? And then how many of those after the genetic testing? And after all of that last round, I was left with one single embryo and I was shattered. I was so disappointed. I was going into the initial transfer attempt where you hope that a pregnancy results just thinking like, oh my God, please, I have this one chance. It was just so much anticipatory stress.

(00:39:48):

And then for nine weeks after, there was this miraculous joy because I did get pregnant. It worked, and I shared that in real time with everyone really. And I knew going in that not every IVF story ends in a pregnancy or ends in a success. I had committed to myself, I am sharing this transparently, the good, the bad or the heartbreaking. And my community does make that very easy to show up in an authentic way. So I knew that going in,