That's exactly what today's guest discovered.

Laura Weppler is a fertility support professional, certified fertility doula, and registered nurse with over 12 years inside the fertility system.

She's also a woman who navigated her own deeply traumatic pregnancy loss, multiple failed embryo transfers, and the relentless emotional spiral that no amount of clinical knowledge could protect her from. Now through her practice, Navigating Fertility with Laura, she's building the bridge between the medical and emotional sides of care that she desperately needed herself.

In this conversation, Sharna and Laura explore what it really means to move through fertility treatment and pregnancy loss without adequate support, and why even the most informed women are still falling through the cracks.

In this episode we cover:

• Laura's personal journey through IUIs, a traumatic miscarriage, multiple surgeries, a torn cervix, and failed IVF transfers — and why working inside the fertility clinic didn't protect her from the isolation
• Why ignorance truly is bliss with a first pregnancy — and what changes forever after loss
• The moment a doctor shamed a patient on a recorded call, and what it revealed about how women are being silenced inside the system
• Why the Google rabbit hole never gives you what you're actually looking for — and what does
• How fertility treatment strips couples of intimacy, identity, and joy — and what it takes to come back to yourself
• The case for building a village around yourself — and why one provider is never enough
• What on-demand, text-based support actually looks like in practice, and why it changes everything for women mid-cycle

Connect with Laura:

• Instagram: @navigatingfertilitywithlaura
• Website: www.navigatingyourfertility.com
• Email: laura@navigatingyourfertility.com
• Podcast: Fertility Nurses Unfiltered — launching March 3rd @fertilitynursesunfiltered

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

Follow & DM Sharna to Enquire or Apply for the certification

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps more women find these conversations when they need them most.

In this episode, I'm joined by Jules Dwyer; hypnotherapist, rapid transformational therapy (RTT) practitioner, and mother of two boys conceived through donor egg IVF, for a conversation about the deeply layered grief that lives inside a fertility journey.

Jules shares what five years, 13 IVF cycles, and three pregnancy losses actually looked like from the inside, including the part we rarely talk about: the profound attachment that forms to embryos in a lab, the grief that accumulates with every failed cycle, and the quiet devastation of losing a pregnancy within a process that tells you to just keep going.

We talk about:

• Why doing mode can become a form of dissociation — and how Jules spent years "project-managing" her fertility instead of actually processing it
• The turning point that shifted her from talk therapy (cycling in her head) to RTT and somatic work (connecting back to her body)
• What the grief inside an IVF cycle really looks like — from follicle scans to the two-week wait to the phone call that ends it
• The layered loss of transitioning to donor egg conception, and the long surrender that finally made space for it
• Why our nervous system can turn against pregnancy when we're not supported through loss
• What surrender actually is — and why it's not one moment, but a series of tiny, uncomfortable micro-movements

Jules also speaks to the experience of parenting after loss, and why two pink lines don't erase the fear that was built across years of trying.

If you've ever felt like the losses inside your fertility journey didn't "count enough" to grieve, or like talk therapy was leaving something important unaddressed, this episode is for you.

Connect with Jules: Instagram: @julesdwyer_

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

If this episode resonated with you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts — it helps this work reach the women who need it most.

The April cohort of the Pregnancy Loss & Trauma-Informed Specialist Certification is open now — and it starts April 6th.

Five spots. Application only.

DM me HERE

This is one of the most important conversations this podcast has had. Because childlessness not by choice is one of the most complex, layered, and misunderstood forms of grief — and it is almost never talked about.

In this episode, Sharna sits down with Judi Johnson, certified grief coach and founder of Embrace Your Future, based in Auckland, New Zealand. Judi specialises in helping people navigate the grief of childlessness not by choice — and she speaks from both professional expertise and lived experience.

Together, they explore what it actually means to reach the point of "I cannot do this anymore" — whether that comes after years of pregnancy loss, failed fertility treatment, or life circumstances that made motherhood impossible — and what happens next, when the world around you still doesn't understand why you're not just trying again.

In this episode:

• Why grief on the reproductive journey starts far earlier than most people realise — long before the decision to stop
• The compounding layers of grief, guilt, hope, and loss that build through fertility treatment and pregnancy loss
• What it means to reach the decision to stop trying — and why that decision is not small, not simple, and not made lightly
• The myth of acceptance: why "you need to accept this" is the wrong thing to say, and what actually helps instead
• The profound loss of identity and sense of self when the future you imagined no longer exists
• How to protect yourself emotionally — in the workplace, at family events, around pregnancy announcements — when the world keeps coming
• Finding safe outlets for anger, grief, and emotional overwhelm
• Why you cannot wait to be rescued, and what it looks like to start doing the work yourself
• The unexpected truth about community — and how belonging eventually becomes possible again

Resources mentioned:

Judi Johnson — Embrace Your Future Website: www.embraceyourfuture.net

Free download: Coping mechanisms for emotional overwhelm

Free download: Breaking free from people pleasing

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/embraceyourfuture_by_judi

Facebook group: Childless Not By Choice community

Connect with Sharna: International Institute for Reproductive Loss & Trauma Leadership: https://www.instagram.com/reproductivelossleadership/

If this episode landed for you, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It helps this conversation reach the women who need it most.