When Life is Life-ing

[00:00:00] Jessy Grossman: Cause the other part of what happened in 2023 is probably even, it is more difficult than the fertility stuff. So I guess I should give a trigger warning that if suicide is very triggering for you, then you might want to shut off this episode. Or skip ahead. But I think, I don’t know, guys, I don’t know if I like, I’ve been very big, but I vaguely mentioned that I don’t have like the greatest.

[00:00:29] Jessy Grossman: Family don’t have like the greatest upbringing. I don’t think I’ve been specific at all, but specifically with my mom, we had been estranged for almost 10 years.

[00:00:49] Jessy Grossman: Hey guys, what is going on? My name is Jesse Grossman. Welcome back to the women in. If you are new, welcome. I appreciate it if you guys were to subscribe throw us a like, and share the show if you enjoy it. I appreciate you guys being here. It helps the show. So this week’s episode. Ta-da!

[00:01:16] Jessy Grossman: It’s going to be a solo episode. It is just me, and I’m going to be honest, this is a little scary for me. This is an episode that I have been wanting to record for a long time. But haven’t. I have been worried about how to say what I want to say. Like, what do I even want to say in the first place? Life has been living and it’s been a complicated confusing, sad, stressful, crazy last few months.

[00:01:55] Jessy Grossman: It’s been months. It’s been more than that, but we’re probably going to focus just on the last few months. And I just want to always be real with you guys. This podcast is meant to talk about influencer marketing and it’s also a women-only group. And I want to lean into that. Also, I think it’s really important.

[00:02:12] Jessy Grossman: There’s a reason we are not people at influencer marketing. So if you are just in the mood for influencer marketing content and you’re here and you’re like life is not life and for me and I don’t care and I’m not into it, that is fine. Trigger warnings all over the place because we’re going to get into it.

[00:02:30] Jessy Grossman: So if you are not in the headspace for it. Go and listen to our past episodes. We have 200 plus wonderful episodes, including the last few weeks of shows where we’ve had wonderful interviews and guests, but this week we’re gonna get into some shit. So, uh, if you’re in the headspace and you care, I hope you stick around.

[00:02:50] Jessy Grossman: So without further ado, let’s get into it.

[00:02:56] Jessy Grossman: This show is sponsored by Women in Influencer Marketing, better known as WIM, the best online community for the creator economy. You will meet fellow influencer marketers, you’ll meet brands, you’ll meet talent agencies to talk shop, get hired, and even find a mentor. When you become a member, do not forget to sign up.

[00:03:16] Jessy Grossman: Check out all of our incredible resources. For example, we have dozens of masterclasses from the top voices, TikTok, YouTube, award-winning agencies, and women who are paving the way for us all. So if you want the chance to network with FooSoo and Influencer Marketing, check out what it takes to become a member.

[00:03:37] Jessy Grossman: Make more money and have fun doing it. Visit IamWim. com slash join. That’s I A M W M. I I M dot com slash join today. And I so look forward to seeing you more around the community. All right, life is life. I kind of don’t even know where to begin. So for any of you guys who have. Been going through it. And I’ve spoken to many of you in 2023 that like, that was a tough year.

[00:04:09] Jessy Grossman: I am right there with you. It was a tough year for me. It started when my cat of 16 years who I’ve had since my sophomore year of college passed away. That was so heartbreaking. And then, I mean, there’s like a subsequent, like all these, just all these things that just kept. on happening. And I consider myself a fairly resilient person.

[00:04:37] Jessy Grossman: Like I would definitely describe myself like that, but I even got to the point of it was just past my normal level of stress. And I was like, wow, I don’t quite know if I’m as resilient as I thought. Cause like, And things were just affecting me like I was feeling it, but it was pretty intense things. So, yeah.

[00:04:59] Jessy Grossman: So one of the big things I guess that happened last year, there are two major events. One of them I know I’ve shared on this show to a certain extent, or just all the fertility treatments that I’m going through and have been going through now for over a year. It takes so much time to even get started with all of that.

[00:05:18] Jessy Grossman: So even after sort of going through this process for. like a year and a half. I’ve only had two IUIs and I only really feel like I’m sort of now getting the traction and the momentum and I’m in the right place and I’m doing all the, I’m in the best hands now than I was before. So I’ve had two IUIs.

[00:05:41] Jessy Grossman: The first one was I think last year. Yeah, it was last year for sure. Was it? I can’t remember. Anyway, it was a few months ago and it didn’t work. It didn’t go through. Wasn’t, I mean, I wasn’t hugely disappointed only because I had heard from so many women and knew the statistics of an IUI.

[00:06:03] Jessy Grossman: Let me pause because I’m so aware that, like, I didn’t know any of this stuff, even that acronym. I was like, IU what? Before. So for any of you guys who are listening and interested in learning about fertility stuff or going through it or just don’t know, I’m not going to give you a whole history lesson for sure or a whole anatomy lesson, but IUI is like the less invasive fertility treatment.

[00:06:24] Jessy Grossman: So what my experience was, I’ll just share my experience, is that I’ve had all these tests. Tests upon tests on tests. at a fertility clinic that I’m going to here in New York. And they get you to a point where, for me, my periods have always been irregular. I’ve never really been regular. And what they discovered is that although I was ovulating, my follicles were teeny teeny tiny.

[00:06:50] Jessy Grossman: And so, What my like treatment plan was, was to go on medication to help regulate my periods and also make my follicles large enough so that they can hopefully become a baby. So that’s been the plan. I’ve been on a couple of different medications. I’ve been, I tried letrozole. Didn’t work so well for me.

[00:07:14] Jessy Grossman: And then I tried Clomid again. I had tried it at a previous doctor, but it was just the gynecologist. And if anyone is going through fertility treatments, I would just highly, highly recommend stopping going to a gynecologist about it. You’ve got to go to a fertility clinic because like gynecologists just like, they don’t.

[00:07:34] Jessy Grossman: Handle, like there’s so much more than a fertility clinic knows and not even like knows, but like that, they will do for you more testing. It’s just a specialized place and it’s a very specialized issue. So I wasted a lot of time going to a gynecologist trying to solve this problem and I wish I had gone to a fertility clinic much sooner.

[00:07:55] Jessy Grossman: So now I feel like I’m in good hands, better hands. Good hands. And, uh, yeah, so an IUI is basically after you, I had like a round of medication, you’ve monitoring every like two to three days after the medication to see that the follicle is getting larger. And once it gets to the size of like a viable follicle for fertilization, you go in and you have a procedure done where your partner goes.

[00:08:24] Jessy Grossman: The morning of very early. It’s all so early. You guys. Oh my God. Everything is. 7 to 8 a.m. Everything. So you go in, they like to get a specimen and then you go and have like a very minor procedure done to insert it. And like, it’s all so imperative that it’s all timed out to like the exact, like within hours of when you ovulate and you hope that it works.

[00:08:51] Jessy Grossman: So the first time I did it, it wasn’t successful. My God, I wasn’t surprised The successful percentages of IUIs, I want to say it’s like, it’s less than 20 percent for sure. And I think it might be even significantly less than that. So I wasn’t shocked, but we’re trying to go the more conservative route for economic reasons, for health reasons, before we jumped to anything like IVF, for example, which I don’t even know if we would do.

[00:09:18] Jessy Grossman: We haven’t gotten there yet, but, and then I had my second IUI in January. No, it had to have been before that. I’m so bad with time. You guys, I’m terrible with time. It doesn’t matter. But I had my second IUI and I got pregnant, but this is not a pregnancy announcement video because I ended up miscarrying.

[00:09:39] Jessy Grossman: That was a huge blow. And it was like another thing that I wasn’t like when it happened. And it happened very, very early on. I wasn’t as affected early on as I was later because I’m fortunate enough to have known many women who have had miscarriages and they don’t talk about it enough. No, no one talks about it enough, but I happen to be privy to like a handful of Frickin angels who shared this information because had I not been privy to it, I probably would have been way more heartbroken.

[00:10:16] Jessy Grossman: It didn’t hit me until later. I think I don’t know. Due to my upbringing and just things that I’ve been through, I don’t process things right away at all. I’m usually in survival mode. So for me, I just know that about myself. It takes me a while to process things and this was no different, but I had a miscarriage.

[00:10:35] Jessy Grossman: And it sucked. And it could have been so much worse. But I hate when people say that because it’s still a tragedy. It’s still terrible. And it’s a loss. And it was my first time getting pregnant. And I’ll never have that again. The excitement that I felt, I feel like I don’t know that I’ll be able to let myself go.

[00:10:55] Jessy Grossman: Go there again, because I’ll be thinking, what if, you know, what if I have another miscarriage or what if something goes wrong And I’ll, I let myself go there that first time, even though in the back of my mind I knew like something could happen. Of course. Uh, well, you know, we all know that like within the first trimester, so many things can happen, but I really let myself go there because I wanted to, and I had worked so hard to get to that point, and I had a miscarriage, and then about a week after.

[00:11:24] Jessy Grossman: The blood tests just were sort of like looking not, they weren’t looking promising, and like my doctor said, you know, this is happening. You are having a miscarriage. I didn’t know what to expect. They kind of give you the option of whether you want to take a pill and just sort of like, Through a pill, have it pass in a timed way, and I think theoretically more quickly, but I say theoretically because I didn’t choose that route.

[00:11:54] Jessy Grossman: I sort of had this idea in my head that I wanted to experience this. I’m getting so emotional right now. I wanted to, it was like a baby that I’ve always wanted and I wanted to sort of give it the respect of not just passing it, you know, through as quickly as possible and just getting it over with.

[00:12:17] Jessy Grossman: Right. Like I, I wanted to sort of give this baby the respect that I, and love that it deserved by just having it go through this natural process. So I chose to go that route. And it took a few days to, like, feel anything, but we had tickets to a comedy show, of all things. This one night, I’m like a huge Tom Segura fan.

[00:12:46] Jessy Grossman: I don’t know if any of you guys listen to his comedy. He’s so fucking funny. We had tickets to Tom Segura. a show in New Jersey, like a random Wednesday night. And I just started going through it and having like really painful cramps and it lasted for a few hours. But by the time I got to the show, they stopped and that was it.

[00:13:11] Jessy Grossman: And that was what it was for me to have a miscarriage. And of course, there’s like, you know, Bleeding and et cetera, et cetera. And I didn’t get my next period for a couple of months after that. And so now I’m in the process of my next round of an IUI. I’m so hesitant to talk about this on the podcast in real time because I just know that it can all take a long time.

[00:13:37] Jessy Grossman: And I don’t want people like thinking, you know, like, Oh, like timing it out basically. And like knowing. within a certain amount of weeks that if I don’t share something that didn’t happen or whatever the fuck, but I’m just, I don’t know. It’s part of my story. So I’m sharing it with you guys. It sucks.

[00:13:55] Jessy Grossman: You know, it sucks going through this fertility journey for as long as we have been. a rollercoaster. You just like, I feel like I have to relinquish so much control where I’m not, I am such a control freak. I just am. I know this about myself. Try to do better, try to improve that. But I’m just so much of a control freak.

[00:14:17] Jessy Grossman: So it’s been like a huge mind fuck because going through this process like it’s something that I want so bad and then I’m not getting it. And then I’m wondering like, is this going to be worth it? Like, am I subjecting myself? To this, like, turmoil and this insanity, this crazy train, because like, I 100, 000 percent want this.

[00:14:39] Jessy Grossman: I start doubting myself. I start questioning my decisions and we’re continuing going through it. I guess I had heard from a lot of people that going through fertility treatments are, it’s like, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One of the hardest things that many people go through. I’ve heard that from many people and you brace yourself for it.

[00:14:57] Jessy Grossman: If you have that information, everybody’s experience is just different. I will say that the month that we got pregnant, I was able to honor my desire to downshift. Things with work with whim really because I had been traveling so much before and I felt like my stress was so high and I wasn’t able to time it out to get all the testing done and I just wasn’t prioritizing it.

[00:15:24] Jessy Grossman: I was having fun traveling for work. I miss traveling for work. I love doing that. And so I was able to successfully like for two solid months, November and December, I didn’t travel and I downshifted and I prioritize this. And that’s the month that I got pregnant. It’s really hard to downshift your whole life for this unforeseen, unforeseen amount of time.

[00:15:49] Jessy Grossman: I don’t know how long this is going to take. And it’s a big mind. It’s such a mindfuck in every way, shape, and form. So that. Is I guess one of the major stresses and this is such a hard-like conversation for me to have and podcast for me to record part of me wonders if I’m even going to publish this, we’ll see the quick question for you guys.

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[00:16:54] Jessy Grossman: And a good lawyer can be invaluable. But what about all those other partnerships? other contracts that are for 5, 000, like 1, 000. That’s where Kavya comes in to support you and your team through AI to process your contracts, to gain a competitive edge with data-driven insights and automatic AI-driven headlines.

[00:17:19] Jessy Grossman: It’s game-changing tech and it’s founded by three brilliant women. So you know why I’m out here. supporting it, get time back in your day because caveat will help you with the part of your business that may be your least favorite. So head to our website, it’s I am whim. com slash caveat for a completely free trial.

[00:17:42] Jessy Grossman: I-A-M-W-I-I m.com/k A-V-E-A-T. I hope you guys love it as much as I do. The other part of what happened in 2023 is probably even, it is more difficult than the fertility stuff. So I guess I should give a trigger warning that if suicide is something that. is very triggering for you, then you might want to shut off this episode or skip ahead.

[00:18:09] Jessy Grossman: But I think, I don’t know, guys. I don’t know if I’ve like, I’ve been very vague, but I’ve vaguely mentioned that I don’t have the greatest family. I don’t have the greatest upbringing. I don’t think I’ve been specific at all, but specifically with my mom, we’d been estranged for like, Almost 10 years.

[00:18:33] Jessy Grossman: She and I, I had to just set that boundary. I don’t want to, maybe I’ll get into some of that, of the reasons why in just a bit, but, yeah, we had been estranged for about 10 years. I always judged. It, to a certain extent, definitely thought people were judging me because it’s like, oh my God, like, you’re a woman.

[00:18:55] Jessy Grossman: How do you not have a relationship with your mother? Like, what’s wrong with you? And if you don’t, what does that mean? But I know the reasons why. I know what I was protecting myself from. And I know That it was the right decision to make as hard as it was for 10 years to do that. I had no choice.

[00:19:18] Jessy Grossman: So that was the decision that I made. And then at the end of, it wasn’t at the end in the middle of 2023, after a whim event that went so well, it went so well. I came home and was just like on cloud nine talking about how. Successful it was, how fun it was, great time, bah, bah, bah. And then the next day, my boyfriend at the time, we’re now engaged, asked me to come upstairs to our attic, so he, like, it’s where his office is, and wanted to talk to me about something.

[00:19:53] Jessy Grossman: And. He told me that my mom killed herself and he knew the day before, but he didn’t want to ruin, you know, this event for me. And he knew how important that night was for me. So he was sitting on that information for like 12 hours and thank goodness, my aunt and uncle who like knew what happened, they called him first instead of calling me because I.

[00:20:21] Jessy Grossman: That would have been, that was the right move. So he told me that my mom killed herself. Where do I even begin? It has been quite the journey. It’s been many months since that happened, but I honestly only really feel like I’m finally like feeling it now. Very recently in the past, like a few weeks, a couple of weeks, even for months, I was just mad.

[00:20:48] Jessy Grossman: Mad. I was pissed. The way that she did it. It was just like a big fuck you, which is very on it on brands for her, and I was just mad and I, I was experiencing and still am like so much anxiety. I’m like grinding my teeth and I’m like, never done that before. And I’m so anxious all the time. Like more like, yeah.

[00:21:14] Jessy Grossman: You know, I have, I’m a huge proponent for therapy, so I’ve been in therapy for decades at this point, and I have a therapist who I’m, I love, I love, she’s amazing, and she’s just like, this is, you’re experiencing anxiety because you’re not grieving, you’re not dealing with or processing what’s going on, so I knew that cerebrally, and in my mind, I’m like, I want to process this, I want to like, I need to grieve, I want to grieve, I just want to get through this, like, there’s, in my mind, I wanted to, and my, heart, my body, I don’t know, just like wasn’t cooperating at all.

[00:21:48] Jessy Grossman: I wasn’t, I don’t know. I was just in this mad angry place and I wasn’t feeling much for months. And then finally, I am just now starting, to grieve her loss. It’s incredibly complicated. Like I said, we had been estranged for like 10 years. I’m grieving. the fact that I never had a mother who gave me what I needed.

[00:22:15] Jessy Grossman: I’m grieving like the fact that like I just never will. It’s very final. I’m grieving that never get to say goodbye. I’m grieving like the trauma of how she did it. And there’s so much, there’s so much. So I guess like when life is life thing and you. Wanna be a productive member of society, huh? And you wanna run a business?

[00:22:41] Jessy Grossman: How the fuck are you supposed to do that? I feel like I’ve been doing it fairly well, but I honestly feel like it’s to the detriment of dealing with any of the personal things that are going on in my life. For me, I am like a pro at being in like. a survival mode. Um, so while other people might be on the floor and a mess and not able to work, I love working because it’s like my safe space.

[00:23:11] Jessy Grossman: It’s the place where I can just distract the hell out of myself and have. a positive result. Things are good. Things are successful. Like things are, it’s all good over there. It’s all roses over on that side. It’s when I deal with the traumas that I’ve been through and the garbage that is, you know, parts of my personal life, that’s when it’s challenging.

[00:23:39] Jessy Grossman: So we’ll just say that like, like, I don’t want this to be a conversation of me giving. Any advice whatsoever? It’s just like me sharing my experience with you guys, but I’m just on a long ass journey trying to work through all this. And I guess take the appropriate time that I need to just work through it and process it Like feel better and like do my personal life, you know, it gets complicated sort of, it gets hard for me.

[00:24:14] Jessy Grossman: I should say it gets hard for me to prioritize myself. I love when because I get to uplift all these other people and help all these other people and support them. I enjoy it. Like it’s, it’s something that I genuinely enjoy. I’m like, I have the luck. I’m the luckiest girl in the world because I have the best job in the world.

[00:24:30] Jessy Grossman: I like creating this. Yeah. Whole life for myself like a job that no one has and it’s something that I’ve architected that it’s like all the things that I enjoy. I’m very lucky, very lucky to have that. I think the challenge for me is. Peeling myself away from it because that’s the easy part for me and the enjoyable part, right?

[00:24:53] Jessy Grossman: Of course, it’s easy because I love it and I enjoy it. But when life is living and when your personal life is a little bit in shambles and shit happens, it’s important and difficult for me, at least. To prioritize dealing with it and processing it. So that’s where I’m at. That is the life update. I’m also on this journey to connect with more people in like a meaningful way.

[00:25:22] Jessy Grossman: I. Because of this recent loss of my mom, and I’m also estranged from my dad, by the way, I’ve just had a huge, I just, I didn’t have the family that a lot of people did that a lot of people do. I didn’t have great parents. So I am on this like journey to make some more meaningful relationships in my life and know that like, it’s okay to like.

[00:25:50] Jessy Grossman: Need a hug. This sounds so stupid and so cheesy. It makes me feel uncomfortable a lot of times when people are like really nice to me or like an elongated hug because they know I’m going through something like that intimacy freaks me out because I’ve had these intimate relationships like with parents, for example, who’ve dropped the ball.

[00:26:16] Jessy Grossman: Right. And so that idea of having that intimacy is so scary because like. God forbid they suck me in and I, and then they fuck me over cause I’ve been fucked over so many times. So many times, so many times I got stories on stories for you guys, but that’s my journey right now. So, God, I have been like wanting.

[00:26:37] Jessy Grossman: To put my thoughts down for you guys and share this, but I’ve been nervous and like, just I’m like, what? What am I? What do I say? Like, what? I don’t even know where to start or how to say it. I hope any of this made sense. I hope that something positive comes from this. If the very least, just to know that, like, God forbid you’ve experienced any of these things.

[00:27:00] Jessy Grossman: Garbage things that I have that, like, you’re certainly not alone. But I also think that, like, I don’t want this to be an episode of, like, you know, freaking toxic positivity that I hate, which is like, everything is going to be just fine. It’s like, no, like, I think it probably will be. I like, but it’s just being present and just saying, like, right now in the moment that I’m in, like, this is hard right now in the moment.

[00:27:23] Jessy Grossman: I am feeling fucking sad, depressed, anxious, all the things and life is living. So I don’t even want to have commentary on it because I just want to be present and hope that by being so I can work through it and sort it out in my mind because there’s. It’s pretty heavy stuff. So that’s where I’m at you guys.

[00:27:46] Jessy Grossman: I did it. I got through this. Oh my god. I appreciate you listening, I appreciate you caring and or being interested in the topic. I hope that if you know anybody going through any of these things you please give them some grace. These are not easy things to talk about. These are two topics that no one talks about very rarely because like there’s a lot of shame around them, around infertility and suicide.

[00:28:19] Jessy Grossman: Oh my God. These are two topics that are so shameful for people. And I, I don’t want to fall into that. It’s certainly not shameful for me, thank God, mostly because I’ve had people who have talked about these things and have gone through them and exposed me to them. No one wants to be part of either one of those clubs, but here I am.

[00:28:40] Jessy Grossman: The shame isn’t there for me. It’s just., it’s a bitch to process all of this and to just be very present and going through it all. So this is, this is that moment. So I’m on the journey, I’m in the process of going through some really heavy stuff and that is my story. Thank you guys again so much for listening and I hope you took something from this episode.

[00:29:02] Jessy Grossman: If you did leave a comment, send me a DM, send me a Slack message like I would be. It’s nice to hear from you guys, especially with such a hard topic to talk about. I hope that something positive comes from doing this and I will see you guys next week. If you enjoyed this episode, we gotta have you back.

[00:29:24] Jessy Grossman: Check out our website for more ways to get involved, including all the information you need about joining our collective. You can check out all the information at IamWim. com. Leave us a review, a rating, but the most important thing that we can ask you is, That’s what we’re going to do is to share this podcast.

[00:29:41] Jessy Grossman: Thanks for listening. Tune in next week.