7 Ways Awe Helps People Living with Infertility

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Awe is such a powerful emotion that it often defies description. It’s more of an ‘I know it when I feel it’ kind of thing. So it’s impressive to think that psychology researchers have pinned it down enough to study it. And I’m so grateful they did because what they discovered is that feeling awe can be very beneficial for your mental and physical health.

The impact of infertility on our minds and bodies is no joke. There is so much pressure to be perfectly healthy and stress-free in order to increase the chances of success. When a month comes and goes without a positive pregnancy test, it’s hard to not feel guilt about the cupcake we ate or the week when work was really stressful. These perceived failures can add up to persistent anxiety and depression, creating a widening gap between our current state of health and the healthy habits that we strive toward.

Windy Ezzell, a professional counselor based in North Carolina notes the way infertility affects the physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual, and financial aspects of life (read: The Impact of Infertility on Women’s Mental Health). As every month passes, she notes, and procedures get more demanding and intrusive, the mental and physical toll of infertility only gets worse.

As we struggle more and more with the health impacts of infertility, it also becomes harder and harder to experience awe. Our minds are preoccupied with appointments and test results, our bodies bloated and bruised from needles. We withdraw from awe-inspiring activities, delaying vacations for treatment and skipping out on events to avoid the heartache of seeing our friends enjoying something we cannot have no matter how hard we try. Depression clouds our senses. Yet I think it’s precisely because of the darkness that people living with infertility are in desperate need of regular doses of awe.

Can experiences of awe improve fertility? I would love to see the research on that. But, until then, this isn’t another shortcut to success. It’s not a secret weapon. The journey itself is hard. And I think awe just helps us to keep going.

“Brief moments of awe are as good for your mind and body as anything you might do.”

- Dacher Keltner Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life

When I first experienced ectopic pregnancy loss from IVF after three years of trying, I knew that I would need a new plan to continue on. I started by making small changes that added up over time to dramatically impact how I coped and lived with infertility. My second ectopic, just twelve months later, was much more dangerous, and, yet, I found that I was actually mentally and physically much more capable of dealing with it the second time around. Reflecting back on what changed over those twelve months, a more cohesive picture started to emerge: I had found awe.

I delayed my second embryo transfer to travel to Hawaii, spending my days feeling awestruck at the edge of the ocean. I would read every morning and while this itself didn’t always lead to awe, the habit usually produced at least one ‘a-ha’ moment that would help me see the world in a new way (awe) in nearly every book I picked up.

It is in one such book, Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life, that Dacher Keltner maps some of the ways in which awe can have a positive impact on a person’s health. He shows how awe can quiet our self-critical ego, can open our mind, can nurture compassion, and can build resilience. I’ve adapted these benefits, based on my own experiences, to identify seven ways that I think awe can help people living with infertility.

1. Address the ‘Awe Deficit’ of Infertility

   Painfully, for those of us living with infertility, we are ultimately pursuing one of the greatest sources of awe: creating new life and watching it grow. In fact, Keltner recognizes the life-and-death cycle as one of the eight sources of awe in the world. Yet no matter what we do, what sacrifices we make, it remains out of reach; our bodies won’t let us in on the big secret. We listen to our friends with kids as they tell us about the magic in even the most mundane moments, trying desperately to imagine what this might feel like. We are left instead feeling envious and hurt, wondering why the universe deemed them worthy of the club and not us.
   
   As our minds increasingly become singularly focused on this one goal, I think we can experience a deficit of awe where our baseline becomes a hyper awareness of what we lack in our lives; both a child and a purpose. Our gaze turns almost entirely inwards. We are surrounded by a fog of uncertainty, often unable to even know if we are making any progress, getting any closer to achieving our dream.
   
   Having lived life through this lens for years, I know how painful it can be. The greatest single antidote for me has been the pursuit of other forms of awe, that is, anything that evokes “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world” (Keltner). He goes on to identify seven additional places where awe might be hiding: moral beauty, collective effervescence, nature, music, visual design, spirituality, and epiphanies. For me, sometimes its dancing to a 90s playlist in my kitchen, immediately transporting me back to a time when the thought of kids was hardly on my mind (music). Or it’s a hike through the forest (nature) with my partner, our strides naturally falling into sync (collective effervescence). Sometimes it requires a big commitment of time and money, like a trip to experience somewhere new. But often it can be found in the day-to-day. As Keltner says: “the wonders of life are so often nearby.”

2. Let Go of Control

   That pressure I mentioned to be perfectly healthy in the pursuit of success? That can lead us to do a lot of wacky things in the name of control. We try our best to manage every variable, predict every outcome. We create strict routines of movement, diet, and rest. We pay too much for weekly acupuncture with its little needles dangerously close to reminding us of the needles of fertility medications we will have to inject ourselves with later that night; the routine for which is also carefully controlled: prepare the solution, swab, poke, compress, repeat. All the while, we frantically run our hands over our bellies willing the outcome to be different this time. It’s not. And yet, despite the perceived failure, we believe what we need next time is to exert more control.
   
   We become so obsessed with ourselves; our inner monologue questions our every action for what effect it will have on our bodies and chances. Every cycle that comes and goes, we drive ourselves mad reviewing all the things we likely did wrong, the ways in which it must be our fault. I think this inner infertility critic is our default self. Keltner explains: “this self, one of many who make up who you are, is focused on how you are distinct from others, independent, in control…[it] keeps you on track in achieving your goals.” He goes on to say, “when our default self reigns too strongly, though, and we are too focused on ourselves, anxiety, rumination, depression, and self-criticism can overtake us.” I feel I know this experience all too well.
   
   The good news is, awe seems to help with that. Keltner explains: “when we experience awe, regions of the brain that are associated with the excess of the ego…quiet down.” I have definitely felt this, and have noticed the way this quieting of the ego has helped me cultivate more patience on my journey, ultimately giving me space to relinquish some of that control that, let’s face it, doesn’t really help much anyway. I am reminded that I am connected to something much bigger than myself, that the best things in life take time, and that whether or not I am ultimately successful is in the universe’s hands as much as it is in mine.

3. Get Curious

   More than almost anything, I desperately crave answers to my unexplained infertility. What if the true source lurking below the surface is such that I will actually never be able to stay pregnant? It would be so much easier if I could just know that now so that I could move on with my life, and stop foolishly getting my hopes up every month for something that is destined to never come. But no matter what tests we do, what happens over the course of my treatments, the answer remains elusive.
   
   Staying curious about infertility is hard. Every “I don’t know” or “It’s just bad luck” answer makes me want to scream. I have been cut open for surgery, my insides explored, and still I am no closer to knowing the truth. But nurturing a curious mindset in my life more generally has helped me to stay curious even in these most difficult moments. And awe has been instrumental in that. Staring up at the night sky, I find myself much more eager to embrace the mysteries of the universe. And it’s through practices such as these, that I have found I am able to cultivate more openness, and am more willing to take every unknown on this journey as an opportunity to find new questions to ask. I am more patient in the face of the mysteries of infertility, and I am more open to trying new things.

4. Build Resilience Every Day

   Infertility truly is a daily battle. As soon as we realize one cycle has ended, the next one has already begun. We monitor our cycle stages and symptoms like a hawk. We count down the days to the next appointment, the next test result. We carefully monitor our medication to make sure we won’t run out. We structure our days to minimize our interactions with happy parents, with every pregnancy announcement on social media and young family at the park a tough reminder of what we lack.
   
   While I have found that big activities, like a vacation or day spent hiking in the mountains, can provide a large injection of awe, these experiences fade over time. Every day that I wake up and recommit to my goal, I feel that I am starting from scratch. Following a routine in which I carve out time to experience little glimmers of awe helps me build my daily resilience in the face of the many unknowns of the day ahead. As Keltner says, we can find awe anywhere and “just a couple minutes [of awe] a day will do.”
   
   For me, this looks like a near-religious adherence to my morning habits. I start by making a nice cup of coffee, turning on the fire, and settling down to read something that I hope will help me see the world through a new perspective (little epiphanies). I then find a live workout class to move my body in sync with others all around the world (remote collective effervescence). I shower and, while I get ready, watch vlogs of people who bravely share their thoughts and personal struggles with the world (moral beauty). Then spend time making a nourishing breakfast (food for me is its own category of awe). As the day takes off, and the daily stressors of life pile on, I do my best to step back and reset through a walk outside (nature), meditation (spirituality), or my favourite playlist (music). We need to build our awe stores for the day every day and throughout the day.

5. Feel Connected

   Infertility can be such an isolating experience. As people in your social circles become pregnant with their first, second, and third children, it’s hard not to feel left behind. Conversation can become awkward as we try to navigate the growing chasm of understanding between us. Pregnancy loss only seems to make this worse, worrying about opinions of how much and what kind of grief is appropriate. We fear that people will be left feeling uncomfortable in our pain. So much of infertility is suffered in silence.
   
   Being reminded of the bigger system in which we all exist and quieting our default self through experiences of awe come together to help mend these feelings of disconnect. Keltner observes that “this transformation of self…is a powerful antidote to the isolation and loneliness that is epidemic today,” and that I would argue is only made worse during infertility.
   
   Sometimes I find this connection directly through the sources of awe I seek out, such as listening to others’ inspiring and brave stories of living with infertility on Ali Prato’s Infertile AF Podcast. Other times it’s just being reminded of the many ways others have connected to me and my life—whether through their art, music, writing, or otherwise—and knowing that I can still be connected to and leave a mark on this world through other means than my fertility.

6. Recover from Grief and Trauma

   Daily sources of awe are important for the daily stressors of infertility. But sometimes on this journey, we are hit with much more. Experiencing my first loss as my first pregnancy after three years of trying was devastating. And this experience was made so much worse by the trauma of an ectopic: being in limbo for weeks, finally being told it wasn’t viable, filling the prescription for the medication to terminate a pregnancy that was so badly wanted, sitting in the crowded ER, being wheeled off to surgery.
   
   In times like these, when we are living the darkest chapters of our journey, pursuing the big, transformative sources of awe can be key to recovery. For me, this usually looks like travelling to somewhere new where I can experience the vast wonders of nature and make new connections. Whatever it is for you, I highly encourage you to pursue it with abandon, particularly following loss.

7. Find Joy and Purpose

   When I finally decided sometime in my late twenties that I actually did want to have children, I immediately felt a rush of excitement imagining the ways in which becoming a parent would give so much more meaning and purpose to my life. As the months and years went by, I began to feel more and more lost. If not motherhood, what would ultimately define my life?
   
   I think Keltner’s eighth source of awe has been one of the most important for me: epiphanies. They are hard to pursue with intention, but I do my best to remain open to them however they may show up in my life. Sometimes it’s through reading the carefully constructed words of others who help me see things in a new light. Other times its the cumulation of a number of swirling thoughts in my mind that suddenly click together as I breathe in the refreshingly clear air at the top of a mountain following a long hike.
   
   It has been as a result of these breakthroughs that I have found new purposes to pursue, new ways to define success and happiness in my life, and what other kinds of legacies I want to leave behind.

Awe truly is everywhere, and its benefits can dramatically change how you think about and live your life. But staying open to it is an intentional practice. While it may feel uncomfortable at first, pursuing happiness during the most difficult times in our lives, I promise it’s worth it. Soon, you will start to see awe everywhere.

I mean, it’s probably not in the room where you’re lying on a table with your feet in metal stirrups, pants-less, with an ultrasound wand prodding around your insides. Maybe doctors and researchers can marvel at and find awe in the advances in science that support fertility treatments, but if you’re going through them yourself, it’s probably not going to be your source of awe. But in all the little moments that surround infertility, awe is in abundance. I so hope you find it.