Episode 44 - Ashley Holmes: Healing Fertility Issues Naturally

Let’s talk fertility issues! – Did you know 1 in 6 women worldwide struggle with fertility issues?

In this episode, Ashley Holmes and I both open up and share our fertility journeys. If you’re struggling with conception, then you’ll love this conversation.

More about Ashley 👇

Ashley supports women struggling to conceive to create a fertile foundation within by integrating mind, body, and spirit together. She customizes programs for clients so that they can nourish themselves from the inside out. She is an International Bestselling author and Executive Contributor for Brainz Magazine.

Connect with Ashley Holmes👇

Website: https://holisticfertilitycoachinc.my.canva.site/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ashley.holmes.3979

Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/271957647919481/?ref=share_group_link

IG: https://www.instagram.com/ashley_holmes3202/

If you want to break free from the 9 to 5 or spend more time with your family, then check out this FREE webinar that goes over exactly what I'm doing to create time and financial freedom.
https://www.breakingfreewithlindsay.com/learn

If you ever have any questions or want to reach out - I'd love to connect with you. Send me a DM on Facebook (it's the best way to reach me!)

Transcript

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Lindsay Ford: All right. I have Ashley Holmes here with me today. And we're going to talk about fertility stuff. So welcome to the podcast Ashley.

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Ashley Holmes: Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

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Lindsay Ford: Well, I'm very excited for this conversation. You mentioned in the form that you filled out that one in 6 people worldwide struggle with fertility, and that was kind of a shocking statistic to me, although I feel like IA lot of my friends, have struggled with fertility. I already know what like

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Lindsay Ford: a number of people, myself included in there.

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Lindsay Ford: And I love that you had said like

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Lindsay Ford: you didn't really share anything about your fertility journey until you started your business. So why don't you walk us through what happened and what led you to being a holistic fertility coach.

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Ashley Holmes: Yeah, definitely. I definitely, when I was in in the depths of it, in the thick of it. No one knew I was there, no one knew I was struggling, and that's really where I birthed my business from was.

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Ashley Holmes: quote unquote, doing it the hard way which I'll share in a moment and the easy way, and knowing how many people are struggling, knowing how much of a lack of support there is worldwide, and that sometimes it's only accessible for certain people, and this is something that I can offer to anybody

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Ashley Holmes: wherever they're at, that they can do and use and embody and incorporate in their own time and space. And so I think that's really important to be able to meet people where they're at, and so that they don't feel so alone, and so that they're not silently struggling. And so over a decade ago I lived in Manitoba.

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Ashley Holmes: and I finally went down that road of going to the clinic, but

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Ashley Holmes: I was never given any answers, and yes, I was blessed with twins. But I had unexplained infertility, and walked away from that, experiencing, not thinking I could conceive any more children on my own, which wasn't the truth. So I did have twins, and I got a boy and a girl, and I thought, you know.

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Ashley Holmes: be so grateful. Some people don't have any, and I was but a little piece, and part of me wanted to know, and wondered why? Why was there no answers? Why couldn't you know the test show anything? And so

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Ashley Holmes: when I landed on my yoga mat, when my twins were small, I really began to understand that I was not having a mind, body, spirit, connection.

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Ashley Holmes: that I was not

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Ashley Holmes: working with my nervous system in a way that was supportive, that I had been living for decades in fight or flight mode, and hadn't really reset or come out of that very often, and that that's very hard on the body, and so really just by learning ancient wisdom and incorporating, incorporating ancient practices, and

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Ashley Holmes: turning my lifestyle into a 1 that actually served me and work with my body, instead of trying to make it be a certain way and do a certain thing on my timeline was completely shifting

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Ashley Holmes: the trajectory of my life and the trajectory of my fertility journey, because I was able to conceive naturally and easily, quite quickly, within months, compared to the 1st time of around. And so it really empowered me to know and see what was truly possible.

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Ashley Holmes: and to know that there was a lot that I was not tapping into that I didn't know was available to me, but that is available to all of us. If we're open to receive that, and we're open to embody that to whichever level we wish, it is going to positively impact our lives, not only now

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Ashley Holmes: and but in the future. And I think it's so important not to just think about the baby and the goal. But to think.

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Ashley Holmes: what do I want my pregnancy to be like and feel like? What do I want my postpartum to feel like? And also, how do I want to feel in the long run? Because what I offer serves you

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Ashley Holmes: to work with your body for your whole entire life. And so this isn't a quick fix. This isn't a diet. There isn't a trend, you know. This is going to help you on so many levels.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah. So let's let's dive into the the alone piece when you were dealing with it alone. I also.

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Lindsay Ford: for the most part, nobody knew what I was going through. I never ended up going to the fertility clinic. I had an appointment, and

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Lindsay Ford: I ended up canceling it in pursuit of more natural things. That was a very strong

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Lindsay Ford: pull of my intuition.

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Lindsay Ford: And trusting in my intuition that either way I would get, I could feel myself getting closer to

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Lindsay Ford: pregnancy, which was a really weird thing to experience, and I felt like I could have got there either way with the fertility, clinic or or not.

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Lindsay Ford: but I had friends at the time, going through fertility treatments and through the clinic and

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Lindsay Ford: But for the most part like my close family didn't know nobody at work knew.

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Lindsay Ford: I remember. You know we had been married

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Lindsay Ford: sort of after you get married. People start joking. When's the baby on the way? And you know for a while I was just like, no, we're going to enjoy a few years, just us as a couple, and then everyone seemed to start asking me, all at the same time as I was experiencing, like we were trying to get pregnant

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Lindsay Ford: and

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Lindsay Ford: feeling like a failure. I was certainly feeling like a failure every month when I got my period. I'm like, you know, people do this by accident, like what's wrong with me, I should be able to do something very basic. This is like the most you know, natural.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, part of. You know what it is to be a woman is like you're supposed to have kids. And there was a lot of judgment. There was a lot of shame. There was a lot of feeling alone. What was your experience like going through that? And or what do you see

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Lindsay Ford: like? Are other people struggling with the same sort of mental.

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Lindsay Ford: a mental, emotional process of feeling like a failure, or like, what? What are people going through in that in that state where they're not really telling anyone because they're

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Lindsay Ford: I'm guessing. If if it's similar to me, it was just like

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Lindsay Ford: the shame and the upset of it like I don't want to be crying at works if someone's like, Hey, when you having babies, I'm like, no, no, no.

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Ashley Holmes: I really resonate with that? And I think so many people can, because I was leaving work hoping no one was going to ask too many questions, or where it was going, because it becomes more frequent. Right? The further along you go, the more

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Ashley Holmes: you know, sort of invasive it becomes. And so I think that you know

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Ashley Holmes: I wasn't able to speak my truth also because I couldn't completely fall apart in those spaces and places. You know, it didn't feel safe for me to actually express what I was going through in the moment, because it was really challenging. It was really hard. And so I think that's why it is so important to have people that maybe

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Ashley Holmes: you know that's not your partner. That's not in it with you, because they can't be your everything and anything, but to have people to go to for support, because it can be so lonely and so isolating. And if people in your circle aren't going through that. Then you think it is just you. You wonder what is wrong with me? Why is everybody else getting pregnant, and why am I not? And you know you judge yourself. There's so much shame and guilt, and fear and anger, and all of these heavy emotions

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Ashley Holmes: that you really need to process and move through instead of just repressing them, because you don't know how to deal with or manage them. And so I think that is really important to have a space and to give yourself time to do that, because

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Ashley Holmes: you keep telling yourself it's going to be the next cycle. And then the next cycle turns into months can turn into years. And then you're just in this really depleted and drained place of I don't even recognize myself or my life, or where I'm at anymore.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, I love, though, that you just mentioned grief because

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Lindsay Ford: I think, even though there is no

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Lindsay Ford: actual loss of something, there is the sense of loss every time, like you get your hopes up, and

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Lindsay Ford: then it doesn't happen. And there is a mini grieving period each and every cycle you go through. And I think that's actually a really important

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Lindsay Ford: point of you know that that disappointment and that grief

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Lindsay Ford: it's not something that

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Lindsay Ford: that you should be suppressing like it is not something to fluff off. It is something there to feel.

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Lindsay Ford: And yeah, giving yourself the space to

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Lindsay Ford: feel is

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Lindsay Ford: so so important, and I think that that leads me to something else you touched on. It was just like

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Lindsay Ford: this you mentioned you were in this like fight or flight state for years.

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Lindsay Ford: and I would argue I was the same, and I think our whole culture is actually set up this way, this hustle, this do it all like you can have the career you can. I mean, in this case, I guess maybe you don't have kids yet, or maybe you do have some, because I do know people that struggle with fertility, with their with their, you know, after sort of their 1st or second.

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Lindsay Ford: But you're told like just hustle, hustle, hustle, do do go go! And there isn't a lot of

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Lindsay Ford: emphasis, you know. People talk about taking care of themselves, but there's not a lot of people that actually

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Lindsay Ford: do.

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Lindsay Ford: And even like, I remember, you know, when I was working full time, and

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Lindsay Ford: I would try to go out for walks at lunch, and you know, and I had, you know, a managerial position. I remember being criticized or sort of frowned upon by my boss, for you know, taking time to go on these walks? When you know, in the midst of deadlines, in the midst of a lot of stuff, and he's like you have stuff to do like, what are you?

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Lindsay Ford: What are you doing? And I'm like, this is me, just sort of refreshing midday. So I can actually like, be super productive in the afternoon. But having but recognizing that in ourselves that we do need these periods of rest, and if you look at our our menstrual cycles as women like.

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Lindsay Ford: There is a point in that cycle every month where our bodies are meant to just like sit on the couch, do nothing, just sort of tune out or rest. It's really to rest and replenish before then we're in that. Go go, cycle. So what is

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Lindsay Ford: your

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Lindsay Ford: what was your experience getting out of that hustle mode, that stress mode? And why is it important for fertility.

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Ashley Holmes: It is so important, and for the longest time I would go to hot Yoga, and I would leave, and I would think what is lying on bolsters going to do for me what is slowing down, going to do for me. And I was like, I don't need that yet. That is exactly what I needed. That is what my body needed. That's what my nervous system needed. That's what my mind needed.

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Ashley Holmes: And that's what I needed to have a spiritual connection was to stop going and to start being, and we don't prioritize that as a culture. And yet

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Ashley Holmes: that is not honoring our feminine energy within us when we're really living in a masculine society that is

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Ashley Holmes: not the same pace. And we're not honoring our cycles. You know. We are not meant to go the same pace the whole month.

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Ashley Holmes: day in and day out, doing the same things at the same rhythm and the same rate. That's not honoring our innate nature and the way that we're meant to live, and it's not creating harmony within us. And so

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Ashley Holmes: when I began to embody practices like Yin Yoga, which is very similar to say, having an acupuncture treatment for fertility, because it's opening your meridian lines in the same way, it's just a different way to do it, and something that you can learn to do for yourself. It's really, you know, getting in tune, getting in touch with your body, listening to your body, recognizing where you're holding strain and stress within you, and tension and acknowledging.

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Ashley Holmes: You know that perhaps you haven't even taken a conscious breath today that you've been breathing shallowly, and that you're stressed, and you're only breathing into your chest. And it's not reaching anywhere else within you. And I think that

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Ashley Holmes: we really don't prioritize rest, and to

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Ashley Holmes: make the time, and to make that part of your routine because it will catch up to you, it will catch up to all of us. I promise you we're not meant to sort of

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Ashley Holmes: keep going at this pace. That

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Ashley Holmes: society pressures us into thinking is success or the must, and it's not sustainable. So find something that is sustainable for you. You need balance, you need both, and restorative. Yoga is beautiful in that you do truly rest. Your nervous system comes out of fight or flight mode and into rest and digest mode, and you really, truly need to be resetting. You need to be resting. This needs to be a priority for you.

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Ashley Holmes: especially if you're trying to get pregnant, because otherwise you are endlessly releasing stress hormones into your body, and you are full of cortisol and adrenaline, and yet there is nothing behind you chasing you. But you think I'm running out of time. I need to do this perfect. And you're putting so much pressure and stress on yourself.

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Lindsay Ford: I mean, I didn't know that about yin yoga, how it was like doing the meridian similar to acupuncture. That's really really cool.

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Lindsay Ford: I remember when I 1st started Yoga Shavasana at the end where you lie down? That was like torture. That was torture to me. I was like, I am wasting time. What am I doing here? I want to be like working out more like, I was there like thinking, like.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, this is to move my body to stretch my body. Why am I wasting time lying down for 5 to 10 min at the end of a class?

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Lindsay Ford: And I mean now it's my favorite blood.

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Lindsay Ford: but yeah, that rest piece.

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Lindsay Ford: The more I feel like I understand our natural cycles as women, the more I get into the health and healing space just for like, for my own purposes in my own body, the more I recognize the importance of sleep and rest and even slower movement compared to vigorous activities depending on, you know, the time of the month and stuff.

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Lindsay Ford: But yeah, rest is something that

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Lindsay Ford: I feel like is really kind of frowned upon. I feel like it's something that men do a lot better than women.

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Lindsay Ford: For whatever reason, they have no time or no problem, sometimes just saying, like, man, I'm just gonna park my butt on the couch in front of the TV and do nothing and do screw the chores, screw everything.

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Lindsay Ford: I feel like, yeah, I feel like they do better at that.

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Lindsay Ford: I am curious about

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Lindsay Ford: and I just lost my train of thought.

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Ashley Holmes: I'll jump in for a minute and just say.

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Ashley Holmes: Yeah.

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Ashley Holmes: I think that

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Ashley Holmes: it's a lot of unlearning right? That is really a lot of what we have to do is to notice what we're doing day in and day out, and then make a conscious choice of. Is this serving me, or is this not serving me in the moment? And then.

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Ashley Holmes: you know, choose a different path, you know habit, stacking, and like stacking a habit with something else, and making that part of your routine and making that a non-negotiable for you, and keeping that promise to yourself, because I used to promise myself

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Ashley Holmes: that I was not going to buy any more pregnancy tests. I would know if I was pregnant. And yet every month there I was at the drugstore, going to get more pregnancy tests, and you know I think I already knew, and that just made it so much worse was to see. Oh, I'm not pregnant again, and yet

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Ashley Holmes: all of those things that I was like. No, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to go down that road again, and then I would, and then would be even more disappointed and more disheartened. You know now I wouldn't do that to myself, and I would honor myself and treasure myself more than

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Ashley Holmes: you know, causing myself more heartache and more pain, because you are going to know, and I feel like sometimes we can be our best friend, or we can be our worst enemy. And it's really our job to learn that we we can train our mind and that we don't have to be controlled by our thoughts and endlessly spiral like, and go down that rabbit hole, and then just keep going further, because it feels really hard to get out when you're down there.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah. So why don't you talk to me about like the mental emotional state of trying to conceive, and what you went through.

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Lindsay Ford: and

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Lindsay Ford: how you recommend that people start to

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Lindsay Ford: think about this journey or shift their that mental, emotional state because it does get, you know you do, by the pregnancy test. For me. It was the ovulation kits. I'm like, I can't. I can't pee on a stick every day. It was way too stressful. But yeah, why don't you walk us through

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Lindsay Ford: the emotional side of this.

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Ashley Holmes: It definitely was a roller coaster for me, and I was just like, I want to get off of this, you know, and the fertility drugs only amplified that right? I was more tearful, and my emotions were all over the place, and I didn't feel like myself. And so I think that

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Ashley Holmes: that isn't helping you. And it's really important to have practices that ground you that bring you back to your center, that help you to feel more balanced and aligned if you're going down that road, because

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Ashley Holmes: otherwise you may think that's the only option, and the only way to get there. And maybe it is. But if you don't have anything to help you navigate this with a little bit of ease and peace and calm, then it is going to.

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Ashley Holmes: you know you're going to be in your mind constantly, and you're not going to be in your body, and you need to be in your body if you want to bring a baby into this body, and I think there's often a disconnect there, because we're doing all the things. But we're so focused on doing all of the things that we're not actually in our bodies. And

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Ashley Holmes: it's 1 of the pieces. I think, that my clients notice the most is that they

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Ashley Holmes: have this mental clarity like this fog is sort of lifted that has just been like a heavy rain cloud over them, of

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Ashley Holmes: being able to shift these emotions being able to process these emotions, and not to remain so stuck in them because they are heavy, and they may get triggered and things will pop up, but having tools and resources to manage those, and to be able to deal with them in a way that serves them

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Ashley Holmes: is much better than just repressing them, and shoving them under the rug, and not looking at them for being afraid, or not knowing how to look at them, or sit with them, or be with them, because we are not taught how to sit with our challenging and difficult emotions as a culture. And so we have to learn that. And it's not comfortable, but we can learn to find.

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Ashley Holmes: you know, the comfortable in the uncomfortable, and when we can do that on our mats, then it's way easier to do that off of the mat. Say when you're in the doctor's office, or when you're somewhere else, because I don't know anybody that goes there, you know, not feeling tension in their body, and not feeling anticipation, and butterflies in their stomach.

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Lindsay Ford: Do you have an example of one tip that might help shift someone something easy that they can do when they're feeling that

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Lindsay Ford: stress, and that angst, or that you know where they're stuck in their head.

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Ashley Holmes: Definitely. Always the best anchor to get you out of your mind and into your body is your breath. So pause, close your eyes, take a conscious breath. Take more, please take more. If you have the space and time to do so, and you will just notice you know

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Ashley Holmes: the the shift in your energy from being, say, scattered and all over the place, to just coming back

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Ashley Holmes: home to yourself. And the more you can do that, the more easy it's going to become, because it may be challenging at first, st and to know that you are not going to

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Ashley Holmes: silence the mind. You are not going to not have negative thoughts, but to become a witness to them and not attach to them and not judge them, and to just let them pass. You know you don't have to either make it positive or negative, but when we do that, then we put a energetic charge behind us, and that is what can land in our body? And it's often the negative that is landing and residing in us more often than the positive right.

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Ashley Holmes: because we can all remember a positive experience. Yet how many of us are like, oh, yeah, I remember that time. And this was decades ago, right? But it's still there, you know it has made a mental impression and a groove in our mind. And, Yoga, they're called Samskaras, and so

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Ashley Holmes: you can lessen that rat, that groove. But it may always be there at some level, and to know that, and to be conscious of that is going to help you and not feeling like Oh, why am I thinking about that again? Or I thought I was past this, or there's all these things, and it's really something that I

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Ashley Holmes: how my clients to learn is healing isn't linear, you know there's not, you know, an even, steady path that you're just going to shelf this, and it's never going to show up for you again. You are always going to have obstacles and things that you come across, but it's how we face those and how we're equipped to handle them with.

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Ashley Holmes: You know the resilience within us that we've been able to build over time and often that hasn't been fostered enough, and it hasn't been cultivated enough within us to know that we can withstand anything that comes our way, and that we are exactly where we're meant to be, even though it doesn't feel like it, because we were meant to be anywhere else we would be. And so

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Ashley Holmes: when we can look at how much resistance we are feeling to whatever we're experiencing, whether it's fertility or something else. That is the exact amount of persistence that we're also going to bring to

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Ashley Holmes: our life. And so we can just take a step back from that and notice the energy that we're approaching this with, you know. Maybe we're approaching. And I was doing it, too. I was completely approaching my fertility journey from a

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Ashley Holmes: entirely masculine dynamic. I just need to do all these things. I just need to check all these boxes, and then boom! Yep, I'm going to be blessed with babies. And yet no, no, no! It took a long time, and a lot of tears and anger and frustration.

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Ashley Holmes: and

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Ashley Holmes: more periods than I would have liked. And so you know.

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Ashley Holmes: alleviate that for someone else, and that's my honor.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah, there's so much of what you just said there that I love. And yeah, from that masculine energy like, it's not the masculine that's getting pregnant. It's the feminine. We need to just be more in that. Bbb, and I love that. You shared the breath. I always like tend to get annoyed when people are just like, take a deep breath, but it's so absolutely like that is the quickest way to

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Lindsay Ford: get into your body. That is the quickest way to calm down your nervous system, and that is, you know, one of those one of the only things that we can do that sort of, you know, bridges that gap or like crosses the, you know, from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. So it's like we're having an unconscious sort of stress response. But through the breath we can calm that unconscious response down. And the breath is just one of the.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, magical things, and and I do still resist breathing deeply sometimes.

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Lindsay Ford: But it is it?

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Lindsay Ford: It is one of the. It's the. It is the fastest way to

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Lindsay Ford: calm your system down and get through things.

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Lindsay Ford: I'd love to share

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Lindsay Ford: a couple of things that helped me during that time period when it was stressful. One was coming up with a response. You know, when people asked me.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, when are babies coming, or like? When are you getting pregnant, or like, you know that question that you sort of get over and over, and for a while it was really just like I didn't know how to answer it. It kind of sent me into like this downward spiral a little bit.

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Lindsay Ford: and I came up with a response that actually felt good to me, that it was believable, and it was just like we'll have babies when we're meant to have babies.

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Lindsay Ford: and you know they assumed that in or when we're ready to have babies. And you know that kind of just people just kind of assumed like, okay, on whatever time schedule we would be having these, and from for me. That was just like

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Lindsay Ford: a very faith based response of just like trusting that.

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Lindsay Ford: You know, we will have babies when we are meant to

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Lindsay Ford: have babies from that broader perspective. And

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Lindsay Ford: you know when you share that, like, you're meant to be on this journey.

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Lindsay Ford: And this is part of your journey, and

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Lindsay Ford: you know, from

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Lindsay Ford: that higher level perspective.

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Lindsay Ford: it is. You know, it's the perfect process for you for this lifetime, and it's really hard to

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Lindsay Ford: see in the moment. But for me

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Lindsay Ford: one of my biggest Aha! Moments that really shifted things for me, and it was deeply offensive to other people. But I'm going to say it anyways

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Lindsay Ford: is when I realized that

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Lindsay Ford: I wanted a baby for the same reason, I wanted a new pair of shoes

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Lindsay Ford: because I thought it would make me happier.

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Lindsay Ford: And

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Lindsay Ford: then from that perspective, I'm like, Okay, I believe a baby will make me happier. What I ultimately want is not necessarily the baby, although I did want that. It wasn't dismissing that idea. But really, deep down is like I wanted happiness. I wanted to feel fulfilled. I wanted to

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Lindsay Ford: feel feel deeply joyful. And so I started to do things in my life that

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Lindsay Ford: you know I'll save fill that void. But, like, fill that cup of happiness and starting to shift my outlook and what I was doing to focus on being happy. And I remember

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Lindsay Ford: being in meditation on the morning I ended up conceiving

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Lindsay Ford: and

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Lindsay Ford: looking back on my fertility journey

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Lindsay Ford: with such happiness and gratitude. It was the wildest memory. I will never forget it of just like how much I had grown as a person, how much happier I was, how much

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Lindsay Ford: more I understood myself, how much deeper my faith was.

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Lindsay Ford: and it was just like I was able to sit there and look back and just sort of wowed by it. And I was like, how cool would it be like, I wonder what it'll be like if this takes me another year, and just like

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Lindsay Ford: this gratitude for the process that I couldn't see earlier on, when I was in the midst of all the turmoil, and figuring it out. But that was the day I conceived my my daughter, my 1st child, and

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Lindsay Ford: I do believe that.

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Lindsay Ford: you know, if you're on this journey, you're meant to go through this journey for whatever reason, and whatever the outcome.

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Lindsay Ford: you're gonna learn so much about yourself.

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Lindsay Ford: And

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Lindsay Ford: yeah, you're just gonna learn so much about yourself and just grow as a human being through it.

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Lindsay Ford: I don't know if you have anything to add to that.

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Lindsay Ford: I doubt.

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Ashley Holmes: I think it is an invitation to get to know yourself at a deeper, fundamental level, to understand yourself, to.

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Ashley Holmes: Really, you know, I have a Guru in India that would say, you know, it's an opportunity for self knowing it's a really.

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Ashley Holmes: you know.

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Ashley Holmes: profound opportunity to completely shift the way that you look at yourself the way you look at life, and to stop looking externally to really shift that locus of control from external to internal, and you cannot control everything. But you can control some things. And so really, that is what I help clients with is

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Ashley Holmes: to focus on the things that you do have control over you. Do have control over your nourishment. You do have control over your breath. You do have control over your movement. There are lots of things in your day you can become aware and conscious of your stress, and be able to manage that and have tools to

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Ashley Holmes: work with that, and to see that within yourself, and to see that begin to dissipate right? Because someone that begins working with me may be way up here when we start, and then it

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Ashley Holmes: it comes down. You know, they're not as impacted by the things that used to trigger them so much and by the pressures of daily life, and they can begin to let go and release perfection and control a little bit and realize and just surrender. It really is a process of surrendering and

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Ashley Holmes: being and feeling whole as you are now.

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Ashley Holmes: without the baby, so that the baby can come, because you, thinking that you're only whole and complete with the baby is really hindering you and energetically blocking you from receiving that because

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Ashley Holmes: you already are perfect as you are. But it's a recognizing of that, and an embodiment of that. And it's not just a saying that it's actually a feeling and believing that as well, and

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Ashley Holmes: having a deep trust and faith in your body.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah. And I love what you just said about surrendering, because I feel like.

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Lindsay Ford: yeah, you surrender to the process of conceiving. But I feel like as a parent. That's

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Lindsay Ford: you're so much of parenting is about surrendering to the process and and surrendering your beliefs of how you should be doing it in favor of what's really like in front of you and really tuning into your child.

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Lindsay Ford: And yeah, I would have, had I conceived right away.

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Lindsay Ford: I would have been a completely different mother like, I don't think I would have been as in tune with my my kids. I don't think I would have been as present with them.

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Lindsay Ford: I think that fertility journey for me really set me up to be a better mother.

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Lindsay Ford: which is really really cool. To think about

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Lindsay Ford: why don't we touch on? We? We've kind of just briefly mentioned it on the surface, but this feeling of worth.

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Lindsay Ford: and that your

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Lindsay Ford: not your self-worth is not tied to your ability to conceive.

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Lindsay Ford: Why don't you talk about

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Lindsay Ford: worthiness as a human being?

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Ashley Holmes: You are worthy because you are because you exist because you are here, and so

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Ashley Holmes: to stop basing your worthiness on things outside of yourself, and to start looking inside of yourselves for all the reasons that you are worthy and the things that you do do day in and out.

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Ashley Holmes: that do matter that do positively impact you and other people in your life. And I think a lot of this is perhaps conditioned socially and culturally, where you are in the world, you know. This can be a big factor of

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Ashley Holmes: part of a life process that everybody deems that you're meant to go through on their timeline, and so on. And it's really just honoring yourself in every moment and letting go of everybody else's expectations and judgments of you, and opinions of what you're doing and why you're doing it. And it doesn't matter, you know why you're doing it. And it's really.

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Ashley Holmes: you know, working with that 3rd Chakra working with that self-esteem and that self-worth to be able to not sort of fold inward when you feel like the world's coming sort of at you, and to know that

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Ashley Holmes: you're worthy and whole as you are right now in this moment, and it's not based upon

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Ashley Holmes: whether there is a baby present or not for you yet, or whether you've lost a baby or not. Yet you know our mind really can

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Ashley Holmes: you know you can allow the thoughts to just be thoughts, because if you've had a miscarriage, or if you've had failed rounds of Ivf, you know, you can really

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Ashley Holmes: take that as a sign like, oh, I'm not meant to be a mother, or you know, you can really embody these things that are going to carry forward on your fertility journey that you don't want to have that in your mind and then embodied because it's not going to help you to conceive. And yet sometimes we think these things because we're like. Well, why did this happen to me? I don't understand.

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Lindsay Ford: Yeah. And and you're right with, like the worthiness journey. It's in every aspect of our life. I feel like we're always. I feel like that's always something

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Lindsay Ford: we are working on, you know, for the application to be a guest on this podcast I asked specifically about feelings of self-worth,

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Lindsay Ford: as people are sharing their stories on all aspects of life, and there's always everyone has

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Lindsay Ford: stories about their self-worth. Everyone is working on feeling worthy.

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Lindsay Ford: and worthiness is not something that is attached to any outcome. You are worthy just because you're here on this planet as a human being.

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Lindsay Ford: So I love. I love that

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Lindsay Ford: Was it going to say

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Lindsay Ford: this is happening all week to me? It's great fun.

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Lindsay Ford: I'm sorry, Ashley. Just give me a minute.

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Lindsay Ford: Okay?

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Lindsay Ford: I'm wondering if you would share

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Lindsay Ford: for your specific experience with your own fertility journey and having kids through fertility treatments. And then and then another child outside of that, just the natural way.

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Lindsay Ford: What was your experience in terms of the lessons

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Lindsay Ford: you learned about yourself? It could be, as it relates to you being a mom or just your personal growth journey through that.

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Ashley Holmes: Definitely, I think I have definitely grown as as a human and as a mother. And definitely, the last 7 years have

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Ashley Holmes: really been a rewiring and a reprogramming for me personally of all the things that I

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Ashley Holmes: really had sort of struggled with my whole life, and I also believe that that is why I struggled so much with my fertility journey as well was because I had

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Ashley Holmes: unprocessed trauma from childhood that I had never been able to handle, or navigate, or deal with, or find peace with.

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Ashley Holmes: and so.

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Ashley Holmes: and I will just share that.

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Ashley Holmes: My brother died when I was 11, so I felt a huge loss. And so, when I was going through my fertility journey, what I realized in hindsight was that.

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Ashley Holmes: not conceiving every month, and not being pregnant and being a mom, was also a loss and something I hadn't been able to fully heal from and process, and so

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Ashley Holmes: that, carried through to having, you know. Yes, I had twins, but it was a high risk pregnancy.

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Ashley Holmes: It was an emergency C-section. It was a harder postpartum period. It was being a new mom to twins with never being a mom before. And so that was challenging. And yet on the flip side, you know, I walked away from that, thinking I couldn't conceive more children on my own, which was a limiting belief that I took away because there was no answers for my unexplained infertility. But tests. Don't look at your mindset and tests. Don't look at your energy system. So

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Ashley Holmes: our sacral Chakra is where we house our reproductive organs, and where we are birthing anything in our life from from this creative space. And so

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Ashley Holmes: I was able to consciously conceive my youngest. But I was also in the middle of a Prana Meditation training when I conceived my

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Ashley Holmes: my youngest, and so I had a little Buddha baby in my belly, and so it was a very easy pregnancy, as I was deemed geriatric at the time, and yet I felt a million times better.

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Ashley Holmes: I went hiking. When my water broke I had a V back. I was back at Baby and me yoga, 10 days later, and so it truly just showed me what was possible in my life, and that the person that was holding me back was me. And so

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Ashley Holmes: I just had to learn to

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Ashley Holmes: do the work. And it's our choice whether we choose to do the work or not, but I chose to do the work, and it wasn't always easy, but yet that is what has transformed my life more than any paper I have from any degree is the inner work that I've done, because that brought life to me. I can now serve others and help them on their journeys, and I think that

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Ashley Holmes: you know this is what I was seeking all the time. But I didn't know it, and I was able to find that. And so when the student is ready, the teacher arrives, and they taught me a different way of being and living

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Ashley Holmes: that was more in alignment with with how I wanted to feel, and how I wanted to live, and what I wanted my life to look like, because

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Ashley Holmes: I do have daily practices, you know I don't get dragged out of bed by mom anymore. You know, I start my day with purpose and intention, so I can carry that energy and frequency into the day. And so it's just a different way of living and being. And so I think that that's available to all of us. But it's whether we heed the call, and maybe we're not meant to heed the call for 5 years, and that's our path, and that's perfectly fine.

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Lindsay Ford: Oh, I love the

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Lindsay Ford: The contrast of your 2 pregnancies, and just how it mirrored your like mental, emotional state, or how each of them mirrored. That's like that's really, really cool. Thank you for sharing that. So if people want to work with you, where can they find you? And at what point in their fertility process should they be contacting you.

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Ashley Holmes: You can find me if you're currently trying to conceive. I have a holistic fertility coach Facebook group that you are more than welcome to join. It's a safe, sacred space, and

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Ashley Holmes: my goal. My aim is to reach people further in their fertility journey so that they can really create this fertile foundation from the beginning, and not finding me once they've been down this road for however long, because the sooner that you can do this and set yourself up for success

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Ashley Holmes: the better off you're going to be, because, being mindful that what we do now affects our egg quality 3 to 4 months from now. So just taking that conscious time and energy and effort to focus on yourself, to prioritize yourself, to have that alignment in mind, body, and spirit, so that you can consciously conceive the baby that you desire.

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Lindsay Ford: Oh, thank you so much, Ashley, for being here. I've really enjoyed this conversation, and thanks for sharing your wisdom.

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Ashley Holmes: Thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.