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Welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio with Linda Prater. Women are pressed daily to give more, learn more, and be more, often at the expense of mind, body, or spirit. Each week with intriguing guests and topics, we'll bring you fresh ways to view your limited time, encouraging a shift to new, healthier perspectives. Wise Health for Women Radio, helping women thrive. And now here's your host, Linda Prater.
Good morning and welcome to Wise Health for Women Radio. I'm Linda Crater and I am very pleased to bring you a good friend of mine who is across the world in South Africa. So it's big time zone change here, but we made it work.
We're going to be talking about how complicated life can get when you have a trajectory planned of your life, don't we all? They say when we make plans, God laughs. But in this case, if you are making decisions and then you come to another decision and it doesn't work out, and I'll explain more about that in a minute, you're going to have
It's very disconcerting. And so one of the big things is we are not in control and we are in control of how we respond. So I want to introduce you to Eloise Clouette, who is a fantastic corporate event planner. She has pulled off some amazing events, huge ones, and super successful. And she's also a mom.
But her road to becoming a mother was challenging. And so we're going to start with your business, Eloise, and how you grew that to a point. And then it became time to raise a family. And we'll go into how the challenges came there. Because many women have the same issues that you're going to be bringing up today. We're going to be talking about the road to fertility. So, Eloise, welcome to our program.
Thank you. Thank you for having me back. It's great to be here. Yeah. It's always a joy to talk with you because we are so much more than our jobs. We are so much more than a mom. We have all these labels. And so I want you to share the woman on her journey.
and how you came to understand how to run a successful business very well, and then your shift to managing what was an infertility journey. Yeah, so I have always been a very adventurous soul, always wanted to be a trailblazer, you know, creating my own path.
At a very young age, I had the opportunity to travel overseas. I spent a couple of years being in the Netherlands as well as in the UK. I was ready to set a little bit of more firm ground in terms of setting roots and came back to South Africa.
and had the opportunity to start my own business after working for a couple of companies in corporate event management. And yeah, just really wanted to feather my own nest, if I can put it that way. It's been 12 years that I have been a successful business owner within the corporate event management arena.
high paced, high demand, huge stress that comes with that particular field. Although it was something that I've always had a passion for in terms of creating something and seeing it come to life. Had an opportunity to really grow a team, which was great, hugely successful. And then as I started building my business,
There was also a time where I started thinking, well, if I have built my baby, which was my business, it is perhaps now time to build my other baby, my other dream, which was really, and part of the plan, but really an opportunity for me to really think into what would life be like as a mother. And, yeah.
As it had turned out, being a long-time sufferer from endometriosis early on in my childhood, I always knew that there would be some form of challenges along the way when one day the time comes when I would have the opportunity to get married and then settle down and have a family of my own. Well, life didn't really turn out the way that I'd planned, and being a
planner all my life, you know, being in control and love to be in control of everything that comes with life. You know, we control people in terms of fixing things for our corporate clients. This was the one area of my life that I wasn't able to fix.
We often refer to ourselves in the corporate events industry as fixers. We fix problems. This was a big problem that I wasn't able to fix. You know, when I finally decided that, okay, now's the time. I settled down. We got married. And then was presented with symptoms of premature ovarian failure, which...
It's very similar to early menopause. Well, it is early menopause, really. And that kind of started happening towards the age of 28, 29. Mm-hmm.
But it was only around towards the age of 32 that when we really started, that things started really getting quite interesting. And the interesting aspect was really about the fact that perhaps my pathway to becoming a mother wasn't going to be one that would be as easy as what my friends' paths towards motherhood seems to have been at that stage. And it really...
me look at who I am and who I was at the time. Now, interestingly, when I started looking at myself, I think it was probably towards the eighth year in my business, a huge...
shift started happening in terms of, as I said, I mean, I looked at how I was if I wasn't able to be a mother. I started questioning me. I started all the self-doubt started creeping in. And that really had a knock on effect on how the business was operating and how I started looking for the symptoms outside of me.
Meaning the problems would be within my staff or the team that I was leading. Was it the economy? Was it the clients, et cetera, et cetera. But I didn't know at the time that because of all of this turmoil that was going in, that was building up inside of me, that it was actually due to.
A lot of beliefs that I started building around me to start protecting myself from the pain that I was experiencing, knowingly that all I really wanted at the time was becoming a mother. So a question to you. Yeah. As you were reaching that period of turmoil and where you were self-aware enough to know that your business was being affected by your mindset, right?
I'm sure that was a very difficult time because you've been this huge success and you're ticking off your accomplishments as you go along and suddenly things are not lining up. How did you learn or what was your pathway to learning to accept
where you were and to make a plan, I presume you made a plan of where you next wanted to go or aimed to go. Yes. So for me, I remember it quite vividly. You know, so we started with, we first went to a fertility specialist, you know,
They gave us a plan, which was good because I like to follow plans because that's just who we are at Nature as event planners. And I thought, well, okay, if this is the course of action that we're going to take, then it automatically would, you know, there would be an end result. But that didn't automatically happen. So a lot of processing internally happened. And what I mean by that is,
When it doesn't happen the first time around, you kind of put that as done as experience. When it doesn't happen a second, a third or a fourth time, you start wondering, well, what is going on? Like, how do I process? How do I connect with what is the end result that I that I really want to achieve? Not that this is an accomplishment to achieve to becoming a mother, because this is something that's not really something that's got in your control.
But what is in your control and where the fundamental shift happened for me and the process that I started working through in my mind was when we decided to try one last time. I remember turning and we were actually mountain biking, my husband and myself at the time. And I remember stopping and he kind of carried on cycling and he turned around and he looked at me and he said to me, are you not cycling? And I said to him,
You know what I think was missing is the fact that I didn't want to let go. I wanted to stay in control of the entire plan, the entire process. I wanted to control what was happening with my body. I wanted to control what it was going to look like. I wanted to be in control. And by wanting to be in control, I was actually out of control completely. Yeah.
Now, I couldn't let go. I didn't want to give myself the permission. You know, I was presented with a multitude of options at the time. We, you know, going into IVF, we did try a couple of times with my own eggs. And
Then I had a bit of a hiccup along the way. It's not really a hiccup, but it was maybe a hiccup is the wrong word to use, but we were thrown another curveball. And after one of the sessions that they tried with my own eggs when they stimulated me about, I would say I was in the resting period between the sessions, between the stimulations.
and then fell pregnant naturally. And I didn't know that I was pregnant at the time until I...
had landed up in the emergency room and was presented with an ectopic pregnancy. Now, it was quite devastating at the time. Firstly, I didn't know I was pregnant. I landed up in the emergency room and they were asking me all sorts of questions and even asking me, are you pregnant? And I was like, are you crazy? No, I'm not pregnant.
Like, really? This is me, you know? And anyhow, and long story short, it was rushed into an emergency and it was a burst ectopic pregnancy. Now, I recall very vividly saying to the physician at the time, you know, I've only got the one ovary. Please do whatever you can to save it. And the miracle that unfolded was that I ovulated and
It beautifully happened. And because there was trauma inside the uterus, um,
from endometriosis and prior to that, how they were preparing me for IVF, et cetera, and clearing out my uterus with a DNC, there seems to have been trauma. They cannot quite explain how that happened, but the egg implanted on the side where I don't have an ovary because I lost my ovary. Sorry, I don't know if I mentioned that. I did lose my ovary many, many years prior to that due to endometriosis. So the process, to get back to your question, is...
What was that plan and how did I look and how did I resolve that and how did I move forward? Well, when I was presented with different options that I was at the time that my levels were not optimal, they weren't able to stimulate me any further. I just had a choice to make whether I was going to put my body through the grueling process of being stimulated or
You can put petrol in the engine or into the car, but you can't put the foot down if the pedal of the car doesn't want to take you anywhere. So if the body isn't really performing in the manner that it should perform, you are presented with these options. And for me, it was considering donor egg. And I thought, well, that's great. There's another plan. So we'll maybe go in that direction.
But I was still very disconnected from the process. And it didn't happen for me, for us, with the first time with the donor egg. And I thought, well, this is very interesting. So what does this reveal to me? And the end result was the plan that I started following and why I'm looping this back to the story that I shared earlier about turning to my husband, saying to him, I think this time it's going to happen. And I just want to prepare you
that you are going to be a father, and that I'm not going to do this all by myself. And I remember him looking at me thinking, has she gone crazy? And I said, what I meant by that was, I said to him that I'm letting go of the control of what I deem the child to look in the end, realize that
by accepting, letting go of the whole concept of if this is not my genetics, then, you know, if I'm not the blueprint maker, then why should I be the incubator? Because that was what my mindset was before. I didn't want to accept that. But I realized that by giving myself permission to
I allowed the scarcity of not letting go of, I've got to still do this one extra thing to myself to ensure that I've tried everything in my power possible. And by doing that, what I mean by that is stopped punishing myself for not being able to create my genetic blueprint for that matter. And by letting go, I opened up
the acceptance of what came into my life, which was a successful outcome in the end. And it sounds very woohoo out there, but I fully believe that once you let go of the outcome, of what you think the outcome should look like, and having a firm, clear vision of what it is that you want to see, you will attract and you will have that in your life. It may not be the picture that you started off with,
But the end result can be so much different. And that's what made the third attempt with Donoreg a success in the end for me. And that was really the plan that I followed. Accepting myself, forgiving myself, and then just really having the courage to move forward.
You know, many people have written about the strain on relationships while this is happening because the focus is so on the outcome. It sounds, though, with your story of the cycling, that you and your husband were on the same page in terms of support and love and forgiveness and acceptance and especially courage and
Would you say that communication was the key to all of that as you went through these tumultuous times? Absolutely. I remember, I'm going to share, I'm all about sharing stories. And I remember the one day we were actually standing in the kitchen and we were making supper. And I can't remember as to which attempt it was in terms of being stimulated and going on this journey.
crazy IVF roller coaster. And I remember turning to him saying to him, am I going to know where the finish is? Because how much more am I going to put myself through? And will I be comfortable with it? And I remember him looking at me saying to me, what does it look like to you? And
what does the finish look like to you? And I remember looking at him saying to him, I don't really know what the finish looks like, but all I know is I've got this burning desire of being a mother. And he said to me, is that such a bad thing if it's just the two of us? And I remember when he said that, I felt this complete horror and shock in my being thinking, how can he even ask me that question? And I remember pausing and reflecting on what he meant by that. And I'm
What he was communicating to me was complete compassion to who I am and who he sees me as, that I'm not the failure that I believe myself to be because it's my body that isn't able to play along with the plan. A lot of the times and what I see happens with a lot of people and also friends of mine that have gone through the same similar journeys where they
They go down, they climb onto this roller coaster and people somehow are not on the same track anymore. Right. They may have a successful outcome and then the child is there, but the relationship was so strained that in the end it lands up in a divorce. And it is so, so sad to be able to witness that because it is the most grueling experience to put any relationship through.
And the cracks, I mean, you put anything in a pressure cooker and you'll see how, you know, you'll see how the relationship will perform and if any cracks are going to come through. Some people make it and some don't. And sadly, it appears that some don't. But I firmly believe that it's when I think it's the way how people start looking at themselves, how they doubt themselves, how they believe in the process of what they're busy going through and
definitely being on the same page about keeping the communication channels open, speaking to one another, being able to almost, you know, have like a silent contract between one another. Because I remember when we were also discussing this and I said to him,
You know, if it hadn't, if we had to have a child and anything, you know, we had the hard conversations beforehand and we made sure we understood exactly what that meant and what that looked like. And we were starting to talk about, you know,
as an advanced mother at the time, you know, our fertility declines after a certain age, the health of the egg determines the health of the embryo, et cetera, et cetera. What does that look like? You know, are we going to be faced with a difficult situation that if something is genetically wrong with a child, like what are we going to do? You know, these are all hard conversations and it's very uneasy conversations to happen, but I think
It's similar to the situation when you go into a relationship, you have the hard conversations beforehand and you write a silent contract to say, well, these are the boundaries. This is how far we're going to push it and keep one another accountable to what we set it out to be, meaning we don't bend the rules. We don't just keep going, keep going, because I think that's when things become gray. There's that gray area of,
where if you don't know what the rules are, the rules of the game are, how can you stay within the rules of the game if you don't know what you're aiming for, if this makes any sense to you? It makes total sense. It's like driving on a winding road. If you don't stay within the boundaries of the road and between the lines, you will go careening off a cliff or go head on into a problem.
But I think that what I sense from you, and I know now that you have also worked your way into helping other people along their journey because you've been there. You understand the ups, the downs, the hormonal fluctuations, the difficulty physically going through all of this, the absolute difficulty of going through it mentally and emotionally.
And so I want to mention that Eloise is now also a coach for those who are walking this fertility journey, because having had this experience makes you incredibly empathetic, sympathetic, but also filled with wisdom. Yes, I've earned my stripes.
And you're here to talk about it. Yeah, it's true, though, because it's not something you can experience if you haven't experienced it yourself. And what do you do with people outside of you who often have judgments? You know, I guess they don't want children, that kind of thing, only to find out that they're on their fifth round of IVF and it took at the age of 45 to
So I have a good friend that people pretty much, she did not talk about it because it wasn't talked about years ago. These days, it's a little more open. But do you agree that people's judgments can really get in the way? Absolutely. I remember, you know, IVF is one thing, especially when you try with your own. It's when you start venturing into the realm of donor egg and...
how people look at you. And I remember even for myself, you know, it was that tug, like, oh, you know, how, how are we going to discuss this with the family? How are we, because we wanted to be very open about, especially towards our child, um, or our daughter that, so she knows where she's coming from and she has the right to know. And, um,
My firm belief is that if you tell one person, you have to tell everybody because if the child finds out, it could be quite detrimental for the psychology of the child growing up, feeling that you were withholding information. Now, I remember feeling that it was like a... I mention it in some of my writings that I do as a scarlet letter because...
It feels like you've got this big secret that you're carrying around and you feel like you've got to keep it to yourself. And there should be no shame in, you know, the fact of you being...
a mother, because you did carry the child. It's the same principle whether you adopt a child. It is exactly the same. And I remember even for my family, like some people in my family are very specific in the way that they think. For my father especially, he's very huge on his genetics, if I can put that in inverted commas.
And it was a very, very hard discussion and conversation, although I made it up such a big thing in my mind. And in the end, it was something that was really not as bad and as scary as what I actually made it out to be, which is exactly what fear really is, is I think it starts creating all of these emotions and starts distorting what the actual reality is in the end because of what we believe is
people are going to say and how they are going to react but you know that just has such a knock-on effect on how you behave and what your actions and your behaviors become in the end.
No, you're exactly right. And so I want to make sure that people know where to find out more information about you. And the URL is Eloise Cloette, that's spelled E-L-O-U-I-S-E, Eloise, Cloette, C-L-O-E-T-E dot com. And you'll
can, I'm presuming, have a contact with you to discuss what might be the best path for them. Is this one-on-one that you're doing or are these classes or both? What is your vision? It would be both. So I have just recently launched a new Facebook, private Facebook group where...
I encourage people to come on to the group, join the group where we have some meaningful conversations specifically around the areas of the mind, your fertility, and also your business for that matter, business meaning your life and so your career, because it's the trio or the trinity that all has a knock-on effect on any area really in our lives. And, yeah,
So the Facebook group is the Acceptance Inner Circle. Is that what the page is called? Yeah, and it is visible, so you are able to find it on Facebook. So I'm just trying to see if I can get the group name for you. But yeah, if they go to my URL, it's
www.elouisecloet.com. You can click. There is a downloadable workbook guide, which was three steps that I've created specifically for people going through this journey, which is also applicable to any areas of life. And that will also direct you to my Facebook group where you're able to access and to join it.
And now it doesn't want to open my group, which is very interesting. That's okay. Technology has not been our friend earlier today. No, no. I'm sure it's there, and I will make sure I put it on the show notes page. So as you walk this journey, it's important to note that you did achieve your outcome. Not everyone will.
But with the right mindset and with the right opening, letting go, forgiveness, permission, communication and relationships, it's very possible. And you certainly had a number of hurdles to overcome physically. So well done. Oh, I found it. The egg-ceptance, E-G-G-C-E-P-T-A-N-C-E, inner circle.
That's great. I'll put that into the show notes as the Facebook group page. And I know that you're not alone in this. Many, many women have had this difficulty and challenge, but it's certainly worth trying everything. So Eloise, thank you for sharing all of this information, the stories that you've been through. And we're very appreciative of your sharing it with our audience.
Thank you. And thank you for having me. And if my story can inspire other people and help people along the way, this has been my absolute honor and my pleasure to be on the show today. Thank you very much, Linda. You're so very welcome. To our audience, make it a good week ahead. Thank you for tuning in today. You can find more shows at wisehealthforwomenradio.com.
