AllPaths Podcast
Building a family can be a complicated, messy, lonely, and sometimes heartbreaking process, but you don't have to navigate this challenging journey alone. Join the AllPaths Family Building community as we talk with people who are currently trying to grow their family, those whose family building journey has come to an end, and experts in the fertility and family building space. Together we'll: *Hear family stories, providing real-life perspectives that highlight the many different paths a family building journey can take. *Explore different fertility treatments and family building options with experts in this space. *Get connected to a variety of...
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An Adoptee Choosing Adoption
<p>In this episode we meet Will, a Boston native living in Texas who offers a unique perspective on adoption as both an adoptee and a new adoptive father. Adopted at birth from a Brazilian birth mother by white parents, Will shares what it was like growing up in a multiracial household where adoption was a normal, open part of the conversation. He recounts his emotional journey to reconnect with his Brazilian heritage and birth family during a study abroad trip in college, a search that has since evolved into a 14-year relationship with his birth mother and siblings.</p><...
“I can do hard things.”
<p>In this episode, Jessica Attime, a life-long New Englander, shares her transition from waiting for the "perfect time" to start a family to navigating the unpredictable reality of infertility. From the all-consuming effort to conceive to experiencing a heartbreaking miscarriage, Jessica and her husband were eventually given a diagnosis of unexplained infertility. </p><p>The conversation explores the emotional weight of moving to a process that suddenly becomes highly medicalized as Jessica describes her foray into IVF and her frustrations over communication gaps she’s experienced, specifically the overwhelming logistics of fertility pharmacies, the confusing "second language" of medical ac...
"I Did Find My People": A Conversation with Our New ED
<p>In this episode of the AllPaths podcast, we are excited to introduce the organization's new Executive Director, Lauren Hart Clancy. A longtime volunteer who has led peer support groups and co-chaired our annual Footsteps for Family Building Walk, Lauren brings personal family building experience as well as her professional background in public health, advocacy, and community building to this role.</p><p>The conversation touches on Lauren’s own family building journey, but for a deeper dive listen to Episode 30 where Lauren shared her family’s story. We also talk about Lauren’s previous volunteer work at AllPaths, including the of...
Faith vs. Fertility
<p>In this episode, we welcome Dr. Harrell Jordan, a nurse educator and author who discusses the often-overlooked perspective of male infertility within the Black community. After being diagnosed with a low sperm count and abnormalities early in his marriage, Dr. Jordan shares his multi-year struggle to conceive, which involved failed IVF cycles, surgeries, and the emotional strain of balancing personal faith with medical reality. The "tug of war" he faced while balancing his Christian faith with the biological realities of infertility led him to author his book, Faith vs. Fertility: A Black Man’s Battle Between Belief and Biology, wi...
A Financial Transaction and a Gift from God
<p>In this episode of the AllPaths podcast, we sit down with Ruthie, a Boston-area school counselor and educator, to discuss her incredibly complex and high-stakes journey to motherhood. Ruthie’s story begins at age 34, when she and her husband, Chris, faced immediate fertility challenges including a blocked fallopian tube and IVF, soon followed by their first miscarriage, which tragically occurred just a week after the sudden death of her father-in-law. The journey grew even more harrowing during a subsequent twin pregnancy when one baby was diagnosed with spina bifida and hydrocephaly, while the other was found to have a potentially fatal chromosomal abnormality. During a procedure intended to manage these complications...
You May Feel a Bit of Pressure
<p>In this episode of the AllPaths podcast, hosts Emily and Liane sit down with author Amy Gallo Ryan to discuss her infertility memoir, You May Feel a Bit of Pressure: Observations from Infertility's Heart-Wrenching Ride. Amy shares her struggle with unexplained infertility, recounting the grueling process of multiple IVF rounds, the isolation of quitting her job to focus on treatment, and the heartbreak of an ectopic pregnancy followed by emergency surgeries. Despite these challenges, Amy eventually welcomed her daughter, Hazel, and later twins, through a journey that taught her the profound lesson of being out of control.</p><p>...
Grief Shared Is Grief Divided
<p>In this episode of the AllPaths Podcast, we are joined by Rachel Spekman, a therapist and career strategist from Massachusetts. Rachel shares her arduous three-year journey to motherhood, which involved multiple fertility treatments, multiple losses, and navigating the healthcare system as a same-sex, mixed-race couple. Eventually she had two successful frozen embryo transfers, leading to the birth of her seven-year-old son and three-year-old daughter. Rachel’s story highlights the emotional and physical toll of family building, the "naive innocence" often felt at the start of fertility treatments, and the importance of maintaining a sense of humor through the many "ho...
So Now What?
<p>In this episode, we speak with Lana Manikowski, an author and certified life coach who navigated a seven-year infertility journey that ended at age 44 after multiple rounds of IUIs and IVFs left her without a baby. Lana candidly discusses her decision to forgo further routes like adoption to avoid additional heartache, reframing the choice to stop treatment not as a failure, but as a courageous act of choosing oneself and one’s partnership. Lana opens up about the isolation, self-judgment, and "tiered grief" she experienced when her body didn't work as expected, and how she eventually found the strength to...
Law School, Lymphoma, and a New Path
<p>In this episode, we welcome Rijon Charne, the founding attorney of Sunray Fertility Law. Rijon’s specialization in reproductive health law was a direct result of her personal experience as a cancer survivor and the educational and financial hurdles she faced during her own fertility journey. Just two days after graduating from law school, Rijon was diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma. During this time, she encountered significant resistance and a lack of information regarding fertility preservation from her medical providers. Her initial oncologists failed to discuss the impact of chemotherapy on her fertility, and one even dismissed the idea of eg...
A Different Ride for Everyone
<p>In this episode, Kristy Koser, a licensed professional clinical counselor specializing in reproductive mental health, shares her family building journey. After years of struggling with infertility and experiencing multiple miscarriages during IUI and IVF cycles, Kristy and her husband eventually welcomed their daughter via surrogacy in 2017. Because Kristy and their gestational carrier lived close to one another in rural Virginia, she was able to be intimately involved in the process, attending every doctor's appointment and "vicariously living" for nine months. Kristy describes the experience as beautiful, but acknowledges the emotional and financial complexities she had to navigate. She struggled...
