Coping with infertility trauma and how racial trauma can make it so much harder for women of colour

The Fertility Warriors

Today on the podcast it's my absolute pleasure to welcome one of my favourite people on Instagram, Dr Loree Johnson. Loree shares so much wisdom on Instagram as a Psychotherapist whose speciality is in women's mental and reproductive health. I think that having had her own fertility journey too makes her such an asset to the infertility community and she has such a calm and warm energy about her. Seriously she is one of my most favourite people. She is also a person of colour. 2020 has been a huge wake up call to me if I'm honest. One of my best friends is a person of colour, I experienced racism first hand when I lived in Japan, both my Fertility Specialist and OBGYN were people of colour and I have had the pleasure of getting to work with some of the most incredible young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. I live in Australia. I don't post about US holidays, or insurance or any of those things because I live halfway across the country, and when George Floyd passed away and the world actually stopped to pay attention to what was happening, I couldn't help but be forced to re-examine myself, as messy and uncomfortable as it is. The truth is that I have not been doing enough, especially with the platform I have. And there have been five major lessons for me •The SAME issues are experienced here in Australia. Indigenous Australians are 7 times more likely to die in custody than Caucasians. •Just because you aren't actively racist, doesn't mean you're helping. I had never even considered how vanilla my podcast was - and not because I had actively tried to make it that way, but just because it is what I know. That needs to change. And I need to visibly ensure that people with different stories to mine are also heard. Because I know that many of my listeners are also people of colour, same sex couples and solo fertility warriors too. •Reproductive medicine has quite an awful history, and together with modern day discrimination and poverty, there is a great disparity in the statistics and care provided to women of colour •Trauma is complex. And so many women of colour experience multiple layers - infertility trauma with racial trauma •This is not over because the riots stop. It requires Some of the facts: •Women of colour have higher rates of infertility, yet some of the lowest treatment rates •Even in mandated states in the United States, they make up significantly lower proportions of IVF cycles •Women of colour have lower live birth rates (even after IVF), higher miscarriage rates, higher rates of preterm birth, maternal death and fetal death Click here to read more about these facts. It is SO hard when you visit a Doctor and don't feel like you are in a safe place, or that you are receiving the care you are so entitled to. It is heartbreaking when financial circumstances dictate whether or not you have the ability to create a family And of course, this touches many fertility warriors, regardless of race, but the fact of the matter is, it affects women of colour in the United States (and likely across the world) more frequently. And we need to talk about it. Loree sees this intersection of infertility trauma and racial trauma regularly and is also a member of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine and serves on its Mental Health Professional's Anti-Racism Task Force. I'm so grateful that I was able to welcome Loree onto my podcast for a really honest discussion (even when I was sup...