Hello, everybody, my name is Mark Sherman. I'm the founder of organic conceptions. And I'm excited to bring you this introductory course, really all about the importance of our emotional health and well being while we're struggling to conceive. And this is the piece generally that's dismissed as couples who are enduring that uncertainty. It's no question one of the most emotionally charged difficult time for a couple. But it's so easy to be focused on what we need to be doing or not doing much more of the physical aspects of conceiving.

And really through that entire process. We get worn down our emotional health, our well being our relationships, and that can have a significant toll on our quality of life and certainly our reproductive health. So I'm excited to have this introductory course to share a little bit with you how we can actually help to optimize and put your emotional health in the optimal place for quality of life that is healthy, that is thriving, as well as put your reproductive health in a position that optimizes your chances for conception. I found it organic conceptions as a result of my wife and I, and our personal journey struggling to conceive for close to a decade. And on two separate occasions, we became this story that I'm sure if you are struggling to conceive, you've heard the story of the couple that tries for years, and then they decide to shift their path, adopt a child foster care, take a break, whatever it might be, and then guess what happens?

Yes, the surprise, unexpected miracle baby. And I will tell you that that particular story happened to my wife and I not just once but on two separate occasions twice. We became that annoying story and I say that Somewhat kidding, but honestly, when my wife and I were struggling, and people would share those stories with us, they'd go out of their way to tell us about the story of the couple of adopted men can see, those stories are really painful for us. In many ways they melt made my wife and I feel like we're creating this problem. We're doing something wrong. And we're the cause of why we can't have children.

What a What a terrible thought that is. And the second reason we dislike those stories was, it indirectly tells you or makes the assumption that you need to give up on what you so desperately want, in order to get what you want, which is completely just unrealistic. If you see yourself building a family a certain way you see your path unfolding, to think that you should be convinced or try to convince yourself to head down some other path would be unrealistic. It wouldn't be the right thing to do. wouldn't be fair in it. Just at the end of the day, something that's not not possible.

So, however, on two separate occasions, my wife and I had that exact occurrence. And we felt compelled, actually frustrated that there was no research ever done to understand. Are these stories, just one offs, these one off miracles that can't be explained? Or is it possible that there's commonalities there is insights, there's trends, there's patterns here that can emerge, to help the millions of couples who are struggling to conceive whether they're looking for an alternative approach, or they're in treatment, and they want to be sure that they're putting all the pieces together, both physically, emotionally and spiritually and putting themselves in the best place. So my wife and I decided that we would go out there and research these stories. Research had never been done before to go deeper into all these situations, all these scenarios.

You I left my work partnered with Dr. Kate Webster. She's a PhD in multivariate statistics. And she's a research psychologist. And we spent multiple years with a third party organization researching all variations of these stories. And what we uncovered, starts to hold the keys to unlocking and unraveling what is happening to us in putting ourselves in an optimal, healthy state for conception. So I'm excited to share with you a little bit about what we've learned in this introductory course.

The reason I say this is just a it's a little bit of a snapshot in terms of what we learned because the course we actually created for couples is close to seven hours long. So these modules that you listen to online, along with the workbook and journal, so it's close to seven hours, so it's near impossible for me to cover the entire program in a short introductory video, but I'm going to do my best today. To leave you with some tools with some things to consider that help you as you progress forward. So, I think that what we probably can all agree upon. And if you're listening to this course that when you're dealing with that great level of worry and uncertainty, it is difficult difficult is probably an understatement. It's a devastating experience.

When couples are dealing with this in the way a woman is interpreting what is happening is certainly different than her partner husband, the interpretation is different. And our ability to to bring validation and connection between that couple is so so, so critical. I think sometimes we forget that this is about a healthy marriage, a healthy couple coming together to achieve Parenthood. However, through this journey, just the natural steps of this journey, start to take women down a certain path and there's generally a disconnect. between how her partner is dealing with this. And then often that leads to a very difficult time for that couple.

And we want to change that. So women are affected, the couples are affected. I also think that we sometimes forget that family friends loved ones who are trying to care for you, they're affected all of this in living with that uncertainty every single month in that devastation that sets in when we have another met Miss month, all of this in the dynamics between our relationships, how we're trying to rationalize this, how we're trying to make sense of this, all of this can absolutely put our reproductive health in a poor position for conception. So I what I want to do in this course, is to help us bring awareness that we can now no longer neglect our emotional health as part of our preconception journey. And that I know because I lived it for close to a decade. That is So easy to focus on the physical things we need to do to solve this to fix this to make this go away.

And there's just millions of choices and suggestions and treatments. But we have to dial in our emotional, the emotional and psychological understanding of what we're going through. And ultimately, how are we processing what is happening to us. It's about processing. It's about interpretation of what is happening. It's about the meaning that we're giving it and it's about what we do next.

As a result of those three in that's where we can make a significant difference and help you so let's get on here's what I think the goals are of the course and what I'm going to try to accomplish one I want to talk about what the challenges are that couples shared with us when they're trying to conceive even before they think about conceiving, what are the realities, what are the things that are the anticipations the early worries that are on people's mind, but then want to Talk about though that anticipation that worry how it morphs into that anxiety, that fear, the panic, and how that actually has technical ramifications relative to our reproductive health, our reproductive systems, in our emotional systems and how they're tied together. I then want to share with you at a very high level what emerged in the research I talked about Dr. Kate and I conducting research, it was never done before, in that we uncovered these nine emotional stages, these transitions.

And I want to share with you at a high level what are these transitions like because I think walking you through this journey map can start to help you understand how we need to connect with our emotions that might right now feel raw feel out of control. There's just constant thoughts that we really need the tools to understand how to own how to process how to make sense of it. It's happening to us. So I'll share that with you. And then the last thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna leave you just with three kind of key things that I would ask any couple to consider things that I say would be key takeaways. That if you dismiss these three than I think for so many, there's such lost time, lost money, lost relationships that can easily consume many, many years of your life and I'd like to give you a few things to leave you with to consider so we can change that