Ep.3: That time I felt completely empty — and how I gently let joy back in

After months of emotional exhaustion, infertility grief after many IVF rounds, and feeling joyless, I found myself staring out the window at grey skies and empty trees, longing for something to change — outside and within. In this episode, I share how I slowly began letting joy back into my life by planting tiny seeds of curiosity: a bookshop visit, a new love for manga, and learning to embrace what once felt “not for me.” If you’ve ever felt stuck, numb, or unsure how to begin again, this gentle, soul-filled episode is for you. A story of healing, rediscovery, and the quiet magic of following what lights you up — no matter how small it may seem. Come sit with me, dear dreamer. Let’s talk about joy, creativity, and reclaiming our inner spark.

During the end of this winter, I felt so joyed out. I know this word doesn’t exist. But that is how I felt. No joy left. Truly empty, in a way. Exhausted from life. During that time, I don’t think I would have been able to say it out loud that way. Now, in hindsight, I am realizing just how low I felt. Over the winter months, even from late autumn, I had accumulated so much heartache, that became a very important and always present side character of our infertility journey. Sidenote: If you don’t know, we’ve been on the journey of infertility for over 7 years now, with many failures along the way. I think I am going to make an episode about that, it deserves its one place. Back to what I was saying: I truly felt the question weighing me down: Who was I going to be in a world full of mothers when I wasn’t one of them? How did I fit in into the picture? Who was I in all of this? There were so many important life decisions to make, like, would we even want to continue with our infertility journey? And, of course there were brighter days in between all of these dark ones. And something happened, that we didn’t anticipate, but I just am not ready to talk about that yet.

 I am not saying, that I didn’t thrive, from time to time. Of course, I had great days, too. But despite of that – looking back on it now – I can see just how much we had to go through. How much I had to really fight during these days with all the weight carrying me down. I am sure, you can understand that. Dark feelings do not exclude joy – sometimes we can feel all at once, right? And of course, I am still priviledged and grateful for the life I get to live -do not get me wrong on that. But in hindsight – oh my, I wish I could just hold this version of myself.

In addition to all of that, I hated the limited color palette, that I was consuming everyday from my window seat. Brown, grey, grey green. Oh, and surprise – brown again! Brown and grey and brown was how I felt inside of myself, too. The emptyness I felt, was mirrored right in front of my eyes. All the trees, that we can look at from our window: They were all empty. Still. After months. All I longed for, was for the outside to change. To grow again. Because, if the outside could change and grow from brown, grey and green grey – that meant, that I, too, could change my state of being. Flourish from the darkness. It meant, that things could move on to something else – and I had the permission to do so too.

And with time – the sun came back, and so did life around the trees. At first, these slight dashes of colors made me smile and gave me joy. The season of hibernation was over! The low season, I can now finally start to leave it all behind. But then, slowly, there was a question inside of myself, asking me: But why, just why, don’t I feel different too? Somehow I expected outer changes to magically change my point of view, too. Now of course, there was permission to be found and wisdom in the changes of spring – for instance, all will bloom one day again, even when you are at your lowest. Or that sometimes it takes patience, for things to change. Or that change is happening, even though we might not see it. But, but – outer change could only give me a slight “this could be you” card. It could never do the work for me.

Want to continue? Listen to this episode here: