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I was not always a herniated disc. When we were born, I started as a wholesomely plump, perfectly placed, healthy disc. I showed up well in scans and gave nearby nerves a respectful berth. So how did we get here: 3 months of our year disrupted and bedridden?

When we turned 18, Amit started a company, went on trips, started working out. These things hurt— curled in airplanes, bent over devices, hunched at desks— but I was always there to curl, bend, and hunch harder. 

When we turned 19, Amit started a running habit. It’s like Nancy says: being taken for granted is the gift you give the ones you love. Thus was my reward for doing my job perfectly for decades: being taken for granted. Amit barely knew I existed. He often thought of business, Apple products, new technology, but never of me. At 19, he started to run for miles. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t take it. When it got tough, I gritted my teeth and leaned on everyone around me to suffer through it. I thought about how lots of spines had it way worse (at least Amit didn’t play football), how all the other valiant body parts (the noble brain, the gritty stomach, my old buddy the steady heart) were all counting on me.

After mile 2 of each run, I’d say, “Ahem. Perhaps you should stop? Or get cushier shoes? Or stretch?” But he would speed up, thinking, “I’m tired of being pudgy. If I could have a robot body, I would. But for now I’m stuck with this. No pain, no gain!”

To hear Amit call us pudgy, to hear he’d prefer to discard me for a robot spine— that hurt! Those words hurt more than all the hours of lifting with me versus with our legs. I let out a few tears in the form of stress fractures (that’s how vertebrae cry). But he couldn’t hear me cry. How could I speak so he could hear?

Finally, I threw myself into my neighbors. The nerves and muscles screamed, “Mosh pit time!” The back muscles jumped up and down and spasmed in violent dance at all hours of the night. 

Amit went to the doctor who diagnosed us with a herniated disc. We were bedridden for weeks, then diligently took posture classes, learned the Alexander method. It seemed we’d reached an understanding. Amit was now aware of me. Even if he couldn’t hear me, he was trying to learn how to listen. 

Years passed, then decades. Amit founded new companies, traveled to new countries. When he said, “Sit,” I said, “How many hours?” When he said, “Walk,” I said, “How many miles?” When he said, “Shoulder my luggage,” I said, “How many useless objects can you stuff into how many bags?” I saw that I was an object to him, to be enslaved, maintained, a deficit in the bank account, an obligation on the task list, ideally neither seen nor heard. Our relationship was purely transactional.  

Amit’s friends would compliment him, “You’re so fit. Look at your arms… And you don’t have any fat.” We did have nice arms, but their view struck me as biased. Internals like me, the elegant nerves, the humble gut, etc never got compliments. 

When we were 42, Amit went surfing even though the waves were high. He ignored my niggle of doubt. Nancy had already driven us all the way to the break. We paddled out.

“It’s all up to me,” I groaned as I kept us afloat. But who can win against the ocean? A huge wave pounded against me, and I tumbled in the surf. Battered and bruised, I succumbed to the bashing of the waves. I bowed to the ocean’s power. 

After being struck, scraped, and bruised by the surfboard, we crawled out of the water, and Nancy drove us home. Nancy inspected the skin of our back and said, “When anything weird happens to me at all, like I land weird when bouldering or feel a twinge when fencing, I stop and don’t do anything else that day.” 

Amit did not share this philosophy. Instead, he decided to go on a hike! Up and down the mountain we went. When we were walking home, Nancy was driving home with some guests when she saw us and picked us up. We could barely get into the car, but we stifled our groans of pain so as not to startle our guests. We can’t blame the hike, or the ocean. It was the years of accumulated neglect. I may be a bone fragment, but I was dying of a broken heart.

The next day, we couldn’t get out of bed. But we had to pee. Maybe the urge would miraculously fade… Maybe the pain would ease… Maybe we could wait until after Nancy returned with the muscle relaxers… We waited and waited until finally we got up and lurched to the bathroom. Things were really hurting. One moment we were standing over the toilet, and the next moment, we were on the floor and Nancy was leaning over us. 

One friend who was visiting us was a doctor and took our pulse. “You’re pale and sweaty.” 

Amit wondered, “How can I be pale when I’m brown?”

Nancy explained what she’d witnessed, “I called to you before leaving and you sounded weird, so I barged into the bathroom just in time to see you faint. You fell into my arms and I lowered you to the ground.”

Our friend said, “You should’ve heard Nancy’s chilling screams for help!”

We couldn’t walk, but Amit kept saying, “Don’t call an ambulance.” Nancy called our dad, a retired surgeon. Our dad convinced us, “Go to the hospital.” Amit said, “Let’s ask our neighbor where to go because he works in healthcare.” Our neighbor said, “Go to this ER; it’s good with back issues.” 

Nancy and her friends got us up the stairs and into the car. The doctor friend said, “Maybe you should crawl,” but Amit wouldn’t stoop to this indignity. We slowly thumped up the stairs and heaved ourselves into the car with our arms. 

At the ER, we waited for 6 hours. We finally got an upper back scan and painkillers that didn’t do much, even though they were supposedly the most potent drugs. Nancy got us our favorite snacks, reminded the staff of our existence, and scolded them for bringing over wheelchairs when our main symptom was that we couldn’t sit up without excruciating pain. We finally went home. I don’t know how we got out of the car and down the stairs into the house.

The next day, Amit was worried we couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom again but refused to use a bedpan and forced us to walk to the bathroom again. We didn’t faint this time, but the agony was intense. Every night, we started to cramp despite all the painkillers, heating pads, and ice packs. We’d try to suffer through it as long as possible, kneading our muscles ourselves, fruitlessly, until finally we’d wake Nancy for help. Amit doesn’t like to accept help, but we needed it. Nancy got us supplies and bathed us with hot and cold towels. She nursed us night and day. After hours of back spasms we’d shout, “How are you asleep!” Nancy would wake to massage us, apply heating pads, pull our legs. Amit decided to move to another bedroom so we wouldn’t disturb her as much, but then he convinced her to switch into the other bedroom too. 

We started going to physical therapy and Amit started pushing himself to do the exercises for hours a day. Everyone said to walk but we barely could. Nancy brought us food and every time she walked by us she’d take the opportunity to pull our legs and massage our muscles to help relax and relieve the pressure on our nerves that shot pain down our leg. Amit felt ashamed we couldn’t help with any chores or packing. 

Nancy packed up the house so we could go on our planned next excursion. She was worried about us flying part of the journey alone because we couldn’t walk or carry anything. “You look strong so people won’t know you’re injured without a cane,” so she got us three different foldable canes, one of which Amit deemed acceptable because it was well-designed.

At the airport, we got to board earlier because of the wheelchair. Despite all the physical therapy and Amit’s diligent exercising for a month, we weren’t improving. Amit paid for the lay flat first class seat so that we wouldn’t be in as much pain during the first leg of the flight. At first Nancy also got first class but then couldn’t sit with us because they wouldn’t allow her cat to be in first. She said she’d come visit us during the flight but only came once.

We made a stop in SF to get a full body MRI that Amit’s investor had a deal for. Then it was onto the second leg of the flight. Sitting for hours was agony. We tried taking many walks during the flight and holding ourselves hovering off the seat with our arms, but it was the worst pain we’d had yet. When our parents received us at the airport, they were shocked seeing us wheeled out in such a state. At least we had the cane. 

Our dad called his doctor friends to get us seen right away. Amit marveled, “What would we do without my dad? Without him the MRI would’ve taken an extra 3 months. The ER only did the upper back and not the lower back. Then the SF MRI wasn’t full resolution. All the appointments are backed up for months.”

A month after the accident, we could barely walk or sit. Each morning, we stumbled to the bathroom and collapsed on the ground to meditate, play with the cat, and check our phone. We brushed our teeth on our knees because it hurt to stand.

Amit finally admitted he had to cancel his writing workshop which he’d been waiting to do for years. He couldn’t wait for Nancy to join us and she canceled her plans too.

With our dad calling in favors, we got 2 epidurals over a period of 3 weeks. Each shot did help the pain. We started being able to hobble down the driveway before having to turn back. 

Our original summer plans were canceled, so we were continuing to work on our startup. Every day, we lay on our back for hours, holding our laptop over us in the air. It was hard to take calls or type. 

Nancy said, “You should rearrange your desk setup assuming this is going to be the new normal.’ 

Amit said, “No, I’ll be back in no time!”

“It’s been more than a month so I’d assume it’ll be at least another month.”

Amit’s family rearranged the monitor and desk so that we could lie more comfortably. Amit designed the setup so that he lay under a table on a mattress, and he ordered a platform that swiveled his computer in front of his face for calls.

The pain was improving, but we still couldn’t walk. Worse, Amit started to feel a tingling down our leg and in our foot, even when lying down. “What if I’m like this forever?”

Our dad said, “Now that we’ve done 2 epidurals, the next step we can try is surgery.” It seemed like a safe, minor surgery that would only take an hour. Amit read a paper on it and learned that people in their 50s didn’t get herniated discs anymore because their disc juice dried up by then. 

As we signed up for the surgery, Amit said, “I’m scared I waited too long to get the surgery, that it’s too late.” Luckily, once again our dad was able to call in favors to get us seen in time. All the doctors were Indian and our dad went in to see if he also knew the anesthesiologist. The surgeon made a small incision in our back and used tiny cameras and knives to remove the pieces of me that had come out of the tear. 

Afterwards, we ate cookies, fluffernutter sandwiches, Indian treats, and rested at home. It hurt to lay on our back where the stitches were, but we were walking the same day. Thank goodness for minimally invasive surgery! The hospital scheduled an x-ray but relented when our dad asked why. They also charged us extra bills and then told us not to pay those because they were supposed to bounce back to insurance. Now we know not to be overeager with bill payments. After the fact, Amit also learned that sleeping in the recovery room after surgery cost $12 per minute, but luckily insurance had kicked in by then. 

Amit learned that, to protect me, there were basic exercises he had to avoid from now on. Want to guess what they are? 

They are deadlifts, crunches, and situps, which we often used to do. Nancy was to do all the lifting for the next few months. Gone were the days when we singlehandedly packed up the car for our trips! Amit felt a bit low so Nancy asked, “What’s your positive vision for the future with your back?”

We sent an atheist prayer into the universe, “Dear god, please let Amit have a healthy body, and find exercises like swimming that are good for strengthening his back, and build a relationship with a physical therapy expert that’ll teach him the right things to do so that he can nurture and care for himself and live a long, full life where he adores his spine…”

Although Amit still felt guilt and shame for not being able to lift things and Nancy having to do the lifting and trash removal, he allowed part of himself to enjoy not having to lift things too. 

Amit found a pool. When we got in, he was worried we’d be too slow. We hadn’t been in the water since this all started months ago. We got into the slow lane and found that we were doing ok. We did a few laps. A pool attendant waved us over, “You’re swimming so fast that you have to get into the faster lane.”

Amit smiled. “No, I’m injured so I should go slower.”

Personal news: Amit and I got engaged earlier this year! Amit said the hardest things about proposing to me were 1) keeping it a secret from me, 2) waiting to match the exact time of our anniversary, and 3) finding the ring. 

Amit says that every time we’d talk about what I wanted in a ring, I’d add on more requirements— I wanted it to be a unique, beautiful, comfortable, expensive work of art that represented our love, and so on. Stressed, Amit looked at hundreds of rings. Luckily, when Amit saw it, he knew this ring was the one. His friend went to 3 jewelers in Germany but they didn’t have it, so he imported it to NYC and got a friend to check it out there. This designer is known for making comfortable pieces fitted to how you wear them. Amit had me trying on ring sizers of different thicknesses and materials at different times of day for weeks to make sure it was the perfect fit. 

Amit put in so much work into the proposal and coordinated with a bunch of friends to pull it off and keep it a secret. He used apple watch data to get the time down to the minute that we reached the peak of the hike that we went on for our first date exactly 2 years prior. He reminded me how, on our first date, he wanted to give me a high five and I was like, “No touching, don’t overstep,” but now we’re in love! 

A week prior to the proposal, Amit’s friend hiked to the top and scouted out the location. Amit schemed with friends to perpetuate the lie that it was just a big surf trip. He even pretended to pack his wetsuit to throw me off the scent. Even though I knew a proposal was coming, I didn’t think it was happening on the hike because there were so many people. He had many backup plans in case it rained or if I didn’t want to go to the top. Friends hid in the bushes to record the proposal and took videos and a ton of legit, fancy photos. Other friends made sure no one was around. Friends texted each other throughout the hike to make sure the timing was right. Another friend put together a beautiful basket of our favorite exotic fruits. Afterwards, a private vegan chef cooked us dinner in her house using local ingredients. Amit also surprised me with a visit to an alpaca farm because I love alpacas. Amit had tried to recreate another part of our first date set in a burning man-esque kombucha shop but gave up after many calls trying to revive the defunct shop. I felt so moved and grateful to be with someone so caring, thoughtful, and logistically competent. He’s so great at community and designing a surprising, delightful experience unique to me. He knows me so well. I’m so lucky he wants to be with me. 

During the proposal, I felt how I muted my emotions. I didn’t know how to celebrate this much joy. I’ve never let myself love this much before. I used to think I would die alone. I never wanted to need anyone, not even my parents, but now I let myself need Amit. It feels great. 

I’ve always been obsessed with growth. When I was CEO, this obsession went into hyperdrive because startups are all about growth and I kept telling myself, “I have to prove I can scale.” For 6+ years, I went through dozens of executive coaches, CEO groups, and coaching programs, read 100+ business books, all with the aim of continually exponentially leveling up in life so that I was bottlenecking my company’s growth as little as possible. Every coach has their own framework, and I went through different types of coaching: productivity/ accountability coaching, therapy-like communication/ group dynamics sessions, skills coaching (from media training, to operational leadership like running meetings, KPI’s, hiring, management, 360’s, etc). After $100K+ in coaching and self development services, what did I learn about how to best level up?

I concluded that increasing in self awareness is the ultimate power. No matter how much power and resources and money I have, I’m restricted to reacting at the level of awareness I’m operating at. At the lowest level of consciousness, I’m a slave to my desires, a beast, easily manipulated by external circumstances, my body, my emotions, my biases, my ego. At higher levels of awareness, I can notice and appreciate my patterns, and I can change them.

The best way I found of improving self awareness is Conscious Leadership forums. I want you to do it. It’s ~$10K+/ year and if you can’t pay for it, I will pay half the fee for 5 people who ask me.

I’ve been in many founder/ CEO groups, often because I was excited to join something exclusive. Each time it was fun onboarding onto a new framework and meeting people, but then we’d fall into the same patterns. We’d whine about engineering/ executive hiring, fundraising, engineering management. We’d end with exchanging intros for recruiters or doing arithmetic around SaaS metrics. I’d start looking for a new coach/ group to join. I’d wonder, “Is there more? Do I really know so much already? Are these fields just not that deep, or am I an idiot, or are these learnings experiential and unlearnable through abstractions like language?”

I’m a writer, I love the science of story structure, and I often look at my life as though it were a movie. Waking up is a key part of my favorite movies like Fight Club and The Matrix. I love the moment of revelation that unlocks and repaints the story. Going through CLG has been one of those fundamental shifts for me. Now, I look back on my experiences and can tell a more insightful story about them, not just a simple villain/ victim story of blaming someone / circumstances for the conflict, or with a deus ex machina event where that new hire or my great idea swoops in to save the day, but a philosophical story that changes how I see the world.

I love being able to dissect the story of my life on a meta level so that it’s not just an episodic sitcom that keeps repeating and glorifying how great the protagonist is at fighting or seducing people while everyone else acts as an antagonistic/ comedic foil. This is my life we’re talking about- I want to build a deeper arc and unveil my wizards of Oz. I don’t want to sweatily re-live my favorite scenes again and again, the same pornography of impressing the highest status whatever, getting into the most elite thing, being the most desirable/ successful/ smart. I want the story of my life to be mind blowing on a totally different level. I want to grow substantively, repeatedly. The movie of my life doesn’t need expensive special effects so long as it’s thematically rich. The wonderful thing about theme is that it’s free. It’s all in the writing, in the awareness of the writer, and the writer is me.

What entertained me for hours when I was naive to story structure- Wile-E Coyote endlessly chasing the roadrunner with bigger and bigger explosives- left me hungry for capital-M-More once I understood the cartoon’s underlying structure. When I learned the tropes and how the conventions of genre work, the patterns unveiled themselves to me, I could predict how the movie would go, and I could choose how I wanted to innovate on the script. Isn’t that more fun than continuing to watch the same thing unfold forever? It remains literally world shattering to see the stories I unconsciously tell myself about my world, to gain the lucidity to affect the script instead of blindly continuing to chase my roadrunners with bigger and bigger explosives. Do you want to learn the underlying structures behind the stories you tell yourself about your world every moment? Isn’t awareness of story structure key to experiencing the most exquisite movie, the movie of our lives that we’re currently casting, writing, and acting in?

Writers learn that in the most powerful stories, underneath your protagonist’s conscious, voiced drive, they have an unconscious, subliminal need (ie. Ricky Bobby consciously wants to win car races but unconsciously wants his dad’s love). The arc of the story requires bringing the unconscious into the light so that the protagonist can grow and their world can change. A well structured story circle feels surprising, revelatory, satisfying, and inevitable. It’s so cheap to insert substance- if a story doesn’t have theme, the only reason is a lack of awareness. Why blow millions on special effects if your story doesn’t explore a heart shaking, deep truth?

Anyway, that’s what I realized was happening in my life- the movie of my life was exciting in a shallow way, with $ and stakes and drama at various moments, but it was a fleeting story that had limited depth of meaning. I had the conscious drives of proving I was the best XYZ, all the while being driven by unconscious desires for love, to be worthy, and I kept missing the turn that would break the story. Until I brought my unconscious desires into the light, my story would keep feeling like Act 1. I’d keep wondering, “Is there more?” and, so long as I wasn’t seeing the truth, “more” would just seem like more of the same old thing, which isn’t actually more of anything. People gain awareness through repeatedly unveiling the unconscious desire driving their conscious actions, and after they see the unconscious, they can finally change the pattern and go a layer deeper to find a new pattern. We can control patterns that we can see, but not the ones we can’t see.

Without awareness, we’re repeating the same thing again and again, an episodic, masturbatory tv show of Sherlock Holmes solving crimes again and again, showing how dumb everyone else is, how he’s always right, never learning, never changing. And that’s fine as entertainment- it’s fun to be right, it’s celebrating and embracing an event that we enjoy and want to see again and again. But that’s not our highest art, that’s not all the meaning there is, that’s not our full potential, that’s not how I want to experience my whole life. I want to change and figure out how I’m wrong. I want to see the meta pattern and tell a full story of my self and my world in a way that doesn’t blame anyone. When we talk with each other and tell each other the stories of our lives, let’s not masturbate the whole time. Let’s go deeper and birth something new and magical. Let’s always keep leveling up. Let’s not keep cycling through our narrative patterns without curiosity.

TLDR; I would love to invite my wider network into CLG. They have forum openings right now. If your company won’t pay for it, I will pay for half of it for 5 people so long as you are in the program for the full year. Contact me if you want my support in doing CLG. I’m excited to commit to leveling up in consciousness together.

Self awareness is the key to easing suffering. Without self awareness, we’re slaves to the patterns in our brains. The universe reflects our unknown biases, so we’re caged within our own blind spots, trapped in patterns that reinforce how we’ve learned to see reality, missing the richness of the infinite other possibilities. It’s easy to read stoic/ buddhist philosophy and think we’re enlightened, but there is a huge gap between theory and practice. CLG takes it beyond theory into structures that make it easier to see when we’re reactive and blinded to higher levels of awareness. Let’s level up so the movies of our lives can become more thematically deep.

I froze more eggs during COVID! Now I’ve done 3 cycles and feel I have abundant eggs. Even if none of them turn into a baby whenever I’m ready to have them, I feel like I gave it a solid try and am free of biological clock time scarcity. FB posts from friends have motivated me to freeze my eggs, so this post is my way of passing on and adding to the story.

Birth control unlocked freedom for uneducated women, giving the choice to go to school, to get a job. Egg freezing is the 2nd half of that equation. Egg freezing unlocks freedom for educated women, giving us the choice to enjoy the fruits of our careers instead of feeling like we’re sacrificing personal life for career, or being rushed because of time scarcity. For the first time in human history, the 2 technologies give women male-like freedom over their reproductive destinies. Egg freezing + birth control level the playing field for women. Until a few years ago, I never thought of a new path towards domestic bliss because, until the last few decades, stories of successful women being single moms via surrogates at age 45 didn’t seem accessible, financially or biologically. But now there are other stories that are possible, and we’re the first generation that will see what kinds of families we’ll create. 

The happily-ever-after story I learned as a kid went like this: I’d effortlessly marry my childhood sweetheart (even though I didn’t have one), we’d take over the world together by day while making love all night, and when we’d sufficiently mastered and indulged that phase of life, start pushing out as many babies as possible. In high school, I chastised my best friend for dating idiots who were clearly beneath her. In college, I didn’t date seriously, especially no one my senior year because, even if I liked the guy, we were going to get jobs in different cities and break up anyway. I didn’t date for most of my 20’s because I was focused on my work and my family. But when I hit 30, I realized that my family fantasy was not coming true. It had already not happened. I had to catch up! My high school friends were long married. My MIT friends weren’t married yet, but they were heading there. 

My executive coach asked me, “How old is your dad? Do you want him to have a relationship with your children? Right, so when do you need to marry by? So how many dates do you need to go on per week?” I was busy running my company, and I resented that I, the great Nancy Hua, had to go on dates with internet strangers just to build pipeline. Why couldn’t I effortlessly fall in love with some supermodel genius who was already my best friend and had loved me for years, as per my childhood fantasy? Instead, I was stooping to swiping on apps. 

I told my personal trainer my dating stories to make him laugh. He said, “You’re such a badass. I told my friends your dating stories. That last guy isn’t good enough for you.” Then he looked at me aghast, “Are you crying?!” I couldn’t explain why I was crying into my towel, mid-dead-lift. When he said, “You can have any guy you want. Every girl here wants to look more like you,” I cried harder. When people told me they were sure I’d find someone, I’d feel so hopeless and heartbroken. One of my executives discovered this the hard way when he remarked during our 1:1, “You’re the most eligible catch I can think of,” and I burst into tears. “Why are you crying?” he asked, eyes wide. “Don’t go into the office or the bathroom in case the team sees you.” 

Dating was not fun for me because I was doing it out of fear, so I’d try frantically dating in bursts, get tired and sad and delete all the apps, take 8 months off during which I’d distract myself with my friends and my work, then get scared of dying alone again and re-download all the apps. This happened for several years. With my biological clock counting down, I wondered if I should just settle. 

Then I stopped being CEO of my company and decided to never do anything that I wouldn’t do solely for the fun of it again. This included dating, because dating for me was about alleviating the fear of being alone, not about the joy of dating. I got curious about all my fears and sat with them. I was scared of my friends leaving me behind, of not prioritizing me once they got married and had kids, of being a single mom, of being lonely. I sat with each fear, and looked at the opposite story. I thought of how I’d seen married friends get divorced, how I’d grown closer to friends after they’d married and had children, how it could be better to be a single mom than co-parent with someone who wasn’t right for you, how married people could be even lonelier than single people. I saw how I was making finding a partner the Way to Having a Happy Family, when really it was no guarantee of happiness, as evidenced by so much experience I’d personally witnessed and experienced. I started looking for counterexamples and saw them everywhere, single moms, successful women I knew like my VC’s, or celebrities like Lucy Liu or Shonda Rhimes, raising children on their own even though they could probably marry genius supermodels if they wanted. I started to see another way the happily ever after story could happen. 

I wrote on my goals doc, “Freeze enough eggs such that I feel abundant about future progeny.” Then I did nothing for years. 

One day, Diane posted on FB about freezing her eggs, which inspired me to get off my butt. I did one cycle, then thought I was done. But my founder friends told me stories that scared me into intending to do more cycles. I procrastinated that until Jessica posted on FB about freezing her eggs. Then I did 2 more cycles and crossed off “freeze enough eggs” from my goals list. 

In my 20’s, I thought I wasn’t afraid of being alone, or afraid of anything, but I was just better able to ignore fear then. My 30’s forced me to face my fears, which I’m grateful for because now I don’t have those fears. Facing fear, I saw that the fear I was avoiding was with me all along, and that I was fine. I was always feeling it even when I was running from it. So it’s better to love it and feel it instead of trying to control it, which is futile and was actually making everything worse. Trying to control my emotions or the future is like building a sandcastle. It’s a fight against nature. Life wants to shift and change. Emotions want to be felt, to move and to move you. All I can do is play with it. And when I dance instead of control, I see life can be better than I’m able to imagine. 

Now I look forward to potentially being a single mom, to dying alone. I’ve embraced being a cat lady. Not to say that I’ve given up on love! I want to love again and raise a family with a man I’m devoted to. I’m just no longer afraid of that not happening. Rather than settling, my standards have gotten higher over time because I love my friends and my aloneness and my cat more every day, and anything new would have to be better than investing in my existing exquisite life. I look forward to making beating my aloneness as hard as possible, and to being delighted if it ever happens. 

The Egg Freezing Process: 

Each cycle took 8-10 days. So fast! COVID is a great time to freeze eggs because, unlike my first cycle, I don’t travel or do anything, freeing my body to do nothing but cook up eggs. The first cycle, years ago, I went to UCSF because Diane used them and it was close to my work. They extracted 16 and froze 11 eggs. 

My friend Jessica went to RMA so I decided to use them for my extractions this year. Sart.org only had data for RMA’s NJ office, but that data was good and Jessica is smart, so I went with them. I loved RMA! They were really communicative over text and super organized. They worked during Thanksgiving and Christmas. 

At RMA, the 1st cycle took place a week or so after my period. The time from 1st injection to extraction was 10 days. I went in about every 3 days so they could check on the follicles, and I found the process fast and fun. I never felt like they were wasting my time or being inefficient. Everyone was smart and nice. I loved interacting with everyone and highly recommend them. 

I injected myself with 1-3 medications every night for 10 days. I figure out how to have fun no matter what I’m doing, so I generally enjoyed injecting myself. I felt like I was playing at being a mad scientist mixing powders and tapping for air bubbles. I found it satisfying to *poink* into my juicy flesh. I did get scared towards the end of the last cycle when I started making mistakes. I bruised myself by hitting a blood vessel or something somehow, and I injected air by forgetting to expel the air, which made me scared I was going to die, but a doctor friend said I was fine.

The extraction took about an hour and I was knocked out. When I woke up, the first thing I exclaimed was, “I feel great!” They said they extracted 27 eggs and froze 21.

The 2nd cycle took place immediately after my period, and was just like the 1st cycle except 2 days shorter and with fewer side effects. The time from 1st injection to extraction was 8 days. They extracted 19 and froze 16. With 40+ eggs banked, I felt abundant about future progeny. 

Costs per cycle: 

$8K for the procedure. 

~$2K for medications. You don’t know how much medicine you’ll need because it depends on how your body responds. Alto delivers same day, so you can avoid ordering more medication until you’re sure to save $. Also they give you a caramel with every delivery, so you’re incentivized to increase delivery count. 

Side Effects: 

The first cycle I did with UCSF, I don’t remember having any side effects even though I was worried about acting crazy. I did feel sore after the procedure and watched hours of Reign (a show I’ve never watched before or since) and shop for elaborate ball gowns, which is uncharacteristic of me, but that was just for 1 day. 

The first cycle with RMA, I gained 9 pounds in 3 days! I’ve never bloated like that before, and it was uncomfortable. Lying on the exam table, I felt like a queen bee whose limbs had withered off, only a gigantic thorax remaining with drones swarming around me feeding me royal jelly while I pooped out eggs. It was water weight, and the day before the procedure I somehow lost 4 pounds, maybe because I had swapped the hormones for the trigger shot. Anyway, a week after the procedure, I was back to my normal weight. 

I babied myself this whole time with lots of heating pads and soups and basically followed what I guessed my cousin would say Traditional Chinese Medicine would say, and basically soupifying everything before I ate it (even fruit) and under-washing my hair. I started getting into making mushroom barley and other veggie soups. I bought a bread machine, an electric steamer, and tons of wild rice. But when those hormones went away, so did the urge to bake. 

The final time with RMA, I didn’t bloat, which made me worried it wasn’t working, but it was. We did this cycle immediately after my period, whereas with the previous cycle, we started injections about a week before I would’ve normally ovulated, so maybe that made a difference.

Both times, my uterus and boobs felt sore so I used heating pads. Unlike my first cycle years ago when I was running around working a ton, for the cycles with RMA, I basically lay in bed all day for a week under a giant heating pad. Generally lethargic, I was not in the mood to do anything other than watch pretty people entertain me via Netflix. My cat was really happy to get so much snuggling and warmth.

The day after my extraction, I got the strong urge to do annoying tasks I’d been putting off for literally years, like a super-charged PMS time (when I’m in my PMS zone, I get into hyperproductive, focused, conscientious mode). For example, I got very interested in my taxes, which has never happened before. As I’ve aged, I’ve learned to notice and love my cycles. My hormone cycles weren’t noticeable until my 30’s when I started getting PMS symptoms. When PMS-ing, I start to clean my house, figuratively and literally. I throw out stuff, organize drawers, and speed to inbox zero with renewed zeal and certainty. The morning after my extraction, I, with genuine gusto, got new health insurance, transfered my retirement accounts, and mailed a package. My body was like, “I guess we’re not pregnant so let’s get busy creating whatever else we do with our lives when we’re not making babies.” All my times of the month bring unique benefits, and I love making the various parts of the cycle work for me. 

Reproductive Therapist:

I was thinking of freezing embryos, so I did a session with a fertility therapist Annie that RMA referred me to. 

Annie asked, “How did you decide to freeze eggs?”

I said, “I always meant to, but I kept putting it off. Finally my friends posted on Facebook and that inspired me to pull the trigger.”

She said, “Yes, that’s often the case, where women in tech read on some message board randomly and then finally do it.” Indeed, my friends who posted are both women with STEM PhD’s from Stanford and Caltech who work in tech. This post is my way of passing on and adding to the story. Sharing more personal experiences has been a gift from Facebook because it safely normalizes / surfaces some things we can normally view as private, which can help us learn more faster together, so I want to share my experience of this process.

Annie asked, “When do you want to have children?”

I said, “It sounds silly, but I read Lucy Liu had her kid via surrogate at 45. She’s Asian, and I’m Asian, so I arbitrarily pegged that age in my mind as roughly when I’ll have kids if I still haven’t by then. But a decade is so far in the future; I almost can’t imagine it.”

She said, “That makes sense. There aren’t a lot of models for successful women who can afford to be single moms with abundant resources and support network. It’s new.”

I asked, “What blind spots do you see women having?”

She said, “I see people who have a very specific time they want to have kids by, and that lack of flexibility can cause issues. I also see people underestimating the support of the community and overestimating the importance of their significant other.” 

“I won’t overestimate the importance of my significant other versus my friends. My friends are the standard that helps me set the bar and decide if a guy is worth dating. He’d have to be really special to be worth investing in instead of just continuing to invest in my friends.”

“What if holding that standard means you are alone?”

“Then I’m alone! I saw a video on tik tok where this girl was saying we don’t need men because women make sperm in their bone marrow.” We laughed. 

Philosophy: 

The future is fundamentally uncertain and thus scary, so I try to give myself the illusion of control to try to alleviate my fears. Yet control is impossible. Even with all the eggs I’ve allegedly frozen, who knows what power outage or earthquake could happen. Maybe I’ll go to the doctors in 10 years and they’ll be like, “What eggs?” Maybe none of my eggs will convert to being a child. Maybe my child will die young. Maybe my child will grow up to hate me. No one knows. From the view of fear, nothing I do is ever enough to make me safe, because safety and certainty are impossible. All is illusory. So we might as well choose the illusion of abundance instead. And, of course, take advantage of the amazing, abundant technologies available to us. Scientists can make embryos out of skin cells. Through science, much is possible. 

Anyway, abundance teaches me that even if my friends spurn me, and I never find true love, and I never have children, I’ll always have me, and that’s just as abundant as it is scarce. It’s cool, having enough, being enough, letting go of control, all an illusion anyway. Whatever happens, I know I’ll be ok, more than ok. I’m not going to do anything out of fear anymore. I’m doing it because I can, because I want to, because it’s fun. 

Technological change drives cultural change, and in this case egg freezing changes the possible futures I can envision for myself. Now I see infinite stories full of abundant joy and no longer feel any scarcity or pressure.

“Annapurna, to which we had gone empty handed, was a treasure on which we should live the rest of our days. With this realization we turn the page: a new life begins. There are other Annapurnas in the lives of men.” There are other Annapurnas in the lives of women.