Ep 80: Food and Fertility with Chloe Lafosse
Fertility Forward Episode 80:
From a career in finance before her foray into food, facing her fertility battles and more, join us as we talk to the inspirational Chloe Lafosse. Chloe launched her flagship zero-waste café, Ancolie, and her plastic-free vending machines, Fresh Bowl, in 2016… And then embarked on her pregnancy journey in 2017! After suffering two miscarriages and subsequently throwing herself into her work, Chloe realized that this was not a sustainable route to motherhood. By taking a step back, opening up to friends and family, and starting a blog, Chloe reached a healthy space, and she talks to us today about what this looks like. We dive into how making healthier choices for the environment can positively affect your health, and how making small changes in your own life can influence those around you. Find out what Chloe is doing to lift the taboo on discussions around reproductive health and her exciting plans for creating a community and safe space where women can open up about their fertility struggles. Don't miss out on this engaging episode!
Rena:Hi everyone. We are Rena and Dara, and welcome to Fertility Forward. We are part of the wellness team at RMA of New York, a fertility clinic affiliated with Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Our fertility forward podcast brings together advice for medical professionals, mental health specialists, wellness experts, and patients, because knowledge is power and you are your own best advocate.
Dara: I am really excited today to have someone who I really, really admire on our podcast. Today. We have Chloe Lafosse, who I met years ago at her beautifully charming store Ancolie. and she introduced me to the world of glassware and really opened my eyes to protecting our environment. And I'm thrilled to have her on today to speak to us about her personal fertility journey, and also how her career has evolved along the way. So a little bit more about Chloe: since 2012, Chloe has been focusing on living her dream and opening her own food business. She went back to school, starting in the kitchen with two diplomas at the International Culinary Center. Then she took a culinary management degree from the Institute of culinary education, where she won the leadership award in early 2015, she quit her full-time job in finance to work at Michelin starred, 11 Madison Park, where she experienced fine dining and hospitality at its best. Having that experience under her belt, she felt that she was finally ready to open her dream place. Ancolie was an elegant and inviting oasis offering real home cooking, efficient service, and reduced the use of disposable packaging using reasonable glass jars. The flagship store opened in 2016 in the West Village in Manhattan. It was awarded a four star rating by the Green Restaurant association, which is the highest rating was carbon neutral and was one of the most sustainable restaurant and catering services in the City. They won numerous awards, including the most innovative award by the Green Restaurant Association and the Norman Bookbinder award for the work they did in the community. Chloe was also on the Cherry bomb list of the hundred, most inspiring women in the food industry. In 2018. She co-founded Fresh Bowl, the first plastic free vending machine selling fresh and healthy food. And in 2020, she started a blog called Real Talk by Ancolie with articles on fertility, motherhood, business, and sustainability. Oh wow. Chloe, you've done a lot and we're so happy to have you on today. Thank you.
Chloe: Of course. Thank you so much for having me there. I'm very excited to be here.
Dara: I feel like we have so much to discuss and I really, I, it's so nice how we started this friendship with your store. And we started a discussion one day and I mentioned that I was a dietician and you had mentioned that you were starting your fertility journey, so let's, let's start there where it all began.
Chloe: Absolutely. So, you know, I'm trying to remember dates, but I would assume my fertility journey started around the last, you know, mid to last quarter of 2017. Yeah. Okay. So now I remember the beginning of 17, then my husband got fired. So that was like, oh my God, no, you know, I stopped birth control. And I was like, oh no, we cannot, you know, we wouldn't have any insurance if we have a baby right now so let's not even try. And, you know, what's interesting is fertility, every woman have their own story, but there's always a lot of ups and downs and bumps in the road. And you know, now in retrospect that I think about that, I'm like, of course that had to happen. You know, he had to lose his job just when we were trying. And then I was freaking out for months and then he started working again and finally, you know, we, we started doing ovulation tests. We got pregnant relatively quickly, but the first two pregnancies were miscarriages. So the first one was in January, 2018. And then the second one was around April, 2018. And at that point, as you mentioned, I had the cafe so it was very, very busy and focused on, on work. So I, I guess I wouldn't, I wasn't spending as much time. Obviously I was looking at my cycle and it was looking at what was going on, but, you know, as the horrible situation and the miscarriage happened, I, I was just trying to pretend it didn't happen. And I was just going back to work. And, and even I remember as the doctor delivered the news and told me, you should take, we should start by taking a pilll to see if you could, you know, instead of waiting for it to happen naturally since you're working a lot, like that would be a bit complicated to start losing blood in the middle of the restaurant. So let's have you rest for a weekend and then take the pill. And I look at her and I was like, I cannot rest for weekend. Like, this is not something like you don't understand, like the next weekend I have five caterings and, you know, so it was just like, not even trying to, to understand what she was telling me. So that was quite interesting. But after that, it took me a few months to really one realize what had happened twice to kind of digest it and feel like peace with it which, which took a very long time, because as I said, the beginning of it was denial of what was happening. And then when I finally accepted how traumatic the experience was and how difficult it was for me and frankly, I didn't even do that work on my own. It was until almost all my staff quit aad one of my most trusted employee told me, listen, you've become a monster. It's impossible to work with you that it really hit me. And then I was like, okay, like, you know, something is going on. Even if I have to stop operating the restaurant for a little bit, like, I, I need to recenter myself on myself and, and build myself back and then go back to, you know, trying to have in your family and then trying to go back to work. So it, it took me a few steps. And then after all of that, I decided to go to a fertility clinic and make sure that I was seeing a specialist rather than, you know, trying on my own again and having the same, very difficult experience every month with my cycle of having my period and all of this. And so luckily for us, when we tried with the fertility specialist, we started with an IUI and the first one worked right away and I gave birth to my son in August, 2019. So he's two years now.
Dara: Wow. But it's interesting that you said I want to go back because you touched upon something that I find is very common - that a lot of times when we're struggling or we're going through a tough time, instead of acknowledging and sitting with the pain or, or the, the challenges we often deflect or put ourselves in more work to cope. And it was interesting to hear that, that it was someone at work who had to bring it to your attention.
Chloe: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, I think that, and I feel some of that is changing, which I think is very positive. I think that mental health is something that people are talking more and more and are more and more aware. So I really feel that that's amazing, but I feel that talking to someone about my problem or talking to someone about myself is not something that I really grew up doing or, or even I knew it was available, but it wouldn't be the first idea that came to my mind. And also, you know, I'm very upset at the way the announcement of the miscarriage was made. I feel that the OBGYN could have done a much better job of, you know, phrasing the sentence in a way saying, listen, don't worry. It happens all the time. It's unfortunate. It's very frequent. You know, a third to 40% of women have miscarriages. So, you know, it's absolutely normal. We're going to monitor, I'm going to ask you to come back next week to see, but at this stage, you know, I don't think the pregnancy is viable, but you know, you'll be able to get pregnant again. The way she told me it was very traumatic where she just started looking at the sonogram and saying, as if she was talking to herself saying, no, no, no, no. And I'm like, no, what, like, what do you mean by that? And then my husband walks in a little bit late and he's like, you know, with a huge smile, sorry, I'm late. You know, I was stuck in the subway, what's going on and I tell him in French. I was like, I don't know what's going on, but it's not looking good. I am not understanding what she's saying. So, yeah. So I think part of it was kind of being thrown under the bus right away. And you know, how do you cope with that right away? And then there's the wait period then. And then I was so busy that it was just easier to go to a super busy mode and forget. And again, you know, I think that for me, the key takeaway is as much as possible if you can talk to someone, if it's your friends, if it's your family, that's great. But the more you can share that experience and the more you can get it out, the better it is because I feel that that also will help you get back on your feet faster and feel better. Because again, this is a very hard experience and it happened twice so it was even harder. And it's hard to admit that this happened to you because people don't talk about it. You know, I was very vocal about it. I started talking about it. I realized that there are lots of my friends have been through it, or my friend's sister or friend's mother so, you know, that's very reassuring when people open up. But you know, when you see your friends, you haven't seen in awhile and they're like, what's up. I was like, oh, well, I just had a miscarriage. Like, that's not the first thing you want to bring up. So to me, another thing is I hate the idea of keeping the pregnancy for the first 12 weeks. Like, that's something that I personally don't appreciate. I understand that you don't want to blast it on social media maybe, but for me, you know, what I, what I've learned and I forgot to mention, but I'm pregnant again now, but it took me a while again, the second time. Thank you. I'm very excited. But so for me, I know that, you know, when finally I got pregnant with my son and now I got pregnant again, I had to share with people very early on. And even as I was doing fertility treatment the second time, which I had to do a few because it didn't work right away. I was sharing, I had a group of trusted people that I could talk to, that I could open up to that for me that was very important because I know that when I phone, I need support. So if they don't follow what's going on before, and you just call them one day crying, saying, you know, this happened, they are going to, you know, they're going to need to catch up and get up to speed and you might not want to do all those steps. So having a few people close to you that you can share that experience with is very important. And again, if you can talk to a specialist, if you can have the professional help also, that that helps a lot. And I know you mentioned the blog, but since I started writing, I've talked to a few women that had similar scenario, and one of them had lost a baby one week before her due date. But at least for her, it was so obvious and it, it was so traumatic that she had to seek help right away. And that really helped her. So the feedback that I'm getting from a lot of people is seek to help you need and try to avoid going into, oh, let's just go back to work and pretend nothing happened because it's going to come back at you at some point and it's going to be very brutal.
Dara: I think you made a great point. I think it's great that you acknowledged that and that you were aware, even if it's after the fact that you, your way of coping, because you didn't know who to turn to at the time. And you had a lot of hearing it in a way that kind of didn't make sense or wasn't comforting in itself can be traumatic. And it's very common. And I can relate to that too, is how we deflect and we keep busy as opposed to experiencing and reaching out to people for support. And it's great that you've learned from that. And not, it sounds like not only have you learned from that this time around, but also that you have people around you and other people who are that you're helping to support, and that people are also supporting you and you have this community now to share and to help be vulnerable to be able to really heal through some challenging moments. And so I think it's marvelous and I've read your entries in your blog and I just love how real you are and the support that you give. And also the fact that you, you know, you highlight ahead of time letting you know, please don't read the following if this may be a sensitive topic for you. And I like that you give people the heads up because there's certain things that can trigger people. And so it's nice that you warn people ahead of time. That's very sensitive of you. I thought that was wonderful.
Chloe: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Dara: And also giving tips, you know, one of your entries, I thought that was great was which I can fully relate to is the fact that you hear, oh, just don't be stressed or don't be worried, you know, now's the time to, to not be stressed, but doesn't that make you more stressed during that? If only that were so easy, right?
Chloe: Yeah. I mean, you know, that's definitely literally something. I mean, I, a lot of what I write is therapeutic for me. So it helps me a lot to get things out there. And of course I started writing this blog in April of last year. No, well, it took me a few months. And then, you know, when I wrote the two biggest articles and I got a ton of feedback, that's when I find that I get pregnant the second time. So even though those were story that I had already talked to a lot of people, and I felt that I was just mentioning things that for me were already out there and I had already talked about, but it was, I think it really helped unblock something else in my head and move on to the next chapter. So, you know, first being able to talk about this in my real voice and in the way that I experienced what I experienced was important, but you're right also, you know, then people feel more comfortable because I'm not even a, I remember a guy friends that I barely know, you know, he's a friend of a friend. We met a couple of time and he told me one day he was like, listen, I loved your first post because you were so honest. He was like, for once, you're not trying to sell me anything. You're not trying to, you know, it's just, you are being transparent with what happened to you. I'm sure it's helping a lot of people because a lot of those topics are very taboo and you're being open about it. And it's true. You know, my only agenda in writing those articles is one being able to share what happened to me. And if one person can benefit from what I have to say, that's amazing. But also it is helping me feel better and it's helping me get stronger by putting it out there. So I, again, I feel that communication is key and unfortunately, too many of those topics are too taboo. You know, miscarriages, IVF, fertility treatment. You don't want to talk to your friends about it. You're afraid about how they're going to react, how they're going to treat you. Again, find the right people that you can share it with. But being able to have this communication channel is very important.
Dara: Oh, for sure. You know, I think it starts with people opening up and being vulnerable and being real as your friend said. And then, you know, once people create those platforms and people's voices are heard, other people are much more likely to connect and hopefully open up. And that just continues. It's like that domino effect, which is remarkable.
Chloe: And what's funny is because I'm sharing things that are so personal, it's about me, but it's also about my husband because obviously he's very involved in the process. So I remember the first post, you know, I wrote it and then it took me a while and then I sent it to him and I was like, Hey, when you have a minute, take a look. And I don't know what I was thinking. I thought he would be too busy. He wouldn't really look. And, and then he read it and he was like, oh my God, this is amazing. I want to help you push this through the channels. I can like, you know, he was so excited about what I wrote. I was like, oh, okay. I have his, because I guess part of me was, well, I'm writing stuff that he might not want to be out there. So I want to make sure that I have his blessing and having his blessing was very, you know, and even the last one about the pregnancy, I go into a few details that I was like, are you okay with me sharing that? And he was like, yeah, of course. But yeah. So you also ended up involving other people and being honest helps for sure.
Dara: For sure. Well, that's a great wife to get his blessing beforehand, especially if there's intimate details. But another thing I really like is that you talk about the importance of down time, about finding time for yourself to really unwind whether that means going on a vacation, whether that means mindfulness techniques or exercise or eating well, which is something that not everyone talks about.
Chloe: Yeah. I mean, I feel that for me, the key takeaway about this, this whole, you know, and I think that overall the past five years, my life have evolved around fertility because, you know, I tried to get pregnant. It took to miscarriage. It took us almost, you know, a year and a half the first time. And then my son is two and now we're finally pregnant again. But so, you know, I feel that for, for the past few years that's been and with COVID, you know, my other activities kind of stuff. So it's, it's been in my mind a lot lately. And what I realize is the key to make it work is to find a way to cope with all that stress. And I even did more research about, you know, how your stress level is impacting, obviously your brain that's very, but also your liver and it's your liver that is generating the hormones to get pregnant. So unfortunately if you're stressed and if you're not taking care of yourself properly, and you're not eating properly, you are starting a negative wheel of your body is thinking, oh my God, we're going to be eaten by a lion. You know, back to the cavemen, we're going to be eaten by a lion. We need to run as quickly as possible. We're going to shut down every organ that's not necessary. And so generating hormone fertility, hormone is considered not necessary at this time. And your liver is getting into a panic mode and is trying to get as much nutrients as possible to give you more energy to run fast and to just survive. But as you start implementing little ways of eating better, exercising, all things that are going to be good for you at the end of the day, but that also going to help the health of your liver and that's going to help you getting pregnant. So, you know, for me, it was a huge aha moment to say, you can go from a situation where everything is bad and you feel so tired and depressed that you want to have a glass of wine or a few, because you need to, you know, kind of unwind for your stressful week. And then all of this is putting you in a negative situation. Whereas if you stop to do one or two positive changes, then all of these are going to put you to the opposite in this positive circle. Then one, if it doesn't work, your body's getting better. You feel energized, you look good. So you're going to feel good, regardless, even if you're not pregnant and two most likely within a few months, you're going to get pregnant because you're going to be able to do all those things. So I feel that, you know, and, and maybe we'll touch on that later, but the goal with the blog was really to start the beginning of a community and stop thinking about my next adventure and, and you know, what I would really like to do and how I would really love to give back to more women is to create a community and to create a place, to help them find ways to reduce the stress. I'm not going to remove all the stress from all the women. Clearly. I know that's not going to happen, but if I can help make them a little bit more aware of what is stressing them, what are the different coping mechanisms that are available to you and putting this available for those women? I know for me, that's what helped me, but it's true that, you know, when people at the end of the day to go back to your earlier point, when people say, don't think about it, that's kind of what they mean, but, you know, they should say it in a better way. But to me, you know, the key learning here was you need to find ways to unwind. You need to find down times. You need to find, you know, is it working out? Is it taking a bath? Is it taking a walk? Like, what are the things that make you feel better? And how can you involve, how can you put those in your schedule on a daily basis, a weekly basis to make sure that you're feeling better because the whole journey, and again, depending on however you do it, if it's used naturally, if you seeing your doctor, or if you're going through a IUI, IVF, like all of this is very stressful. And unfortunately it takes time. And the more time it takes the more stressful it becomes. And the more aware you become of all those little cycles and all those little things that if you cannot unwind, you're just crying alone on your toilet every time you see that you have your period and you're in a burnout situation before even getting pregnant. And that's another thing I know so many women that went through IVF and when they give birth they're in burnout, the only reason they are in burnout is because they started the journey being exhausted then they were pregnant, they were exhausted and then they have a newborn it's even worse. They don't even know how to cope and there's all those emotions that are coming to them. And so finding ways to letting them go as quickly as possible is going to help you when you have your child.
Dara: Yeah. I think he made a good point in terms of, if you're always on that, you know, stress inducing, you know, the stress hormones are increased going into a pregnancy during a pregnancy, after a pregnancy. Not only can that be detrimental to a woman's health, but to their offspring. And I think part of it is finding joy and happiness in one's life. And that can be from doing something cathartic, like starting a blog to, to write about your emotions to help release but finding those moments and it doesn't have to be something very, you know, something that's going to break the bank, but finding time for yourself. And it's not a selfish thing. I think it's a beautiful thing. It's, it's selfless, in my opinion.
Chloe: I agree a hundred percent.
Dara: So I would love to hear about your plans or what's on your mind, or what's in the horizon for you if you want to share a little bit with us.
Chloe: Sure. It's very early, very early stage, but I'm, I'm talking to a few women and we're trying to create a collective to, to help women go through this stressful time. The idea is to start with the getting pregnant phase so it could be during just freezing your eggs or it could be as you're going through a fertility treatment, but really putting together one, a suite of services that will help you unwind so could it be acupuncture or nutrition, even if nutrition might not help you unwind right away. But as I said, you know, it's going to be part of you taking care of yourself and feeling better for your body. So putting all those services together in one place in New York city, and at the same time, creating a community for women to be able to, to talk about this freely with people that they don't necessarily know, and they might feel more invited to share very personal stories, whereas with their friends, they might not be able to do it. So, you know, that's very big project and I don't know exactly how it's going to stop and what would be the beginning of it. But the idea is to create, to be able to share more stories and hear and support the women that are going through the process and help them unwind and help them feed better so that this, this journey can be easier for them and work faster.
Dara: I love that. I think there is a void in terms of, you know, we do see support groups online, but to have a space where people can come together in person, share and also get some support for, for their overall wellness. And I like that, that you're including, it could be mental health, it could be something physical, like acupuncture. It could be education in terms of, you know, what are the things that we can do, whether it's coming from, you know, what we eat in terms of the environment where we can do to help with our body, which I want to, you know, take a little step back because I want to really commend you. I don't really know if you know of this Chloe, I think I mentioned to you this before in the past, but you really started me on the path the thing about not just what you put in your body in terms of food, but in terms of, and I know you had the vision of impacting the environment in terms of reducing plastic use and using these glass jars, which literally it's something that I speak to with so many of my patients now I practice what I preach and, you know, use those glass jars for food storage. I use the glass jars for my water, but you really, I could, I could tell how passionate you've been with that and really how much I know you've touched me and I can only imagine how many other people you've really impacted. I think it's phenomenal.
Chloe: Thank you. Thank you. It's interesting because, you know, initially the journey started more on, I always loved food and I always wanted to have a restaurant that was kind of my little girl's dream. And then as I was transitioning from finance to food and I started thinking, okay, what could this look like? I realize, okay, I don't want to have an evening restaurant and then work all nights and not see my friend. And, you know, at some point when I'm going to stop, if I'm in need, this is not going to work. So I, I was focusing more around the daytime and having been in an office in a corporate setting for 10 years and having seen all the options that were available, I thought nothing looked good and looked appealing to me. So I was really looking for simple food, delicious salad, dressing without a ton of honey or cream, or, you know, crazy thing where you look at the ingredients and you're like, I cannot believe this is in my dressing. You know, there's only three ingredients in the dressing in France, and it's olive oil, vinegar and mustard and maybe salt and pepper five, but that's it. So, you know, the idea was clean eating, but more from a perspective of this is what I grew up eating, and this is what I crave more than I want people to be healthy. So it kind of started with that. And then the more and more I started to research, I realized that another thing that bothered me when I moved to New York was the amount of packaging and waste. So I, I started looking at the environmental impact more from a waste perspective and more from how can we avoid going downstairs, grabbing a salad or something, and then throwing away a stack of napkin, these beads five years, 10 sides of plastic thing, and then a plastic bag and all those things that are going to have a life or 15 minutes that sits. So, you know, by doing some research and spending a little bit more time, I had the idea of using the glass jars for the salads. And so the cafe that I had was really daytime breakfast, lunch snacks in reusable glass jars, and people could return them for credit. So that was the whole idea. It was fascinating because we opened in November 15, right when Trump got elected. And at that moment I freaked out and I was like, I'm doing the biggest mistake of my life. You know, going with like a super sustainable business and that doesn't align with what happening in this country. But at the end of the day, a lot of people realized that they kind of had to take this matter in their hands. And I feel that, you know, the key message at Ancolie, we never wanted to give lesson to people and tell them, this is how you should do it and this is why you should do it. It was more, you know, by the way, the food is delicious. It's healthy, it's clean, it's local. So people would come for those three reasons because they wanted to eat well. And then we would tell them, by the way, if you return the jar, you get started with $1 and then it was a $2 credit on your next purchase. So people came back to save money initially, and that was perfect. You know, and then little by little, as you start returning your jar and participating in the system, you realize, oh, it was not that big of a deal to return the jar. It was, the experience was actually pretty nice. It's not like those mushy compostable bowls that you feel are going to stop leaking on your table. And you know, are going to break in your bag like Laskin break, but it is rarely broke. But overall, you know, the experience was good. People felt that they were doing something. And then after a few, a few weeks of participating, then people will start telling their friends and we'd start doing more and that, that's kind of what happened was me, you know, as I said, the initial idea was let's remove plastic. Well, let's remove disposable from lunch. And then I started doing more research. I started understanding a little bit more, what was done, what was not done. I started realizing that I was using plastic in a lot of my day to day life and switching them one by one at the level I'm at today, six years later would have never believed that I would do as many things as I'm doing today, but I went regularly and it seems very natural. And sometimes just being, especially with a kid where I'm like, okay, disposable wipes, the first year was my son we have reusable diapers, reusable wipes. There were fantastic. We had the service that would wash them for us, bring us clean diapers every week was amazing. He went to nursery. They wouldn't accept that. So, you know, I, I had to go with disposable diapers and disposable wipes. And so yes, I try to look for the most sustainable ones are the better ones. And going back to your initial point, like, as I did that, I realized I was also much better for my health. I realized that I was skirting a lot of a doctrinal distributor that are actually very bad for your fertility or infertility and very bad for your body and for you or for your health. So, you know, at the end of the day, now that I think about it, it's, it's a holistic full circle of realizing that one it's not that complicated to remove a lot of those disposable plastic or a lot of those things, convenient things that we've been used to, that we don't necessarily need. And then two, it actually makes for a much better, cleaner and often cheaper lifestyle. And that's something that people don't always realize, but it is much cheaper to buy in bulk to use reusable. You know, I use reusable tissues, which are the old wipes from my son, and he also uses them. It's 30, or like, again, usually the experience is better because it's, it's meant to be used multiple times and it's not made to break down right away. So yeah, this is, this is actually important and I'm glad I had an impact on you. And on the way you're looking at those things. And it's true that when I closed the restaurant and still today, I get a lot of people that reach out to me and tell me, you have no idea the impact you had. And even I see it with my close family, like, you know, my husband of just he, but my parents, my sister and my brother, like little by little and even more my sister had at the beginning, she thought I was crazy. She's like, I'm so tired of all your, the things that you're doing. You know, even this summer, she was like, it’s impossible where we're three in the family. So my brother only buy things made in France. So she's like shopping for you is a nightmare. I need to find a jean made in France and I need to find whatever made in France. And for me, and for you, Chloe, it cannot be in plastic. It has to, she's like, I'm so tired of you guys. But you know, little by little, she got into the habits and she started being mindful of herself. And then she realized that it's actually much better. So, you know, on the whole sustainability or environmental aspects for me here, the key takeaways are start with something small. You know, if you want to make a change in your life, stop, if you drink coffee everyday start by buying a reasonable coffee cup or a reasonable water bottle, wash it and reuse it. And actually you'll see that again, you'll save money by not buying water every day. And lots of coffee shops give you a discount if you bring your own cup. And again, the experience is going to be nicer. The cup is going to be nicer. And then little by little as you see that, it's not that complicated. You'll, you'll want to do more. And you'll start looking for other hacks that you can add. And again, like the message is don't blame yourself. You know, every once in a while I'm thirsty and I want to drink something and I don't have my reusable bottle. I'll buy a plastic bottle. Like I'll try to buy a can first, because I know it has a higher recyclable content. So, you know, maybe I'll drink a soda or I'll drink whatever, rather than buying water or every once in a while, I'll buy a coffee, I'll try to ask without the lid if I remember, I try to ask without this feed, like to remove the additional stuff, but it's okay. You know, I 363 days of the year, I'm making, you know, maybe not that much, but you know, 90% of the time I make a difference. And then every once in a while, I don't, then it's overall, it's, it's, it's making an impact.
Dara: I think that's great that you said do the best that you can. And I think that's like a great slogan for life. You know, I think we all often beat ourselves up for the couple of days of the year or whatever it may be for something that we're not doing, as opposed to saying what you had said, do things gradually. Start off somewhere small. Make small changes to your day to day routine that can really over time build up and be more impactful. It took me a long time to switch over to glass jars, but now that I'm here, I can't, I couldn't see myself using anything else. So be kind to yourself, start off gradually, but realize that it's, these little changes cannot only be impactful for the environment, but also potentially for your health. So both so important and really thanks for inspiring me. I really appreciate it.
Chloe: Thank you.
Dara: So I'm really excited to see, you know, what your future holds for you and in terms of your career, in terms of your blog, in terms of your family, and I'm sure that our listeners would love to be updated. So what's the best way to get in touch with you in terms of your blog?
Chloe: I mean, I think the easiest is maybe to find me on Instagram and the handle is ancolienyc. So A N C O L I E N Y C. And then from there you have the link to the website, you have, and the website is Ancolie that’s CO that brings you directly to the, to the newsletter where you can subscribe. You know, I try to send, you know, every other week or every week articles. I have a couple of very exciting women that are also going to share their own experiences. I'm excited about that. And if anybody had ideas or was inspired about the idea of creating a, the community or, you know, things that worked for them in their fertility journey, please shoot me an email [email protected] or reach out, DM on Instagram. I'm very available. I love to share experience, and I really would love to learn what is working for people or even what is not working. Like I tried to do that. That was really bad. Like, please don't add that service. That was a horrible idea, or it should be done this and this way, like I am looking to learn and get more feedback. So feel free to reach out.
Dara: I, I can't wait to see what's in store for you down the road and how we'd like to end our podcast is to discuss gratitude. So, Chloe, what are you grateful for today?
Chloe: So I, I try, I love gratitude journal. I mean, I'm a huge fan. I try to do it every day and think about three things. You know, when I go to bed, what are the three things really that I'm grateful for? And usually every day, one of them is my son. And there's those little moments that just make my day and, and, you know, motherhood is tough and it's a lot of work, but there's always, you know, everyday this little one moment for you, like, okay, this happened now I can, this hit the fan, or whatever can happen. I'm fine for the whole day. So this morning we live on the fourth floor walkup. So we were going down the stairs and he came totally go down the stairs on his own, but he didn't want to. So he was like, mom, carry me, carry me. So I took him and he just gave me this huge hug for like four floors of going down the stairs. It was the cutest thing. And as, as I was walking down and holding him, I was thinking about it. And I was like, that's it like, you know, it's 8:30 AM. My day is done. Like, I'm just like, my cup is full. Now, anything can happen. I'm just blessed for the day. So that, that's my gratitude of the day.
Dara: How beautiful is that? And it's something so simple, but something that's really so special. I'm grateful for so much, but I'm grateful for this fertility community. And it's expanding for me as the years go on. And I'm especially grateful for, for meeting you and for connecting and finding you from a different angle from, you know, the nutrition food. I, I admire your cafe and it's so nice how this, you know, this connection has evolved and, and to see where, where you're going and where you've come from and, and just your evolution and how much you supported others and in turn supported yourself throughout it. And it's really admirable.
Chloe: Thank you so much. It's funny because I seem to remember, I think it was shortly after I announced that I was pregnant and I've been going through difficult times and I remember you came and you're like, you know, I do that. We can talk anytime. And I just remember, I was like, of course I never thought about it because every time I would see it was like, oh, I should say something. And then I was like, oh no, it's a bit shy. I don't know. So, you know, that's, that's another two people example like just open up to people because they're here for you. But yeah, I, I agree. I'm, I'm very grateful to our relationship as well. And, you know, seeing how both food and fertility bring us together on the, on those two paths and I'm excited about what's going to happen next.
Dara: Me too. It's all about timing and this is how it was supposed to be laid out and very excited to see where it goes. So thank you so much, Chloe for being on today.
Chloe: Of course. Thank you, Dara.
Dara: Thank you so much for listening today and always remember: practice gratitude, give a little love to someone else and yourself, and remember you are not alone. Find us on Instagram at fertility_forward and if you're looking for more support, visit us at rmany.com and tune in next week for more Fertility Forward.