Midori D - Miscarriage, Motherhood, and Making Space for the Hard

*This episode briefly mentions childhood SA. Please be mindful of your own triggers and mental health when listening. 

In this episode of Quiet Connection, Chelsea speaks with Midori—a mom of three, trauma-informed advocate, and co-founder of Simply Midori—about her winding journey to motherhood. From multiple miscarriages to the anxiety woven into pregnancy after loss, Midori shares how therapy, open communication, and her faith community helped her find her footing. She talks candidly about how grief shaped her marriage, how her past trauma informed her present, and why she believes in talking to her young children about the hard stuff—including death. This is a powerful reminder that healing is messy, growth takes time, and we’re never as alone as we feel. 

To learn more about Midori, visit her Website or her Instagram. 

Takeaways

• Midori emphasizes the importance of support systems and open communication in navigating emotional challenges.
• Experiencing miscarriage can significantly impact one's view of pregnancy and parenting.
• Anxiety during pregnancy can stem from past experiences of loss and trauma.
• Therapy and counseling can provide essential tools for coping with grief and anxiety.
• Open conversations about hard topics can help children understand and process difficult emotions.
• Cultural backgrounds can influence how individuals navigate trauma and relationships.
• It's important to recognize that everyone's trauma is valid, regardless of its nature.
• Creating a supportive community can help individuals feel less isolated in their experiences.
• Empowering children to discuss hard topics fosters emotional intelligence and resilience.
• Being vulnerable and asking for help is a crucial part of healing.

Sound Bites

"Suffering isn't a comparison game."
"Let's just talk about it."
"Simply Midori exists to be simply you."

This episode discusses topics that may be triggering for some individuals. Please check the show notes for more information and be mindful of your own mental health and comfort levels.

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Join Odd Moms On Call as we tackle parenting in a world on fire—one hot take, eye roll, and belly laugh at a time. 

Transcript

Chelsea (00:00)
Welcome to Quiet Connection, a podcast dedicated to ending the stigma around postpartum mental health. I'm Chelsea. This week I'm speaking with Midori about her journey to motherhood, her experiences with miscarriage, and how these events influenced her views on pregnancy and parenting. She discusses how her family's dynamics were affected by her losses and how they approach hard conversations with their children.

Midori emphasizes the importance of support systems and open communication in navigating the emotional landscape of motherhood. Here's Midori.

Chelsea (00:38)
Hello, today I'm here with Midori. Midori, how are you?

Midori (00:38)
Hello!

I'm great, how are you?

Chelsea (00:44)
I am doing all right. It's Monday. It's a Monday morning. So I'm doing the best I can. We're making it work. I'm really excited to have you. I'm excited to meet you and to chat with you. And I'm going to jump right in. I'm going to ask you if you could tell me a little bit about who you are, where you are in life right now, and then who was Midori way before she was ever a parent.

Midori (00:47)
I'm don't jump on me. We're making it work.

Yeah. So where I'm at in life right now is we just had our third little daughter. So we've got three, five, five, two, and two months. So we're in the thick of like,

Child life and babies. we live in the Chicago area and my husband, I have been married for almost 10 years. And yeah, it's Monday morning and the past few nights my baby, our baby is figuring out how she wants to sleep. So I'm a little, I'm more tired and I drink more coffee than I probably should as a breastfeeding mom.

Chelsea (01:49)
No judgment here at all.

Midori (01:51)
No judgment.

But she's fine. She's healthy. She's going to the doctor tomorrow. So I guess I'll guess I'll find out if I'm inputting too much caffeine into her tiny body. Yeah. Well, she's super jazz in the middle of the night and like super sleepy in the day. So here we are. Yeah, but she had them mixed up and then she didn't have them mixed up and now

Chelsea (02:03)
If anything, she'll just be super jazzed. She'll just be happy to be there.

⁓ she's got them mixed up.

Midori (02:20)
Now, yeah, she's mixed up again, so.

Chelsea (02:23)
I feel you. I feel for you. I'm sending you all of the vibes for sleep whenever you can get it. But who... Yes. Yeah, I will never turn down nap time. Who was Midori before Midori was a mom?

Midori (02:28)
⁓

Yeah, that's the best part. It gives you an excuse to nap in the day,

Yeah.

Yeah, so before I was a mom, I would say I worked a lot before I had my first daughter and know, did whatever I wanted to. I like lived downtown. I went to yoga in the middle of the day. I woke up early, took naps whenever I wanted to. I, you know, kind of beat to my own drum, so to speak. And I got to travel. I traveled a lot.

and I got to see my friends and my family when I wanted to. I partied a lot. Yeah, was living like that. I don't know if it was my best life, but I was definitely living a different life that was way more spontaneous and rambunctious.

Chelsea (03:18)
Yeah. You had fun. You were living your best life.

Yeah,

yeah. It sounds like you were having a lot of good life experiences though. Yeah. And I always ask that because you are more than just a mom. You are, so I like to get to know who you are and who you are evolving into. But...

Midori (03:36)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Chelsea (03:50)
Yeah, so you've got three kiddos. If I'm doing my math correctly, you had your first one like during pandemic time.

Midori (03:58)
Yeah, my first one in February of 2019. she turned. Yeah. So she was actually she turned Right a week, like 10 days before the whole world shut down. She turned one February 28th and then we shut down, think, March 7th. So we had like a big, of course, obnoxious first birthday party at a local children's museum around here where all the kids were touching everything and everything in their mouths. So I'm sure.

Chelsea (04:02)
Holy baloney.

my gosh.

Midori (04:27)
COVID was transferred to some degree at that party. And then, yeah, the whole world shut down, which was actually sort of a blessing for us because we got to like slow down and I got to see things that I probably wouldn't have been able to experience with my daughter if I was still on my typical work schedule. So to some degree it was great and some degree it was like, what am I doing? But we got to recalibrate and find a new normal for sure.

Chelsea (04:29)
my gosh.

Yeah. So even prior to that, before that, what was your motherhood journey like? Was becoming a mother something that you always wanted to do? Was it something you decided on later in life?

Midori (05:10)
That's question. I always knew I wanted to be a mom. would say I thought I would have been a mom like earlier than I had my first daughter. So I'm 35. So I had my when I was 30. Yeah, I think I just turned 30. All right. Yeah, I must have. Yeah, something like that. was like 29 or 30. And

Chelsea (05:30)
Math is hard and it's Monday morning, it's okay.

Midori (05:36)
I thought I was going to have kids a lot younger, but I didn't. And so I got married when I was like 25, and then we waited five years to have kids. And we did want to, I think in that moment, we thought it was a great idea to like have your married life and like be married to the two of you for a while. And I think looking back when we talk, when my husband and I talk about it now, we would have started like a lot sooner just because.

We want to have more kids. I'm like, well, it's very, it's a having kids when you're 35 compared to when you're 30 for me personally is like a massive difference. Like I was like, I'm like a little bit more tired. I'm a little bit more like stubborn. I'm a little bit more sad.

Chelsea (06:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, and you've got three, right? You've got three kids. Yeah. It's definitely, I can relate in, I had my first when I was in my mid-20s, but I didn't have my second until I was in my mid-30s. So yeah, I waited a while and it's a very different experience having kids in your 30s.

Midori (06:20)
So, yeah.

Yeah.

Like

her body is different. was like, ⁓ this is like very different.

Chelsea (06:46)
Yes, it's very, very different. So yeah, let's.

Midori (06:48)
But leading up to my first,

I will say like leading up to my first pregnancy, it wasn't what we thought it was gonna be. We thought you get pregnant and you move on and you're pregnant for nine months and you have a baby and that's just what happens because that's what you hear about, right? You hear you get pregnant, you're pregnant for nine months and you have a baby. Well, our experience before our first was we miscarried twice and I was like, no one told me about this fun fact

Chelsea (07:16)
Yeah, that's

Midori (07:17)
Like, yeah.

Chelsea (07:17)
what I was gonna ask about. I was gonna ask about that journey. Like, so I know you experienced multiple miscarriages and those were all prior to your first?

Midori (07:27)
No, I literally had two before each kid Yeah, it's not so crazy. It's so random.

Chelsea (07:31)
Wow, okay.

It is, it is. Well, it's common. It's so much more common than we're told about. And just like you said, you're like, no one told me this was a possibility.

Midori (07:43)
Yeah, I

was like, one forgot this detail in the classes that we got to take.

Chelsea (07:49)
Yes. Yeah. They're like, yeah. Well, and it's a product of our

generation too. Like you don't have sex, you'll get pregnant. And it's like, well, you might get pregnant or you might not, or it may not, it may not stick. I hate that term, but when you were, when you were experiencing that, let's, let's even, let's focus on the first time. How did that kind of impact?

Midori (07:57)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's

Chelsea (08:17)
your view in terms of your fertility journey? how did that kind of shape how you experienced your journey into parenting?

Midori (08:29)
Yeah, it's a great question. I guess, like I said, like I didn't even think that having a miscarriage was like an option. Like it just is like, they happen. And like, I actually don't even think I like read it in my head that like it honestly could happen. So when and I've had my doctors and I've gone to the same doctor since I was like,

Chelsea (08:44)
Yeah.

Midori (08:50)
18 so it was like Amazing how he navigated it But okay some things like playing music

Chelsea (08:58)
No

Midori (08:59)
I apologize. ⁓ okay. I was like, what? was like, she singing? I was like.

Chelsea (09:00)
It's okay, I couldn't even hear it. It's okay. Yeah.

I am

not singing. No. Yes, I'm going to sing while you tell your story.

Midori (09:09)
I was like, ⁓ anyways, so I was like, this

is a really great ambiance Chelsea, I love this. No, that's great. So I think you should actually keep that part in.

Chelsea (09:19)
my god, no. Okay, sorry, sorry.

I think I will!

Midori (09:26)
I wish you could hear it was like this very like so yeah anyways. It's okay. Everything's gonna work out. But that's pretty much what it was. I like I've gotten the same doctor for for since I was 18. So for a really long time.

Chelsea (09:27)
God.

mean, maybe someday I'll maybe I'll try that I'll put on some like nice spa music and be like, it's okay.

Midori (09:47)
so I went in to go for like my eight or whatever thing you go in whatever week you get to go and He is like pretty outgoing so many like the first thing who told me thank goodness my husband his name is Joshua so I can stop referring to him as my husband also called Joshua when Joshua thank goodness Joshua came with me and

I remember my doctor just sitting there and he was like doing the ultrasound and it was like taking like a little bit longer than I remember it taking the preceding weeks. Now it's like, what's going on? And he's like, just hold on. And I was like, he never is like that. So was like, this is not like something's weird. ⁓ and he was like, I can't, you don't have a heartbeat. Like here's your fetus and there's no heartbeat. was like, well, maybe it's still there. Maybe you're just like not doing your job. Hey,

Chelsea (10:25)
Yeah.

my God, yeah.

Midori (10:36)
But no, like literally he was like, yeah, there's no harping. I was like, okay. And I instantly was like, does it come back? this like, yeah. And he like closed the door and he obviously has like multiple patients back to back, but he like took time to like sit with us for literally an hour. I was like, it just like happens. Like, and the thing I remember the most that he told me was like,

Chelsea (10:44)
Right, like it didn't even register.

Midori (11:01)
There's nothing that you could have done to like get pregnant and there's nothing you could do to like stop the pregnancy. He was like, it just is. And he's like, and it really sucks. And I was like, yeah, it's like, what do I do from here? Like, how do I like, how do we like what there's still something inside of me though. So like, what do we do? And he was like, he obviously gave you the options, like a DNC a pill or like natural.

Chelsea (11:07)
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Midori (11:32)
And because we wanted to baby on that journey, was like, well, what's the fastest way to get pregnant again? And he was like, well, you can have a surgery. And I was like, ⁓ OK. Like, I guess that's what you do. So I had a DNC. I'm very familiar with what a DNC is. I've gotten to go through two of them.

Chelsea (11:45)
Yeah.

Midori (11:56)
Yeah, I mean, it was like a full surgery day and I did not expect that. thought, I mean, the gynecologist is such a foreign thing to me, even though I've been going for almost 20 years. It's just like, they're just, cause it's all internal, right? Like you don't see anything. So I did, I thought like for DNC, they just go in there and get something out and then you move on with your day. But it's like, no, it's a different location. Like you're on anesthesia. Like they have a social worker come in and talk to you afterwards. And I was like,

Chelsea (12:10)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Midori (12:24)
And like you don't really go back to like normal life because your body still is producing Your like pregnancy hormone. So just like the whole healing process from that first DNC was crazy and then we literally got pregnant like a month later and Then after that and then we got pregnant again, and then we miscarried that baby Thankfully, we didn't get to have a DNC with that second pregnancy. We just it naturally passed

Chelsea (12:49)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (12:50)
And then right after that, I got pregnant with our first, what is now our five year old. And that pregnancy, I was like at the doctor every five days because I was like, something's going on, something's wrong. Like I was just anxious the entire time. And I would say that I like carry that anxiety until this third pregnancy. Well, this third like, ⁓ yeah, when I was pregnant with my second daughter.

Chelsea (12:56)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Really?

Midori (13:16)
I used to say my second pregnancy, it wasn't it was like my sixth pregnancy. I was like, do you think she's okay? I was like always on edge like I hope she's okay. Do you think I'm doing something wrong? What's going on? Like do you hear heart beat? Well, and my husband Joshua was always like, yes, she's fine. Everything's fine. And with this one, I our third baby, I was like, you think she's okay. And I just found myself like trying to ask about it last. And I was like, I don't want this. I want to enjoy.

Chelsea (13:20)
Yeah.

Midori (13:46)
being pregnant and not just be anxious being pregnant. And I was really trying to be mindful about like not carrying my past experience of miscarriages like into like being pregnant. Cause I'm like, miss, I was missing out on like the joy of pregnancy. And people are like, I love being pregnant. I was like, I don't.

Chelsea (13:49)
Yeah.

Yeah, that, I'm.

That, yeah, and I was gonna say that that's so common in, especially if you've experienced any kind of trauma in your pregnancy or loss. So, you weren't able to enjoy your first pregnancy or your second pregnancy. Did you feel like you were able to enjoy this last one at all?

Midori (14:23)
Yeah,

I mean, I feel like I enjoy it like.

Yeah, like a little bit more. Yes. And there was still like this subconscious in the back of my head, like something's gonna go wrong. Like I just want her out. So I was induced with my first two like a week before their due date, not because anything medically was going wrong, but I was like, if I can just get them out, they'll be okay. If they say it the longer I remember thinking like the longer they send me the more opportunity they have to like not make it. So let's just get them out of me as soon as possible. So this third baby, I was like, I just want

Chelsea (14:28)
Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Midori (14:54)
to see what happens naturally. Let's just have it all play out. And of course, I'm a pretty extreme personality. So I went to the other extreme and I got to the hospital at 6.30 and she was out by 7.03. So I just went to the whole other extreme of not going through any medical process at all. Just showing up and her sheep popped out and she was totally fine.

Chelsea (15:17)
Yeah.

my gosh. Wow. Yeah, that is a big difference. It's a big shift. Was that anxiety anything that you sort of addressed or got any sort of help or guidance on? Or was it just something you were navigating between you and your partner, your husband?

Midori (15:38)
Yeah, I think no, I never. Well, you know what? That's not true. We did go to we. We got married like really quickly. We got married like 13 months of meeting each other and then we like worked together and we we like were together a lot. And so we had always been going to a marriage. Like we did pre-marriage counseling and then we did marriage counseling like a month after we got married, because I was like, we are both like, I don't think this was what we were supposed to do.

Like, I think this is crazy. So thankfully, we already had like a marriage counselor that we had been going to for five years. And so obviously, we just continued to go to him after he miscarried. And he was like very helpful. So he like addressed a lot of the anxiety. And he told me he told us something that like really helped me was like miscarriages tend to make women feel shameful because they

Chelsea (16:11)
Yeah.

Midori (16:34)
or like a failure because your whole life you're told this is what your body is supposed to do. Like this is like how your body operates period. Like, and so when a female's body doesn't do what it's supposed to do, like the woman, like females tend to take on like this failure or this shame or like my body, something's wrong with my body when, or me. And there's nothing wrong, like there's nothing wrong with me or whomever goes through a miscarriage. It just is more like,

But he so he addressed it from that standpoint, like you're probably going to feel these things. And since I proactively was aware of those emotions when they did come up, I was able to like combat it pretty quickly. So like when the anxiety would come up, I feel like I had the tools to be like, I am feeling anxious and it's a fair feeling and I get to sit with this anxiety and I have the tools to be like, I don't want to stay here. So like, let's figure out a way to like get out of this.

Chelsea (17:16)
Okay.

Midori (17:30)
And sometimes getting out of it was just sitting in it for a couple hours or just being okay with like not being okay.

Chelsea (17:30)
Yeah.

I love that you clarified that too. That was gonna be one of my questions is like, what were those coping skills or what were those coping mechanisms? And I love that you allowed yourself to feel the feelings. That's hard. It was really hard. It's something I still struggle with. And I'm thankful that you were in a place that you had support.

Midori (17:49)
Yeah.

Chelsea (17:58)
Because going through those experiences, obviously nothing is going to change it and it's not going to make it go away. But having that support system there can help navigate that journey like it did for you.

Midori (18:11)
Yeah, like I'm a huge advocate for like any sort of therapy, counseling, work, because it just is like, you never know when you're going to need it. And when you need it, it's like too late. You know what mean? It's just like not too late, but it's like so much better to proactively. Like, like if I didn't have that relationship, I don't know, like if we had already we weren't already in like the process of counseling and like therapy and doing all that work, I don't know like what that outcome would have been in our marriage, because I think as the female, you think it's like

Chelsea (18:21)
Yeah!

Yeah.

Midori (18:40)
you're only being affected, but it's like your husband or your partner or whomever is also going through like the grieving process of what they thought would be that no longer will be in six months or whatever you whenever the miscarriage happens. So it's like also and so, you know, it was easy for me to like get met him like, don't know what you're what this feels like when it's like, yeah, he does. It just feels differently. But so it's good for our marriage to have that awareness that

Chelsea (18:53)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (19:08)
we're both going through a grieving process, it just is completely different, and to some degree, because it's more, it's also physical for me.

Chelsea (19:16)
Yeah, absolutely. And you answered my next question beautifully. You're like one step ahead of me today. Well, was going to ask, how did those first initial miscarriages affect your relationship with your husband and even the subsequent ones? How did you guys navigate that as a couple? You were in therapy, so you were talking about it with someone.

Midori (19:39)
Yeah, we were talking about it. And the first one, hit, obviously it hit the hardest because you're just like, what? I remember like us. mean, obviously we were both like very sad, like we're very sad, like, like, ⁓ it is a gut punch, like literally, you're just like, ⁓ yeah, we are very sad that we navigated as a couple, like, I we went away, we left.

Chelsea (19:47)
Yeah.

Midori (20:02)
Like after my procedure, we like went away. We took some time off work and like left for a few days. I don't remember where we went and all that I think about this. But we just like kind of like sat and like it wasn't, you we got our mind off of it because there's nothing that we could do. And it's like we can't move forward if we're just sulking in it to some degree.

Chelsea (20:16)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (20:21)
And we yeah, we pretty talked about it a lot and then we still talk about it a lot. When we talk to other people that are trying to get pregnant, or that are pregnant or whatever the case may be, we try to be very open with our miscarriages because I think that I would have appreciated.

knowing someone who had gone through one or like been aware of them before I would have had one. I just literally had never met anyone at that point that like had ever gone through one because no one really in my experience no one really just openly talks about them. So even if it's people for me I really try to make a cognitive like effort to talk about them when it's appropriate and I'll just bring it up at the Thanksgiving dinner table.

Chelsea (20:58)
Right.

We don't talk about the great

pumpkin and we don't talk about Miss Karen. No, but I would even argue, I bet that you did know people that had gone through it, but people weren't talking about it, like you said. So I think that it's amazing that you're able to be authentic and talk about it. My train just jumped the tracks.

Midori (21:13)
Yeah.

Yeah.

That's

the best. I love your laugh.

Chelsea (21:35)
I love it when that happens. Yep.

Did you guys have any other sort of support network around you? Did you have family that was super supportive, friends that were super supportive? Yep.

Midori (21:45)
Yeah, so we were super involved in our church. So like at the time our pastors

were really, really great. And they like prayed with us and they sat with us in it. And like, it was like very, we had a great community. I was also, it was also like a weird time because one of my best friends at the time was going through IVF, like very intense IVF thing. she was in that process during one of my miscarriages. I forget which one.

And then during another one, my miscarriage, my sister was going through an IVF process. So it's a weird thing to go through. And my husband and I were just talking about this the other day. Like it's a weird thing to go through a miscarriage. Well, somebody's going through IVF because they're, they're cool. And I was like, it was like my, my best, best, best friend who was going through IVF. So I was like, I feel like I almost went through IVF with her. Like I was like,

Chelsea (22:38)
Mm.

Midori (22:39)
Lois were appointments like knew when she was going like all of it. So miscarrying while she was going through that, it almost like felt like her IVF journey was like more detrimental than like my miscarriage. Not anyone's fault. Just like. Because IVF is such a journey and a miscarriage is such a moment, right? Like it's like, you miscarried. So like it's kind of like like there's nothing you can do with like the. That baby, the dead fetus in your stomach, so it's like you just get to move on with that.

Chelsea (22:57)
Mmm.

Midori (23:08)
So was like this weird dichotomy of like, do I, how am I present for somebody who's going through this intense IVF journey while also like mourning my miscarriage? And how do I, how does she like give me the support that I want and need? Well, she's also going through her incredible, like incredibly hard IVF journey. So it was like, we had a really good support system and we did have a great support system.

to some degree, not like by anyone's, I think if she wasn't going through her IVF process, she would have been more present, but because you know what mean? So was like this weird dynamic. Like I think I was like, well, I don't want to tell her I miscarried because I don't want to like make her stress her out because her body temperature is a certain degree. And because I waited to tell her, she literally brought me like a little present when I told her and I was like, ⁓ I mean, like we got this huge fight about

Chelsea (23:43)
Yeah. Yeah.

Mmm.

⁓

Midori (24:05)
the present sounds like you're in your own stuff because you're going through your own. So it's like so support. had it. It just was in a weird moment, which was looking back. It was really great for our marriage because it forced us to like lean into one another rather than externally to the other people, which was really helpful for us in our marriage. It's like drawing us closer together and like

Chelsea (24:25)
Yeah.

Midori (24:33)
fighting, like there was definitely arguments between Josh and I. Well, we were miscarrying, like emotions are high, things are happening. And the arguments led to like beautiful endings after some time, wasn't immediate. Yeah, right.

Chelsea (24:40)
Yeah.

Mm.

Yeah, it wasn't like a knockdown drag out and then rainbows and sunshine immediately

Yeah, but what you're what you're describing to is is Such a difficult thing especially when like your friend group around you is going through their own fertility journey and going through their own like pregnancy journey It's so hard. I was literally just having this conversation with one of my family members yesterday about how like

suffering isn't a comparison game and how like we all suffer and we don't need to compare it to other people's suffering, but we do. We're almost like, my suffering doesn't like you're suffering more than I'm suffering. You know what I mean? But so.

Midori (25:31)
Yeah, no, it's really,

it's so funny that you say that because my husband I like specialize in trauma and different types of trauma in life. And so you find that in trauma, too. if you didn't have like this extreme life experience of trauma, then you never went through trauma. It's like, well, no, everyone's trauma can look different. Yeah, just because it wasn't

Chelsea (25:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Midori (25:51)
you were sexually abused as a child doesn't mean you didn't go through trauma. Like trauma is there's no there's no like degree or like every like trauma is trauma. But it is funny. Like everyone comes into this comparison like that was suffering or trauma or like sadness. It's like, well, it's it's so crazy how he like the human brain works.

Chelsea (25:59)
Yes!

Yes, absolutely. We're constantly comparing ourselves to others, whether we realize it or not. It is exhausting.

Midori (26:14)
Yeah, it's exhausting.

Chelsea (26:20)
So yeah, so you had a support system, but then you were also navigating these other feelings of watching your friends go through their journeys. Did your experiences with miscarriage ever impact your decision to keep trying to keep trying to have more kids?

Midori (26:35)
That's a good question.

Probably like in the hyperactive way, like I want to force myself to get pregnant. Now that that's even you can't force yourself to get pregnant or not pregnant, but like I felt like I wanted to like, I wanted to like force myself. I wanted to like get pregnant as soon as possible with my when I had the my first few miscarriages, because I wanted to like, I learned that I was trying to like prove to myself that my body is capable of functioning in the way that it was designed to function. And then

Chelsea (26:46)
You

Mm-hmm.

Midori (27:03)
After my second set of miscarriages before my second daughter, I found myself like wanted to get pregnant as soon as possible. So I'd have to not deal with the pain of the miscarriage. Like, okay, it happened. I'll just get pregnant again. Okay, it happened. If I get pregnant again soon, then I won't have to deal with the pain of the miscarriage. And so I kind of put myself in like overdrive. I'm not really good at like tracking ovulation. So I never like went on that path.

Chelsea (27:21)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (27:31)
But I was like, if I was, if I like had this like type A personality type of me, I probably would have done like that in a better, in a better degree. But I just, I think I bought or like I downloaded an app to like track it, but I like forgot forgetting. So I was like, well, that's not going to work. So I tried to be like even more aggressive than I ever, than I actually was. yeah, I think, I think I went to overdrive. Like I wasn't ever scared of like getting.

Chelsea (27:31)
Yeah.

Midori (27:57)
I was never scared that I wasn't able to get, wasn't going to be able to get pregnant. I was more like, I'm going to get pregnant now. I'm going to get pregnant now and I want to get pregnant now. So it was more just forcing something to happen that.

you know, whatever, or may not.

Chelsea (28:10)
Yeah,

just, well, just putting pressure on yourself maybe, right? Like, okay, we're gonna do this. This is gonna work.

Midori (28:13)
Yeah.

Yeah, like I felt like someone disrupted my timeline. So I need to like make a new timeline. Like I felt like I was no longer in control. So I wanted to like figure out a way to be in control kind of thing.

Chelsea (28:27)
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. That makes perfect sense. so you.

You mentioned in, and so I have all of my guests fill out a Google form so I can learn a little bit, but I don't do, I don't like research my guests because I want to meet you and experience your story authentically. So, but one of the things that you mentioned is that you are a big believer in talking about the hard and talking about the hard things. And I was curious if your,

Midori (28:37)
I'm sorry.

Yeah.

Chelsea (28:56)
parenting journey and fertility journey is one of those hard things that you discuss openly as a family. Your kids are still pretty young, but is it something or just hard in general? How do you approach that with your kiddos?

Midori (29:12)
Yeah, I mean, we can use a miscarriage one, for example, like my five year old will be six at the end of February. So she was when we miscarried before our third daughter, she was really aware of like what was going on. Math is hard, like you said earlier, so I don't know how old she She might have been four or she might have been five when she was carried. But she was she's she was cognizant.

very aware of like that we lost the baby. we told her that we are pregnant. And then we told her that we weren't pregnant anymore and there was no longer a baby and we sat and she mourns like she cried. And so we're very like open about like the hard, like we're never, we'll do whatever we can to invite her in on the hard. we never are in our opinion about it is that

Chelsea (30:04)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (30:09)
we don't want ever we don't want her to ever go through something hard and not talk about it. So if we Yeah, or just like to say and be like, Mommy doesn't know what to say, but I'm sad. You don't have a baby in her. I don't have a baby in my tummy anymore. And it's sad. And that's, that's all I really have for you is I'm sad. And know, and then it opens up the conversation for like when she is, then I feel like it invites her to be a part of the journey.

Chelsea (30:13)
Right, like not have the language.

Mm-hmm.

Midori (30:35)
and the conversations that we went questions do come up. She just talks about it like casually like is there going to be another baby? Will there be another baby in your tummy? You're like and then when I did get pregnant with our third daughter, she was like, is she going to die too? Because she and so is more it's and it's like those are hard conversations to have with a four or five year old. But we all we have a saying in our house like we don't hide anything like anything that we need to hide. We probably shouldn't be doing or anything that we need to hide. We probably.

Chelsea (30:54)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Midori (31:03)
need to talk about because if we're hiding it, there's like shame associated with that. There's a negative feeling associated with that. So like, let's just talk about it. So let's bring it all to the table. yeah, we really try and address like the hard readily as we can. You know, we were at a talk yesterday, it's almost talking about how there's avoiders and warriors and

Chelsea (31:26)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (31:27)
We try and then there's a third way, which is like the peacemaking way. It's like, so how do we not avoid the hard, but how do we not bulldoze the people that it makes super uncomfortable to not be engaged in the conversation. let's, do we find a middle ground of like the hard can exist. So the avoiders can be on the, be a part of the conversation too. Cause that's like the whole dynamic that we're really trying play out with our kids as parents is like.

You can have the hard there still can be like peace on the hard journey.

Chelsea (31:58)
Yeah. it's great that you're having those kinds of conversations and even having those like, like sussing them out between you and your partner too, because that's a skill that many of us adults are not great at. So you're you're giving your kids a good jumpstart on that whole thing. Yeah.

Midori (32:00)
We

Yeah. Does

not always work out there sometimes I'm like, let's just move on.

Chelsea (32:24)
I've there. We tried to have the

hard conversations and then we're like, okay, seriously, I've said the same thing 20 times now, so we're gonna, let's revisit this another day. Because mommy doesn't have any brain cells left.

Midori (32:32)
Yeah. Yeah. And then they're like, why? you're like, blah. Because they're all sleeping.

Chelsea (32:47)
So I do, I want to touch on Simply Midori and if you can talk about what that is and how that developed.

Midori (32:54)
Yeah, you know, it's so funny. This is I talk about my marriage counselor a lot. But our marriage counselor, when we first got married, my husband are like pretty culturally diverse. I would say I was raised. I'm Japanese and Mexican. I was raised culturally Japanese. And my husband's black and Lebanese and he would say he was raised culturally left more on the Lebanese side. So when we went to our marriage counselor, he was like, you guys are going to just have like cultural. But like.

Chelsea (33:09)
Mm-hmm.

Like crossroads.

Yeah, like all the time

Midori (33:22)
Yeah, like you

don't even like know why you're fighting but like it's because of like your culture and the generations that have gone before you and I was like, this is great. So basically, he was explaining to me that Asians tend to make their decisions based off shame. Because it's, it's just the way that the Asian culture, parents, whatever the word may be how they were raised, how they talk to each other.

Chelsea (33:37)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (33:48)
so the name actually, my husband, Joshua came up with, and I was like, so embarrassed of it. I was like, I felt like so shamed, like tell people about it. Cause I was like, we made a company called simply Midori. Like it's clearly my name. Like I'm not like a generic name. Like it's pretty like obvious that it was a doctor. You know, I remember being like,

Can we call it anything else? Like, and he's like, no, I feel like this is what we're supposed to call it. I was like, what about simply? ⁓ like what about simply MD? Like we could use my initials. And he was like, no, I think it just, I think it's actually, he was like, I believe it's been like healing for you. And I was like, I'm going to have to like, trust, fully trust you others. I don't feel bad at all. ⁓ but so that's how the name came to be. And I began to embrace it. And what we do is we offer.

Chelsea (34:27)
Yeah!

Midori (34:36)
services, counseling, therapy services to people that want to understand like why they do what they do. So my husband and I were both raped when we were children. what we learned about ourselves as adults is that we made a lot of our decisions based off of the trauma, the unhealed trauma that was in our lives. And once we had this

Chelsea (34:56)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (34:59)
for lack of better words, this aha moment of like, my gosh, if I hadn't have gone through that trauma, I don't think I would be doing these things, or if I hadn't gone through that trauma. And I was like, I wonder. So we went on a trauma healing journey ourselves for a long time, and it's still going, right? I still catch myself making decisions from that And so I was like, well, if we're doing this,

Chelsea (35:09)
Yeah.

Midori (35:27)
I'm sure that there's so many other people that are also doing this. like, I don't, if I don't, I wouldn't like, how can we help people? Like, how do we help people get from like who they are to who they want to be or like learn, or even just like learn why they do what they do. Cause it's so easy to pass over. Like you were saying levels of suffering or like levels of trauma. It's like, there's really no levels. It just is like what you experience. And so it's like, you were bullied on the playground. Like that's traumatic. If you're like,

Chelsea (35:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Midori (35:55)
whatever, like left at school for too long and your mom forgot to pick you up. Like that's traumatic. Like it's not, and like all of it is traumatic and it all wires your brain a certain way and your heart a certain way. So simply Midori was birth of a place of pain and how we found healing on it on our journey. And we just want to invite others on that journey also of like how, like, why do you do what you do? Like, why do you do what you do at work? Like, why did you make your career choices? And why did you make your marriage choices? And how do you want your kids to be raised?

You know what mean? that's how, that's what we do is something Midori and we started a podcast and it's like very hard because we're, would say we're both perfectionists. Like we want it to be perfect. And I feel like we were just supposed to like get something out there. And I was like, no, we can't just like get something out there. It's not going to be perfect. And so it's been, yeah, it's been really humbling for me to be like, we're just, we'll just get, get what it is out there. And it's very raw.

Chelsea (36:24)
Yeah.

Yeah.

I feel that.

Midori (36:49)
It's like just Josh and I having conversations and it's not beautiful and I don't we don't edit it much. I like. At all, and like literally, Josh, I went to the bathroom during one and then came back and I was like, does your tummy hurt? And I forgot to edit that part out of the podcast. And somebody tells me and they're like, do you did you know you forgot to take this out of the podcast? And I was like, no, but I'm literally at the zoo with my kids, so I can't.

Chelsea (36:58)
Yeah.

But it's real life. It's real life.

Midori (37:17)
even fix it right now or take it down. like it just is what it is. like me two years ago, me three years ago, I would have like, I'm never doing this again. Like I've never shown my face. Everyone's gonna hate me. I'm like a failure. So it's more just like, Simply Midori exists to like be simply you like who are you are and like, who do you want to be and like, how can we help you get there?

Chelsea (37:35)
Yeah.

I love that so much. like, so a theme that has run through our whole conversation is this sort of like, this evolution, but also drive. Like, so this marriage between this drive and revolution, revolution, ⁓ my god, words are hard, braining is hard. But what I love about what you're doing,

Midori (37:55)
Monday. Math is hard.

Chelsea (38:03)
is that you're taking your situation, realizing that your situation is your situation. Other people are going through their own situations and you're trying to find a way to just sort of like navigate life and be present and stay in the moment. And you're doing that with your kids. Like you're giving them the language and the tools to be like, things are hard. Sometimes things are hard and sometimes there's not a reason. And sometimes we're just sad and

That's okay. We can be that. And we can also grow and we can also keep going. So I think it's beautiful.

Midori (38:38)
Yeah.

Well, I think that's why I really loved your, even like the name of your podcast, Quiet Connections. Cause I'm like, there's so much that happens in the quiet that like connects us all at a deeper level. And it's like, how do we create those moments? Like how do we create those conversations to be had? I, do believe like sitting with people in the quiet is like where change genuinely happens. It's like, we all don't need to be talking. You're like giving each other advice all the time. It's just like being like, yeah, it sucks.

Chelsea (38:48)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it sucks, right? Yes, yes. And it's okay. It's okay to sit in the quiet or it's okay to have the conversations and it's okay to be like, I see you. I see you, yeah.

Midori (39:09)
period.

Yeah, like I see you yeah, I

love that like I see you and it sucks and I'm here and Yeah, and then we can go get ice cream yeah

Chelsea (39:27)
Yeah, and we can sit in it together. And then we can move on. Yes. Exactly.

Okay. Well, because you've done such a beautiful job of like talking about your journey and talk, I'm not going to do the go back in time thing. I, I think what I want to know is like, if what do you hope the one thing what do you hope my listeners take away from your story and your journey?

Midori (39:57)
Hmm. That's really good.

Chelsea (39:59)
Right? Like, it's not easy. It's not.

Midori (40:00)
Yes. was like, ⁓

that's perfect. I think I pick a or I think D all the above. Yeah, let me think.

Chelsea (40:07)
All of the above. Everything. Yeah.

Midori (40:11)
Hmm.

Yeah, but that they're not alone, that what they're going through is hard and they're not alone. Like there's somebody out there that has gone through it and they're on the other side of it. like be okay with like not being okay and be okay with like asking for help and

Chelsea (40:25)
Mm-hmm.

Midori (40:31)
Yeah, like being vulnerable and putting her hand up and like waving the white flag like, ⁓ I'm like really not okay. And I like really need help and like vocalizing that.

Chelsea (40:38)
Yeah.

I love it. That's, mean, that's exactly what we're here for. That's what we're trying to do. I love it. Well, Midori, thank you. Thank you for what you do. Thank you for taking the time to chat with me. And yeah, this was, this was great.

Midori (40:43)
Okay, that's.

Yeah. Yeah.

And.

Chelsea (41:01)
Midori, thank you so much for sharing your story with me. I admire your ability to have tough conversations with your kids, your husband, and other families on their journeys. Thank you for reminding us that comparing our suffering isn't always helpful, but it is comforting to know that we are never truly alone. Listeners, be sure to check out the show notes to learn more about Midori.

You can keep up with us on Quiet Connection by following us on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and threads at Quiet Connection Podcast. You can help our community grow by leaving us a rating and review on Apple podcasts or Spotify and consider sharing our episodes on social media. To share your personal journey, you can contact us through our website at quietconnectionpodcast.com or by email at quietconnection.

Join us next time when another story is told and you realize you are not alone. I see you.