like anyone else. I've been through my share of trials, loss, pain and difficulties in my life. I will say that without a doubt the worst experience of my life was my back to back Miss miscarriages. A miss miscarriage occurs when the baby dies, but the body does not register this fact and therefore begin physiological processes to end the pregnancy. So people can be pregnant for weeks and not know that the baby has died. I suffered my first miss miscarriage in February 2021 when I was nine weeks pregnant. One cannot understate the life altering power of the phrase. I'm sorry, I can't find a heartbeat. I was told my options afterwards and went home to process and make a decision on how to end a wanted pregnancy. There's truly a level of horror associated with being pregnant with a dead child. Knowing that you couldn't protect or save your baby. I delivered my baby's remains at home around midnight on sunday at the time. I thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened to me. The trauma finding out delivering at home and dealing with emotional and physical aftermath still haunts me. To this day. Fast forward nine months and I was pregnant. Again. The tear and anxiety associated with pregnancy after loss also can't be understated. I immediately wanted to see my provider. They ordered an early pregnancy ultrasound ultrasound confirmed that I was pregnant, which showed the baby wasn't growing as fast as expected, explanations were made. Maybe I ovulating later than expected. You know, it can be very normal not to see anything at six weeks still very early and they said come back in two weeks. So two weeks later I would have been eight weeks pregnant and healthy babies tend to have heartbeats. At eight weeks. We saw electrical activity that precedes a heartbeat, but not a definite heartbeat. And they told us to come back in a week, nine weeks again and pack on the ultrasound table. This time, the ultrasound room was absolutely silent. I could see on the screen what had happened, all the technicians said this time was I'll go get your provider. I read somewhere that when you miscarry lose a child, that you no longer see the world in color anymore. It's such a profound loss that everything around you appears monochromatic and dull. And that was the case for me for a long time. I had to come to terms with being a statistic in the worst possible way. It's rare to have to miss miscarriages in a row. I had to come to terms with all the fertility testing we had to do and all the blood draws because I had now joined the ranks of people diagnosed with secondary infertility and through all of this finding ways to manage my grief. The only way I managed to cope with my story. What had happened to me and my grief and to start the journey towards healing as much as one can was to sharing my story. I've blogged about my losses, written case studies and been interviewed on podcasts, sharing my story being authentic, being vulnerable. The subject of this lesson gave other women the courage to speak up and begin the process of healing as well. My losses, the biology of conception, pregnancy and the advocacy I do now for fellow lost months is the subject of my next book. The only way I could heal and make meaning out of my losses was to use my grief as a tool for helping others. So this story brings us to the key message of this lesson, the courage to be vulnerable and authentic in front of others. Now, I have to start by saying that this isn't for everybody. For some it's just too scary to do and that's fine if you're not ready when it comes to sharing our stories some things we might be ready to share publicly and others were not ready. It's also hard to go against cultural norms, to the experience of miscarriages generally not talked about. As a result, grieving individuals and their partners are often left alone are pathologize for having a hard time overcoming a traumatic life event as Brown, a brown, a researcher who specializes encourage shame, vulnerability and empathy, discusses in one of my favorite nonfiction books, daring greatly being vulnerable is hard. It's uncomfortable and it opens us up for ridicule and criticism. However, it's ultimately the key to being authentic and building trust with your audience if you're still feeling dubious about the value of authenticity and vulnerability, but also point out some of the research presented in Adam Grant's book, think again, when managers admitted mistakes and where and how they plan to address their weaknesses, thereby normalizing vulnerability in the work culture and lead to better productivity because it created a sense of psychological safety where people felt that they could try and fail and course correct without being deemed a failure. Brown A Brown also discusses the importance of courage to be vulnerable so that we can be better leaders in her book Dare to lead. Like I mentioned in my introductory story, when we still courage, it gives others the courage to speak up. Renee Brown goes as far as to say courage is contagious, vulnerability is not a weakness, but the key to authenticity that helps us become better communicators, better leaders and better humans. It opens the door for empathy, which we'll talk more about later in this module, listening to others. Like we would like to be listened to keep in mind though that there's a fine line between vulnerability and over sharing, as Brown points out daring greatly if you overshare it can cause your audiences to go deer in the headlights and disconnect with you rather than connect. I strongly argue that authenticity is key to building trust with others and consequently to having effective science communication. So even if being vulnerable and authentic is hard and it's awkward and it's uncomfortable at first it pays off in the long run, sharing our stories and putting our authentic, vulnerable selves out there. When we're talking about science helps to make science as an enterprise to more trustworthy and positions you to be a valued, trusted source for scientific information. Remember in course one, we talked about how to put ourselves out there as an authority people will listen to rather than having people go to those who promote fearmongering authenticity and vulnerabilities. That starting point for building trust, authenticity is humanizing. It helps others relate to us and ultimately relate to the science for trying to communicate when it comes to combating mis and disinformation. If people feel connected to us, they're also more likely to hear what we have to say or come to us for information first, as we've talked about before, there. Unfortunately, good reasons to distrust scientists therefore, science communicators thinking about how to rebuild trustworthiness is very important. Are reading in this module also addresses strategies for rebuilding trust, but all of these strategies are moot without first presenting yourself as authentic as a real imperfect human. Now, let's hear from Bernie Brown herself and her ted talk, one of the most popular ted talks of all time before we get into strategies for building trust in science communication
