The Day Oprah Didn’t Save My Life

And No, Saving Your Life is Not Just an Inside Job

It was almost exactly how I dreamt it.

Well—almost.

In the dream, which teetered between fantasy and mild psychological thriller, the Oprah crew showed up unannounced at the back door of our Upper West Side apartment, just as I was dragging out the garbage in my faded red-and-black flannel pajamas. Bed hair. A smear of tahini on my chin, probably.

But in real life? Things were actually lining up.

Four years after self-publishing Inconceivable, the story of my “impossible” second-chance pregnancy, one of my clients was interviewed on Good Morning America. A producer from The Oprah Winfrey Show caught the segment, picked up my book, read it, liked it, and pitched my story for “Remembering Your Spirit.”

After several rounds of screening interviews I was declared “the real deal.”

My husband Ed and I began preparing. We researched fulfillment companies, discussed shipping logistics for the analanche of sales that were bound to pour in after the show.

Woudln’t be great, we fantasized, if Ed could leave his job at the investment bank to help build the Fertile Heart community full-time.

There was just one small snag in our grand plan.

There were no books in the stores. The timing of what was to be our big break was just a wee bit off. The publisher who had acquired the Trade Paperback rights to Inconceivable was not prepared to fast-track production to catch up with our luck.

To be fair, we did have a spike in sales. Our Amazon ratings for a few days after show aired, flirted with bestseller territory.

But there was no million copy explosion. No book tour. No branded tote bags and mugs.

Was I disappointed? Of course. Crushed? Yep, for a day or so.

But after the dust settled I noticed something else. After decades of trying to cure my obsession for searching for saviors, something about that Oprah show had a decidedly curative effect.

It was a timely lesson I may need to keep re-learning for the rest of my life.

Nope, it was not a lesson I wanted to learn.

In some crusty corner of my heart, there may always be a forgotten child, yearning for a rescue team. Someone to speak up for her. A defender, an advocate. Someone to validate her right to be alive, to take up space on this most amazing earth.

The rest of me knows I’ve been saved a long time ago; I am, in fact, exactly where I need to be. The rest of me knows that being saved begins as an inside job. It begins with a choice. With choosing to live the life most closely aligned with our own deepest, purest desires.

Once we have made that choice, we will gravitate toward people who can support us in living our way into honoring that choice.

Years later, my work is probably very different than it would’ve been, had we sold a million copies of Inconceivable after the airing of that segment.

Would my work be better or worse?

Who’s to say?

All I know is that the truth I choose to live, is that the Fertile Heart OVUM birthing practice, needed a longer gestation, in order to grow into the—beautiful, fully formed creation, with its very own name, language, philosophy, its own special tools—which it is today.

So in the most unexpected way, maybe Oprah did save my life. Not by changing it overnight. But by not changing it too soon. By leaving me just enough room to grow into the teacher, the guide, the witness I was still becoming.

And for that, I am deeply grateful.

Any lifesaving events you wouldn’t have chosen for yourself? Any rescues that didn’t look like rescues at the time? I’d love to hear your story—or anything else this one stirs.

With love,
Julia