Nikki Boyer Learns to Let Go

Cold Open

Nikki Boyer remembers the exact day she told her mom that she was pregnant. It was June 27, 2014. Her mom’s 60th birthday.

Nikki: The first pregnancy felt like spiritual and miraculous and hearing the heartbeat. And I actually got pregnant on accident, which I'm like, how at 34, 35 do you accidentally get pregnant? Like, come on girl, figure this out.

But less than a month later, Nikki’s pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. It was the first of many.

Nikki: There was grief around that one. Like, that one resonates more with my husband because his excitement about that one was just like through the roof and I was so excited for us.

Six months later, Nikki was pregnant again. And miscarried again. Six months after that, she was pregnant for third time… she walked into her OBGYN’s for an ultrasound expecting joy… and instead got silence.

Nikki: Oh my gosh, it was so, ugh. It was so devastating going into that ultrasound and being so excited. And then there's just no heartbeat for the third time.

Infertility affects 1 in 8 couples in the United States. And for those who pursue treatment, the price is steep—not just emotionally, physically, and spiritually—but financially, too.

A single cycle of IVF can cost anywhere from $15,000 to $30,000.

Nikki: My doctor, who I loved said, I think it's time to go look into this. 'cause I can't, I can't imagine you going through this a fourth time. I wanna be smart with your health, and I also wanna be smart with your mental health.

Nikki was about to embark on a very long, very challenging and very expensive journey to try to have a baby. But she had a lot of support: her husband, her family, and especially her best friend Molly.

Nikki: I mean, I have lovely friends in my life and people that understood this journey very deeply, but Molly just seemed to like get it on a really deep, deep level, and I think she really, like, she really wanted me to have a baby. I think that hope and little moment of like a life created took the weight off of how heavy things were for her. And honestly, it did for me too. I kind of gave like a little spark, you know, something exciting and something to look forward to.

But while Nikki was trying to create life, Molly was approaching the end of hers. Her cancer had returned. It was Stage IV. And together, they made a podcast about it called Dying For Sex, which was first released in 2020.

Clip from Dying for Sex

Nikki: You’re listening to Dying for Sex.

Molly: I'm Molly. I am 44 and I have stage four breast cancer. Um, technically I'm dying, but aren't we all?

(Clip fades under Shoshana)

Nikki: She decided to do something really bold and go on a sexual adventure to kind of learn w ho she was, to figure out what she liked and to kind of really get into her body and she wanted to do it through sex.

(Clip fades back up!)

Molly: Do you know that our friendship has given me so much meaning in the face of all of this, you are actually, uh, one of the people that makes me wanna continue to live.

Nikki: Oh, I love that. Yeah. Yeah. I love you.

Nikki: When a lot of people hear the title, they, um. They think it's all gonna be about sex. But I think if you listen and you kind of dive in, you realize that it's just a window into the, the deeper dive that Molly did into herself of finding bigger questions. Like, what do you wanna do with the time that you have left? And who am I and what's my legacy and what do I wanna leave behind and, and, how can I heal from old wounds? You know, all the stuff that we, I think we're all trying to figure out.

Shoshana: Just the small stuff. (laughs)

Nikki: (laughs) Right?

At its core, Dying for Sex wasn’t about sex. It was about meaning, friendship, and asking—what do we do with the time we have left? And Nikki says spending so much time with Molly in and around the end of her life really changed the way she lives her life today.

Nikki: Watching her be so vulnerable and open. I, she didn't have that element in her life before she got really, really sick so when I got to see her sort of live so fearlessly in her truth and kind of expose all of it , I just found it to be so empowering and I so brave and so cool and like she just didn't give any Fs, and I loved that watching her do that in those last. You know, months of her life, I was like, God, I don't wanna wait that, I don't wanna wait. just say it. Say it out loud, say it to a friend, see what happens. Like, talk about the uncomfortable things. That's kind of one of my favorite things to do. I'm great at a party. I'm like, so how do you feel about death?

Shoshana: Girl, me too.

Nikki: Right? I know. Hello. We're in good company.

Shoshana: Absolutely.

They had plans to do a second season. But Molly died in 2019 before they could record it.

Nikki: She was like, let's flip this on to you. Because Molly always said as I've been fighting to save my life, you have been fighting to create a life.

Nikki: So that's what she wanted season two to be about. At the time I was like, oh girl, I don't know if I could do that. I don't know if I was ready at that time, but I wished I would've been. 'cause how empowering would that have been?

I’m Dr. Shoshana Ungerleider and this is Before We Go. This season, we’re in conversation with people from all walks of life, exploring how we live alongside mortality.

Today’s episode: Nikki Boyer Learns to Let Go

Act 1

In the fall of 2015, Nikki and Molly found themselves on unexpectedly parallel paths—both deeply medical, both deeply personal. Molly had a double mastectomy and started cancer treatments, hoping to extend her life. Around the same time, Nikki was referred to a fertility clinic to begin her journey toward creating one.

Nikki: First of all, they go into your uterus and start like scoping things out and being like, well, what's going on in here? And I remember like being, being very confused by that. But if you think about it, they're gonna go to great lengths to get this embryo that where they're gonna put it needs to be as flawless as possible.

While Molly began having sexual adventures as a way to connect with a body that she felt was letting her down, Nikki and her partner Tommy started the very un-sexy process of trying to get pregnant through fertility treatments.

Nikki: Like he was going to the IVF clinic with me and, um, going into a very sterile room and watching porn and, you know, masturbating into a cup. And I was like, how, how was that? And he was like, really weird. And I was like, what is happening here? Right. Like, oh my gosh. Yeah.

Nikki started with Intrauterine Insemination or IUI. It's one of the first steps many people take when trying to get pregnant with medical help. During ovulation, sperm is placed directly into the uterus, giving it a better shot at reaching the egg. But like so much in this process, what seems straightforward can feel anything but.

Shoshana: And did you have like high hopes that that would work at the time?

Nikki: Every time I was like, this is gonna be. This is gonna be the answer. This will be the fix every single time. I just think I was naive enough to think, well, oh, this will work, right? Because what's the other side of that? I hadn't even really thought of that as an option.

After the procedure comes what Nikki calls “the waiting game” – as you wait to see if you’ve become pregnant. 

Nikki: You buy like 700 pregnancy tests from the CVS down the street and wait, wait for you hopefully not to bleed. So it was just this, this anxious, anxious, I think I may have even gotten blood work done early to just see if maybe there was a high level of something that indicated some something going on or a pregnancy. Um, and I remember being very disappointed when that failed. 'Cause I knew that meant now there's a bigger step. I don't know, I didn't know what that was, but I just knew that there was something.

Through it all, Molly was the person Nikki found herself leaning on.

Nikki: I mean, I have lovely friends in my life and people that understood this journey very deeply, but Molly just seemed to like get it on a really deep, deep level, and I think she really, like, she really wanted me to have a baby. I think that hope and little moment of like a life created took the weight off of how heavy things were for her. And honestly, it did for me too. I kind of gave like a little spark, you know, something exciting and something to look forward to.

Nikki: And she was incredibly engaged and understanding. Like, I was like, gosh, I don't wanna bother you with all the details, but she, man, she leaned in hard and was like, what time is your appointment? Where are you going? Call me after. She was, she understood the, the ups and downs of health stuff unlike really anybody else. So she was somebody that I leaned on, but when I wanted space and didn't wanna talk, she never took it personally. 'cause she understood.

If IUI doesn’t work, the next step is often IVF—short for in vitro fertilization. It’s more intensive, more expensive, and more emotionally complex. Doctors retrieve eggs from the ovaries, fertilize them with sperm in a lab, then transfer an embryo back into the uterus. The next step for Nikki was hormone injections that would encourage multiple eggs to mature at the same time.

Nikki: I did hear the wonderful compliment that I had the ovaries of a 25-year-old, which was so nice to hear. It got lots and lots of eggs. I wanna say like, oh my gosh, I, I think we ended up with so many eggs, but I think we ended up with like 15 or 16.

Shoshana: Wow.

Nikki: I know. It was an insane amount of eggs.

For a woman of Nikki’s age, the average number of eggs retrieved from a single cycle is closer to 9. And given Nikki’s history, her doctors expected her count to be lower. So the news was really encouraging.

But no matter how many eggs you retrieve, the number that matters is the number of embryos that make it through genetic screening and are considered viable. That takes about a week. Nikki says, for her, that was the most intense part of the whole process.

Nikki: (sigh) And I would sit by the phone. Days. Like I would just would, I couldn't even move. I was just like, somebody, please tell me like that this is gonna be a good answer. And my doctor, who was so lovely, gave me her cell phone number and I was texting her and all the nurses knew me and I was, I was kind of losing myself in the process, but I just thought, gosh, if I could just get the answers and just get the answers. And I remember I'd get a phone call and you know how sometimes your phone like will miss a call and you're like, no. And I would call back and there were just missed voicemails or my phone's not ringing right? Or, and so much anxiety around it. I just felt like that was the umbrella under which I was living was like, are there any viable embryos? And that first time it just, the numbers kept going down after each day and there were no viable embryos out of all of those. And I was so crushed because I thought, well, what else? Like, what else do we do here?

Shoshana: Oh my goodness. You wanted that so badly and to get, I, I can't imagine what that must've been like for you.

Nikki: I was really lonely

Shoshana: Yeah.

Nikki: Even though my, my husband was being so supportive and so amazing and so invested 'cause we really wanted to make a baby together. But I don't think he ever really fully grasped what was going on. You know, it's so hard for – not to make this gender specific, but I think it's really hard for sometimes for a man to really grasp what that, what that does to a woman. And he stepped up and showed up and was right there for everything. But it always still felt like I was on an island, you know?

And the friend who could relate to that feeling the most was Molly -- who found herself on an island of her own.

Nikki: I remember there was once where she was like, Hey, I really need, I really need a ride to an appointment. And by this time I was. after my first failed round of IVF, and I got pregnant naturally again for the fourth time and was going through my fourth miscarriage and I was in bed, which is kind of where I felt like I was for almost four or five years wearing a diaper. And I was like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm a little tied up right now. I'm in a diaper, and she was like, blah, blah, blah. Excuses, excuses, excuses. And we, I just knew like. She had a way of just lightening things up and we had really, really dark senses of humor together. And so we would say things that we would normally not say probably to other people, but she knew the gravity and the weight of things more so than anyone. So I felt such a nice, like, safe vibe with her.

Shoshana: And so with each miscarriage, did you allow yourself time to grieve the loss or were you sort of focused on, okay, that's horrible. I'm upset, but let's get onto the next procedure.

Nikki: Ding, ding, ding.

Shoshana: Yeah.

Nikki: I was like, okay. I was so, um, driven, mildly obsessed with like getting through it. No, rephrase that. I wanted to get over it. And I knew over it just meant let's have another pregnancy. The second, the third, the fourth, the fifth. I just felt like were medical things that were just wrong with me. They never really felt like potential babies. But to answer your question, no, there was, so I couldn't even grieve. I was just so on the train of trying to just Let's get onto the next thing. Let's get a good pregnancy. Let's get, and I mean, I see how women get obsessed with this and how it becomes like just who you are and you lose sight of everything else that's going on in your life.

Through all of this, Nikki and Molly were checking in on each other, usually over text.

Nikki: She's going through chemo. I'm on pins and needles, hoping that there's a good embryo. She is sick as a dog. And I mean, I would kind of lose her for two or three days because I knew she couldn't even text. She was so exhausted. And I remember feeling torn because I wanted to take care of myself, but I also wanted to be there for her and take care of her. And I was also waiting for that phone call of like, here's how many were fertilized. Right? And I think by this time I was only getting, even with all the drugs, I was only getting like. Five, six, I was getting a bunch of eggs, but like five or six embryos.

So, in some ways, Molly's dating life was a good distraction for them both.

Nikki: In the middle of all this crap that I was going through, I'd be like, oh my God, did you have a good, like, did you have any good orgasms? Were you like hooking up with anybody good? Anybody cute? Like… (laughs)

In early 2018, Nikki found out that she was pregnant for the sixth time.

Nikki: I was oddly very fertile. Every time I was ever pregnant, it was always naturally, I never got pregnant from IVF because the eggs were never viable.

In mid February, Nikki and Tommy went to their first ultrasound and heard the baby’s heartbeat. But two weeks later, the heartbeat was gone. It was Nikki’s sixth miscarriage in four years.

Shoshana: Did you know that attempt was the end of the dream for you or, or were you still holding out hope?

Nikki: God, that's such a good question. I was so attached to that pregnancy. The doctors at the IVF place were so excited for me, and it had gotten farther along than. Any other pregnancy and I, I think we even

[00:17:55] Shoshana: oh my goodness. Nikki: I felt like, oh, this is, this is supposed to be, you know, the one.

Nikki: Something shifted in me. Something shifted drastically in me where I thought my brain kept going, well, what are the other options and what can we do? And how could, but my body knew that it was the end.

Shoshana: Was there any part of you that was relieved maybe to have made that decision?

Nikki: Yeah, and just talking about it with you right now, I can feel the relief in my own body. Like I felt relieved.

Nikki remembers the exact moment when she knew it was time to stop trying.

Nikki: I was in my bathtub. And I, your body just kind of has to process the miscarriage and you just kind of have to like, I mean, I can, I, can we go there and talk about what really happens? Like you sit on a toilet and you feel this passing through your body, right? And then you think it's done and then it's not. And then it's just like the most massive, painful period with cramping and, and you're on some drugs and you're kind of there, but so you're kind of euphoric and. I mean, I'm not gonna lie, the drugs were the best part. I was like, oh, great. Give me drugs. Like anything, not let me be feeling this. But I remember I was in my bathtub and it was filled with blood.

Nikki: I was just sitting there trying to get some relief and I kept thinking like, why am I fighting so hard for this? Like, what is this really about? And my husband came into the bathroom and he looked at me and he is like, oh, it makes me so emotional to think about. He looked at me and he said. Oh my God, you look so beautiful. And then he was like, wait, wait, I'm sorry I didn't, I hope you know what I mean? Like, I know you're struggling, but you just look so beautiful. And I looked at him and I remember that moment and I said to myself, that's my baby. That that's what I have to focus on that relationship, because he's the reason I wanted to have a baby. Because if I'm being really honest with myself, the idea of being a mother. Eh, it's fine. I've been a mother my whole life, but the idea of having a baby was so fascinating to me. I love newborns, I love infants, I love that. But when they get like older and like, get annoying, I'm like, go away. Like, so I think I had to have a real moment with myself of what do I want? Like what is this baby to me and what is it representing? And I got really clear with my, with my husband. I was like, that's what I need to focus my love and attention on. And that was the moment that shifted in me where I was like, I think this is the, I think this is the end of the road for this.

You’re listening to Before We Go. We’ll be right back.

Break 18:41

Act 2

I’ve never been through the heartache of wanting children and not being able to have them. And I can’t pretend to know what that feels like.

But in my early thirties, during residency, I started asking myself that question—Do I want kids? It took time—years, actually—but I got to a place where I could say, honestly, that I didn’t want to become a parent.

Then, years later, I found out I carried a BRCA2 mutation. I chose to have a preventative hysterectomy to lower my risk of cancer.

I remember this one moment, playing with my niece and nephew—they were maybe six and eight. And it hit me in a new way: I would never have children. That path wasn’t just unlikely—it was gone.

And still… I felt at peace.

But I know that peace is a privilege. Because I got to decide.

And so, I wanted to talk with someone who has sat with women in the midst of that uncertainty, that grief—who really understands what it means to hope for a child, and to lose that hope again and again.

So I called Dr. Jessica Zucker. She’s a psychologist in Los Angeles who specializes in women’s reproductive and maternal mental health.

For years, Jessica counseled women as they grieved children who would never be born. And then one day, it happened to her.

Jessica: So 16 weeks into my second pregnancy, I had a miscarriage. While I was home by myself, I had to cut the umbilical cord. My O-B-G-Y-N coached me by phone, how to do this. My husband, all the while was darting through Los Angeles traffic trying to get home to me, and my doctor recommended that we bring the fetus in a bag to her office to be tested. To make matters all the more traumatic and physically challenging and psychologically unbelievable, I ended up undergoing an unmedicated D&C.

A D&C—or dilation and curettage—is a surgical procedure that is sometimes needed to remove tissue from the uterus after a miscarriage. It’s often routine. But usually people get medicated for pain and anxiety before and during the process.

Jessica had spent years helping others through the heartbreak of miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss. But when she experienced it firsthand, something shifted.

She realized just how deep the cultural silence around pregnancy loss really goes.And she wanted to break it.

Her first book was called I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, A Movement.

Jessica says many women carry shame after losing a pregnancy—blaming themselves for something entirely out of their control.

But for her, the reaction was something else entirely.

Jessica: My initial reaction was something must have been wrong with the fetus. That was just where I went. I didn't think, oh, did I have an extra sip of coffee? Or, oh, was it because I had an orgasm that day, or, oh, I, I, I don't think I did, by the way. I'm just saying, you know, I didn't go to the places that many women report going to in terms of what might I have done wrong? But when people started asking me questions or when people started saying certain things to me, platitudes, well-meaning ones, that is actually when I found myself wrestling with feelings of shame. So, for example, at my son's preschool pickup, a few days after my loss, another mom said to me from afar across the, uh, parking lot. Oh, you look so great. You don't even look like you were pregnant. There's so many things wrong with what she said. I wanna be pregnant. The fact that my body just happened to sort of lose the weight that quickly wasn't something I was proud of or excited about or something I had a hand in. So I think oftentimes people say things they think will be helpful. Maybe she thought that was a compliment. I guess she did. But it ends up alienating people and it ends up making people sometimes regret being vulnerable or sharing what they've been through.

When Nikki was in the thick of trying to get pregnant—endless appointments, shots, and then devastating loss after loss—her best friend Molly just seemed to know what to do. She didn’t offer advice. She didn’t try to fix it. She just showed up.

Maybe it’s because Molly had spent years navigating her own health crisis, hearing those same well-meaning but ultimately hurtful platitudes. Maybe she understood, in her bones, how isolating that kind of silence can be.

But the truth is, most of us don’t know what to say when someone we love is facing infertility or loss. We’re afraid of saying the wrong thing, so we say nothing at all.

Jessica says it doesn’t have to be that way.

Jessica: The simplest thing that we can do. To get up close and personal with our loved one in a time when they need us most is to literally just be there. All we need to say is, I'm here for you. I care about you. If you wanna talk about your situation, your story. Your pain. I want to listen. Some people will say, well, I didn't wanna bring it up because in case she was over it or she wasn't thinking about it, I don't wanna be like a downer for her. I can assure you she's thinking about it. And I can also tell you that if she's not, it's still loving to ask. We all wanna feel seen, heard, acknowledged in our pain, in our lives, in our processes.

Shoshana: Jessica, when those losses start to multiply, when it's not just one experience, but several, I imagine the emotional toll grows in ways that are, are hard to even describe. And, and for this particular episode, we also talked Nikki Boyer, and she had six miscarriages in four years. And I can't imagine how the mental health effects must compound when someone just experiences so many losses

Jessica: Well, I think what I see in my office, and I understood firsthand when I was pregnant again after my miscarriage, the intense, excruciating anxiety in the next pregnancy, and the fear of leaning into it, the fear of embracing hope, the fear of joy, the fear of excitement. When you know what it's like to lose something, you want this badly and it's happening within your body and you had absolutely no control. I think you're just. Lodged into a whole other field of feelings and fear and sometimes isolation because you don't really know who's gonna get it. The numbers, the statistics are so clear. One in four pregnancies results in miscarriage, and I think the number is like one in 160 stillbirth. And why are we being basically groomed, I think to blame ourselves. When we become one of those numbers.

Jessica has now come out with a second book called, “Normalize it: Upending the silence, stigma and shame that shape women's lives.”

Jessica: I worry that too many women are feeling alone when they don't have I worry that when our important stories are tucked inside, they can swallow us whole. I worry that that shame leads to depression and anxiety and so many other disordered, you know, ways of being that we need to collectively decide once and for all that if we can honor people's stories, if we can get people talking, if we can normalize the fact that. These outcomes of pregnancy are in fact, normal, unfortunate, and painstaking? Yes, but normal. Then maybe people will feel less badly about themselves or less afraid, to be honest.

Infertility is so much more common than we talk about. People all around us are quietly carrying these stories.

And it makes me wonder… how do you know when enough is enough?When to stop trying?When to consider a different path—like adoption, surrogacy—or, like Nikki, to make peace with the decision not to become a parent at all?

These are deeply personal choices. And they’re never easy.

Jessica: I struggle with that because I'm not a psychic, I'm not a medical doctor, and even the medical doctors can't know and predict the future. And so I'm just here with them thinking through the emotional toll this is taking, and we try to weigh out. How badly do you want this versus how badly are you feeling after going through all of this pain, all of this money, maybe all of these losses. But so we talk it through. We talk it out, you know, what would it feel like to not have a child? What would it feel like to turn to another root to become a parent? Because again, if you leave the house, you think that everybody has a baby, and you probably think that everybody got there pretty easily. And so it is a long, arduous process for some people to really come to terms with. This isn't gonna be a part of my life.

As difficult as it sounds, Nikki Boyer found her way through that.

After everything she’d been through—all the procedures, the losses—she made the decision not to pursue adoption or surrogacy.

Not because she didn’t want to be a mother. But because, for her, the cost—on every level—had become too high.

I asked her, a few years out from that decision… how does it feel now?Does the sadness still linger?

Nikki: It is like a sliver of the pie, right? It's like a piece of the pie. It's always there. Um, there's always a little grief around it. I mean, look at me right now. I'm just, but I think this grief is about the sadness of what I had to go through and the deep. Like reconciliation that I had to, to come to, but it's not so much about not getting a child and I'm clear about that. I also was one of those kids that babysat was always very maternal. I raised my two stepdaughters from like three and a half and five and a half or six. So I got, I got a taste of parenthood and, and. Listen, kids are awesome, but oh my God. The what? Like who? Who signs up for what? Who signed up for this? Thankless

Shoshana: Mm-hmm.

Nikki: No. Gratitude.

Shoshana: And you don't know what you're gonna get.

Nikki: Yes. And you assume that you put all your energy in the payoff is gonna feel like this and it doesn't. So, so I feel. I feel at peace with it. But there'll always be a little like I have to tell you, I'll be really honest with you, I love going shopping. It's like one of my favorite things. Shopping for crap. Like candles and like cheap lip glosses. Like I love to go to TJ Maxx or Marshall's or Target. And it used to be I could not go through a store like that going by the baby section without feeling like I wanted to just like sob. It's been a long time since I felt that way. So I don't look at the baby clothes and go, oh my gosh, I look at the baby clothes and go, all right, I made it through that. Right? Like I figured that out and I had to get really clear with myself of what does happiness and success and love and relationship look like without being a mother. And I got to a place where like I'm really like, I'm really okay with it.

Shoshana: Yeah. Looking back, would you go through it all again? Um, did you have any regrets?

Nikki: I mean, I'd love my thousands of dollars back because I was like, I literally said to one of the nurses once, can I get a refund? Like, can we get a refund when this doesn't work? Because I look back and I'm like, I would've, I would've loved to have gone to Europe. Right, like the Eiffel Tower sounds lovely or Tuscany like, but in all honesty I'm just gonna say it. I called my financial advisor, which first of all makes me sound like I'm rich, but I'm not. It's a friend of mine who is helping me and like trying to do smart things so I don't end up poor. And I called him and his wife had gone through IVF and some things and I said to him, what do I do? Considering where I am financially and how expensive this is to do each time. And three failed. IVFs was like purchasing a car, a very expensive car, . And his advice to me, and he's one of my favorite humans, he said. You have to try it until you're completely tapped out because I would rather you be broke and not get what you want out of this than to have not tried it and always wonder like, what if I would've just done it one more time? And I really followed that advice and I. I did it as long, as much as I could until I tapped out. So I, I don't really have any regrets. And would I do it again? Yeah, probably.

<music>

Dying for Sex (Hulu) Clip: Seriously. You never had an orgasm? No. No. Like I would get close. Mm-hmm. Like, you know, when it feels like a little sneeze, like, <sneeze>

In early April, Dying for Sex – the TV series based on Nikki’s podcast – premiered on Hulu, with Jenny Slate playing Nikki and Michelle Williams as Molly.

Nikki: I think Molly would be obsessed with Michelle Williams playing her and then she'd also be like, yeah, that sounds about right. Yeah, that sounds good. That that's perfect. Right? Like that's how she would be.

Shoshana: If Molly could see where you are right now, what do you think she'd say?

Nikki: Oh, that's so sweet. Oh. that she's proud of me and that. She's happy that I have found like a real deep love for not only my partner, but for myself in this process. And I think she would be. I think she, I think she is actually. I don't think – I could feel her. I think she is just all over me and with me all of the time, helping make my life really great and I'm so grateful for that with her.

Shoshana: Yeah. I see that.

Nikki: You do??

Shoshana: Yeah. I feel like I know her, like she's living on, you know, through you.

Nikki: Thanks for saying that. You know, she always used to say, you know, you're my soulmate. You're my soulmate. And, and I'd be like, well, I love you a lot. Like I really deeply love you. I mean, I'm not gonna say soulmate. She's like, Nope, we're soulmates. And it's funny 'cause my husband and I actually decided after 14 years together, we should get married in 2022. 'Cause I was like, oh, I want a husband, like let's be married. And we got married and after we had our wedding, he said to me, um, gosh, Molly's everywhere. Even though she wasn't physically at our wedding, like I felt her. And her soul is working through you and he goes, she really is your soulmate. And I was like, ah,yeah, she is. She is my soulmate.

[00:37:16] Shoshana: What a special man you have.

[00:37:18] Nikki: He is so awesome. Now you see why I wanna make a baby with him? I was like, we have to like bring some more of this into the world, but I'm so lucky I get to be on this road with him and it has not been easy. And we have really struggled and gone through some shit together. But I have to say like, he's like, yeah, he's my baby. (laughs)

CREDITS

Next time on the show: last May, actor Alexandra Breckenridge lost a close friend to suicide. And she did something we’re seeing more and more often these days. She shared her grief with her fans on Instagram.

Alex: I often wanna tell people that they're not alone in their big feelings in life because life can be overwhelming and loss is overwhelming.

But what’s really happening when celebrities share their grief? And does it help others who are also grieving?

Wendy: It's, it's grief education, right? So it's this amazing opportunity to build grief literacy.

That’s next time on the season finale of Before We Go.