““The spine isn’t a column, it’s a living river””

Lina spent most of her career working as a private equity investor in the UK. After experiencing pregnancy loss and difficulty conceiving, she realised the need to build more companies by women for women to help make health more proactive. She is now the founder CEO of Adia, a digital health platform empowering women through their fertility journey, and mother to three children and two angel babies.

In this episode, we talked about:

Lina worked in finance for over 10 years and was often the only woman on the team. She strived not to let gender be an issue

Lina has grown up with strong role-models, including her mother and sister, who taught her independence and inner strength
At 35, she tried to start a family and had a challenging time regarding pregnancy loss and difficulties conceiving, and she reflected on how often issues aren’t spoken about as they are taboo
When someone is grieving, you need to sit with the pain and process it
She realised there need to be more women’s health services that build on a community and improve access to doctors and support. This idea gave rise to Adia
Giving meaning to a painful experience helped to rationalise it and make something more positive out of it
Nurturing a community and creating
Tackling mental, emotional and physical health
Educating women to enable them to be more proactive
Making services more women-centric
Dr Jessica Farren - study about miscarriage and PTSD
The silence around miscarriage - taboo
Empowering and educating women to access the services they need and increasing accessibility
Tech helps to reduce barriers of time and money
Tommy’s charity has been trying to reduce to 2 rather than 3 miscarriages before investigation
The impact of the contraceptive pill and trying to prevent pregnancy
More needs to be done to help working parents to have a family rather than ‘solutions’ such as egg freezing e.g. with flexible working, job sharing etc.
Work-life balance and work-life goals
Motherhood helps people to become efficient multi-tackers, which is effective in the work environment
Working with HR to support women suffering with painful periods and the impact on work, and returning to work after loss
Adia’s campaign in November to put a spotlight on the issues for men dealing with fertility challenges and miscarriage and an at-home sperm test. Adia’s co-founder and Lina’s husband Tyler spoke about his experiences, which prompted other men to share theirs
Mark Zuckerberg talked about how he and his wife experienced miscarriages
The increase of women talking about their experiences e.g Serena Williams and her difficult birth and Michelle Obama having IVF
Learning to “sit with it” and feel our emotions, discomfort and pain
It takes time to feel, so digital detoxes, connecting with the breath and movement are ways of being more conscious with the body
We’ve come to stop trusting our intuition, but when you can sit with it, you can relearn trusting
Lina trained to be a yoga teacher and it helped her to reconnect with herself after baby-loss
Make space for a grieving friend to talk. Friends often come with a solution because they want to take the pain away, but not acknowledging the loss is painful in itself