Starting an international comedy tour after a fourth miscarriage

We were greeted with the very worst of news the day after our flight back from Colombo. I wrote a long Instagram post summarising what it felt like to be pregnant after over two long years of “trying” and IVF fails then not pregnant shortly after.

The outpouring of support helped to validate our choice to shut the door on IVF. We are healthy people who have attended hospital appointments several times a week before 8am for the past year and a half. I’ve done my best to keep going through the injections, the blood tests, the pills, the pessaries, the diets, the list goes on and on. I’ve held on tightly to my sanity, like a kid taking a puppy for a walk around the block for the first time. I can do this no more - if we keep down this path, I will lose control of the leash and the puppy will dash. I’ll be crawling around the streets of Melbourne trying to lick my own shadow muttering ovulation-window-ovulation-window-ovulation-window to myself and Charlie will be in want of a wife.

It is a huge relief to know that I’m free of the IVF train. However, I’m still riding through the miscarriage - it’s not a quick physical or emotional process and you have to let your body heal. It involves a lot of sitting on the couch and lying under the doona - I’m lucky I have a wonderful partner and cat to do this with. Our support system is well versed in being there for us, the fourth time round. Our friends and family send much love, most notably my mother who flew over from Perth and left a fridge full of home cooked curry.

In this context, I’m sitting in bed under the doona, feeling a bit surreal that my show Boundaries for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival opens tonight. It never occurred to me that I couldn’t do it. Or to pull out of any gigs that I had booked for spots around the festival before my show. Here’s why.

I registered this show in October last year. I spent six months writing bits for the show, practising them at gigs all over town, working with my manager to organise the promo, get the designs for the posters and merch, and put together the audio and visuals for the show. The show is a hundred percent of what the audience sees but only twenty percent of what the performer does. The other eighty percent is all the admin is takes to write it, finish it and get people to come see it.

The festival machine started two weeks ago, it rolls on and you best get involved. I opened for Hannah Gadsby for their opening night at the Arts Centre - it was a total career highlight to meet and perform on the same stage as them.

Yes it’s blurry but as if I care, it’s a selfie with Hannah Gadsby!

Comedy Republic had a Fairly Poor Portrait Fair (their words not mine) where they got the city’s most anxious people to paint each other for charity. I’ve not laughed as hard as I did at the big reveal, especially because Tom Ballard appears to have aged me by 1000 years.

Our comedy is better than our painting skills, I swear

I performed for Brown Women Comedy’s opening night which was so much fun.

The ABC national news also did this feature article on us.

I was also judge for the festival’s Class Clowns final and straight after my show this evening, I’m running to get on stage again for the Upfront Gala, which was one of my most favourite nights from last year.

So if I must have a miscarriage, how lucky am I to get to do all this and also to go laugh with a whole bunch of people for the next ten days straight at the world’s third largest comedy festival? Then get to keep doing it around Australia and beyond?

So I’m going on stage tonight. I’m going to do my weird warmups and hope I’m doing it right. I’m going to remember that people often don’t get what want, many times over in life. That all we have to get through the disappointment is ourselves and each other and laughter.

See you at a show or online. Shout out to anyone who’s navigating not getting what they wanted out there - you’re doing great, keep going.

Big hugs

Sashi

Boundaries runs 8-21 April at Trades Hall in Melbourne. I’m doing shows all around Australia, the UK and the Netherlands. Come down!