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Reference

Basir, N., Ladge, J. J., & Sohrab, S. (2026). Disrupted selves in transition: How women navigate fertility treatments in the context of work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 111(2), 153–174. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001310

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🎙️ Welcome to Revise and Resubmit.

A few years ago, I remember speaking with a friend who had become exceptionally good at looking fine. The kind of fine that shows up on time, answers emails fast, laughs in meetings, and still remembers birthdays. If you only watched the surface, you would think her life was moving forward in neat, reasonable steps.

But every so often, in the quiet seconds when the conversation drifted, something would flicker. Not sadness exactly. More like the fatigue of someone living in two timelines at once. One timeline where she kept building a career, brick by brick. Another where a deeply wanted personal future kept getting postponed, revised, delayed, rewritten.

What struck me was not just the private ache. It was the constant negotiation. The decisions no one else could see. The way her calendar became a battleground between public competence and a profoundly personal uncertainty. The way the self can become a project, managed in fragments, while you are still expected to perform as if you are whole.

📄 That is why today’s episode centers on a powerful qualitative study titled “Disrupted selves in transition: How women navigate fertility treatments in the context of work,” by Basir, Nada Ladge, Jamie J. Sohrab, and Serena, published online in February 2026 in the Journal of Applied Psychology (Volume 111111, Issue 22). This is not just any outlet. It is an FT50 journal, a prestigious venue that shapes how organizations, scholars, and leaders understand working life.

🔍 The authors spoke with 4141 working women and traced what happens when a life transition does not behave like a transition. We often assume change has a middle, an end, and then a new stable chapter. This paper shows something tougher. When the path toward motherhood is disrupted again and again, it can create a state of being stuck between identities, neither fully here nor there.

🧩 The study maps three ways work and personal life can interfere with each other in these moments: what the body demands, what emotions consume, and what the mind cannot stop calculating. And here is the clinical precision of the finding, delivered without theatrics. Repeated disruption does not necessarily open space for self discovery. It can do the opposite. It can shrink the imagination. It can erode the ability to picture a future self at all. The authors call what remains a “lingering self,” a version of you that persists, shaping both work and personal identity, regardless of how the journey ends.

📌 If you care about work life research, identity, organizations, or simply the unseen labor people carry into the workplace, this episode is for you.

✨ Before we dive in, please subscribe to Revise and Resubmit on Spotify, and follow the YouTube channel Weekend Researcher. You can also find the show on Amazon Prime and Apple Podcast. Your subscribe matters more than you think. It tells the algorithms that rigorous ideas deserve a bigger room.

🙏 And sincere thanks to the authors, Basir, Nada Ladge, Jamie J. Sohrab, and Serena, and to the publisher, the American Psychological Association, for making this research available through the Journal of Applied Psychology.

So here is the question I want to hold