My Journey

Life is a journey that is unique to each individual, filled with their own experiences and challenges, shaping them into the person they are meant to be.  Who is that though?  For some, it takes a little bit longer to discover that. 

For me, at 33 years old, I am just now discovering what I am truly meant to do with my life.  So many say that they want to help people and that was true for me.  That is where I feel the most fulfilled.  Ten years in the human resource field and I still felt that something was missing.  Years of trauma have brought me closer to my truth.  I am now on the right path and I have zero doubts.

We all have a story.  Here’s mine.  At 13, I was raped by a man that was close to my family, a good friend of my dad’s on a trip out of state to visit him.  I struggled with it for years not understanding what I did wrong.  Years of therapy that just didn’t help.  It always sat in the back of my mind.  At 15, my parents divorced.  It was ugly.  My mom bounced from house to house with her abusive boyfriend, eventually losing custody of us.  It took him threatening to kill her to get her to finally call the cops and be done. 

During all of that, I found myself pregnant at 16 with a 30 something year old.  I thought he was a good man and so did my parents, so no charges were pressed and we married when I turned 18.  The abuse started on our wedding night.  He was an ugly drunk, calling me disparaging names and leaving bruises all over my body for the next 6 years.  I’d finally had enough and left.

I found the man that I now call my husband a few years later. We brought 2 beautiful boys into the world, adding to my 3 older children that I had with my ex-husband. With my 5th and final baby, I wanted to be in control of the birth, as I’d had 4 previous C-sections.  The entire pregnancy was great.  I had a supportive midwife and doula that helped me plan a homebirth and assured me that I could do it, but that it may take a little longer because my body had never gone into labor prior.

 At 41 weeks, it was go time. My water broke early in the day on Saturday, but I went throughout my day waiting for the contractions to get closer together.  Around 1 am on Sunday, they were about 5 minutes apart, so we contacted my team. The contractions came on strong and I was afraid and excited. My husband started filling the birth pool. Contractions were getting very intense. I got in the pool once it was ready and contractions were coming every 3 minutes and were incredibly intense. I didn’t think I could do it, but got to where we thought it was time to start pushing. I pushed for about 2 hours. I was losing hope but everyone kept reassuring me that I was doing great. By 5 or 6 am, we decided I needed to rest. The contractions were so intense and I couldn’t sleep. We decided to do a cervical check and found that I was still a ways off. They all decided to leave for the day and come back later in the evening. After a little while, I decided I was done. The contractions were so intense that I could no longer cope. I told my husband that I wanted to go to the hospital and be done. I let my team know as well and they said they knew I could do it, but supported my decision regardless.

The first nurse we encountered made me regret my decision instantly as she made disparaging comments to me when I told her my circumstances. She made sure that everyone knew that I had no proof of due date, that I had zero prenatal care even though neither was true; in fact I had lab work done early to confirm pregnancy, and multiple ultrasounds confirming my due date My midwife even offered to fax everything over. But this was ignored. I was told that because this was an emergency and had no lab work, I had to be put under and that my husband could not be there with me. They also said that because they didn’t know how far along I was, baby would be whisked off to the NICU. When I got back to the operating room, the anesthesiologist said my lab work that they did came back and that I could do a spinal tap if I wanted and that my husband could join. The nurse tried to argue it, but luckily enough people overrode her. Baby was out at 12:04 and everyone commented that I definitely had to be 41 weeks along due to his size.  The following days in the hospital were equally stressful as CPS and a psychiatrist was brought in to ask questions as though I were a criminal. The psychiatrist empathized with my situation and said she understood why I did what I did.

Let’s backtrack a few years now. My Grandma was admitted to the hospital and it was discovered that she had a sizable tumor on her brain. Chemo started, but eventually she chose to stop. In a matter of months, she went from working at the jail to passing away. This was the first major loss that I experienced. I had so many memories from my childhood spent with her and losing her broke me a little.

My Mom’s aunt that was a Medium gave my mom a message from my Grandma. She stated that my Dad was going to wait too long. This will make sense soon. My parents reunited and eventually remarried shortly after I had my first daughter. They had me over to give me some tough news. My Dad had an incurable disease that typically lead to death within 7-10 years of diagnosis. He had been to multiple doctors trying to figure out what was wrong with him and because his disease was fairly rare, it took a little while. His health declined slowly in the coming years, but he kept going as though nothing was wrong. He was typically unable to keep food in and lost a lot of weight. ER visits and surgeries increased.

My Mom became the main caregiver for my Grandpa as his health began declining. He passed away days before my youngest was born, leaving me in the hospital during his funeral. While I wasn’t super close to my Grandpa, it broke my Mom even more, losing both of her parents in a matter of a few years. And unfortunately, there was more loss to come.

Let’s jump to another area of my life for a minute. During my maternity leave, my new boss called, texted and emailed daily. I was stressed out every day from lack of sleep due to having a newborn and having to help my new boss figure out how our company ran. After my 8 weeks off, I returned to work, trying to stay positive, but things got rocky as my boss argued with me constantly when I explained things to her stating that I was wrong and didn’t know what I was talking about and she took credit for my work when presented to the President of the company. One month into being back from maternity leave, I arrived to work to find my badge no longer worked. My boss let me in and brought me to a conference room where she explained that my position had been eliminated and handed me boxes of my personal belongings.

These next few things were my 2023, a year of constant loss. I enjoyed the next month and a half off with my babies, but quickly found a new job. Sadly, it didn’t take long for me to realize it wasn’t the right fit due to constant overnight travel. I found a new job in May that I had high hopes for. The company had just been taken over by a larger California company and made it seem as though my experience would be great to come in and help make some great changes and improve moral. This couldn’t have been further from the truth. Every idea that I had was shot down. I then started noticing things happening to my employees that were on the edge of being illegal and highly unethical. When I brought these things up, things got ugly. Then, one day, a message that my boss had written to a co-worker about me was accidently shared with me. When I brought up the fact that I could see this message I was sent home. I knew then, there was a target on my back, so I packed my things and waited.

In the meantime, in June shortly after arriving home from work, my husband headed out to go somewhere and returned within minutes pounding on the locked door to tell me to call 911 because our detached garage was on fire. We completely lost the garage and everything in it with just minor damage to our house. A bag of my Grandma’s clothes sat on a shelf in the charcoaled garage, still vibrant and full of color. Our insurance coverage was not enough to cover the cost of our unnecessarily large garage, but we were required to rebuild the same or better conditioned garage in order to receive all of the money. The estimates we received were more than double the insurance money. To this day, we haven’t received all funds and won’t until we insulate, put up drywall and add electricity to the garage.

Two months later in August, I got a message from my Mom that my Dad was being rushed to the hospital again. No one expected that this would be any different; he would have surgery and be fine. That was not the case this time. He waited too long and his bowels and intestines were dead. So we stayed by his side until he passed. He never woke up. Every single moment plays in my head, from the initial message to the call in the middle of the night telling me to come right away to pushing his body into the crematory with my Mom and sister.

I had to return to work a week later. At this point, the message that my boss had written about me had already happened. She had stopped communicating with me directly altogether. I didn’t receive a single word of condolences from her. One month later, I was told that my position had been eliminated due to the company struggling financially. I wasn’t mad. I knew it was coming and was prepared.

During my time off, I had a lot of conversations with my Dad. He was always the person I called when I needed to talk or needed advice. He was always positive and said that things would work out and to not stress. He was my biggest cheerleader. I waited for answers and received one. As a child, he always had rock playing in the car. I found myself listening to classic rock quite a bit after he passed. A song came on and I was told to listen. I did. Although the song didn’t specifically tell me what to do, the lyrics brought a realization to me. I needed to look to my heart. I needed to look into spiritual coaching. I didn’t know this was a thing, but it is. I started taking courses and still am. I’m more at peace. I’m happier. And now, I’m ready to share what I’ve learned with whoever I can.

 In the meantime, I found another job fairly quickly by posting in a local Facebook Women’s Networking group. The COO saw my message and asked me to send her my resume. I was quickly brought in for an interview and was offered the job. It was everything that I had been looking for. I was appreciated for my knowledge and experience. I wasn’t micromanaged and my ideas were welcomed. I am still here and still happy. My goal, however, is to be successful in running a spiritual life coaching business. I’m open and ready and still continuing my learning, but that’s a story for a different day.