What brought me to my keynote speech?

In 2017 my husband and I decided together that I would apply to become a surrogate. I had very easy pregnancies and felt that it would be my honor to help a couple create the family for which they longed. Through a series of events (in what felt like messages from above), we were matched with a couple and I gave birth to their child in December of 2019.

We all knew that a sibling journey was the next step but when COVID changed the world it also changed our trajectory. It wasn’t until January 2022 that I was given the go ahead to begin the sibling journey. After a successful IVF transfer, things were going well— until they weren’t.

At 16 weeks and 5 days, at what I thought was going to be a normal checkup, we found out that the baby didn’t have a heartbeat. In that moment, my life changed completely.

I started by creating OursAndYRS: A Pregnancy Loss Survival Toolkit (a care package with hand picked and homemade items) to be able to send to others who had become pregnancy loss survivors. I then began my podcast, Pushing Through Loss, to hear from other loss survivors; I wanted to them to have a place to share their journey in loss through surviving to thriving and let others know they are not alone. Finally, I became a Reiki practitioner to guide people through the release of stuck emotions and energy. I work with energy, sound, and frequencies to rebalance the inner self.

Through my journey, I have come to understand how important inner strength and resilience are. I want to help others feel empowered to work with their challenges and not fight against them. We all have our own struggles; no one should feel held down by their circumstance and I help people feel like they can be the victors in their stories instead of the victims.