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 first 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 created OursAndYRS: A Pregnancy Loss Survival Toolkit following my loss to help others who had become pregnancy loss survivors.

This is an extremely difficult topic and there aren’t enough resources out there for survivors. 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 my keynote will help people feel like they can be the victors in their stories instead of the victims.