How did I get here again? Oh yeah...

Hi, hey, hello,

or maybe I say...

Dear diary,

Okay, no. Let's get serious...

Whoa this is a little strange. A nice little blank sheet to just begin writing the million and one thoughts that pop into this brain of mine. I truly don't even know where to begin but I guess a good place to start might be to introduce myself and give you the insight of how the heck I even got here in the first place.

So hi, hello, hey, my name is Sam, most people in my family call me Sammy, and I am now officially a bereaved mom. I mean, that's how I got here but let's back it up a bit and talk about me before I landed here. I am 29 years young and a wife, mom of both, sister, daughter, friend, jokester, lover, anxious mess, and very interesting human being.

I grew up in a small town in Southeast Kansas until I graduated from high school. Then I moved to another small town to play sports, moved back home, graduated from college near (I say in) my hometown and then landed in the Kansas City metro area shortly after graduation and been here ever since. So like, I don't know, six ish years. I am happily married a woman who truly puts up with the most. She is the definition of what the "cool" kids call the GOAT. She is patient, loving, supportive, brave, a true care taker, my best friend, confident, and favorite person to see every single day. We have two nutty but very protective and amazing pups. And we also have our hands full with our two and a half year old daughter, earthside here with us. If you know, you know. She is the center of our world and truly the daughter we both never realized we needed.

So now that you got that little bit of goodness lets talk about why the heck am I even here...

Motherhood. The wild, amazing, empowering, terrifying, anxiety provoking journey of motherhood is how I landed here.

Let's start at the very beginning, rewind the tape to 2020. My journey started out much different than others, and alongside my wife I took on the journey of fostering- talk about going straight to the deep end feet first, no floaties. The grief, the trauma, the learning, the growing, all of which happened in a short time, I truly thought I was prepared for whatever motherhood had to throw at me.

So fastward a bit and in 2021 after parenting, loving, raising, and then reunifying eight boys my wife and I decided it was time to give it a go at having our forever family. We did the research, put in the effort, and in two very short, quick months my wife was pregnant. Let me just say our journey to becoming pregnant is one we do not take lightly and one we constantly remind ourselves and others of how lucky we were to not experience difficulty in regard to fertility. While her pregnancy was high risk due to health conditions we never experienced any sort of red flags or warning signs so quick flip to 2022 and we got to welcome a beautiful, healthy, sweet girl that was carried by my wife.

Then in 2023, shortly after our daughter turned one we decided we wanted to give it a go again and work on giving her a sibling. Both my wife and I have siblings and also want a bigger family and truly no time like the present was our thought at giving it a go.

However, this time, I was going to carry.

And then there we were on our journey to pregnancy a second time. It again, thankfully and luckily, took us two months of trying and on my 28th birthday we got pregnant with our second baby. Way quicker than we anticipated but we were so excited and truly couldn't wait for the twenty-three month age gap between our daughter and her first brother or sister. Or at least, that's where we thought we were headed.

Unfortunately, in September of 2023 our lives changed forever. The three words that no one ever wants to hear echoed throughout our nearly twenty-nine week appointment "there's no heartbeat." Our son Tacoma was born still on September 15th, 2023 at 6:54 am. He was truly anything and everything we could have hoped for.

Our hearts shattered and our world stopped spinning that day.

From that moment is how I ended up here- sitting at a computer dumping out these thoughts, and memories. Typing this and looking back, I still wonder how I got here. How I'm even sitting at this computer desk, typing out these stories, playing back memories from each little snippet that I've shared. I miss the girl I was. I miss the innocence, the care free thinking, the happy go lucky, go with the flow, laugh it off girl I was. It has nearly been one whole year since our world changed and I wish so badly that I could go back to that but my "option A", "my plan", it doesn't exist anymore. I am here, in the "option B" in the truly sh*ttiest plan I could've thought of but slowly each day I am figuring out how to put one foot in front of the other and take a step, because I deserve that. My family deserves that. Tacoma deserves that-he deserves to be remembered and I am the one in charge of that.

So welcome to my space. Our space. The space I hope to be a place for healing and connection. The space I hope that can bring someone some peace. A space that someone can find and realize they are not alone. Whether you're here to just read and see what our life is like now or you're here because your world stopped, too. I am so glad and so sad that you're here.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being here. I hope you stick around.

And honestly, welcome to the sh*t show.

XOXO,

Sammy