Long story alert.. but I finally decided to share my journey. I could never sum it up truly.. but here it is in part. How looking at this bump means all the world to feeling alive in my body.. 💛

My body journey has been very chaotic for several years as so much of my life has changed in every way I could’ve never imagined.. I lost my very best friend in a car accident in January of 2015. We grew up together. She lived with my family for a long time. She is my sister. My soulmate. We were barely 18. My whole world collapsed. Part of that spiraling on the inside presented in a massive weight gain. I lost a lot of it in 2017 before my wedding to my incredible husband, whose love continues to help me get through each day. I was trying to recognize myself again and I did a good job of doing so in a HEALTHY way. The best I could. I felt beautiful on my wedding day and knew Haley was proud of me for fighting for my joy. I carried her portrait on my bouquet.

In February of 2018, everything I could’ve ever feared happened. I believed with all my soul that my family had to be safe now. We had given our fair share in the universe and more. We were surviving our cross to bare each day without Haley. And then my husband called me. They were gone. My mom, my rock the absolute soul of my very being. She was 9 months pregnant with my baby sister Hailynn (named for my best friend and myself: Haley and Jayd-Lynn). My mom had fallen unconscious at the wheel of her car, they believe due to complications with her gestational diabetes. They were both gone. Hailynn was due to be born in just two weeks. My mom was just recently single (having FINALLY escaped from a horrible abusive marriage just before she found out about my baby sister). I have four other siblings who are still young. My brother was only 5. I was 21.

Everything everything everything fell apart. I can’t believe I continue to live through it. I hear their screams at night. I see my babies, my beautiful beautiful siblings falling to the gravel when they stepped off the school bus to find me in the driveway. I had to tell them. I see their faces. Every day I wish my mom was here, I think of every single thing I would trade for her life. I am selfish and I wish it were me. I wish Hailynn got the chance to live. I wish my siblings didn’t know this pain.

I gained a lot of weight again as I struggled with alcohol abuse in the year after my mom and sister’s death. My nightmares and sleep paralysis kept me awake all night. I drank every day of my life to try to survive. I almost ruined my marriage becoming a hateful person I didn’t recognize as my pain and my drinking made me go from unbearably sad to aggressive and angry at night because I was afraid to lay down. I was pushing away my family, and pushing away the man who I had promised my partnership to only 4 months before I lost my mom and my sister. The man who was my boyfriend for only a month before I lost my best friend years before and who somehow loved me through that even then.

He helped me. He loved me every moment through. And my sisters and my brother. Their love saved me over and over. They save me every single day.

My mom loved making a home for us. She made a home for everyone— including Haley when we were just little girls and my mom could tell in her soul that this weird kid I brought home from school needed a mom too. She was everyone’s mom. And she always told me I could never know how much she loved me until I got to be a mommy too.

I tried to feel like myself again for them. I started doing Pilates literally just on my bedroom floor in the morning. Just as a way to get out of bed whereas before I would lay there for hours and cry, it would physically hurt to think of getting up. But I did get up. I started by LITERALLY rolling onto the floor to do breathing exercises and then moved on with the Blogilates YouTube series. I held myself accountable. I lost 30lbs in 5 months and had progress to be proud of and to hold in comparison to the way I was drinking before.

My family and my husband helped me find good things to hold on to. We decided to start looking for a home (something that made me feel so close to mom..) and in May we finally closed on a house that felt like where we should’ve always been. Literally two weeks later (without it being quite in the plans at all), we found out that I’m getting to feel that love more than I could’ve ever fathomed. My own baby girl will be here.. in February. Her name is River Mae: my baby sister Hailynn’s middle name and my mom’s middle name. Named for the women who I am missing every moment of every day, but whom I know sent her straight to me.

Today is my two year wedding anniversary. I’m about to head to have lunch with my incredible unconditionally loving husband. My little siblings are in school closer to me and my older sister. We are doing good. We are living our lives in a way that I know mom has always wanted us to. And I am proud every single moment of the day that I look at myself and see this precious bump. 23 weeks. That’s six months ABSOLUTELY completely sober. That’s a whole person in there completely created in the love my husband has given me. That is my mom’s love that she told me I could only feel this way when I understood. I will never understand why my family has to live with what we do.. I will never understand why we have to live without them. How loss could find us again when I believed it wouldn’t. Why the best people I know had to go so soon. But I’m understanding more and more every day why I’m surviving. It is love. Love love love, this love alone.

My sweet precious River, mommy recognizes her body again because it is your home.

The best husband ever

23 weeks

My siblings and mommy

Our last Christmas

Mom and Haley 💛