Flash forward about three decades and I'm still that little girl inside. In fact, I happen to believe that the little kid within us never truly leaves. Some of us are just better at hiding him or her. Well I don't hide her. I'm 35 years old and I love to dress what some others call "a tad young for my age". I have a unicorn tape dispenser in my office with rainbow colored tape. Glitter is my middle name and I still believe that allowing yourself to sparkle on the outside gives other people the courage to do the same.
A lot of people don't know this, but the baby in my belly is a sheer miracle almost eight years in the making. His nickname is Rainbow Jack, which is short for Jackson and there are quite a few rainbows in his nursery already. Why? Well because he's what's known (albeit not quite commonly yet) as a rainbow baby. A rainbow baby is a baby born after a loss, a miscarriage, or a difficult journey with infertility. They are symbols of hope for a rainbow after a storm, or a promise of sunshine after the darker parts of life. Allow me to share with you four seasons--or life themes, if you will--that I believe we ALL encounter that build strength and character. And it's these seasons and traits that can lead to all sorts of colorful rainbows of your making if you just have enough patience and grit.
#1 You Must Have a Dream
This seems self-explanatory. I mean, we all have dreams right? No, I mean you need at least one big dream for yourself that you TRULY believe is all yours. That you're destined to live it. A dream that you are adamant will not stay a dream, but will become a reality no matter how hard it is or how long it takes.
My dream? When I married Erik, I inherited an instant-family. He was a single daddy raising two young kiddos, a step-son from his first marriage who was 11 and Alexis who was 7 by the time I married into the family. He was such a wonderful father to those kids, I couldn't wait to create life with him. Little did I know how difficult a task that would prove to be. When we finally began trying about five years into our marriage, I always dreamed I would have two babies--a boy and a girl. We discussed what we would name our babies. I began to envision myself as a mom to babies, even though I was already getting plenty of practice as a mom to two young children that I didn't birth.
Imagine your dream as a reality. Make vision boards. Journal about it. Keep doing it, because sometimes it takes years to come to fruition, such as was the case for us. After four and a half years of negative pregnancy tests and painful periods, doubt began to creep in. Lesson here: you will most certainly doubt the feasibility of your dreams at some point. Until one day, you may find yourself there.
Seemingly out of nowhere, in August of 2015 I found out that I was pregnant! Finally a positive test! Soooo... why, then, was I bleeding?
#2 You May Experience Setbacks
Or a loss. The path to your big, wonderful, delicious dream is most likely not linear and clean. It's probably a quite a bit messy. Fraught with detours and roadblocks and NOs and again, more self-doubt. This is the character-building phase. The patience-testing part. It's not fun, but it's actually quite integral to the process.
My setback? Miscarriage. It's a word that women don't like to talk about, although I've since learned it's alarmingly common. After waiting four and a half years for that positive pregnancy test, I thought, this is it! It didn't take long for me to learn that...welllll, maybe not exactly. I was bleeding slowly every day. Getting blood drawn every other day was proving what the back of my mind knew to be true...my hormone levels were not high enough to sustain the pregnancy. Even after the fertility doctor put me on progesterone, my hormone numbers continued to drop. What little glimmer of hope I had was slowly fading to a quiet darkness.
Listen up y'all. When you have dreams, sometimes it may look like they are finally coming to fruition and then something bad happens. It doesn't mean that you need to stop pursuing them. Maybe it does mean that you take a break from it for awhile, or reevaluate your process. Maybe you take awhile to grieve a significant setback. It will be different for everyone. For me, I grieved for a little bit. I decided to get a tattoo of a bird taking off on my wrist as a symbol of letting go of control and sadness and moving on. The way I saw it, I could either wallow in misery and have four more years of "why me" and "it's not fair" or I could change my mindset and allow myself to
#3 Press Into More Hope and BELIEVE
There is perhaps nothing more powerful than BELIEF. There is science that shows how when we change our thoughts, we actually affect change in our circumstances. Whole books have been written about it, and they are best-sellers. Guided meditations have been created as a way to influence our thoughts, subconscious patterns, and therefore our outer realities. I recommend looking into all of this!
I could've looked at this miscarriage as a sign that maybe it's just not meant to be. Maybe I was wrong about my dream...maybe I should just do all of the fertility measures that everyone has been harping on me to do. Maybe I should adopt even though my heart isn't in it yet. Maybe I should just give up on this dream of being a mother to my own children.
Instead, I decided NO. I will not give up. In fact, I will see this heartbreaking experience as something good. I chose to look at it as a victory. For once we had actually conceived! No, it wasn't the ideal conception and it appeared to be doomed from the start. But we GOT PREGNANT. I saw it as a sign that pregnancy was a possibility for us. If my body had done it once, we could do it again. And this time, we would prepare better than we had before.
Lesson? Keep believing in your dreams. If they are truly worth it to you, step up and own your birthright. But is that all you need? No, a dream and belief alone are not enough. You need
#4 Determination, Grit, & Manageable Steps in That Direction
Dreams without follow through stay dreams. Yes keep the overall forest in your field of view, but take a look at the trees, for the trees will get you there. Chunk your big, scary goal into mini goals. Take manageable steps in the right direction. One of my favorite sayings is "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."
Erik and I decided after that miscarriage to make some changes in our lifestyle. We had already began using essential oils, but we began researching on how to use them to support our bodies hormonal balance. I used oils to boost my progesterone and he used oils to boost his testosterone. We started eating healthier and eliminated most processed foods, while working on our gut health using probiotics and food enzymes. We kicked the nasty chemical-laden cleaners and personal care items to the curb and began using plant-based products. We continued to work on meditation and mindset and filled our heads with more of what we wanted to see in our worlds. In short, we went to work manifesting health and wellness by making our bodies and minds an inviting place for a child to thrive.
And sure enough, without a single fertility drug or Petri dish, we were again with child. And THIS time, my hormone numbers were excellent. This time, we knew that this pregnancy was here to stay. This baby, the one following a loss, is called a rainbow baby. And his name is Jackson Douglas. This baby will paint our lives with colors that have yet to be discovered. This baby is our dream come true, almost eight years in the making.
I know you have dreams for yourself. Perhaps even outrageous ones. You've no doubt spent time visualizing them and seeing yourself victorious. You may even have experienced one or more setbacks or detours. I pray that you have continued to hope and believe that the world deserves to see you living out your dreams. And no doubt you have the wisdom to know that you must walk a little more towards your dreams everyday, step by step by step. Keep all of this up and you'll get your rainbow.
As Judy Garland so beautifully sang, "Somewhere over the rainbow, dreams really do come true."
