The past 6 and a half months have been full of experiences and emotions that I never expected or hoped to have. Grief is this weird thing you always hear about and maybe have learned about the different stages. Grief is something that seems like a textbook answer of how to be sad. It doesn't seem like a real thing that happens until it smacks you in the face and knocks you on the ground before you could comprehend what happened. I had been sad but I had never experienced sadness. As a happy person, I have always seen the glass as half full. Until one day there is suddenly no water in the glass at all. It's empty. You know the glass will be filled again someday but you are thirsty now. I wanted to share my experiences with an empty glass. Here's some things no one told me about grief: 1. GUILT - okay so maybe someone did tell me about this one but I didn't think that it was real. Why would someone feel guilty for an unexpected death that they literally had no con...
I've written and re-written this for weeks now. Unsure and worried of sharing too much or too little. I want to share Rylie's story in hopes that her life will continue to inspire others and spread a message of God's love to everyone. Rylie was due on Valentine's Day. That night, Ryan made us a wonderful candle-lit dinner and then we read some of our letters to each other from our missions and then we went to sleep, anxious and hopeful for Rylie's arrival. I woke up in the middle of the night with chills and vomiting, which lead to intense contractions. We decided to go to the hospital, thinking it was time for Rylie to arrive. We grabbed our hospital bags, the diaper bag and a barf bucket since I was still not feeling well. We left our house in perfect condition to bring our daughter home to. Everything was ready for her. We got to the hospital a little after 6AM. Once I was in triage and hooked up to the monitors, my nurse said she thought I just had th...