I chose to focus on the field of health education because I loved learning about and discussing wellness, especially its mental and emotional components. My love for the content area only grew, but unfortunately my love for the nitty-gritty aspects of public school did not. Classroom management, school politics, and being scheduled to the minute were not for me. Even though I felt a little lost at what might come next, I decided to leave public education.

Meanwhile, after four years of marriage, my husband and I decided maybe the timing was lining up to start our family. I moved thoughts of a career to the back burner and quickly had our first child, Gabe, in 2004.

Although we’d hoped to quickly add more to our family, life had other plans for us, and we endured a grueling six+ year journey of infertility and miscarriage. This rocked everything in our entire world—our emotional well-being, our marriage, our faith, and our finances. My professional goals were completely subsumed by our family-building goals, resulting in an era of just doing what we could to survive because the grief and loss were so consequential.

It was with great surprise and relief, then, that we welcomed Isla into our world in 2012, with Jude completing our crew in 2013. On one hand, it was the happily ever after for which we’d hoped. On the other hand, babies are often the easiest parenting is going to get: we’ve faced ongoing challenges as we learned to navigate neurodivergence, mental health struggles, unexpected physical health diagnoses, and the unplanned adventure of homeschooling.