COLLIDE

July 8, 2024.Reading time 13 minutes.

I stand in the Atlantic Ocean jumping the waves as they attempt to crash over me. Some are too big to jump and I dive under them at just the right time. With each dive I hear the force of the wave breaking above me. The impact as it breaks – pounding… booming… swelling…nature’s most powerful force.

37 weeks pregnant, I feel my baby boy kick and turn inside of me as I take on wave after wave after wave. I hold my belly and for a moment all of time stops and the world slows down till it barely moves. I feel a surge of emotion and an unbelievable protection over something I have yet to hold or see or meet. And yet in the same breath the mountain that’s been emerging, somehow getting larger each day, looms before me.

I point my face towards the sun and close my eyes for a second. I feel so free in this moment. Standing in water there is no pain. No gravity pulling my belly downwards. My back doesn’t continuously ache and even my re-injured ribs, potentially my re-broken ribs feel better than they have done in months. In this moment there is nothing. Just the ocean, the waves, the sun, the wind and my body. Standing in unity. Flowing in sync.

I feel the swell of the water start to pull around my legs and I open my eyes just in time to dive under another thunderous wave. The peaceful moment disappears with a whirlpool of foam all around me as more waves come crashing through… one after another after another. There’s barely time to catch a breath.

The hospital wanted to induce me this week at 38 weeks. The baby is very big, but more than that I get the feeling they’re just trying to control the situation as much as they possibly can. For the first 6 months I had kept myself in a great place with the pregnancy. But after losing my OB practice at 30 weeks pregnant, because they suddenly decided out of nowhere I was too high risk to be seen by them any longer and refused to see me again… fear slowly crept in. For 6 weeks no one would see me. Finally a call from the medical director at the high risk OB group asking me to come in and see her personally definitely made things feel a little better, but for some reason I haven’t been able to quite shake that initial fear that managed to hook itself onto something refusing to let go.

“It’s not your pregnancy that’s high risk, it’s the labor that’s very high risk.” “Every patient here is high risk… you’ve been promoted to high HIGH risk.” “Your situation is so unknown and so unpredictable we’re going to have to have every specialist on standby just in case.” The words ring loud in my ears. High risk. Unpredictable. Unknown. Every medical professional I’ve seen keeps saying the same thing. No one knows how my body is going to respond going into a situation as traumatic and stressful as labor.

I jump through another wave. Emotions are suddenly high. I feel angry, lost, out of control and very fearful of the unknown. Every medical observance weighing me down, my feet planted in the sand, my legs suddenly feeling heavy. Last year when my body started attacking itself after the horrendous miscarriage I went through… it was one of the worst and hardest times of my life. Being stuck in a hospital bed for 6 weeks unable to move, needles every day, medications that made me feel out of it, the excruciating physical pain of constantly dropping oxygen and fighting for air, memory loss due to the lack of oxygen and intense body cramps from lying still for so long. When I let myself go back there I feel claustrophobic and panicky… Will my body do the same thing again when I go into labor? Or potentially as soon as the labor is over? Doctors have told me there’s a real possibility it could. They’re avoiding a c-section because surgery is a trigger for autoimmune. Labor or post labor can apparently also be a trigger.

I stare out into the depth of the ocean. There’s a point where the ocean meets the sky and you no longer know which one is which. Both sky and ocean – they just keep going. The vastness of both makes me stop and take a deep breath. Baby boy is coming one way or another. I’ve had an amazing pregnancy. Yes it’s been very painful. From my pelvis, to the crazy pressure that never let up, re-injuring my broken ribs, some breathing issues and an asthma flare up… but overall… I have worked out 6x a week at high intensity for 9 months straight without missing a beat, walked my dogs every day of the week, worked without having a sick day or missing a show, and not needed to change anything in my day-to-day routine. I mean that’s something I should be proud of! Now I just need to get through the final part. The most important part. Bringing this beautiful miracle into the world safely, while staying alive myself!

I dive under the next wave. I’ve probably been doing this for close to an hour. My legs feel less heavy again. Fear’s little hook hasn’t let go, but for a moment it doesn’t feel quite as intense. I gently place my hands back on my belly. He never stops moving. I visualize my ultrasound from the previous week and follow his spine, move over his little bottom and find his little hands and feet. Out of nowhere tears jump into my eyes. 5 and a half years I’ve waited for him. I didn’t think it would ever happen. I’m so close to holding you baby boy. I’m so close to smelling your head, and feeling those little feet which have been kicking me painfully for so long. We’re so close. I promise I’ll keep you safe. I promise I won’t let anything happen to you. Even if my body does start failing again, I promise I’ll bring you out safely.

The tears fall as I jump through the next wave. This one hurt as it crashes through me. I should have dove under that one but I didn’t have enough time between the two waves. That’s what the looming mountain in front of me feels like right now. Going from pregnancy to labor is going to be so quick, I won’t have time to make a decision. It’ll just happen. It’ll be painful but there’s no stopping it.

Fear has hooked himself firmly inside of me and for now he’s not going anywhere. But as I breathe in the ocean air deeply and continue to jump each wave I know I have a choice to not let fear be the only contender right now. Breathe, jump, breathe, dive… I’ve been given this miracle to carry and it was far from luck and most definitely not by my own doing that this pregnancy came to be OR that I was able to healthily carry him for the last 38 weeks. I breathe in HOPE. Deeply. Saturating as many parts as I can. I stare out again at where the ocean meets the sky. Limitless. Endless. Infinite. It’s all so far out of my control. Just like I can’t control these waves, or the vastness of the ocean, the sky that never ends… I can’t control how this baby will be born. I breathe it in deep. FAITH fills my lungs. You’ve got me this far in life. I know with every fibre in my being that You won’t leave me now. Whatever that looks like. Even when it feels so out of control, I KNOW He’s completely in control. I take one more deep breath… peace gently floods in. Like a warm sip of tea slides down your throat and thaws a cold body, peace tingles through me and numbs the nervous anxiety mixed within the fear as I stare up at the mountain looming before me. It still stands before me, towering high. But the peace makes it feel just a little less threatening. Whatever happens – I can do this.

I dive under one final wave, come up for air, turn and slowly make my way back to shore. The sand glistens in the sun before me. “We got this baby boy. You and me. We got this. No matter what happens.” The fear of the unknown, the uneasiness of the ‘what ifs’, the stress of the ‘what could be’… they continue to linger. But I breathe in deep again… hope, faith, peace. Hope, Faith, Peace. I look back at where the ocean meets the sky one more time. The waves crashing under it. In a matter of days or potentially a few weeks they’re all going to meet. Fear, what ifs, unknowns and stress… but also hope and faith and peace, beauty, a miracle and a promise complete. All in one place. They’re going to collide and meet and crash and pound and swell as my body brings this little one into the world. There’s no stopping it and there’s certainly no predicting it. There’s just moving forwards towards it. And in that moment I realize once again that all I can choose to do. Choose to move forward. Taking it all in my stride. Focusing on the good and putting my faith in the rest.

INTO THE UNKNOWN

April 15, 2024.Reading time 11 minutes.

There’s a saying out there that I’m sure most of us are pretty familiar with. It goes a little like this… “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” The man behind this very famous quote is Neale Donald Walsch. Why would he come up with a quote like that? Honestly… I’m not entirely sure I agree with it! Life BEGINS at the end of your comfort zone?! Most of the time it feels like life ends or it starts hanging on by a thread when you enter into the discomfort zone. It definitely doesn’t feel like it begins. I look back at some of the hardest times in my life and it most certainly wasn’t pleasant, enjoyable or even at times “worth living”. And yet this quote intrigues me. What does it really mean?

I open up a browser on my laptop and type in “Neale Donald Walsch… who is he?” Wikipedia pops us. A catholic man on a quest for spiritual truth. Actor, screenwriter, and speaker. I scan the page and stop about half way down. In the early 1990s he suffered a series of crushing blows. A fire destroyed all of his belongings, his marriage fell apart, and a car accident left him with a broken neck. He ended up alone, unemployed and homeless. Living out of a tent, he collected and recycled aluminum cans just so he could eat. It was out of this complete desperation and during this all-time low that he started writing. His first book “Conversations with God” became an international best-seller and remained on the New York Times Bestseller List for 135 weeks! He has since published 28 books, which have been translated into 37 languages. Today he has a net worth of over 52 million.

I pause… wow. I hadn’t quite expected that. I assumed some rich old philosopher had once upon a time come up with this quote because it sounded wise. Felt good. Wrote it down without much thought behind it. And yet the truth behind this quote was actually far from it.

“Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.” Suddenly the quote takes on a whole new meaning. A man who once lived in a tent, with almost nothing to eat, no friends, no family, no belongings, no comfort… he had been ripped away from comfort and entered into complete discomfort. And yet this very season of discomfort would bring him his greatest success, purpose and triumph.

I look through the window of my office and stare out through the trees to the bright blue sky above. Not a cloud to be seen. No wind. No movement. Just quiet. Still. Maybe the quote isn’t as far fetched as I once thought. I think back to my hardest days as a teenager. My trafficking days. Days which turned into years, years which I didn’t think would ever end. Trapped in a cycle of addiction, abuse, pain and pure evil. It most certainly didn’t feel like my life had begun. And yet now looking back it’s exactly where it had started. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone”. It doesn’t say “life get’s good at the end of your comfort zone”. No. It says it begins. It begins because eventually we can look back and realize we’re where we’re at BECAUSE of that beginning. For Mr Walsch his life wasn’t milk and honey, flowers and paradise… so far from it. Homeless, alone, hungry, desperate… THAT’S where his life started. Away from all comfort, everything he knew. It was in THAT moment that he could be used for his full purpose. To his full potential. If his marriage had survived, if his house hadn’t burnt down, if he hadn’t broken his neck… would he have ever gotten to such a place of desperation to where he wrote a number 1 international bestselling book? I’m gonna take a guess and say NO! He needed his comfort to end so that he could start the life he was supposed to live.

I rub my belly. Baby boy is kicking. I’ll be 26 weeks pregnant this week. Pregnancy has been so tough. I’ve felt awful for most of the last 6 months. There’s been a lot of pain, so much discomfort. Have just felt rough, most days. And yet this miracle… it still leaves me speechless. I think of the journey it’s been. The five years of infertility. All the horrendous procedures, triggering appointments. The miscarriage. Weeks of hospitalization. Having to rebuild my whole body. And yet here I am, 26 weeks pregnant, with a healthy, growing, kicking, baby boy living inside of me. A dream I never thought would come to pass. I’m experiencing the reality of that dream happening right now. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. The moment I fell pregnant I entered into a whole new season of leaving comfort behind. Again. But I know in a few months time when I’m holding my beautiful baby boy in my arms, it would have all been worth it. Every moment of discomfort. Every moment of pain and exhaustion.

Had I never been trafficked I would never be doing the job I get to do today. Had I never walked through the different seasons of trials and pain, I wouldn’t know the people I do. I wouldn’t be married to Ryan. I wouldn’t be living in America. I wouldn’t be living this life. I wouldn’t be who I am right now. Comfort looks amazing. And it feels great. But it doesn’t ever push us to leave, or change, get better or try something new. During my most desperate times I’ve seen the most growth. Through the deepest pain I’ve experienced the most profound healing and developed the most real and authentic relationships. Out of my greatest hardships, unbelievable purpose was born.

It’s scary walking into the unknown. Whether we are pushed into it unexpectedly, walk into it by choice or emergency crash land right into the heart of it… discomfort never feels good. The unknown is scary, unfamiliar, at times lonely and isolating, it can feel unsafe and disconcerting. Many of us run away from it, most do whatever they can to avoid it. Sometimes you can, most of the time you can’t. But even when you can, what opportunities are you missing? And when you can’t, how are we choosing to handle the uncertainty around us?

When I moved to America 7 years ago I cried on the plane. I was leaving behind all I knew. Family, friends, work, everything familiar, everything I’d ever known… 4000 miles away. I was terrified to start over. Fearful of finding new friends, a whole new community, work. I had married the man I loved but had to leave everything else behind to be with him. Life starts at the end of your comfort zone. 7 years ago I cried thinking I could never build a better life than I already had. I was so wrong. It took being uncomfortable for a while and stepping fully into the unknown to build something bigger and better than I could have ever imagined possible.

Whatever place you’re in right now. However uncomfortable, unfamiliar, unknown… remind yourself today that the unknown doesn’t last. The emotions don’t stay. The feelings, they pass. I can look back at every single difficult moment I’ve had to walk through and can see something better that was born because of it. There’s a purpose you need to fill, a task you need to accomplish, a dream that can only come to pass by walking into the unknown… by persevering through the pain. Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Keep going, keep fighting and keep moving forward.