Leave Behinds and Heart Dreams

Throughout our years together Travis, my hubby, and I have always differed…well on a lot of things. But that is also why we somehow compliment each other. We have discussed the idea of what we will leave behind when we die in length. I have always answered I wanted to leave behind a family and hopefully kids that were kind good people. One of my biggest goals with Teagan has been to give her a magical childhood as best I knew how.

For Travis while this was obviously very important too – he wanted to leave behind something like the way Jeff Bezos will. My husband is a programmer at Amazon.com and he wants to know when its his time to go he left behind something that helped propel our progress as a society, even if its just a small contribution.

Until all the sh** hit the fan (excuse my french) with my bodies apparent inability to carry another child again I was just plugging away at my leave behind – Teagan – pouring myself into raising her so that one day society would hopefully gain a good, kind person. And that is more than  enough for me. It truly fulfills me. I never really thought about leaving anything else behind.

And then this past year happened. And then this blog happened. And then yesterday happened…

We got a message from a woman in Kentucky. It was one of those messages that you get chills reading – you re-read it again and again… And you know its one of those moments that will be etched in your soul because you realize this is a leave behind moment.

The letter we received:

(Paraphrased out of respect for her privacy)

Hi, Tory. I’m ______. You recently commented on a post of mine in a Facebook group. I’m the one who had the emergency hysterectomy after having had my one beautiful baby boy. I can’t thank you enough for your comment. On several levels. One, I felt a kinship with you because of what you wrote about. That’s so so rare these days. Because of what happened to me (having my uterus taken away) I feel like I’ve been singled out and set apart from other women in the world. Less important than them because I can no longer do what so many of them can do so easily. After reading your comment, I feel less singled out. But also, reading your comment made me curious about you, so I decided to click on your profile. And there I saw your blog. I love the title, so I went to the web address. And there I found… what I’d call solid gold, to me. Like, the holy grail. I read your whole “About” section, and then all of your posts, overnight last night and into this morning while nursing my son. I have a lump in my throat as I write this because of how tearfully grateful I am for your and Brandi’s posts. Seriously, your blog means the world to me. There are very few things that have helped me feel afloat during this time (my surgery was only a little over a month ago, everything is still so raw, still in denial, still heavily grieving). Those things are my husband, my baby boy, and the thought of having another baby via surrogacy. But I have had no idea how it works, no idea how to negotiate it or anything. No frame of reference. Then I come to your blog. And it’s like (now I’m crying for real)… it’s like just the warmest sunshine. The brightest hope. You and Brandi, your relationship, your story, how you care for each other, how invested you both are in your process together—it’s all beautiful beyond words. Really amazing. And it brings me so, so much hope. Hope that I can have a story like yours. That after taking some time to grieve and to heal emotionally, and enjoying my baby boy’s first years, I can have a unicorn, too. And I don’t have to be so sad that it can’t be me who’ll carry my baby because of how much I’ll love and appreciate the woman who’s doing it for me. Really, thank you thank you thank you to the both of you. You and your families have brought real-world magic to my life. I will be following your journey, sending you both all the prayers and positive thoughts I can muster for your baby boy and both of your families. 

Brandi and I had tears reading it. I have always struggled to convey how truly earth shattering it is when the reality hits that you cant have more kids. It takes you to mental and emotional places that are terrifying. It is earth shattering. It is SCARY. I wanted to blog because I never ever wanted another person to feel like that. It was living hell. And there were very little resources because know one talks about this stuff. And that was NOT OKAY.

And her words, her sentiment – she captured that. (I later found out she is Professor of English!) And then for her to say this blog helped? It really did help someone?! I wanted to breakdown. We did it.

It justified all the hours we have spent on the blog neglecting our dishes, the toys that need to be picked up, the laundry… That is all we have ever wanted to do. To help one person. To leave something behind that potentially changes the course of a family. To be a safe place to see what your options are if you are ever in the heartbreaking position to think you cant have a child. And to give you a road map on how to navigate the surrogacy world.

As Brandi said in an earlier post, what is your heart dream?

I implore you – follow it. What if Brandi hadn’t followed hers? None of this would be happening right now. There might be people that need you to follow your heart dream so that THEY can follow theirs.

Magic happens. In Minnesota.

And in Kentucky.