My mom died April 23, 2013.  I was 31 years old. The clock read 10:13 a.m.

This is the story of her plant.  A hibiscus.  It never flowered after she died.  Honestly, it didn’t flower much even before then.

The hibiscus felt like a piece of her so I babied those ugly dry limbs sticking up from the dirt.  I kept it indoors.  It wilted.  I took it outdoors.  It yellowed.  After two years I gave up and told my husband I was going to just throw it away. He said, “no I’ll plant it in the garden.”

Fine.

Six months passed and the same ole ugly dry limbs now shot up from the earth.  Honestly, I forgot about that plant.  It had become sort of a sore spot for me as I tried to distance myself from the pain of remembering her death.

But this morning was different.  THIS morning I woke up and looked outside.  I was not trying to look at that damn hibiscus, I was just zoning out.  Something bright pink caught my eye. My mom’s plant had come back to life.

Wow.  It was truly a beautiful sight.  And it honestly felt like a miracle.

I teared up with emotion.  I couldn’t believe it!  What could this mean?  Was it a sign of something good?

You see I did have something that I was expectantly waiting on.  After undergoing fertility treatment all month I was in the two week waiting period from HELL.

All my ladies who are trying to get pregnant know exactly what I’m talking about!  The time after ovulation or fertility treatment when you’re waiting to find out if you’re pregnant.  A time when you feel like your heart is being ripped out piece by piece.

This MUST be a sign that all my treatments worked and I’m pregnant!  Wow what a nice way to receive reassurance.  I cried and cried.

Not even an hour passed before I started spotting.

Now I’d been here many times before and knew that this was not “implantation bleeding.”  This was my period.  Sadness quickly turned into anger.  This was not the first time I’d received a sign that my mom was still with me.  But WHY did she only seem to appear alongside bad news?

But the anger I felt quickly turned to sorrow. The sobbing was uncontrollable.  Deep grief from the depths of my belly shuddered throughout my body.  I was heartbroken.  Not in the romantic sense of the phrase.  No, truly heartBROKEN.

The end of a two-year infertility journey culminated on that beautiful summer day.  No more shots.  No more blood work.  No more procedures.

Gone was the hope of starting a family with the man I loved.

I was done trying.

I didn’t get out of bed for three days.

But that hibiscus has continued to bloom.  And it’s beautiful.  Truly breathtaking.

And I have bloomed again too.  But it has taken awhile, just like my mom’s plant.  I had ugly dry limbs sticking up from my heart for a long time too.   Places inside of me had died from too much sadness and loss.

And then bit by bit I started to come back.  I began to smile again.  And notice the sunshine.

Yoga was the biggest part of my healing.  It welcomed my sorrow and tears.  All was accepted.  The only requirement was to show up.  Maybe I would do 5 minutes of stretching. Or maybe I could do an intense hour of Vinyasa.  But whatever effort I put in, I reaped the benefits tenfold.

Along with yoga, I started to do written exercises and meditations to bring clarity and closure around my infertility experience.  I could tell that what I was developing was not coming from me, but from something bigger.

The ideas I was given and direction I took to heal was Divinely led.  It was a deeply spiritual experience.  All that I needed to do was to be receptive and write it all down.

So that’s what I did.  And I am beyond honored to be used as a vessel to bring healing to others.

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