Family – DEEP ROOTS

Q4 2024 Reflections: Purpose Through Presence

The final quarter of 2024 was about grounding myself in purpose and living with intention. These months challenged me to step into the present, balance my adaptability with authenticity, and embrace the magic I bring to the people who matter most. As the year came to a close, I was reminded that true progress starts with showing up—with all the vulnerability, effort, and love that requires.

October: Be who you needed.

By October, I had taken stock of my year and asked myself, “How can I bring what I’ve learned to others?” I decided to let go of self-doubt and comparisons and focus on living in the present—just the present. Not the past, not the future, but right here, right now. Choosing to stay in the moment requires thought and effort on my part. As someone who has always been a planner and naturally reflective, this hasn’t come easily. I’m still growing in this area, but I’ve asked my peers to hold me accountable, and it’s making a difference.

I started reflecting on the challenges I’ve faced as a trainer, leader, and working parent. Then, I began talking about it. I shared stories with peers during mentorship sessions, gave specific advice rooted in my experiences, and showed up as someone I needed during my own struggles. It’s not always easy to be vulnerable, but I’ve learned that the best way to grow yourself—and others—is to show up and share your truth.

November: Balancing Adaptability with Authenticity.

By November, I had gained a deeper understanding of the toll that balancing adaptability and conviction can take. My years of leadership development taught me to focus on what works best for the collective group, and I approached situations with flexibility to meet the team’s needs. However, my adaptable approach was sometimes perceived as indecision, which required me to reprioritize direct communication and be more intentional with every message. While this effort led to results, it often felt one-sided, as I didn’t always experience the same willingness to adapt from others.

In 2025, I plan to foster a culture of shared flexibility, where collaboration and progress come from mutual effort. Adapting takes work, but it’s most effective when all team members contribute equally to meeting in the middle. This year has shown me how much growth is possible when adaptability and respect are embraced collectively, and I’m committed to continuing this work with my team.

December: To my kids, I am magic.

As the year winds down, I’ve taken my usual week off to spend time with my family. Upstairs, my twins are loudly resisting bedtime, and my 4-year-old is happily glued to my side. We’ve just wrapped up a beautiful Christmas, and as I reflect, I’m struck by how different life feels from this time last year. The trials of this year pushed me to my limits, yet in my kids’ eyes, I am magic. They see me as their light, their safe place, their constant—and they don’t need me to prove it.

I don’t have to convince them of my worth or explain my value; they feel it in everything I do for them. Heading into 2025, I hope to carry that reminder with me: my worth isn’t defined by anyone else’s standards but by the love I bring to my home and family. As long as I’m keeping our home happy, safe, and wrapped in love, I am succeeding. My kids remind me that I am magic, and I hope to honor that gift every day in the year ahead.

Closing Thoughts: Ending the Year With Intention

The final quarter of 2024 reminded me of the power of showing up—with honesty, adaptability, and purpose. Whether it’s sharing your experiences to help others, adapting to meet challenges head-on, or simply being present for the people you love, progress begins when you’re willing to give your full self to the moment.

As I reflect on the year as a whole, I see how each quarter built upon the last. Transitions taught me resilience, self-awareness strengthened my purpose, discomfort led to growth, and presence helped me find clarity in what matters most. Each season of 2024 brought its own unique lessons, and together they shaped a year of transformation.

Heading into 2025, I’m carrying these lessons with me: to focus on what truly matters, to lead with authenticity, and to honor the magic I bring to the lives of those around me. Growth doesn’t stop at the end of a calendar year—it’s a continuous process, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to embrace it with intention and courage.

Q3 2024 Reflections: Growth Through Discomfort

The third quarter of 2024 was all about navigating discomfort and finding growth on the other side. These months forced me to face hard truths, lean into courage, and accept that change—whether personal or professional—takes time. Growth doesn’t come from avoiding discomfort; it comes from embracing it and allowing yourself the grace to evolve.

July: Therapy is hard.

As helpful as therapy has been, I can’t pretend it’s always something I look forward to. I’ve held (and still hold) a lot of resentment about my birth experience with the twins, and their hospitalization last year turned us into hermits, constantly feeling like the world was dangerous for our babies. My therapist has made me sit with some of the most anxiety-inducing, stressful, and painful moments of my life. There have been weeks when I’ve dreaded my appointment.

I feel like I could talk to her forever, but our first focus was preparing me for the anniversaries of the complicated birth and hospitalization. It hasn’t been easy, but I’m so glad I’ve been putting in the work. My kids deserve a mom who can handle her complicated emotions—and dammit, I deserve that freedom, too.

August: It’s better to speak up and be wrong than stay silent and be right.

In August, I faced a complicated situation at work that taught me an invaluable lesson. A colleague shared something with me that surprised and unsettled me. It could have been a bad joke or an exaggeration, but I couldn’t shake it. After hours of second-guessing myself, I finally texted my leader that night to share my concerns. She listened, validated my perspective, and encouraged me to act.

I brought others into the conversation and explained why I felt it was necessary to investigate. In the end, it turned out to be a lapse in judgment on my coworker’s part—but I’m proud I spoke up. I stayed true to myself by honoring my thought process and emotions. I’m a deep thinker, a critical thinker, and I trust my intuition. Instead of overthinking, I leaned into those traits and made a decision that prioritized the safety and well-being of my colleague, even though it was uncomfortable.

This experience reminded me that courage isn’t about certainty; it’s about trusting yourself to do what’s right, even when it feels difficult.

September: You can’t return unchanged.

When I returned to work in January, it may have seemed like I was simply picking up where I left off. But the reality was much more complicated. During my time away, I brought twins into the world, nearly lost them to RSV, and faced brushes with death myself. I came back physically present but mentally transformed. My carefully crafted five-year plan had led me to a leadership role I worked so hard to earn—only for it to be gone the week I left for maternity leave. I thought I’d bounce back quickly, but it became clear that “bouncing back” wasn’t an attainable—or even desirable—goal when the person I was returning as had changed so much.

By September, I began to realize that acclimating takes time—and that’s okay. We can’t bounce back to who we were; we must adapt forward to who we’re becoming. It took me a long while to accept that this year wasn’t about reclaiming the version of myself I had been; it was about stepping into who I am now. Growth doesn’t happen on anyone’s timeline but your own. I’ve learned to let go of the idea of “bouncing back” and instead embrace the process of moving forward, even if it’s slower and messier than I expected.

Closing Thoughts: Growth Isn’t Easy, But It’s Worth It

This quarter reminded me that growth and discomfort go hand in hand. Therapy forced me to face hard truths about myself, and speaking up at work taught me the power of trusting my intuition. I also had to accept that returning to a familiar space doesn’t mean returning unchanged—it means finding new ways to thrive.

Stay tuned for lessons learned in Q4, where purpose and presence took center stage. Growth is rarely comfortable, but it’s always meaningful—and this quarter proved just how much is possible when you lean into it.

Q2 2024 Reflections: Strength Through Self-Awareness

The second quarter of 2024 taught me the power of self-awareness. From managing the chaos of parenting to making meaningful decisions and prioritizing my mental health, these months challenged me to dig deeper into who I am and what I value. It was a season of recognizing my own resilience, trusting my instincts, and seeking the clarity I needed to move forward.

April: Resilience and consistency keep working parents going.

By this point in the year, I’d been back at work for nearly three months, and my kids still weren’t sleeping through the night. Sleepless nights are part of parenting, but months of running on 2-4 hours of sleep had me questioning my sanity. After my birthday in March, I bragged to coworkers about the full night of sleep I finally got, thanks to Evan taking the babies downstairs. Some didn’t get why I was so excited, but it was life-changing—my first uninterrupted sleep since the third trimester.

Even though we’re getting better sleep now, we’ve learned that a strong routine is the key to keeping our family on track. We have to get up, get going, and keep going until the last kid is in bed and we’ve managed the basics for ourselves, like eating dinner and stealing a moment of time together. There’s no time to waste, and consistency makes it all possible. Looking back, I’m amazed at the stamina it took to function during those harder months, but I’m proud of the resilience and discipline that have carried us through.

May: Quick Doesn’t Mean Thoughtless

At the end of April, I surprised myself by getting a tattoo of the Tiffany lamp that sat in my grandparents’ home. Normally, I’m a planner who deliberates over every decision, but when I saw a similar design online, I knew instantly it was what I wanted. I booked the artist on the spot.

In May, as I reflected on that moment, I realized the decision wasn’t impulsive—it was deeply aligned. I’d been thinking about honoring my grandparents for years, and when the right design appeared, I acted. This experience taught me that acting quickly doesn’t mean acting thoughtlessly. It means trusting yourself when everything falls into place.

June: Therapy is cool.

This year, I found a therapist who I really connected with—someone who has been helping me process the birth trauma and anxiety I’ve been carrying. At one point, I took a step back and said to myself, “I’ve gone through an overwhelming amount of change in the last year, and I don’t think I’m handling it as well as I could be.” I knew I was doing the best I could, but it’s impossible to gain perspective when you’re in the deep end.

Therapy has been an immeasurably helpful tool for me. It’s given me space to untangle the emotions I’d been pushing aside and to better understand myself in this new phase of life. Sometimes, the hardest part is admitting that you need help—but when you find the right person to guide you through it, the relief and clarity are undeniable. Therapy really is cool.

Closing Thoughts: Embracing Self-Awareness

This quarter was a reminder that self-awareness isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s essential. Whether it’s recognizing your resilience as a parent, trusting your instincts when a decision feels right, or seeking professional help to process life’s challenges, the ability to connect with yourself makes all the difference. These months taught me to trust myself more deeply and to prioritize clarity, even when the path forward isn’t easy.

Stay tuned for lessons learned in Q3, where discomfort and growth took center stage. Each quarter brought its own unique challenges, but with every step, I moved closer to becoming the best version of myself.

Developing the Negatives

Hanging on one of the walls in my home is a trilogy of photos. The first is of my sister holding her daughter, Anna, the day she was born. I’m in the photo, too—smiling over my sister’s shoulder, thrilled to be meeting my niece. The next is a photo of me holding my daughter, Rosalie, on her birthday. My husband, Evan, is gazing at our sweet, perfect new baby, while I’m giving the camera a tired but content smile. The final photo in that trio is of me holding my twin nephews, Alex and Max, on the day they were born. I love this photo wall, but it also makes me very, very sad.

Why?

Well, I had every intention of adding one more photo to that set. I imagined a photo of Evan and me, each holding one of our newborn twins. Teary, smiley, tired—another momentous and joyful moment for our family, right alongside the others. Seems like a simple enough goal, but it didn’t end up happening.

My birth story with my twins is a bit brutal. Despite signs of worsening pre-eclampsia, my medical team either missed or ignored the severity until a routine non-stress test became urgent. Even though my induction was scheduled for a few days later, I was told that wasn’t fast enough. It was no longer safe for me to be pregnant. At 37 weeks, Ivy and Owen were born with underdeveloped lungs, which landed them in the NICU immediately after delivery. While they were whisked away to receive medical attention, I was rolled into a recovery room to slowly make my way out of anesthesia.

Evan was told he could go see the twins “soon,” but nobody came back in the room for hours. When they did finally come to get us, they shared news that nobody wants to hear. The babies were struggling to breathe, and it was likely to be a very hard path ahead.

The two weeks that followed were among the scariest of my life. Ivy and Owen were hooked up to tubes, wires, and sensors that beeped relentlessly. I was separated from all of my kids. Rosalie wasn’t allowed to visit due to hospital visitation restrictions, and the babies were in the NICU instead of right next to my hospital bed. I remember touching my post-delivery stomach and bursting into tears dozens of times because I craved being with my babies. It didn’t make sense to my body that they were both out of my body and out of my room.

My severe pre-eclampsia only continued to get worse post-delivery, and it wasn’t responsive to any medications or treatments. My blood pressure got so high that they padded the rails of my bed and told me I had to stay on complete bedrest. I remember the sheer sensory hell of that 24-hour window. One arm had the blood pressure cuff, set to go off every 15 minutes. One arm had my IV. Both legs had those inflatable cuffs to help avoid blood clots. They moved me to the room closest to the nurse’s station and told me, “Don’t worry, honey! We have you here so we can run right in if something happens!” Somehow, that wasn’t very comforting.

When I was off bedrest, I would visit my babies in the NICU as often as I could, but I was unwell. My stamina was practically nonexistent. Recovering from major surgery and dealing with the chaos of postpartum hormones while my health remained unstable made everything harder. One day—maybe two or three days after giving birth—I was determined to spend the entire day with my babies in the NICU. On that day, I developed the worst headache of my life. The searing hot pain spread from my head to my neck and shoulders, and once again—nothing helped. I was crying so hard, devastated that I had to leave the NICU because something was clearly wrong with me.

That headache? It turned out to be caused by a hole in my spinal cord, caused by the spinal block I had received for my c-section. I had been leaking spinal fluid. The more fluid I lost, the lower my “headache” would travel. I had to get an unexpected and stressful procedure done to fix that.

I didn’t get to spend real time with my babies for several days after they were born. I wasn’t able to hold them for days. When I finally did, we were haggard and emotionally broken. There are very few photos from this time that convey positive emotions. Almost all of them are hard for me to look at because they reflect the reality of that fear and exhaustion. Wires, tubes, frail babies, and wrung-out parents.

We finally made it through that and welcomed our babies home in September. In December, we underwent another hospitalization for the babies when they both contracted RSV. One day, I’ll write another post about how my babies were whisked to Children’s Hospital in the back of an ambulance just three months after they first came home. Today is not that day, but trust me when I say it was a nightmare that compounded our trauma. We made it home just in time to celebrate the twins’ first Christmas as a family. That was a huge relief, but the experience left us shaken. We became shut-ins, doing everything we could to try and avoid more health scares.

Back in January of this year, I won a photo giveaway contest on Instagram. An old friend of mine has become a fantastic photographer since our days of doing community theatre together, and I was incredibly excited when my name was announced as the winner of a free family photo session she was offering. After a year of such intensely emotional experiences, it felt almost ridiculous to admit that one of my lasting painful memories was the fact that I didn’t have any photos of me with my newest little loves that made me feel happy, but it was true.

Last weekend, we finally cashed in on our photo shoot, and receiving those pictures has brought me more healing than I had expected. I was expecting to love them, of course… but I wasn’t expecting it to feel like the closing of a hard chapter.

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In these photos, I don’t see frail, sick babies, and I don’t see scared, exhausted parents. There are no wires, tubes, blood pressure cuffs, or puffy, swollen eyes. I don’t feel the anxiety and trauma that have filled our home and our hearts since my pregnancy started getting scary. All I see is our sweet family—big smiles, loud laughs, and connection.

I will never have the hospital photos I had imagined. I will never complete that trilogy of photos. It’s simply not how things panned out, and accepting the fact that I wasn’t able to get something so simple was hard. I needed some help putting that vision in the past. Julie—if you’re reading this, thank you so much. You’ve given me such a gift that extends beyond the beautiful photos.

Next month, we’re going to recreate our picture wall. We’ll print some of these gorgeous new family photos, take down the trilogy, and dedicate that space to another part of our art collection. Our new gallery wall will include all those smiling faces I love to see—Anna, Alex, Max, Rosalie, Ivy, and Owen—and some classic family photos I inherited from my grandparents. It will be a beautiful way to move forward, putting the ache behind me and embracing the truth: hardship may lie in the past, but there’s comfort in the present. And my goodness, we are really good at getting through some tough shit together.

All photos by Julienne Marie Photography.