Perfect HOPE Blog

I always wanted to be a mom. When I was a little girl, I played house with my dolls.  I would pretend to feed them and change their diapers. I would wrap them up in blankets and carry them around the house. When I got a little older, I would help our neighbors with their four little boys. I loved them and was always so excited when I could go next door and help.
I babysat when I was a teenager and in high school I worked at a local daycare after school. Having children was never a question and I truly had no doubt that I would be a mom…one day.

To my surprise, it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. My husband and I started trying to have a baby as soon as we were married.  After many doctor appointments, six miscarriages and lots of tears, I was finally pregnant with our sweet Eliza Hope. She was born on April 12, […]

On June 21st we cut the ribbon for the Eliza Hope Therapy Center. It was overwhelming to say the least but it was a beautiful and special day. It is the day I dreamed about all those months ago, during the hardest grief and shock I knew what I had to do. And now it is here and on Monday morning 8 boys and girls will be walking through the doors of The Eliza Hope Therapy Center.

I will think of Eliza. I will think of the pain of November 12th, I will think of all the bad days and all the good days. I will think about how it felt like I was floating through this process of building our center and how I was very simply guided though every twist and turn.

A few days before we opened I told someone very dear to me that it was crazy how long it took us to find this building and how I must not be very good […]

Just today I was having coffee with a friend and I told her about this blog post. I wrote it on the plane to Las Vegas on November 10th 2016, the day before Eliza went to heaven. I started this blog and finished it on the flight but I never had the chance to post it. I think about it some times but I have been scared to read it again and especially scared to post it. It’s so personal now because I never had the chance to do what I said I would do and I have so many regrets; and that is a hard thing to face, especially when you don’t have any more chances. 

As much as I hate to admit it I’m on my phone a lot, emailing, texting, social mediaing (that should totally be a word). I struggle with it because I know it occupies a lot of my time. I blame it on work since I work, I blame it on having too many doctors appointments, I blame everything but me. The last few […]

A few weeks before Christmas Aaron and I received a text from our friends saying “Do you want to go to Hawaii with us the day after Christmas?” Of course I couldn’t write back YES fast enough! Hawaii has never been a place I dreamed I would ever go. It’s so far and its a place I never imagined I would be able to see… and then here I was packing my bags for Hawaii.

The week of Christmas was torture for me. We always go see my family and I had decided early on that I just couldn’t face the fun family holiday with all of the cousins when Eliza would be missing. Last year I was in shock, I don’t even remember it but with the shock slowly wearing off I knew it would be too sad, at least this year. So I spent the week of Christmas on the couch under Eliza’s blanket praying for the days to go by quickly, then I could […]

I miss Eliza so much and the holidays are so much more difficult than last year. I must have been in shock last last year because I don’t remember any of these feelings. This year I want to buy her presents, I want to drive around looking at Christmas lights and take her to Christmas Town. I want to give Eliza her first candy cane and dress her in Christmas outfits for the entire month. I want her to sit in Santa’s lap and I want to snuggle on the couch with her and watch Christmas movies even if we just end up watching Frozen over and over again.

But I can’t, because she isn’t here.

I’ve always loved Christmas. I have great memories from my childhood. Memories of red and green construction paper chains that my brother and I would take turns ripping off until Christmas. And the advent calendar that we would open every morning  just for the simple joy of seeing what the picture was […]