From Lemons to Legacies: Creating Out of Love and Loss with Kera Sanchez

Kara, I am so happy to have you today. Thank you for being here and thank you for being vulnerable and just going to open up to us and share your story, oh my gosh, thank you.

This is such an honor and I'm with good company because moms are the best. We're the best people.

Oh yeah, it's true. Though it's true, I love it. So you created a journal. Before we dive into that, tell me about what got you to that point in your life. Go ahead and just tell us your story.

Sure, so well, one. My name is Kara. I'm a high school Spanish teacher and I've been doing that since 2011. You know, I married my husband in 2012 and together we have two little girls, and last summer or actually last spring, so the spring of 2022, I was expecting my youngest daughter and at the time I was joking around a lot with my mom because she was taking a trip in the summer, a trip to Italy and Greece with my dad and many of her friends, and this was a trip that she had planned for a very long time and I could go in and talk about my mom for hours, but let's just say that she just loved to travel. That was her passion and obviously during COVID that didn't happen very much. So this was a trip that she had planned two years prior to this and it kept getting delayed due to COVID. So she was finally getting ready to go on this trip and she was so excited to take many of her friends that had never left the country before, and the one thing that was in the way was that she was supposed to be gone or, I guess, just getting back, supposed to be just getting back from her trip. When my due date was. I was like mom, you're not going to be around while I'm giving birth. I just know it. So that was just something that was on our radar for many months as soon as my mom found out the due date was oh my gosh, I hope that I'm home in time for you to have this baby. So last spring, as we're preparing and I'm eight months in, I go into labor early. This is a full month early, and I knew that it could be a possibility, because with my first daughter, I did go into labor three weeks early. So this was a full month, though, and I was just not expecting that. And the other problem with going into labor early is I had COVID. So, it just threw a wrench in the entire situation. They originally made it seem like it wasn't going to be that big of an issue and on the way to the hospital they let me know that they're going to just have me go up alone to the room and they would check that I was in fact in labor and then my husband would be able to accompany me after the fact. So basically, they didn't want us both coming in together unless I was in labor. So I was very nervous. I wanted to be back. That was my plan, my birth plan, and it slowly just started to unravel Everything. Just, it was rough, especially because I was alone and I'm sitting there trying to navigate this and hearing that later that oh, actually, I know that we said that he could come up, but that's no longer a possibility. We checked with the floor manager and yeah, he can't come up with you.

Even during your labor.

It was quite close, like when you were. He was not allowed up because oh okay, yes.

No, I would have just started cracking yeah.

Oh, I was freaking out.

What year was this Again I?

had this whole plan. This was last summer.

Really yeah, 2022?.

Yeah, I totally it's because he was also testing positive at the time. Yeah, it was a nightmare. It was awful, oh my goodness. I can't even imagine. Luckily, my mom had not left for her trip yet. So my husband called my mom and she was COVID negative and he said we need somebody to be there immediately with Kara so she's not alone at the hospital. And so, yeah, she came. It was great, minus the fact that my birth did not go as planned. I did not end up having the VBAC, I had another C-section, but, yeah, my mom was there with me and that's what mattered at the time is that I wasn't alone. And the next day my husband tested negative and they let him up. So within 12 hours of the whole situation of them saying, no, you can't come the next day, they let him up. So my husband came up and the nurse was nice and said hey, you guys can have a little bit of time together, but we really are trying to enforce just a one visitor policy. They did ask after a little bit for my mom to leave and I said, mom, that's fine, it's OK, you're literally leaving for your trip in two days. When you get back, we can have lots of baby time, don't worry about it. And I didn't realize it at the time, but that was the last day that I saw my mom, so she left on her trip and when they arrived in Italy, I was getting text messages from my father saying that my mom had a really rough flight and she wasn't feeling well and that they were going to try to take her to the doctor. And in my head it still didn't hit me or process. I was like, oh well, she's just not feeling well, maybe she just needs medicine or whatever. I didn't think. If I go back into my brain, I didn't think oh my gosh, something's going to happen to my mom. But the next 24 hours I get many, many phone calls from my dad and I didn't answer immediately because I was still at the hospital with my newborn and we were in the nick NICU. And I finally answered because they wouldn't stop calling. And so I was like. I told my husband, micah, I need to answer this phone call because my dad keeps calling me. And I answered and my dad was in hysterics and just explained what had happened that they came back from dinner. My mom said she was not feeling good at all because she stayed home in bed and she said I'm getting scared, please call an ambulance. And they called one and by the time it got there it was too late. We're still not 100% sure what caused her death, but we're speculating. It was probably a pulmonary embolism, just because of the way she was coughing and all of those things and how it just happened so quickly. Yeah, that happened on my mom's second day of the trip, with all of her friends and my dad it was like 30 people that were all out there and they decided to finish the trip in her honor. But having my dad eventually, two weeks later, come home with just her suitcase, but not my mom, was the most heart-wrenching experience that I've ever had. And on top of that, I have a newborn and another 1 and 1 half year old at home, and so I was just struggling. I was drowning in the grief, but at the same time hey, this is supposed to be one of the happiest moments of my life. I have a new addition to my family, and just trying to navigate that situation was not easy. It was very frustrating, very hard. That's where I think sometimes, like the grief, phases don't necessarily correlate with what you're actually feeling, because there was no phases, it was just one big giant, it was a little bit scribble, it was a mess. It was a mess.

I'm so sorry. I know you've probably heard I'm so sorry so many times and it doesn't help anything, but I'm sorry. I'm sorry that you had to go through that. All of those really really really good and then the worst emotions ever at the same time.

Yeah, I guess, like that's the background, you know, of where I was left last summer, being a new mom or, I guess, being a mom new mom for the second time I should say because, you know, I had a daughter beforehand, but being new to having two under two and finding myself without my mom there was just. It was rough, it was really hard and it was not a very fun experience. But throughout the months, as they went on, I found myself searching for that connection still, or wishing that there was more conversations that we had had, because, although my mom and I were extremely close, we were more like partners in crime and like we were, we got in a mischief together. We just we had more of like a fun relationship. We didn't always make the time to have those serious conversations about life, and so I think that's what I was really searching for and what I really was missing or lacking and wanting more of. Especially, my mom was in a similar position that I was in when she became a mom. When I was born, her father died, I want to say when I was like three and a half, four months old, and so it's like man, she lived this experience that I'm living now, but we never talked about it. So that's the part that like totally stings is wishing that I had that guidebook from her of how to handle this situation. So I think, yeah, as the months went on, I was processing it more and more and having conversations with my husband, who he also lost his mom about a year before I did. That's where the journal started to come into play and that's where I thought, man, I just, if I am ever in the position where I have to leave my daughters, I want to make sure that they have everything that they need from me. They have all of my words of wisdom or they have all of my support, love letters, anything. And so I was talking with some of my other mom friends and I said I really think it would be nice to have some type of journal that we could write notes to our kids too. And every single one of them like their ears perked up and they're like what? Like this sounds great, like you should do it. And so that very day, I just sat behind my computer and just went to town and just wrote a lot of prompts that just came to mind. So I think that day alone I wrote like a third of the journal prompts. And then I just slowly started to add to it over a few months, and I started this in February February of 2023. And I felt like it was ready to go right around April. So that's when I published. It was April 11. Yeah, it's basically it's a book, it's a journal that guides you through different pieces of life. I truly feel like I wrote it for my own daughters as a testament of all the things that I would love to leave for them, knowing you know what I'm left with and all the missing pieces that I have. But then I published it for everyone because I know that everyone could benefit from it. But, yeah, it touches on lots of different things Milestone moments, in case you're not there. It touches on just when you're sad and you just need your mom, right, like you need a hug from your mom, like there's pages and journal prompts about that. There's a section that's kind of like all about you, so that way you never forget who they are as a person. And if you're seeking that connection which is, you know, that's something I found myself doing a lot in the past couple of months is just wishing I could spend time with my mom. I feel like you can open that book and just feel like you're close to them, so that is so special.

I know you did it for basically for your own children, but think how many people are going to get this and going to leave it for their children, grandchildren, and it's just going to continue on and continue leaving these memories. And I mean that's kind of huge. Like through your grief, through your sadness, you are going to touch so many lives through what you've created. You know, whether you pass away when you're young or when you're 100, you're leaving that and you're just leaving a nice bit of comfort. So that's so special, garrett.

You know, now, looking back, I do have like memories of my mom, like mourning my grandpa, but at the time I just didn't maybe understand or couldn't conceptualize what that meant and you know, I didn't have the capacity to talk to her about it because, you know, I was a child. I think it's so important to truly, I guess, understand the importance that every single person has in our life and the giant void that they would leave if they're not there At Christmas time. Like I save all of my gift bags and I found, you know, gift bags that my mom had gifted to me with my name on it and it was just like just seeing her handwriting, like just, you know, made me feel so good. And I hope that people, when they do, if they get it, they're not writing it from a dark place, like I hope that they're writing it out of the most vibrant and beautiful years of their life, so that way that there's like that snapshot of what that looked like versus you know, I'm on my deathbed and I need to write this quickly, you know, quickly as possible. You know, I hope it's. It's something that it's actually just like a journaling practice that they incorporate, you know, and try to slip it in from time to time, just to create those memories that need, that deserve to be written down you know, yeah, that's so neat, kara.

That's so neat that you did that. You didn't just hold it all in, but you put it. You just put all of that energy and everything into just integrating something to help you and that's going to help many, many people that you will never know, that you'll never meet who get your journal. You know like it's going to be around for a while. It's probably on someone's bookshelf right now. That's going to sit there for years and years and years and you'll never know.

Funny that you said that too, because I I didn't realize I was doing this when I was doing it, but I felt, I guess, at the time, like I was giving all of that pain and all that sadness, like a place to live right. So we're outside of my body and someone like told me about that the other day. They're like oh, like you know, you don't want to keep all that in, like you get rid of it, you know, push it somewhere creative. And I didn't realize at the time that that's what I was doing, but that's what I was doing.

Do you have like a piece of advice to moms who are balancing motherhood and life in general or tough times? You know, I feel like life is just an up and down of happy times and tough times. So do you have any advice to moms just balancing it all?

I would say trying to be as honest as you can to yourself and to the people that are close to you about how you're feeling, because I think, as moms, we're very good at masquerading or kind of hiding the fact that we're struggling, that we're drowning and all of the things, and so I think it's really important to truly be vulnerable with people and explain to them what you're going through, be open to help. I know that's not the easiest thing for us to do as moms is to say I need help. I was talking with my husband the other night and our youngest just started sleeping through the night and I was like man, this is like the first time in a year that we've had a solid night's sleep. This is crazy. We have so much going on at all times and we're sleep deprived and we're not taking care of ourselves the best that we should be sometimes, and so I think the best piece of advice is to just be honest, ask for help, willingly accept it and then, when you can, try to carve space out where you can still pour back into yourself, because this is like the cheesiest saying, but like you cannot pour from an empty cup Right and so I think, that, for me, was important and in some ways, writing this filled my cup a little bit, even though you would think like, hey, that's work. But yes, it was also a way for me to I don't know rejuvenate myself and get the grief, the nasty grief, out and turn it into something productive. So, yeah, I think that would be my biggest piece of advice is trying to keep your own cup filled.

You know what that's, even though you know you hear it and it is cheesy, you know. Make sure you can't pour from an empty cup or whatever. It's like one of the most. Like it's said, but it's like understated. Like you hear it but you don't really process it. You know you, you literally cannot pour like from an empty cup. So you have to make sure, through good and bad, that you keep yourself filled with whatever makes you happy and whatever fuels you, because getting through those tough times and getting through the good times, both you have to have that same fill inside of it, inside of you, you know. So you have to really, you know, keep an eye on your, yourself, your, you know, self care, self care here, self care there. But it's so true, it's so true just for your family and just for your own personal life and your own feelings. And you know mental health so important, so important, so it cannot be said enough. I know, no matter how many times you talk about it, it can't get it easier. You know the pain is probably always still there. But what you have made from this, you know, terrible, terrible life experience. I know it's blessing and helping others that are going through tough times as well and, like I said, you'll never meet them. You don't everyone who's buying the journal from you. Thank you for creating it. Thank you for sharing your story today. It's been really great talking to you and thank you. You know I'm so sorry you had to go through that, but it was so nice meeting you and just hearing your story and hearing how you process everything and advice to other moms maybe going through a hard thing right now. So thank you so much for sharing your story.