Hi, I'm Laura
This is not the way my life was supposed to go.
Says pretty much every person, ever. But, man, I feel this. And the older I get the more truth this holds.
I grew up in the suburbs of Minneapolis/St. Paul to incredibly supportive and encouraging parents who let me know I could be whatever I wanted to be. And it didn’t have to include marriage or children.
So, I went out and did it. I spent 16 years as a television sports anchor and reporter, starting in the small town of Rhinelander, WI (shoutout Hodags!) to Madison, WI, to Boston, to San Francisco, and finally to New York City.
At 31 I was working at the number one station in the number one market in the country. I made enough money to actually enjoy New York City and my apartment had a view of Central Park. But as the years passed I became more and more depressed and anxious about the state of my life.
Because while my parents had told me I could be whomever I wanted to be, what they showed me was a happily married couple who met when they were 21 and had me by 27. And by that standard I was completely failing.
Not only was I single but I had never had a relationship. Ever. Not one.
On the day of my 35th and a half birthday (because the older you get without being where you think you should be the half years matter) I walked into a bar on the Upper East Side to meet a British stranger I connected with on Match. Marc became my first relationship, and considering he would also become my husband, you could say that a lack of relationship experience means nothing when you meet the right person.
We were married on a beach in Mexico in front of our favorite people in the world when I was 38 (and a half). And a couple years later we embarked on an IVF journey when I was 40.
Why the delay? Because two weeks after our wedding my father-in-law was diagnosed with kidney cancer. One month later my own father received a prostate cancer diagnosis. My father-in-law passed away a year later and on the day of his funeral in England we found out that back in America my dad was told his cancer was terminal.
I spent the next five months going back and forth between NYC and Minnesota, spending his final weeks with him and my mom before saying goodbye on Christmas Day, 2019.
A few months later, still grieving, Marc and I were set to begin our first round of IVF. But the day before our cycle was to start all IVF clinics were shut down due to COVID.
Eventually we were back on track but were greeted with disappointment—three rounds with zero healthy embryos. Our insurance wouldn’t cover much more so we did one final round, hoping this would be different.
It was.
I had our daughter Mari at the end of 2021, when I was 42 years old. Definitely not the way I drew it up!
We were overwhelmed and exhausted, but happy. But the bleeding that had started during my pregnancy continued. We had assumed it was hemorrhoids but as time went by and it only got worse that explanation seemed less likely.
In July of 2022 I was diagnosed with stage 3B rectal cancer. Mari had just turned seven months old. I began five weeks of radiation followed by five cycles of chemo over 15 weeks. My treatment ended with low anterior resection surgery, a temporary ileostomy bag, and then an ileostomy reversal.
I was finally and thankfully cancer free but had spent over half of my only child’s life in treatment. Which still doesn’t seem fair.
Now we are living in the San Francisco Bay Area with a toddler and our labradoodle, Oxford. I’m two years cancer-free and we are doing our best to finally live a boring life.
But nothing is certain, and “normal” left the building long ago. So, we simply do our best. And that’s why I tell my story.
There is no such thing as normal, and just when you think you have everything figured out—bam! It changes.
So, if you’re looking for a dose of reality, a space to feel all the feelings and acknowledge all the experiences, you’ve found the right place.
This is life, actually.
