Aug 27, 2024
Jessica has quite an amazing mama journey with the release of her new book called Breath Taking, A Memoir of Families, Dreams and Broken Genes. She left the corporate world to write her story and tell her family’s story. Her journey to motherhood was long and twisty and not at all what she thought it would be. After dating her husband for 10 years, they were finally married and thought they would be pregnant right away but five years later, they were still trying. After 25 procedures, and five years they decided they needed to pivot and fell in love with the idea of adoption. They adopted through Guatemala and adopted three amazing children. They thought their struggles had hit the apex but boy were they wrong! She suspected that her middle child had health issues and she was 100% right. She had her checked by Early Interventions and they and the doctors all said she was just a “little behind, give her time.” But this mama had an intuition that there was something else going on and low and below she was diagnosed with a mild to moderate hearing loss. At the age of 5 she was given genetic testing (because she was adopted) and that proved she had MERRF syndrome (a mitochondrial degenerative disease). This ultra rare disease was life changing for their entire family. Rare diseases are a challenge in every way for an entire family. When Dalia turned 9, they all went on a family vacation and a cold turned into respiratory failure with a tracheotomy and a ventilator. Dalia had to have eyes on her 24/7 and this continued for EIGHT years! Dalia lost her battle right around her 17th birthday and it changed Jessica in a beautiful and horrific way all at the same time. She wishes she would have known that all emotions are possible to be felt AT THE SAME TIME! Her journey is not like most but she has quite the story to tell and we implore you to check out her book, Breath Taking, found on her website https://www.jessicafeinstories.com
Give a listen here: yanamom.com/lets-be-real-podcast/