It's interesting because when we think about, you know, suffering and what that really means and what it looks like in our life, I think it's really tough because everybody's suffering is theirs. It's unique to them and their story. There is no, you know, two stories that are exactly the same.

Therefore nobody can really understand the exact pain of another person in the way that they're experiencing it because it's a culmination of so many things in our lives that are leading up to these difficult journeys that were going through.

But to me, what I learned in the infertility journey that was unique to any other situation that I've been through was about sort of for a lack of better term, the art of suffering.

But it means, you know, to really find meaning in that pain.

You're listening to She, with Jordan Lee Dooley, a personal development podcast for the Everyday Woman. Come invited, leave ignited.

Here's your host, Jordan Lee Dooley.

Hey, Angela, welcome to She. Hey, I'm so so happy to be here.

Well, I am so happy to have you here. Angela and I already had like a 15 minute conversation before we started recording and it was so rich and I was like, we've got to record. This is so good. So buckle up. This is going to be a really good and just encouraging episode in so many different ways.

But before we dive into some questions that I have, Angela, I would love for you to share a little bit of your journey. Maybe just maybe the spark notes version.

But I know you're a mother of eight and the journey to get there definitely took a lot of different twists and turns along the way. So if you can share a little bit of what that story looked like and how you got to where you are today, that would be an awesome place to start.

Yeah, you know, it's always so funny because whenever I begin to share my story, I kind of take a step back because I feel like in some ways, it sounds like I'm reading off of a roll call when I'm like, we had this child and then we adopted this child and then we did this and this child and it feels like I'm just kind of like going down the list.

And I always feel like in some ways it just, it's such an injustice to the beautiful stories that God has written for each of my children and for how they joined our family.

So I'm always hesitant to like list them off, but with that said, I would just say like we started as sort of this very traditional boy meets girl kind of thing we met when we were 13 years old.

My husband and I and you know, we ended up getting married right around college time and then we had two girls and everything was sort of what life is supposed to be, you know, I'm using my little air quotes here.

What life is supposed to be and I still felt this sense that something was missing something wasn't life didn't quite have all of the meaning and purpose that I personally felt I was looking for.

And that really, I really struggled through that time because I felt like, am I being ungrateful like is this a slap in the face to God for all that he's given me all these blessings, everything's provided me and I'm still unhappy like what is wrong with you, you know, I kind of, you know, really struggled in that time, but God being the gentle loving father that he is guided me through that time and helped me to sort of see that yeah, there is a lot out there.

That I have for you, like just come with me take one step at a time and I'm going to I'm going to show it all to you.

And so, you know, I took that initial first step into adoption because, you know, through a various series of events that's where I felt like God was leading our family.

And so, you know, we stepped into that first adoption and since then, I mean, it's kind of been very much one after the other, I mean, basically in eight years, we went from two kids to eight kids.

Wait, and how many years in eight years, we went from two kids to eight kids.

So, you know, and now granted, there's a set of twins in there.

But it's still, I mean, that's a, that's a lot. It's fast and it's a lot, you know, we've adopted from Africa and China, we've done special needs adoption, domestic adoption, struggled with secondary infertility and then ended up going into an embryo adoption situation.

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