Desere
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[00:00:00] Nicole: well, thank you today for joining us on the Power of MoMMAs Voicess podcast. We have Desere that's joining us, and in this season two, we are really focusing on bringing people their own lived experience to come and share and have a platform to talk about what they've been through, what their advocacy journeys look like, what their pregnancy journey look like, where things could have changed and made a difference, and giving them that opportunity to share with.
[00:00:24] Nicole: All our listeners about some of those things. So today we're welcoming Desere, and so thankful that you joined us here. And yeah. So thanks for joining us.
[00:00:35] Desere: Thank you for having me. Thank you for giving me and so many moms the opportunity to, to share. Thanks.
[00:00:43] Nicole: Well, we like to start with like, what are some key takeaways?
[00:00:46] Nicole: If people only listen to the, maybe the first five minutes of this, what is something you want them to take away from today's podcast? What's your message?
[00:00:55] Desere: The most important thing I want people to hear is that you are [00:01:00] never alone. I want people to know that you can find your village, find your village, find your people, the ones that are just willing to come and sit with you in the darkness that you are going through, and that will help you find your way out, and then when you are able go back in and help somebody else out.
[00:01:20] Nicole: I love that. I love that it's very connected with my own experience. So I feel like we're gonna get into some of that today and maybe help each other out. So what, when you're thinking of like your advocacy journey, let's talk about that first and, and we'll, we'll talk about your pregnancy a little bit more.
[00:01:36] Nicole: What, in your advocacy journey, what stands out most to you, in your mind that got you where you're at today? My journey is, has kind of, has a few different parts and each part has kind of grown me and transformed me from what went from more of a ministry to more advocacy. I lost a baby and then I had a very hard pregnancy, and [00:02:00] then I had some, many people I'm sure listening to your podcast have faced of health problems postpartum and was not being heard. So I feel like I went from ministry wanting to sit with other people in their grief of what they went through to being like set on fire to just try and advocate for maternal health and wellness and mental health.
[00:02:21] Desere: And just speaking up for people that don't have a voice.
[00:02:26] Nicole: And that's, that's exactly what like advocacy is. We've had this question come up over time. It's like, what does advocacy mean to you? And so often it's like being the voice of people that don't have one or can't find theirs.
[00:02:37] Desere: So true. Or just don't feel, that's the thing about MoMMAs Voices is that really grew me.
[00:02:43] Desere: I mean, I had already had my feet on the ground for a long time in the pregnancy and infant loss community, but MoMMAs Voices really helped me realize that. My story. When I share my story, I'm sharing so many people's story, people that may never have a [00:03:00] chance to, to share or may not feel comfortable sharing because there's such a stigma around it even today.
[00:03:06] Desere: And mm-hmm. It really empowered me and equip me to, to be able to use my voice in that way.
[00:03:14] Nicole: That's so to hear that it, it's special to me to hear that because that's a lot of. We hear people that say like, I don't feel like I have a story. And in our coaching of like, yes, you do. And like, we'll help, we'll help you find what that is.
[00:03:28] Nicole: And also like being able to connect and represent people that maybe they just don't have a, they don't have an opportunity to share their story at all. And so how can we, how can we help beyond ourselves? And you talked about like, this started out as a ministry for you and share anything about that.
[00:03:46] Desere: Sure. So I'll go back to I, my very first pregnancy, I had a little boy, and a year and a half later I had another little boy, and both of them were such easy pregnancies. I had them at the birth center, no issues. And [00:04:00] then my third baby, I just expected. Same. And when I was six weeks along, I started bleeding and the bleeding didn't stop and it really, really shook my world.
[00:04:10] Desere: And a couple months later we tried again cautiously, and we made it through the first trimester and we were just, you know, we had that, it's safe now and you can breathe now. And we did. We took that big sigh of relief and, you know, everything was going okay. There wasn't really anything. Crazy. You know, I didn't feel really well.
[00:04:31] Desere: But all of my labs came back good. My ultrasound was good. We did extra labs because where I had an early loss before and found out she was a girl and did all the planning and decorated her room and we named her Stella and we were totally prepared for her way early. My little boys were so excited.
[00:04:47] Desere: And then when I went in for my anatomy scan. Five months 20 weeks and five days, we heard the words nobody ever wants to hear. I'm sorry, your baby doesn't have a heartbeat today. And [00:05:00] there's the me before that day and the me after that day went and delivered my baby later that day. Was induced to deliver.
[00:05:12] Desere: I had a really bad reaction to the medication. I was running 106 degree temperature and was very unwell and thought I was dying and thought I was gonna be leaving my boys without a mom, and it was really traumatic on top of already being in a very traumatic situation. But I walked out of that hospital room at one o'clock in the morning with
[00:05:34] Desere: empty arms left my baby there and it was the hardest thing I'd ever been through. So after that, I started a ministry, me and my husband knew immediately that we wanted to pour back into that community. We knew that if we were feeling this way, there were so many others feeling this way as well. And we were fortunate.
[00:05:52] Desere: We'd already been part of a nonprofit riding club. We rode motorcycles and we had friends and my husband's long-term best [00:06:00] friend. We wrote a lot for special needs children, and I said I wanted to add had pregnancy and infant loss to our list of causes. So we did and we started fundraising and we made what we call blessing boxes, which are grief care packages that we took and delivered to the hospital.
[00:06:19] Desere: We went through all of the things that helped us in those first days, hours, months, year. We talked to so many other lost families and asked them what helped them, and we just poured everything we could into this box. We put letters in there, our testimony, we just wanted them to know, like. This is the hug that you need when something like that happens to you because your family, your friends, they're gonna love you and they're gonna wanna be there to support you, but they just don't know.
[00:06:46] Desere: They just have no idea what you're going through. So we wanted to make that for these families. So we started doing that and our project kept growing and growing and we've continued doing that. We still do it. We call it the Blessing Box project. We still do [00:07:00] that, and now we ship them all over the United States, not just to our local hospital.
[00:07:04] Desere: And that project's been amazing, but then it was after when I became pregnant again after loss and went through so much PTSD and all of that, that it's really transformed from that ministry into advocacy. See,
[00:07:21] Nicole: do you feel like your experience brought you closer to your faith?
[00:07:26] Desere: 100%. But first it broke me down. First it broke me down and not so much after loss, but definitely in the pregnant after loss aspect because I struggled with anxiety so bad. It was crippling. Mm-hmm. And I kept thinking there's something wrong with me.
[00:07:45] Desere: Like, how can I call myself a believer if I don't have faith, if I can't just find peace and, through that experience. I stayed on my knees, I was on my knees crying out to the Lord, and he was [00:08:00] never closer to me, ever. And yeah. It's been a trial by fire and mm-hmm. Yes, most definitely. I've never felt closer to him and I, and it's so weird 'cause we call them blessing boxes, not because they are a blessing to the families we're giving them to, but because it's a blessing to us that he has given us this, this purpose through our pain and that he sat with us and he is allowing us to be able to sit with others.
[00:08:29] Nicole: I love that. I. So true. It, it, it is. We weren't ever told it was gonna be easy all the time and sometimes it's really hard. And not everybody believes that things happen to us and for our benefit even it's hard sometimes and it really sucks and. But how can we, like, how can we use that? How can we use it for when you get the go there?
[00:08:59] Nicole: But like, how [00:09:00] can you use it for his glory and how can we help other people and be Jesus with skin on for somebody else?
[00:09:07] Desere: That's, that's exactly right. That's exactly right.
[00:09:13] Nicole: You're reminding me a lot of, of my own journey of, of wanting to help other people and, and it is so hard because if you haven't had someone, like you said, like your family and friends, like they'll try to support you and they mean well.
[00:09:30] Nicole: But I just have to keep reminding myself like they mean, well, they mean well, but sometimes they hurt a little bit too. And, and having someone that really understands what you've been through and can relate and connect and. And understand, like you, you're grieving your child, you're grieving the whole pregnancy.
[00:09:53] Nicole: Then you have like the after aspect. Like you now know like what can go wrong in a pregnancy and it affects your next [00:10:00] one.
[00:10:01] Desere: Oh yeah, your eyes are wide open now.
[00:10:05] Nicole: I I don't know if you had that. So I have a stillbirth and then I have a daughter that's 10 now, and when I was pregnant with her, I just didn't believe, like, I mean, I had faith, but I was like, until she's here, here,
[00:10:23] Nicole: I'm just, I don't want to, I don't wanna get my expectations up so much to get hurt again.
[00:10:27] Desere: Yeah.
[00:10:29] Nicole: You know,
[00:10:30] Desere: I always say that losing. My daughter Stella, was the hardest thing I've been through. But being pregnant after loss was the most torturous experience of my entire life. You just can't breathe. You just, it's cruel.
[00:10:45] Desere: It's like this cruel punishment. You wake up every day worried your child's gonna die and mm-hmm. It's horrible. It's horrible. And nobody can really understand what you're going through, and they just are, it's gonna be fine. Calm down. That does not [00:11:00] help. It doesn't help at all.
[00:11:01] Nicole: Mm-hmm. It felt really surreal after I had her.
[00:11:05] Nicole: I was like, did that just happen? That did just happen, right? Life has changed again, and I just kept waiting for like, something to go wrong. But it, it's, it's tough. It's tough to finally get that like, sense of relief and there's still days even where I'm like, is she breathing? I go in her room at night, put my hand on her back, you know, and.
[00:11:28] Nicole: It's 10 years later, and I still do those things sometimes.
[00:11:31] Desere: Yeah. And I just, I feel like that's kind of part of the problem is you get this whole like PTSD stamp across your forehead, right? And then when things do go wrong, people are just seeing your diagnosis and not really listening to you, you know?
[00:11:46] Desere: And you, mm-hmm. The lines blur and you start losing trust in yourself and your intuition because you're like, is this just my anxiety talking to me? Or is there something really wrong? And that's definitely what happened in my case. [00:12:00] And. Yeah, it's, it's so hard. It's really hard.
[00:12:07] Nicole: So talking about like support and things through your loss and then subsequent Rainbow pregnancy, what were some things that helped you?
[00:12:17] Nicole: Were there things that helped you? What were they?
[00:12:19] Desere: Sure. So the idea of the blessing boxes, I was so fortunate that. The day that we had our little girl, there was a nurse in the hospital. She wasn't our nurse, but she was on staff and she had also delivered a stillborn boy, so she knew that I was there. She came to her room to visit and she came in and she sat on the bed with me and she cried with me, and it just, I can remember it like yesterday.
[00:12:56] Desere: Sorry, you.[00:13:00]
[00:13:06] Desere: I can remember, like yesterday, she, she showed me pictures of her little boy Judah, and she held my baby with me. And this was, this happened to me during COVID, so we couldn't have anybody come visit with us. Nobody else got to meet our little girl, which I think really fed into people's inability to connect, you know?
[00:13:31] Desere: But she held my baby and she showed me pictures of her little boy, and she just, she was there with me, you know? But after that, after that, it was Christmas Eve, she sent me a message on Facebook. She found me on Facebook, and she sent me a message and she showed me a picture of her Christmas tree, and she had her little boys.
[00:13:51] Desere: Ornament on there, and she had one named for my daughter still right next to it. And that meant so much to me. I'll never [00:14:00] forget it as long as I live. Because she remembered. She remembered. And. It's like you said, the people in our lives, they mean well. Right? They love us and they see us hurting and they mean well.
[00:14:14] Desere: And my husband and I remind ourselves all the time that we don't ever want anybody to actually understand, because that would mean that they've had a lived experience. We don't wish that on anybody. But it's really hard sometimes to not be bothered by. We just want our babies remembered. We want their lives honored and.
[00:14:34] Desere: We want people to just sit with us in our grief and not just try and push us through it and want us to just snap back to who we were before. 'cause there's no going back. But anyway, her coming and sitting with me in my room that night was. The Lord put her there. He sent her to me and I'm forever grateful.
[00:14:54] Desere: And it changed the trajectory of my life. That's what started the idea of this project because I [00:15:00] know how fortunate I was that night, and there are so many that will never, ever have that. So we just wanted to make sure that all of these parents that were going through this had somebody that was telling them that they're not alone.
[00:15:14] Desere: And to put all of these things in there because. In the, in the immediate right, there's gonna be people that reach out to you. I'm so sorry for your loss. Do you need food? You know, you get that bereavement. Experience from your loved ones, your coworkers, but then they forget and they move on, especially if they've never got to see the baby or hold the baby.
[00:15:36] Desere: And you are still very much in it, right? Something has died inside of you and you had to witness it and go through all the things, and your body's producing milk and your body still thinks that you have a baby to take care of. And it's, it is so cruel. So life moves on for everybody else, but not for you.
[00:15:53] Desere: And all of these little things like an ornament on the Christmas tree and you know, [00:16:00] just so many little things to help get you through, like devotional journal, get your feelings out of your head and down on paper and the wave of light candle and just so many things that. Just memories throughout the year to help you keep that baby's memory alive.
[00:16:18] Desere: That's what we wanted to put into there. And we started a community that we remember project just for other families like us that just are grieved for each other and want to support each other and help each other, remember their babies and just all those, all of those little things, all of those little shows of support and just.
[00:16:41] Desere: People remembering is, is what's made the difference. And it, it comes from our lost families, our brothers and sisters in-laws more than any. More than anybody.
[00:16:52] Nicole: Yeah. The compassion that that nurse, 'cause that's, I mean, it's hard, it's hard to do that. You put [00:17:00] yourself right back
[00:17:00] Desere: in, like me, like just, you put yourself right back in that place and it's.
[00:17:06] Nicole: And I hope she's not called on often to do that work. I hope she's not, but I'm so thankful that she did.
[00:17:13] Desere: She worked, she works in OB, so she, I'm sure, I'm sure she is.
[00:17:22] Nicole: I'm, I'm very thankful for her. That's amazing. Especially during COVID. I mean like just so isolating and having to, resources and being able to talk to people and, and have that like physical touch and hug Yes.
[00:17:36] Nicole: That we lost. And so you definitely had just so much taken from you and also, you know, given back as well and how others showed you what support looks like. What an amazing, amazing nurse. I'm glad y'all are connected on Facebook too. It's, it's, our stories impact the healthcare providers too. Even if they're not, like, if they're on the [00:18:00] floor or on the unit and they have a similar experience or the ones that are taking care of you. It has a, a long lasting impact. And I've had some that have found me on Facebook or MySpace, we'll go that far back that are like, I was one of the nurses that helped take care of you.
[00:18:15] Nicole: And I was like, oh my gosh. You know, I don't remember. But yeah. Thank you for, for taking care of us. So, it is. I feel like nurses are angels in a lot of instances. For
[00:18:27] Desere: sure. For sure, for sure. And especially the ones that really have a compassion and a heart for it, you know, that aren't just going through the motions anymore.
[00:18:37] Nicole: Mm-hmm. What was there any moments where you felt particularly seen or heard? Well.
[00:18:49] Desere: That nurse for sure. Mm-hmm. But then having our tribe, we call them the tribe, our, our ministry, our group we just came to them with this [00:19:00] idea of, Hey, we want to raise tons of money and start, start making these care packages for people.
[00:19:08] Desere: And they were like, whatever you need. You know, whatever you need. And then like my best friend, her mom she has a knitting group with her church and she knits our prayer squares and mails them all the way across the country for us. And just the people that are the closest to us sister who fundraises for us, the people that are closest to us that have just really latched on to serving others and.
[00:19:32] Desere: Knowing how healing serving others is. Mm. Mm-hmm. It's, it's what the Lord uses, I think, to heal the broken hearted. Mm-hmm. I like that. I haven't thought about it that way, but I like that. What in your, in your subsequent pregnancy and your following pregnancy, were there things that were like support that you got that [00:20:00] helped you, or was it.
[00:20:01] Nicole: Kind of the cliche, well-meaning, well-intentioned folks, but really didn't help. Was there anything that did help? Sure.
[00:20:08] Desere: Well, that one was really hard. 'cause as you know, being pregnant after a loss, you have so much anxiety. But I just had, I didn't have an easy pregnancy. I mean, I had gestational diabetes, I had insulin shots four times a day, and I was just having so many.
[00:20:21] Desere: Things happening. Like I had lipomas and I had nodules, and all of these weird things were happening. And my midwife was so supportive because she was the midwife that I had with Stella. So she really held my hand and calmed my 9,000 fears. And I'm so grateful that I had her support through this pregnancy.
[00:20:43] Desere: But like I said before, like. You know, now you have this anxiety stamp across your forehead, so it was very hard to tell all of these things that were happening. Is there something really wrong or is it just. My [00:21:00] anxiety speaking to me, but she held my hand and she got me through it. And my baby was born and she was healthy.
[00:21:07] Desere: I had to have some more medication to stop the bleeding after I had her. And then I had another reaction to the medication like I did before, which was another lovely traumatic experience. But other than that, we got to come home in a couple days. And then unfortunately my boys started running fevers the very next day and had the flu, and then my house got COVID two weeks after that, and I just kind of spiraled, like I finally got this baby home and now she's gonna die from a virus, you know?
[00:21:36] Desere: I feel like my midwife supported me through the whole process. And was was great. It was just in the after, right, the postpartum, my health really started tanking and I was in that limbo of, well, now you've been postpartum long enough that you're not. Here for postpartum care anymore, and you can go back to your primary, but your primary still thinks that the, these are postpartum [00:22:00] symptoms.
[00:22:00] Desere: And I had hyperthyroidism and lost all my baby weight, plus 30 pounds without trying. All my hair fell out. I was not well and couldn't really get anybody to hear. That there was something wrong.
[00:22:13] Nicole: Mm-hmm.
[00:22:13] Desere: So during my birth, I felt very supported because I think that the pregnancy after loss, you get the compassionate care that everyone should have their first time around.
[00:22:23] Desere: You shouldn't have to lose the baby to get all the extra tests in love. But then in the postpartum experience is where I really feel like we do not do women justice. Mm-hmm.
[00:22:37] Nicole: I feel like there's some things to be learned from, like you said, what we do for infant loss that can be applied for people that are having like a severe maternal event or a traumatic birth.
[00:22:49] Nicole: Like it's the same. Compassion and care and resources and, and support that should be offered.
[00:22:56] Desere: Yeah. Yeah. And even just like in my [00:23:00] experience I've been able to meet so many moms and hear so many different stories. And like the NICU experience, right? These parents have separation from their baby and they're just pleading and worried and anxious, and they finally get their baby home and they think everything's gonna be great and glorious.
[00:23:15] Desere: And now it's like. They are able to breathe in this wave of reality and anxiety just comes upon them and. There's very little support there because now you've made it home. You don't need us anymore, you know? Mm-hmm. I, I think there's so many situations. There's so many stories where people have went through something that they need.
[00:23:38] Desere: They need to be heard, they need support. And just because their baby's okay now doesn't mean that they should just be left to fend for themselves. Where's our village? You know, where's that village that we were supposed to have that we were promised? Where's that at? And. They're not gonna give it to us.
[00:23:54] Desere: So we need to create it for each other. And that's why like MoMMAs [00:24:00] Voices is, is amazing. Because that's what it's doing. That's what it's doing.
[00:24:06] Nicole: Well, thank you. One of the things you, you said earlier, we were talking about like snap snapback and snapping back to who you were. It made me think of, resilience. I'm gonna get on my soapbox for a second. So hairing off me. Okay. I, we had it several years ago. MoMMAs voices had, a summit. We had an event in Houston, it was pre COVID 2019. And we had Dr. Cheryl Beck come and, and I was talking to her before, whoops, before the event and I said, we really wanna talk about resilience and being resilient.
[00:24:35] Nicole: 'cause it's a concept everybody wants to talk about. Like, oh, like what made you resilient? And she's like no, we do not talk about resilience. Yeah, we talk about post-traumatic growth. And I was like, okay. Like she was very passionate about it. And when I did some like. Learning on my own now, I like fully support it as well because like when you look at the word resilient, the definition is to return to your former [00:25:00] shape.
[00:25:01] Nicole: And when you have gone through something that is this life changing, I'll say often, like the foundation of who you are has changed. There is no going back to your original shape. You are not the same person. You are different. Mm. And I think as a society that there's so much pressure to get back to your breathe baby weight, act like everything's normal, put it on Instagram and make it look great.
[00:25:25] Nicole: That we, in these positions, we don't feel that way. And then we feel like something's wrong with us. Yes. And there's not anything wrong with us. There's something wrong with the thought process of that's we have to be that rubber band. Yes. And just like the rainbow baby, right? People think, okay, well now you have a baby.
[00:25:46] Desere: Everything's fine. As if it just erases your other child and all the things that you went through it being a mother, there is no more transformative experience in life. And then when you [00:26:00] add trauma to that and then you add no village to that. Yeah. And it is just like you said they expect us to just be who we were.
[00:26:11] Desere: And if we're not, we think it's us. We think there's something wrong with us. And that's just not the case. Mm-hmm.
[00:26:22] Nicole: Why, why did you choose to share your story through almost Voices? And what has it meant to you to use your voice in this way?
[00:26:30] Desere: When I was first approached about becoming a PFP with MoMMAs Voices, I had already had my feet on the ground, so to speak, doing the blessing boxes with the hospital for a while.
[00:26:40] Desere: And also I just was never comfortable with public speaking, like never wanted to have this s shined on me, but particularly about this subject because there is so much stigma and so much judgment, and I just did not want to. I wanted to be behind the scenes, you know? But I decided [00:27:00] that I was gonna be brave and get into it because I did have that fire for advocacy in me, from what I went through pregnancy after a loss, and then postpartum.
[00:27:11] Desere: And I got into it. And I'm so glad that I did because the training just really equipped me to be able to feel empowered to share my story, like I said earlier. When you're sharing your story, you're sharing the story of so many others, and I'm grateful for that. And I'm grateful for being built up and being given the courage to be able to speak up.
[00:27:34] Desere: And I think it's just, I. We all have so many different gifts and we go through different seasons, and it's okay if you're not good at everything. It's okay if you don't want to be an advocate. It's okay if you, you know, wanna work in one area versus another, but. There's endless ways that we can help, and it just all starts with a willingness to serve.
[00:27:56] Desere: Just get out there and find something that you are comfortable doing, [00:28:00] and you never know what's gonna open up, where the Lord's gonna lead you, who he is gonna put in your path to grow you in ways that you never thought possible. And so I wanted to, I just wanted to be brave. I think I wanted to be brave and be a voice for others that didn't have one.
[00:28:20] Desere: Okay.
[00:28:21] Nicole: You feel like you've become brave now?
[00:28:24] Desere: Not brave, but like I tell my kids you know, being willing to do things when you're still scared is, is okay. It's okay.
[00:28:36] Nicole: What would you say to someone, I mean, you said like just, you know, take the step and, and be brave and find something. Is there anything else that you would say to someone who's just beginning their own journey and then maybe considering becoming a patient family partner?
[00:28:49] Desere: Sure. I think that I said there's so many, there's so many different ways that you can help.
[00:28:54] Desere: There's so many different ways that you can serve and if you're not comfortable doing all of them, [00:29:00] just find something you are comfortable doing. And somebody will help mentor you into that. There's, there is somebody that has walked the path before you that is going to be there to guide you, and you're gonna be able to do that for somebody else.
[00:29:13] Desere: So just find something that you are passionate about. Get your feet wet. And I promise you, I promise you that if you serve in some way, it'll lighten your load. It makes no sense, right? It makes no sense when you're serving others, when you're taking more on your plate, it lightens your load. But that's just how the Lord works.
[00:29:34] Nicole: Mm-hmm. It's very healing. It can be very healing to help another person and, and sometimes. You might not have it all figured out, but y'all figure it out together.
[00:29:45] Desere: That's bear one another's burdens, I mean mm-hmm. That's what we need to do for each other.
[00:29:55] Nicole: How has telling your story, how has it changed how you see yourself? How has it changed, [00:30:00] like your motherhood journey?
[00:30:03] Desere: Oh, man. I think that telling my story before. I thought, I guess I was more worried about what other people thought. Like I didn't want people to think I was attention seeking or I was stuck in this place.
[00:30:18] Desere: Mm-hmm. This like, like we said, you know, people expect you to just go back to who you were, and I was apprehensive about telling my story because I didn't want judgment. But now I realize that by speaking up and being vulnerable and being transparent, I am teaching my kids more than. Anything else I could do, it shows them that you just have to be authentic and honest and ask for what you need and be there to help people that need something also.
[00:30:52] Nicole: Well, we've taught my daughter to serve from a very early age, and so it, it is something that's really important to us in our, in our [00:31:00] home and. Now she's getting to see, well this summer I've traveled a whole lot and so she came with me on some of these trips. 'cause it's summer. I'm like, you're coming with, yeah.
[00:31:09] Nicole: I'm thankful to be in a space where it's okay, it's fine. Like I could bring my kid and she's pretty self-contained. But she's getting to see. As well, what it means and what I do and, and not feel like, well, mom has to go outta town for a trip and she's away from me, but she's seeing the impact and we're able to have conversations now.
[00:31:30] Nicole: Like she just asked me the other day why do you do this work? And I'm like, because it started out like is my healing for me and how to help other people? And now that I have a daughter that's 10. That's not far away from puberty and being in her reproductive years, I don't want her to have the same thing happen to her.
[00:31:51] Nicole: Like we have to be doing better. Yes, it's been 20 years since my son was born. We still have people that are experiencing the same thing. I don't want her [00:32:00] to go through that, and I don't want anybody else to go through that. And I wanna make sure that things are changing.
[00:32:05] Desere: Yes. That's amazing. And we are huge advocates for teaching your children to serve, and I'm so grateful that we have the Tribe Ministry where they can be involved in that.
[00:32:17] Desere: I mean, it is so welcome that they're involved with that because they get to see firsthand, you know, what it means to really make a change. I mean, there's so much wrong in the world and there's very little that we can do. But what can you do? You can help directly in your community. You can help. There's so many people that need your help that you can go out and be the change for, and my children have got to be a part of that.
[00:32:43] Desere: And that is just amazing. If I've done nothing else as a mother, I'm grateful that I've been able to do that, to teach them about the Lord and to do that. And like my son he wanted to write a book. He's nine and he wanted to write a book about our family story. And it's called the Brothers Who Prayed and we wrote [00:33:00] a book about them praying for their little sister, our Little Rainbow Baby.
[00:33:04] Desere: And we published it on Amazon and I promised him all the money, all the proceeds. And this little child, his little heart, he's, no, it's going to our Blessing box fund. I don't want it. He doesn't keep any of it. And that right there is when you are, I. When the Lord is shining through you in front of your children, they're reading you like a Bible, and I'm just so grateful.
[00:33:31] Desere: I'm so grateful for their little hearts, their little servant's hearts that have grown through this. And honestly, if it wasn't for the loss of Stella, I don't know that that would've happened. So I'm grateful for the pain, as weird as that sounds. I'm grateful for it. 'em in storms. Yes. I, it never would've thought I ever would've said that.
[00:33:56] Desere: But I am. I am. [00:34:00] Mm. Well, thank you and I'm, I'm thankful and grateful for Stella that she brought you here and for the work that you've been doing and, and to be that light to people when they need it. It's amazing. As we wrap up with this, is there anything else that you would like to share or, or leave our listeners with today?
[00:34:21] Desere: I would just say to go be the change. Go be the change. There's endless ways that we can help just go out there and, and, and help somebody and watch it heal you.
[00:34:37] Nicole: Oh, well, thank you. Thank you, Desere, for joining us today and sharing your heart being vulnerable and sharing about your experience. I, I know it's not always easy and especially going back to those, those hard days of where so much changed about us.
[00:34:53] Nicole: And I thank you for being brave being brave and courageous today and, and sharing your voice. [00:35:00]
[00:35:00] Desere: Thank you for having me.
