Jill's Story: When The Picture Shatters

What do you do when the life you dreamed of — the one constant picture you held in your heart since you were a little girl — just doesn't happen?

Jill wanted to be a mom to a house full of kids. That was the dream. Simple. Pure. The kind that settles into a little girl's heart and never leaves. 

Then she lost three babies, and with each loss, something darker than grief took root — blame. The voice that whispered your body should have been able to protect them. You failed.

She became someone she didn't recognize. Someone bitter. Someone who couldn't feel happy for friends announcing pregnancies. Someone so focused on the children she didn't have that she was missing out on the child she did.

In this episode, you'll walk with Jill through the moment a single quote stopped her in her tracks, the courage it took to hold grief and gratitude in the same hands, and the hard-won truth that a shattered picture doesn't mean a shattered life.

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Jillian Armstrong is the owner of Custom Safety Services Ltd. 

Website: https://customsafetyservicesltd.com/
Email: customsafetyservices@gmail.com 

Tiny Hands of Hope: 

Website: https://tinyhandsofhope.ca  
Email: info@tinyhandsofhope.ca

Tiny Hands of Hope Society is a non-profit organization whose mission is to work within our community of Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada and area to support families who have suffered from all types of pregnancy and infant loss. They are dedicated to raising awareness and helping others during their time of need and in their time of grieving.

Tiny Brave Steps is hosted by Bernice McDonald - Creator of the Tiny Brave Steps Methodology and Author of the Little Books of Courage. Shift your identity from “not enough” to “brave enough" to keep becoming - no matter what shows up in your life.

Have a courage story? Know a woman whose story needs to be heard? Reach out at bernice@bernicemcdonald.com.

Learn more at www.tinybravesteps.com.
Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bernicemcdonald/

Transcript

Speaker 0:03

What do you do when the life you dreamed of, the one constant picture you held in your heart since you were a little girl, just doesn't happen. Not because you did something wrong, not because you weren't trying hard enough, but simply because life had a different plan.

Speaker 1 0:26

A lot of things in my life have changed or been different than what I initially pictured, and I didn't have like big aspirations of career or anything like the one consistent thing that I had always imagined about my future since I was a little girl was being a mom. And so the idea that that one thing I had dreamed about since I was little, the one thing that no matter how much I wanted, it couldn't happen. I was I was very scared of what a feature would look like. Um if we had never been able to have one.

Speaker 1:08

I'm Bernice McDonald, and this is Jill's courage story. And if you've ever whispered to yourself in the dark, this wasn't how it was supposed to be, this one's for you. Act one, wake up your courage. Jill's dream was simple, pure, the kind of dream that settles into a little girl's heart and never leaves. She wanted to be a mother. Not a CEO, not famous, not wealthy, just a mum. To a house full of kids. Laughter in the kitchen, chaos at bedtime, the beautiful ordinary mess of a big family. And for a moment, a brief shining moment, it seemed like that dream was coming true.

Speaker 1 2:17

The challenge is a little bit different each time, but the three babies. The three babies that I've lost. Um two were before Danny. And one was after Danny. It felt like losing losing a dream. Each time, a dream that I wasn't sure could ever or would ever come true.

Speaker 2:45

Three babies. Three times Jill's body couldn't hold on to the life growing inside her. And each time something darker than grief began to take root. Blame.

Speaker 1 3:00

You know, I've I've always held on to this guilt or fear or something that it was my fault. That I did something wrong that caused each of these losses, that I should have recognized something, or my body should have been able to protect them, then I failed to do that. Then I didn't realize how much I was blaming myself.

Speaker 3:33

This is what fear does when it shapeshifts into something else. When it stops being the protective voice that says, watch out, and becomes the accuser that says, you failed. Jill didn't just lose babies. She lost her sense of being enough.

Speaker 1 3:54

I put a lot of yeah, just put a lot of blame on myself and uh something in me wasn't good enough or wasn't strong enough, or feeling like somehow the universe was saying I wasn't good enough to have these babies.

Speaker 4:14

And here's what that kind of blame does: it poisons everything else. Jill found herself becoming someone she didn't recognize, someone bitter, someone who couldn't feel happy for friends who announced pregnancies, someone jealous of what others had.

Speaker 1 4:35

After the first two losses, before we had Danny, I had a lot of bitterness in me and struggled a lot with jealousy. And anytime anyone had a pregnancy announcement, it was so difficult to deal with. And family members who would be complaining about their kids and being like, the things you're complaining about are the things and moments I'm dreaming of. I didn't feel like myself for those for those years of I don't I don't like being that kind of person that can't be happy for somebody else or you know, being jealous of other people. I didn't want to be living like that, but I didn't know what else to do with those feelings or how to protect my own feelings.

Speaker 5:36

This is Fred, our name for fear. That is most dangerous. Not the fire-breathing dragon circling your castle, but the voice inside the castle walls whispering that you deserved this, that something is fundamentally wrong with you, that you're not enough.

Speaker 1 6:10

I didn't think after we had Danny that if we had another loss, it would hurt as much because I had Danny, I had a baby, I had one to love and hold. But the second time it was like I knew this level of love and what could have been. So it it hit me just as hard and in kind of in a different way than the other two.

Speaker 6:42

But even his presence couldn't quiet Fred's accusations. Because when you're measuring your life against the picture that should have been, when you're living in what we call the gap, even what you have feels like not enough.

Speaker 1 7:00

I was trying to also be a mom and be happy and not miss out on this little boy that I had dreamed of my whole life while also mourning the baby that should have been, and the baby and the you know, the sibling that Danny could have had, and picture of that life that we could have had.

Speaker 7:25

Jill was standing at a crossroads, and she didn't even know it yet. Act two, embrace who you are. The turning point came quietly, not with trumpets or lightning bolts. It came with a simple quote, a sentence that stopped Jill in her tracks.

Speaker 1 7:54

I had seen a quote that the things in your life, if you thought back five years ago, you're exactly where you dreamed of being back then.

Speaker 8:07

Five years ago, Jill would have given anything, anything for one healthy baby, just one. And here he was, Danny, real, alive, growing, right in front of her. But she'd been so focused on the children she didn't have, she was missing the child she did.

Speaker 1 8:32

And so as I was sitting there mourning the babies we didn't have, I thought back to five years before that, and all I wanted was one. And I had one now. I was where I had dreamed of being, and maybe it was a little bit different. But there was a time where all I wanted was that one. I had it, and I was missing out on enjoying him and enjoying the life that I dreamed of having five years ago because I wanted something more or wanted that, you know, that next thing, rather than just being present in the life in the stage that we were at.

Speaker 9:15

This is what we call a hot air balloon moment when you just rise high enough to see the pattern, to see what your fear has been stealing from you. Jill realized she'd been standing in a beautiful place, calling it broken. She'd been holding a precious gift and mourning the wrapping it didn't come in. But here's what makes Jill's journey so powerful. She didn't force herself to get over it. She didn't shame herself into accepting the loss. She didn't paste on a smile and pretend the grief wasn't real. Instead, she did something extraordinarily brave. She gave herself permission to hold both.

Speaker 1 10:08

Yes, you do always have a toy. And so I did have to find strength in myself to let go of things and find kind of peace in myself. I never thought I would get to a point of what's meant to be will happen because that didn't make sense to me. Um you know, people would tell me that to try to make me feel better and it didn't because I didn't understand that, you know, even I don't I don't have to have peace or acceptance with that part of myself to continue moving forward with my life. And things can still be happy, and I can still be thankful, even if there's this part that I don't quite know what to do with.

Speaker 11:05

Listen to what she's saying. She's not pretending the pain doesn't exist, she's not manifesting it away or choosing joy at the expense of truth.

Speaker 1 11:18

And then I've also found ways of just honoring that grief. I have little mementos in our house. I have three little crystal angel statues that all are the birthstones of those babies.

Speaker 11:40

Something tangible that I get to have. She's acknowledging that she can be both grateful and grieving. She can move forward and still hurt. This is the strange jewel that grief carves out for us. The capacity to hold complexity, to be big enough inside to contain both sorrow and joy, both loss and love.

Speaker 1 12:16

It's almost like my mind has to imagine it's split into two, and like this grief and this sad version of myself is its separate person.

Speaker 12:40

What Jill created here, the mental separation, isn't denial, it's genius. She's not pushing the grieving away. She's giving it a place, a seat at the table. She's acknowledging it exists, but she's not letting it drive the car. The grateful version of herself can look at the suffering self and offer something the suffering self desperately needs. Embracing. This is how you embrace who you are after loss, not by becoming someone who got over it, but by becoming someone spacious enough to hold it all. Act three. Stand up for you. Jill realized she had an internal boundary crisis. The biggest threat to her peace wasn't other people's judgments, it was her own.

Speaker 1 13:50

I would never talk to somebody else or put the blame on somebody else, that would I do to myself. And so it's like when I can imagine that person, that side of myself as their own person, I'm able to say it's okay and to forgive yourself that and that it's not your fault. All of these things that I've said to other people, like I'm able to accept them for myself.

Speaker 14:18

This is voice activation at its most essential level. Not finding your voice with others first, but finding it with yourself, setting a boundary against the internal critic that says, you failed, your body failed, you're not enough. And replacing it with the voice you'd use with someone you love. This is hard. You're doing your best. This isn't your fault. Jill also learned something crucial about those inevitable bad days, the days when the grief crashes back in like a wave.

Speaker 1 15:05

It's taken a while. We are trying, you know, this side that wants to hold on to it and be upset. Still trying to comfort that side in being like, it's oh, it's okay to be sad, and you know, you don't have to forget it all. But you can't let it freeze you either. Continue like, like I said, continue to miss out on life.

Speaker 15:33

She's not suppressing emotion here, she's not just positivitying her way through pain. She's seeing it, she's feeling it fully. And then she's making a choice. This is what standing up for you looks like from the inside. It's protecting your emotional state, it's refusing to let the spiral take you under. And Jill didn't just do internal work, she took a tiny brave step outward too. She joined the Board of Tiny Hands of Hope, an organization supporting women through pregnancy and infant loss.

Speaker 1 16:21

Sometimes all you want is someone to just listen and say this this sucks. I'm sad. And then being like, that's okay to feel that way. Sometimes you don't always want somebody to cheer you up. You just want someone to listen.

Speaker 16:44

This is the boundary against isolation, against the lie that you have to carry this alone, against the pressure to be strong when what you really need is to be seen. Jill found her people, the ones who understood, the ones who didn't need her to be over it or grateful for the lesson, the ones who could sit with her in the mess and say, yeah, this is really hard. Act four, create your impact. Here's what Jill knows now that she didn't know before. She knows that the hardest days of her life gave her something nothing else could have.

Speaker 1 17:40

Evidence of her own strength. Yeah, I just I do see more strength in myself because now when I face other hard things, I'm like, I've gotten through the hardest days of my life. I can get through this too. I've done it for something harder, I've done it for something more important than whatever the seemingly huge challenges in front of me. I'll get through this too.

Speaker 18:08

This is legacy building, not the legacy of what you accomplished, but the legacy of who you became in the fire. Every hard thing you face from this point forward, you have proof you can survive it because you already have. But Jill's impact doesn't stop with her own life. Through tiny hands of hope, through her story, through her presence, she's creating permission for other women to stop pretending. This is what courage creates. Not the courage to stay positive or find the silver lining, but the courage to tell the truth. The courage to say, this broke my heart, and I'm still here. And both of those things are true. Jill's picture shattered, the dream of a house full of kids, the vision she'd held since she was small. It didn't come true the way she thought it would. But what she built from the broken pieces, it's real. It's honest, it's beautiful. Because it's hers. Hard won, grief carved, love filled. Maybe your picture shattered too. Maybe you're standing in the middle of broken dreams, wondering how you're supposed to move forward when this wasn't the plan. Here's what Jill would tell you.

Speaker 1 20:05

It's okay to say it's hard. It's okay to say it's hard. You don't have to say it happened for a reason. Like it there doesn't there may not be a reason. You know, you didn't you didn't deserve the things that happened. Sometimes the way to find acceptance or peace for yourself is to just find peace with the fact that it's not fair.

Speaker 20:32

You don't have to have it all figured out. You don't have to find the lesson or trust the process or believe it happened for a reason. You just have to take the next tiny brave step. Talk to yourself like someone you love. Find one person who will sit with you in the message.