How do you respond when “the worst thing” happens? You know what it is–that thing you’ve feared the most, but soon learned it was destined to be your “worst.” Today’s show is about making the choice to move forward with good and a flat-out refusal to let that worst moment define you, even though it forever changes you. 

When Christine McAlister lost her first daughter, she realized she had a choice. She had the choice to hope to survive and keep doing what was comfortable and normal and what others expected of her or to get over her fears and use the grief to create a legacy that mattered for her daughter and for herself. She chose the latter and her whole life changed for the better. She started a new, more aligned business, co-founded a non-profit with her husband, and rediscovered who she’d been as a child—her true self–someone who was ready to use her unique gifts to help others. This is a story of devastating loss and incredible triumph.

Christine is a business and success coach and the author of The Income Replacement Formula: 7 Simple Steps To Doing What You Love & Making Six Figures From Anywhere. Her company, Life with Passion, helps high-achieving go-getters use their gifts to quit their 9-5’s by creating and growing online businesses from their passions. We talk about the difficult subject of losing a child and how that experience shaped Christine’s life. It’s a beautiful and moving story from which we can all learn to take our worst moments and turn them into something good. 

More in this episode:

• Christine’s lightbulb moment came at the full-term stillbirth of her first daughter, Maeve. The revelation was that she would figure out the next level in creating a legacy for her daughter
• After battling infertility and enduring three early miscarriages already, Christine was full of judgment and inner conflict about what motherhood would be like for her
• How she had difficulty getting pregnant and battled constant sickness and perinatal depression immediately
• Grief, guilt, and “degrees of loss” in this experience
• How Christine’s husband had to work through his personal grief and decide how to handle any feelings of blame he had toward his wife
• The best part of the loss was being surrounded by very supportive caregivers and getting connected to others who had gone through a stillbirth
• 1 in 160 pregnancies ends in stillbirth, with very few of those even making it full-term
• The whirlwind of leaving the doctor’s office, going to the hospital, getting induced to give birth, and planning picture and funeral details–not at all what Christine planned for her birthing experience
• During the grief process, the idea for the non-profit
• The options that grief presents us with, in moving forward, and what Christine chose
• Out of her loss grew a personality brand and a legacy to make sure Maeve would not be forgotten. “This is how I could parent her.”
• How Miles with Maeve provides coaching and support for athletes who want to reach an impossible goal
• Helping raise money for the four non-profits that were instrumental in helping them survive: Faith’s Lodge, Molly Bears, Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, and Little Angel Gowns
• Christine’s rainbow baby, a second daughter, born 18 months after her first daughter (she is now 20 months old!)
• What Christine wants others to learn: “It all comes down to choice. Chuck Swindoll said, ‘I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react’. It’s what you choose to do with the worst thing that ever happens to you.” 

Resources:

Website: lifewithpassion.com

Christine’s FB page

Christine’s FB group

Christine on Twitter

Christine on Insta

Mentions: 

Miles with Maeve

Faith’s Lodge

 Molly Bears

Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep

Little Angel Gowns

The Grace Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll