Christina Waggoner

I decided to pursue my career as a life coach and hypnotist as a result of my own personal experience of pain and suffering through loss. I was raised in a traditional Catholic family. Our parents provided well for us. You could say we lived a life of privilege, and our parents were present and loving toward us. My main struggles growing up occurred because my mom and dad fought a lot, and that created tremendous stress for me. Being the oldest (of five) meant that I was put in charge of my siblings. I had plenty of responsibilities and usually felt weighted down with my parents’ troubles. All of the arguing and fighting was overwhelming at times. I spent many years being almost like a teen mediator for my parents. I’m not sure how I got that job, however, at the time, it seemed like I was pretty good at it. My parents eventually decided to split and then divorced when I was twenty-one. It was NOT a friendly divorce. Both of my parents were very unhappy for a number of years.

It was 4 years after my parents’ divorce that I found myself at the alter saying my vows. All through our marriage I would find myself saying to my then husband, “let’s do whatever is necessary NOT to get divorced”. He agreed. We were in love and we had a fun early marriage. My struggles did not fully surface until we began our journey to have children. I experienced an unforeseen serious illness (preeclampsia) during my pregnancy with our first child. I was confronted with a life or death situation and my then husband and I were told that I would have to have a C-section immediately or that I would die. We were distraught knowing that our daughter had only been in vitro for 28 weeks and that her chances of survival were greatly reduced. It was a very scary time. She was born at only 1 pound and 14 ounces and we spent the first 2 months of my daughter’s life in the hospital watching over her as she struggled to survive. Fortunately, she survived and eventually thrived! Three years later we decided to try to have another baby. Sadly, we were so discouraged as I had eight miscarriages over the next four years. The doctors did not have any explanation why and they only said, “keep trying”. During this time, I was experiencing tremendous sadness and frustration, however, I refused to give up hope. We started a special treatments with a reproductive immunologist and, eventually, my perseverance and determination paid off. On September 11, 2001 I was able to safely deliver our son into the world. Yup….9-11! It was a very difficult time to bring a child into the world. So much fear, sadness and anger. Our son’s birth was very emotional, and we were beyond thrilled to finally hold this beautiful little boy in our arms. I was so scared though, about what