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so much to be grateful for this year & always✌🏾

hope you had a happy thanksgiving!

yesterday, i celebrated my 30th birthday & entered

yesterday, i celebrated my 30th birthday & entered a new decade! everyone always talks about your 30s as being a time of personal freedom, and i’m definitely here for that energy. today already feels like a new beginning 💫.

i know some people don’t like to make a big deal out of birthdays, but honoring the day you were born was always a tradition in my family growing up, and it’s one i plan to continue! ever since our pregnancy loss, i have an even deeper appreciation for birthdays.

we are here.
we are alive.
we were born.

and that is certainly reason to celebrate. 🎉

thank you for your love and support! 💕

for those in the 30-something club, what are your favorite things about being in your 30s?

10/10 recommend visiting maui! our honeymoon story

tyler worked with a family jeweler out of state to

tyler worked with a family jeweler out of state to create my engagement ring 😍😍, but when it came to our wedding bands, we decided to shop in person! if you’re looking for a jeweler in the LA area, we had a great experience with @bridalringscompany!

when it came to our wedding bands, we really wanted something unique. i love that my wedding band has 7 stones, because we were married in the 7th month of the year, and 7 goes into each # of our wedding date (also my name has 7 letters too, so that’s cool 😛).

they custom made tyler’s hammered gold wedding ring as well, and the process was so easy! 💍❤️

7/14/21 💍 thank you to all our family and frie

7/14/21 💍

thank you to all our family and friends who made this day so special, to @sajephotog for documenting the day tyler & i became a family, & to all of our vendors who made our wedding so beautiful ❤️

venue: @thevineyardhouseatjdwinery
coordination: @herestothemevents
photo: @sajephotog
floral: @wild_and_behold_florals
music: dj mike of @secondsong_official
catering: @stonefiregrill
hair: @claresecreates
makeup: @donnadoesbeauty
dress: @luv_bridal
bride’s shoes: @loefflerrandall
wedding rings: @bridalringscompany
neon sign: @neonartisans

soooooo you know how you’re supposed to expect t

soooooo you know how you’re supposed to expect the unexpected when it comes to weddings, right? a ton of things happened that were not in the plan, lol, but i wanted to share a couple of them with you to give these photos some context:

as it turned out, the custom green suit tyler ordered for our wedding didn’t arrive in time, and though he found a replacement (LOL i forgot how stressful july was ;P) we were disappointed because his original suit was *so* him (i mean, he ordered a green suit with a snake print pattern on the inner jacket, lol).

another unexpected & heartbreaking thing that happened was that due to an error, the professional photos from our traditional igbo wedding (the night before our wedding on 7/14) were unfortunately lost (not by our wedding photographer…it was someone we hadn’t worked with before). thankfully our loved ones took a ton of photos of the event, and we had a professional videographer who went above and beyond for us! we didn’t have a videographer for our wedding day, so having the memories of our traditional igbo wedding captured via video is so special.

soooo given the above, we thought it would be nice to do a post-wedding portrait session to 1. have some photos in tyler’s actual wedding suit, and 2. have some nice family portraits of us in our traditional wedding attire to surprise our families and thank them for all the love and effort they put into hosting our igbo wedding.

thank you to my friend alyssa of @lovelylight_imagery for these portraits!! we are forever grateful!

p.s. swipe to see my daphne bridgerton-inspired dress ;)

p.p.s. you know i’m gonna share our wedding photos when the time comes ;). i’m so excited to see all the film photos and photos of MY BOUQUET. i’m obsessed. 😍😍😍 oh, and photos of my husband too ;).

you may not know this as it’s not something i’

you may not know this as it’s not something i’ve ever really shared here, but i failed out of grad school. ⁣
⁣
no, that’s not an exaggeration: i literally failed.⁣
⁣
it has taken me almost ten years to process how i could go from being a straight-a, overachieving student who earned her bachelor’s degree in 3 years, to being sick with depression, barely wanting to be alive and literally failing out of a graduate program at a prestigious university saddled with an unreasonable amount of student loans for a degree i didn’t even complete (oh yes, we’re going there). ⁣
⁣
part of me always knew i would share my experience (i actually did even while going through everything, by publishing anonymously on a blog i had at the time. it was so fulfilling to develop a community of readers who could empathize with what i was going through!)⁣
⁣
and now i’ve re-committed to putting my entire story down in words & seeing what comes of it, because i’ve come to face the harsh reality in recent years that i can do nothing else until i finish. i don’t know how else to describe this other than to say i am energetically beholden to documenting my experience in a way that can help others heal and be set free. my future self is begging me to get this done. so, i will be quietly working on my manuscript in the background while i create & share my life with you here.⁣
⁣
i do hope to publish my book (among other things!!), but i know that pressure tends to have the opposite effect where i’m concerned, so for now i’m committing to the experience of showing up and working on my story. it may be years before it’s available to read, so the sooner i continue this work, the better.⁣
⁣
i thought you should know this, because (CONTINUED IN COMMENTS)

6/19/21 this one’s for everyone making life cha

6/19/21

this one’s for everyone making life changes after the past year ✌🏾

how do you talk about someone you loved and lost a

how do you talk about someone you loved and lost and never met?

tyler and i were pleasantly surprised when, a few weeks after our wedding, we discovered we were pregnant.

i had planned to share the news with a few close friends by sending them a photo of our little one after our first ultrasound. unfortunately, the appointment did not go as we imagined, and we couldn’t see our baby on the screen.

we were so excited to grow our family, only to discover weeks later that our first pregnancy, my first pregnancy, wasn’t viable.

how do you talk about someone you loved and lost and never met?

if you’ve experienced any kind of pregnancy loss...my heart goes out to you. it is a pain i would not wish upon anyone.

what no one tells you is that this experience is excruciatingly painful in every way: emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and physically. you are challenged on every level.

this experience has truly shown me how much life is a gift. if you are alive, you are a miracle. you are MEANT to be here. your soul was placed on this earth for a reason, and chose to come here exactly at the perfect time. so, so, so many things had to happen in order for you to be here.

you are a miracle,
and women are warriors.
women go through A LOT.
sometimes i wonder how we’re meant to go through it all, and keep moving forward with grief and love in our hearts...until I remember God gave us each other:

a sisterhood.

next month is national pregnancy and infant loss awareness month. i never really knew it existed, but i am grateful president reagan designated a month to shed light on an experience of destroyed innocence that so many people go through alone in the dark.

most of all, i am grateful for my husband—
my intuitive, sweet, caring husband whose big, big heart loves so deeply (& was a huge reason why i fell in love with him). i am grateful we have each other.

we are okay:
healing,
resilient—
hopeful for the future.

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