Caralyn Brace never planned to have children. It wasn’t something she actively didn’t want. It just wasn’t something she aspired to. Then she met the right person at the right time and everything changed.
They got pregnant fast. On their wedding day — a small backyard ceremony with immediate family — Caralyn was bleeding heavily. She knew what was happening. Any woman who has miscarried knows. She took the medication that was supposed to stop it. It didn’t stop. She finished the ceremony, walked upstairs, and then came back down and cut the cake.
Six months later, on vacation, her husband became violently ill. He couldn’t leave the hotel room. At the resort bar, Caralyn met a woman who turned out to be an adoption attorney. Over the next few days, that stranger taught her everything about how adoption in this country actually works. They came home. Within a week, her husband was diagnosed with stage 3B colon cancer.
What followed was sperm banking before chemotherapy, adoption paperwork filed during treatment and an open adoption with a birth mother who had Type 1 diabetes. They knew the risk. They chose to walk toward it. Their daughter was diagnosed with Type 1 at age five.
In this conversation, Caralyn talks about what it means to keep choosing forward when every chapter comes with a new crisis, what the day-to-day of Type 1 really looks like and the moment on the oncology ward when she decided she could handle it.
Executive Producer: Sara Glassman
Follow At the Brink: Instagram @at.the.brink.media |YouTube @AtTheBrinkPodcast
www.atthebrinkmedia.com | hello@atthebrinkmedia.com
","author_name":"Erica Brinker"}