Get ready to feel deeply listening to this episode as our guest definitely stomps to her own drum. Meet Madeline Schulle who opens her life up on this episode and shares some of her most vulnerable self with you. This wife, mom, birth educator and birth doula, professional nanny and a gestational surrogate is amazing in her life direction and how she handles balancing it all. Madeline and her husband got married and within five months they found themselves pregnant and getting ready to be parents sooner than they had planned. Pregnant and not finished with her college education created a massive shift in their thinking. While they loved it and wouldn’t change it today, there was a bit of panic. They found marriage counseling early in their years because they pretty quickly decided they didn’t know what they were doing in marriage so they found fabulous counseling that gave them practical skills for communication. She talks about the Gottman Institute which utilizes research to provide resources of what is helpful in a marriage and to point out some of the ineffective tools that might be pulled in any relationship. This laid groundwork for their marriage, their parenting and then of how they would cope for a health condition called alopecia areata that Madeline found herself diagnosed to deal with day in and day out. This condition has resulted in total hair loss for Madeline. We discuss how you go through conflict and knowing how to get support and how to communicate through vulnerability. You will be changed to hear her story of compassion and love.Madeline’s perspective on family is that you take care of one another—that comes from her being raised in a military family often finding themselves far away from extended family and they learned how to enjoy each other’s company well. They learned how to pull up roots and move efficiently and how to make friends quickly. She credits that time of learning as where and how she began to care deeply for people and she translates that today into her career choices. Becoming a doula, which is a professional labor partner who helps to provide physical and emotional support to the birthing parents, set in as a passion after her first child was born in a natural birthing process. Today she educates, leads and provides emotional and physical support in the birthing process during that monumental event for families. To become a surrogate seemed like a natural progression for Madeline as she looks to care for a couple to help them to have a baby. This life changing decision is an amazing gift that we discuss both the process and how she feels in her heart for the parents and the child. This process requires strength, selflessness and commitment of monumental proportions.Her journey through her hair loss and seeing the things she has mourned—but didn’t realize that she would — like the wind blowing through her hair or even running a brush through her hair create a message for her to vocalize. Through her tears her story is moving and makes opening this world to understand for others compelling. Madeline takes what she’s dealt with and creates a path for growing compassion for others and opening a world for connecting.Saying that she is incredibly blessed and in all of the unique situations she encounters give her a way to normalize some of the topics and issues that hold stigma. Madeline tells her story because she wants people to know that hair loss is not a reflection of anything on you—morally or in any other way.Another message we cover rather completely is that Madeline believes that loving your job makes you a better spouse and a better mom. Not waiting on one part fo life to fill up so you can embrace the next is a theme woven through for this lady. Madeline says she is a whole person made of many pieces and that is where she continues to grow and have purpose. Tune in!Music “STOMP” used by
Music "STOMP" used by permission of artist Donica Knight Holdman and Jim Huff
