Gina’s Story

When Gina came to the Center facing an unplanned pregnancy, she met with a client advocate named Marsha who helped change the course of her story. At the time, she was overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty. Abortion was a path she had turned to before in unplanned pregnancies. So when she saw a positive pregnancy test last July, her mind went there again almost immediately. She was in physician assistant school, uncertain how a baby would affect her future, and burdened by fear about how her family and others would respond.

Gina said:

“I was already planning to get a flight to New Mexico… I was pretty much leaning in the direction of, okay, I’m going to go to New Mexico, and this is just kind of what needs to happen.”

 

Gina also carried deep shame and self-doubt. She feared she was not ready, not capable, and not worthy of becoming a mother. Looking back, she described those early thoughts as being shaped by “a wall of fear and doubt.” She could not picture this pregnancy as something good.

Then she met Marsha.

That conversation became a turning point. Gina came in crying, hopeless, and convinced she already knew what she needed to do. But as she talked with Marsha, something began to shift. She remembered thinking, “This woman barely knows me and she feels very confident in me based off the very little amount that I’ve told her.”

“Why don’t I feel that way about myself?”

 

For the first time, someone helped her imagine a different future.

Gina said, “That one day there with Marsha really turned things around.” As Marsha listened, encouraged her, and shared hope, Gina began to see that this pregnancy did not have to be defined by shame. “I felt a lot more like an adult and like an individual with my own thoughts by the time that conversation ended,” she said.

The next day, Gina called her mom and told her she was pregnant. It was still a hard conversation, and she was still afraid, but she decided to move forward with the pregnancy. Over time, fear began to give way to hope. When she returned to the Center for her ultrasound, she experienced something she had not expected: “I just felt like, hey, you know what? My life can be like this with my pregnancy. It can be positive. It can be, everything can be okay. People can be happy for me. I can have people say congratulations and it can be a good thing.”

Her boyfriend Eric joined her at that follow-up sonogram appointment, and the experience impacted him deeply as well. When Gina first told him she was pregnant, he said, “A lot of feelings rushed in. I was overwhelmed. I was excited. I was nervous. I was scared.” He wanted to support Gina no matter what, but when they came for the sonogram, everything became real. “I instantly started crying,” he said. “I was just so happy.”

Today, Gina and Eric are the proud parents of baby Kody.

Their journey has not been easy, but both say Kody changed everything. Gina calls him “the biggest joy of my life” and says motherhood has brought “a different kind of love that I’ve never experienced before.” Eric says fatherhood gave him new purpose and direction:

“Every decision I make at work, every decision I make just in life in general right now, it has to be based off of both of them and our wellbeing.”

He also said Kody gave him “a new motivation … a new meaning.”

When Gina looks back, she is blunt about how much the Center mattered. “Without that initial conversation with Marsha, I’m not sure that my outcome would have been the same,” she said. And when asked what she would say to the people who give their time and money to make the Center possible, her answer was powerful: “I’m not sure if they really realize how big of an impact that’s made.”

“It saved Kody’s life, and it saved mine really. It saved ours.”

 

She went even further: “If these places didn’t exist, what would I have done? I probably would have just gone to New Mexico.” She said that if she had not been able to have that conversation, if she had not been introduced to another way of thinking, “my life would be very different right now. And he wouldn’t have had the chance that he has now.”

In a recent text to our team, Gina wrote:

“Thank you all again for changing our lives and helping us see a bigger purpose that I had hidden for myself behind a wall of fear and doubt.”

Today, the family is thriving and growing together as a couple and as parents. Through a generous gift arranged on behalf of the Center, a local newborn photographer also blessed them with beautiful photos to celebrate this new chapter in their lives.

This is the kind of impact your support makes possible. Because volunteers gave their time, Gina found someone who could sit with her in fear and speak hope. Because donors gave generously, she received free care, an ultrasound, and a safe place to process a life-changing decision. And because the Center was there, Kody is here too.

Thank you for Sharon Cleveland Photography for the photos of Eric, Gina and Baby Kody.