WEST FARGO — On Christmas evening 2017, Karli Moch was in the hospital fighting for her life. Her family had been visiting — including the young son she and her husband, Taylor, had dreamed of for so long — but now, visiting hours were over.
Karli watched them, including little Dawson, 1, leave, and as the door closed, an emptiness overwhelmed her heart.
“This is where I truly fell on my face and hit rock bottom,” she recounted, knowing she’d miss celebrating that “magical time” of Christmas with them. “I just sobbed for hours.”
It was a stranger, a nurse, who became her angel. “She didn’t try to fix it. She just sat there on the bed and was there for me, allowing me space to fall apart,” Karlie said.
Karli had only been living with her diagnosis of ulcerative colitis, a chronic condition causing inflammation and ulcers in the gastrointestinal tract, for a couple months, but within a 30-day span, her symptoms had gone from moderate to severe. Unable to eat or drink, she’d lost 30 pounds.
“I was in immeasurable pain, and my life was ticking away,” Karli said. “That day, I hit my knees, begging God for a chance to be the parent I’d always dreamed of,” saying, “If you give me a chance, I will walk through every door you open.”
Though she’d grown up believing in God, Karli hadn’t realized the difference between believing and following, she said. Now, at a point of surrender, she yearned to know God better.
To save Karli’s life, her colon would have to be removed. “God was stripping away every single thing I was holding my identity in,” she said, including, ultimately, her hair and voice. “I love to sing, but nothing but a breath would come out.”
The worst was losing a year of mothering and growing back trust with Dawson, who’d become accustomed to her leaving for the hospital. “I’m happy to report that now, he’s the biggest mama’s boy of all time!” she said.
Though her health remains tenuous, Karli said her faith and family keep her strong and motivated.
The adoption option
As Karli’s health improved, the couple’s dreams of adding more to their family returned. But then came a final blow: she wouldn’t conceive and carry another child. “It was like, ‘God, what else can you take from me?’”
High-school sweethearts, Karli and Taylor had been dreaming of a big family since their dating days at West Fargo High School. So when the thought of adoption emerged, they were quick to embrace the idea.
In January 2019, they met with an adoption agency, and a question emerged: “Do you want to give birth again? Or do you want to be a mom again?” As Karli answered, all lingering grief over “lost motherhood” vanished.
The wait could be years but might be reduced with unconventional searching, they learned. With the agency’s encouragement, Karli and Taylor created a Facebook page and website, offering honest glimpses of their daily lives.
They eventually connected with a match; a birth mother expecting a boy in February 2020. “She was willing to meet with us right before the pandemic,” Kari said, and despite the eeriness of that time, it was God’s perfect timing.
Simon was born in June of 2020. Now four, “He’s like the piece of the puzzle we never knew we needed,” Karli said. “While we’re pretty chill, he has no fear. He’s going to take us on adventures we never would have known otherwise.”
A mother’s resilience
Angie Honzay, one of Karli’s closest friends since high school, has seen Karli through the best and worst, including things “that have shaped who she is down to her core.” But the adoption process may have been the most trying. “I don’t think anyone can prepare you for it,” Honzay said.
Nevertheless, the couple “remained desperately hopeful during that time, never questioning whether it would work out,” she said.
She also witnessed Karli’s faith resurgence. “She’s definitely transformed spiritually and is more connected on that level than ever before,” Honzay said.
Honzay, who counts Karli among one of her greatest blessings, said she’s proud of her friend’s resilience and outlook on life. “It’s been hard to watch at times, but she’s also really blossomed through it all,” she shared.
Cassie Sackman, Karli’s sister, said that, growing up, Karli was “the free spirit” who had “spunk and creativity,” which made adoption a fit. “Because of all her struggles, I was like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s something you could totally do,’” she said. “Karli has that open mind and heart and personality.”
Her tenacious pursuit of welcoming another child, starting her own business and still finding time for family, friends and strangers has increased Sackman’s admiration for her little sister. “I call her a saint. She does it all and makes it look so easy,” when in reality, it’s not at all, Sackman said.
There’s also a wisdom about her. “Even though she’s my younger sister, I still look up to her and the things she does — how she takes it all in stride,” Sackman said.
Becky Moch, Karli’s mother-in-law, is a retired nurse who willingly filled in the gaps when needed. “We just tried to lift them up the best we could,” she said, noting her gratitude for being able to be close to Dawson as an infant. “It gave us time for a sweet bonding as well.”
Because of what she’s been through, Becky observed, Karli has developed a great sensitivity for others who suffer. “I think it was part of her healing as well,” she added of Karli’s outreach to others in the hospital during Christmas time. “When you offer others that comfort that you yourself were the recipient of, it’s really empathy that comes out, and it did with her.”
It doesn’t hurt that Karli has a robust sense of humor, Becky noted, bringing needed levity to the challenges, even while dealing with them responsibly. “She’s very upfront about what she’s going through,” she said. “To be able to speak it, name it and deal with it like Karli does is a gift.”
As a grandmother of nine other grandchildren, Becky said meeting Simon in the hospital room nearly immediately after his birth and receiving him from his birth mother was incredible. “That first hour of skin time — my heart immediately made space to move over and love another. It’s been such a blessing on so many levels,” she said.
No one was surprised, Becky added, when Karli left her successful career in a big corporation to start The Dream Project, offering life-coaching and speaking to workplace staff and college athletes, among others. “Her heart was pulling her to this work,” she said, noting that Karli’s servant-leadership approach is special, and the opportunity has “lit a fire within her.”
Now 37, Karli said something of a midlife crisis led to her career change, with her trials demanding she answer the question, “What am I doing with my life and gifts?” and realizing she wanted to use them to “develop deep connections with people for the greater good.”
She infuses her personal accounts of overcoming obstacles into her talks, aiming to bring hope to others who struggle, including with infertility and unplanned pregnancy, encouraging adoption whenever possible.
“There are no accidental children,” Karli said. “There might be accidental parents at a season in life, but not accidental children.” Being willing to place a child in another family’s arms, she added, is “one of the most selfless acts I’ve ever witnessed.”
She wanted to make clear, however, that adoptive parents are neither saviors nor heroes, as some have suggested. “It’s not about us. It’s about God’s plan for this child,” she said.
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Nov. 10, 2024.]
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