Happily Ever After: The Life-Changing Power of a Grateful Heart (2 page)

So I asked for another leave of absence and when that was politely refused, I said good-bye to the PT department at Miami Children’s Hospital and set sail for the West Coast … a spot I had always dreamed of calling home.

While I worked out the legalities with the production company’s powers that be, I hit the gym, met new friends, and waited for the day I would stand in front of my mansion-away-from-home, hearing host Chris Harrison say, “Let the journey begin.” October 10, 2002, was that day.

In a long, black Carmen Marc Valvo dress and a more than ten-carat diamond necklace bigger than my earlobe, I was introduced to twenty-five charming bachelors. One of them was a stunner who was so thoroughly outside of his comfort zone that he forgot to tell me his name. But after I heard it for the first time, I would never forget it: Ryan Sutter. He stepped out of the limo and told me I looked “ravishing.” I couldn’t remember a time that I had even heard that word in a sentence, but it sounded so romantic and genuine, and I bought it—hook, line, and sinker. His crystal-blue eyes, firefighter résumé, NFL muscles, and the poem he handed me during our first solo chat didn’t hurt his cause either. For the next six weeks, he continued to stand out among the crowd, a crowd of eligible men who had left their homes and jobs to test the relationship waters with me.

With cameras following our every move, I got to know as much as I could about each of the men who had signed up to join me on this crazy ride. Ryan had been a front-runner since the first night, but after holding that position myself for much
of the journey I shared with Alex Michel and then getting the rug pulled out from underneath me, I decided to keep my heart as open as I possibly could and not make a final decision until the very end.

I fully immersed myself in the search for love. I hoped to find someone who made me laugh and had a strong family bond. Someone who wanted to create babies out of our love and show the world what it meant to be a good father. Someone who made me feel special and safe and full of fluttering butterflies. Someone who was kind, honorable, trustworthy, and athletic. Someone I couldn’t stop thinking about no matter whom I was with or what I was doing or where I was in my travels.

After narrowing down the playing field week after week, I couldn’t deny the inevitable. I had told myself before I started that I wanted to walk off into the sunset with a man I couldn’t live without. At the end of the six weeks, I got all that and more.

On the night of the final rose ceremony, I said good-bye to Charlie, the only other man remaining, and waited patiently for Ryan to arrive. I was on a platform surrounded by candles and flowers, but all I could think about was the gorgeousness of the man I had completely and utterly fallen for. I will never forget the intensity of the smile that took over my face when Ryan started walking down the stairs toward me. It was happiness in its purest form, and not only because he brought me such joy, but because I could finally reveal the depth of my love to the man who had captured my heart.

I had worked very hard to keep my feelings to myself, constantly worrying that if I shared them with Ryan they might change, just as Alex’s had for me on the final day
taping
The Bachelor
nine months earlier. I had wanted to protect Ryan from that kind of pain, but soon found out that I had been unintentionally torturing him in another way: through ambiguity.

From about the fourth week of the process, he continually confessed his developing love for me. I tried to show him through my actions that I felt the same, but he needed more and I didn’t know how much until it was almost too late. Thank goodness I didn’t know at the time, but the day I was to reveal my final decision, Ryan disappeared. He had hit a wall of frustration and decided to quiet his mind away from prying producers and the chaos of the show. He made his way to a neighboring hotel and tried to get some clarity poolside. As someone who has been in those very shoes, I don’t blame him for one millisecond. The good news is that he showed up when it mattered most—when I could finally tell him that I had fallen for him.

During the rose ceremony, I asked to hold his hands and took a big, deep breath before saying what I’d been keeping hidden in my heart:

Ryan, this day is a day I have dreamt about my entire life. Since I was a little girl, I’ve had visions of a man who I could see my future with, but someone whose face was always blurred. Until now. Now, I not only see his face, but I see a future of dreams come true. I see smiles and laughter. I see babies and grandbabies. I see comfort and safety. I see a white dress and I see it with you.

He interrupted, “You do?” with a big smile on his face. Then he let me finish pouring out my thoughts.

You’ve stepped out of my dreams and into my world, and I want to thank you for standing by my side when I couldn’t give you any verbal reciprocation of your feelings. But my walls have finally crumbled and I can now tell you without reservation that I’m in love with you. I hope with all my heart that you feel the same and that you want to spend the rest of your life with me, as I do with you.

I can’t help but giggle when I replay that moment in my mind, because he was
so
ready for me to stop talking. (Things haven’t changed much.)

After asking if I was done and giving me one of the kisses that had made me fall in love with him, he said:

I started down this road hoping for love, and I think I was only able to make it to the end because I found it. You were my strength. You were my inspiration. You were the breath of my voice and there’s a place in my heart, a space now that only you can fill. Trista, I love you with every ounce of who I am and offer you my hand and my heart and soul and my love forever, if you’ll have it.

So, Trista Nicole Rehn, will you marry me?

I can’t remember how many times I said yes (although I know it’s on a dusty VHS tape somewhere out there), but I did . . . over and over again. My fairy tale, or at least its beginning, had finally come true.

We were engaged on November 11, 2002, and after a grueling three months apart (to conceal our happy ending from the public and the media), we were ecstatic to start our life
together—a life of true reality, not one that included an entourage of cameramen and producers.

I’ve been around for more than forty years and I am certain that happily ever after isn’t always glamorous. It has nothing to do with whether you can afford or fit into a dress right off the runway. It isn’t based on how many times you’ve had your hair and makeup done, what you get paid (or not) to do with your time, how many square feet your house is, or the number of invitations you’ve had to talk to Larry King, Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, or Ellen DeGeneres.

Away from the cameras, away from the spotlight . . . everything was different. I can’t tell you what happened to Cinderella and her prince after their fairy-tale ending, but in the case of Ryan and me, happily ever after was about building a home and a family and a peaceful life together. Our off-camera lifestyle now includes a daily balancing act of work and play, a house in need of constant tidying, bills to pay, mail to open, kids needing Mommy and Daddy, a dog who could probably use a bath and some belly rubs, and a marriage that needs just as much attention, if not more, than everything else on my long list of things to do.

Do I enjoy bits of pampering as an annual tradition on my birthday, treat myself to manicures so that my temptation to nibble at my nails is curbed, and take advantage of date nights when we can get a sitter? Heck, yes! But my days are not full of long, luxurious bubble baths, hours relaxing with a bowl of popcorn and the latest chick flick in a glamorous home theater, dinner parties catered by my personal chef, shopping sprees, or even massages.

Above all else, I’m proud to be a mom, wife, daughter, and friend. Maybe if I won the lottery, I could focus on those
roles alone, but since that has yet to happen, I’m also required, as so many of us are, to take on the additional roles of housekeeper, travel agent, psychologist, spokesperson, peacemaker, chauffeur, accountant, secretary, teacher, chef, manager, nurse, designer, and cheerleader.

And while I may have found my prince and landed at the center of some extraordinary moments, I have also suffered and struggled through my fair share of disappointment and pain.

The universe has taught me so much, and undoubtedly will continue to do so. The main thing I’ve learned about what makes for a happy life, right up there with good health and lots of love, is gratitude.

My intent here is to share not only the lessons I’ve learned, but also those of my friends and family, those of strangers, and even some of the teachings of some of the world’s most enlightened authors, philosophers, poets, and educators. I will never claim to be an expert, but you won’t have to take it from only me; there is plenty of research out there to back up the benefits of a grateful heart.

I just hope that after reading these pages you will walk away with a positive outlook on life and all it has to offer. Then, if you’ve taken anything I’ve said to heart, you will lay your head down at night feeling the same way I do: like the luckiest person on the block, thankful for all the little blessings that make up your world.

A Conscious Choice

I am not what happened to me.

I am what I choose to become.

—C
ARL
G
USTAV
J
UNG

CHAPTER ONE

E
VERY
MORNING
, I
WAKE UP AND WONDER WHAT THE
day will bring. Every night, whether I’ve had one of those days, a day I would love to completely forget, or a day that made my cheeks hurt from smiling, I make it a point to remember my favorite part of the day. I’ve been posting these thoughts, my own personal expressions of gratitude, almost every night on Twitter and Facebook under the hashtag #favepartofday for the past four years. It may sound silly, but it’s my way of focusing on the positive. As Olympian Jesse Owens once said, “Find the good. It’s all around you. Find it, showcase it, and you’ll start believing it.”

My days aren’t always perfect, but I believe wholeheartedly in what Jesse said. By actively noting my favorite part of each day, I make myself more receptive to the joys of life—from the second I wake up until just before I send out my nightly post. This simple act makes me accountable to searching for and sharing shining moments, and helps me realize through a changed perspective that I have so much to be grateful for.

On May 10, 2009, that was certainly the case. It was about a month after I had welcomed a beautiful baby girl, my second child, into the world, and it was a day of celebration.
Blakesley Grace Sutter was celebrating five weeks of life, and I was celebrating Mother’s Day for the first time as the proud mom of two. It was a day I had dreamed about for most of my life, and I cherished it that much more because the path to reach it hadn’t always been an easy one to follow. Looking back, though, I see that all the pieces found their place in my life at just the right times—each piece adding more and more meaning along the way.

Finding someone to walk hand-in-hand with down the path was the piece that eluded me the longest (thirty years), but thanks to a network-television matchmaker, producers who saw something in me, and an open mind, I found Ryan. Crazy? Definitely. Worth it? You bet!

After saying “I do” and taking a couple years to enjoy our newlywed status, Ryan and I were ready to add the next piece of the puzzle to our lives: parenthood. Like the children’s playground song says, “First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in a baby carriage,” we believed that nature would automatically take over after we were married and we could throw caution to the wind. No birth control = new baby, right? Yeah . . . not so much.

But we were determined to start a family and actively pursued our goal.

Did sex become a chore? Yes. Even with a husband as good-looking as I think mine is, when sex is a requirement, it becomes more like a duty and less like the stuff you see in the movies.

Did frustration rear its ugly head? Yes.

Did we undergo painful and embarrassing blood tests, semen tests (Ryan), acupuncture, and intrauterine inseminations (me)? Yes, yes, yes, and yes.

We did everything we could until we couldn’t do anything new. We finally came to grips with the fact that we needed help, so we sought out Drs. William Schoolcraft and Eric Surrey at the Colorado Center for Reproductive Medicine. They have one of the most successful fertility clinics in the country and, luckily, they are practically our neighbors. (Okay, it takes two hours to get to their office from our house, but when you live in the mountains, two hours is practically your backyard.)

Before we could start the process, there were more tests and a particularly excruciating procedure involving one of the things I truly hate: needles. The good news: After the procedure, our options (aka my cervix) literally opened up. Ryan’s guys were able to reach their destination and get the job done. We were pregnant!

I couldn’t have been happier, but my body didn’t feel the same way.

For the first sixteen weeks of my pregnant life, I was on the couch, feeling much the way I had back in college after a night like my twenty-first birthday, when I lost my sanity and attempted twenty-one shots (I made it to nineteen, and yes, I know, I was an idiot). Every second of every day was an ongoing battle with nausea that wouldn’t disappear, no matter what I tried—and I tried it all. I ate raw ginger and Preggie Pops, Popsicles, and boxes of Froot Loops—sometimes all in one sitting. I was also reminded to drink what felt like gallons of water each day, but I’ve always struggled with downing glasses of water, especially when my stomach is queasy. To make matters worse, I didn’t brush my teeth or change out of my pajamas for what seemed like months (official apologies to both my husband and my dentist, Dr. Haerter). I felt like life was draining out of me rather than growing inside of me.

Thankfully, the torment of an unsettled stomach finally resolved. For a few months, I was able to put a smile on my face, get out of the house, and quit complaining.