A Story of Hope, Resilience, and the Signs That Guide Us
I am honored to share The Story of the Blue Lobster, my award-winning essay that earned First Place in the Inspirational/Spiritual category of the 95th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition (2026).
Inspired by my personal journey through motherhood, this true story weaves together love, loss, hope, and the extraordinary signs that can appear during life’s most challenging moments.
What began as a deeply personal experience has become an award-winning story, and I am grateful for the opportunity to share it with you.
I hope its message reminds you that even in moments of uncertainty, hope can appear in the most unexpected places.
The Story of the Blue Lobster
By Jeannine O’Neil
It was a bright, sunny day, and I was driving through town when I looked up and saw it: a newly painted blue lobster mural stretched across the side of a building I had passed hundreds of times before.
The building had once been home to my very first job.
I slowed the car and stared.
A blue lobster.
Massive. Impossible to miss.
It took my breath away.
“Well,” I said out loud to no one, “I guess we’re doing this then.”
A few days earlier, my OBGYN had called with the results of our fertility testing. After ten years of trying, she explained that IVF would be our best option. My husband and I had multiple conditions working against us when it came to conceiving naturally.
Ten years is a long time to wait for something your heart never stops wanting.
But life had filled those years in other ways.
I built a business. My mother got sick. I became her full-time caregiver as vascular dementia slowly took pieces of her away from us. Then she passed away in 2019. After that came grief. Then came 2020, when the whole world seemed to pause in uncertainty.
Somewhere in all of that, motherhood kept slipping further into the distance.
When my husband and I finally sat down to seriously discuss IVF, he looked at me and said, “It’s your body. Whatever you decide, I’ll support you.”
I wasn’t against IVF. I was afraid of it.
Afraid of the waiting. Afraid of the heartbreak stories I had heard from so many women before me.
So, I did what I always did when faced with something bigger than myself.
I talked to my mom.
“Mom,” I said, “if this is the path I’m supposed to take, send me a sign of a blue lobster.”
I chose blue lobster because they are incredibly rare. I wanted the sign to be undeniable if it came.
And then, days later, there it was.
Not subtle. Not hidden.
A giant blue lobster mural towering over downtown like my mother herself was shouting back, “YES.”
My mother had always wanted to be a grandmother.
Every Christmas, we baked sugar cookies together using her grandmother’s cookie cutters and our passed-down family recipe. Flour dusted the table with vintage cookie cutters, while she talked about the future so confidently, as if it were already promised to us.
“Someday,” she would say, “we’ll be doing this with your kids.”
When she became sick, one of the hardest realities to accept was knowing that even if I did become a mother someday, she would never get to experience being a grandmother here with us.
That grief sat beside the infertility in a way I could never fully separate.
So, when I saw the mural, I sat in my car, stunned. A future that felt impossible was suddenly one step closer.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “And if you can… keep sending me the sign on the days you think I’ll need it most.”
I set up an appointment with the fertility clinic the next day and told them we were ready to move forward.
We kept IVF private. I couldn’t bear the thought of other people carrying expectations alongside us if it failed. By then, I had heard enough stories to know how fragile hope could become.
I told my husband we would do two rounds. That was my limit. If it didn’t work after that, we would find another path toward becoming a family.
The process itself was overwhelming at first. The medications arrived in giant boxes filled with needles, instructions, and terminology that made everything suddenly feel very real. My life became a cycle of bloodwork appointments, hormone checks, emails from the clinic, and waiting for the next set of instructions.
Then came transfer day.
Out of sixteen eggs retrieved, we ended up with three healthy embryos. Our doctor said she would implant one or two, but not all three. Because I was thirty-eight, I joked to my husband, “Let’s roll the dice. If we get twins, great. If it’s one, that’s okay too.”
The transfer took place on June 30th.
Three days later, before any blood test confirmed I was pregnant, before any doctor called with results, my mother sent another sign.
Every July 3rd, our seaside town hosts a Horribles Parade before the Fourth of July festivities. That year, our neighbors built a giant blue lobster float mounted on top of an old Ford truck. And it ended up parked directly at the end of our driveway.
I drove up the hill and did a double take, completely dumbfounded. My mother had never been subtle.
The following week, on July 7th, the pregnancy was officially confirmed through bloodwork.
With IVF, every step is scheduled with clinical precision. Blood draws, medication changes, appointments, ultrasounds, your life becomes a calendar of waiting. My test had been scheduled for a Sunday morning, the same day I had already signed up for Reiki II training.
I remember sitting there when I received the voicemail at lunchtime.
Pregnant.
I said the word out loud in disbelief to the small group gathered in the room. The Reiki instructor, a woman named Grace, smiled, and the class came together and embraced me. Tears immediately filled my eyes. A few hours later, during the attunement portion of the training, Grace quietly told me something that stopped me in my tracks.
“Your mother is here,” she said gently. “She’s radiating joy.”
We did it.
But even then, our story was only beginning.
My first ultrasound was scheduled for August 4th. Because of lingering post-COVID protocols, every appointment with the IVF doctor leading up to that point had been virtual, so walking into the room and seeing both the ultrasound technician and my doctor waiting for us immediately made me nervous.
The room was dim and quiet except for the sound of the machine.
Then my doctor smiled.
“Well,” she said, “the transfer was successful.”
Relief washed over me for exactly one second before she continued.
“One embryo has two heartbeats.”
I blinked at the screen.
Then I asked, almost instinctively, “How many does the other have?”
She laughed softly.
“Just one.”
The room went silent. Time stood still. My husband and I stared at each other, completely stunned.
Triplets.
But the joy of that moment was quickly wrapped in fear.
My doctor’s tone shifted as she explained the realities of a high-order multiple pregnancy. Because of my age, the IVF process, and the risks associated with carrying triplets, I would now be considered extremely high risk.
“You need to prepare yourself,” she said carefully. “You may end up with one, two, or three.”
Suddenly, the future felt fragile again.
After years of longing to become a mother, after finally hearing the words you’re pregnant, I was now being told not to get too comfortable with our hope.
I was referred to a Maternal Fetal Medicine team in Boston, and from that point forward, every appointment carried both excitement and dread. My pregnancy became filled with statistics, monitoring, contingency plans, and difficult conversations no parent ever wants to have.
And yet, somehow, I never felt alone in it.
I carried this quiet certainty that my mother was still with us somehow, loving these babies long before they arrived here physically.
Maybe it was faith.
Maybe it was grief looking for comfort.
Maybe those are the same things.
Whatever it was, it became the thing that kept me afloat when fear threatened to pull me under.
The signs continued to appear, always arriving at the exact moment I needed reassurance most.
The day after learning that Baby C had severe growth restrictions and would require additional monitoring, I walked into our laundry room and froze. Reflected against the wall from the afternoon sunlight was the unmistakable outline of what looked like a bright angel with wings spread wide.
Then, weeks later, on the morning of an appointment where I hoped we might finally learn the babies’ genders, two songs played back-to-back on the radio during my drive.
First, “Daughters” by John Mayer.
Then “Boy” by The Killers.
The following week, we learned we were having twin girls and a boy. There she was again, showing up most beautifully.
I would love to say the pregnancy became easier after that, but unfortunately, that is not our story.
From that point through twenty-four weeks, every appointment carried some level of fear. There were conversations about emergency surgery to try to save Baby C, and possibly Babies A and B. At one point, there was even discussion that I might need to be flown out of state for treatment.
When I finally reached viability at twenty-four weeks, the conversations shifted from survival to preparation.
Then, at twenty-seven weeks, on December 20th, I was admitted to the hospital indefinitely.
I spent Christmas and New Year’s there.
The day after Christmas, my husband tested positive for COVID and had to quarantine away from me for ten days. Suddenly, there was a very real possibility that I might deliver our babies without him beside me.
And yet, somehow, I never felt abandoned.
Friends and family called constantly to check in. Nurses became anchors in the long days. Our family even hosted a fundraiser and Face Timed me in so I could still feel present for it all.
I felt held from every direction, here on earth and somewhere beyond it too.
Even now, when I tell people our story, I’m sometimes stunned by its intensity. But strangely, while we were living it, it never felt impossible.
Terrifying, yes. But never hopeless.
It felt as though something was cushioning me from completely falling apart. A kind, steadying force beneath all the fear.
Faith.
Grief.
My mother.
Maybe all three had become intertwined by then.
The babies were born at 30 weeks and 5 days.
Charles, “Chuckie” named after his father.
Grace, a name my husband had loved long before we were ever parents.
And Iris, named after one of my favorite songs but also after the Greek messenger of the gods, whose symbol was the rainbow.
Chuckie weighed 3 pounds, 10 ounces.
Grace weighed 3 pounds, 3 ounces.
And Iris, our tiniest fighter, weighed just 2 pounds, 4 ounces.
Chuckie and Grace spent two months at the NICU.
Iris stayed four and a half.
Many NICU mothers describe the agony of leaving their babies behind each night. Of walking out of the hospital empty-handed.
But strangely, I never feared the NICU itself.
Maybe because, by then, I already understood that this place had always been part of our story.
I trusted the doctors. I trusted the nurses. And somewhere deep down, I trusted that my mother was still watching over all of us.
That feeling deepened one afternoon in the NICU waiting room.
My husband and I were eating lunch when the hospital chaplain sat down beside us. She wasn’t what I expected at all, not formal or distant. She had kind eyes and the warm, grounded energy of someone who had spent a lifetime listening closely to people.
As we talked, she mentioned that she sometimes sensed spiritual energy around families.
Then she paused.
“When I usually feel spirit,” she explained softly, “it feels light.”
She gently touched my arm.
“But your mother…”
She stopped and firmly pressed her hand against my upper arm.
“It feels like this.”
Strong.
Present.
Certain.
I laughed instantly through tears.
“That’s her,” I said. “Big love. Big signs. Big energy.”
Flash forward to today, and I have three vibrant, healthy three-year-olds.
Our house is loud now. Constantly loud.
There are tiny shoes scattered across the floor, toys in every corner, overlapping conversations from three little voices all needing something at the same moment. Most days feel beautifully chaotic in the way only motherhood can.
And there are days, in the middle of it all, I pause.
I watch them play together. I listen to their laughter echo through the house. I see Grace mothering her brother and sister already in her own quiet ways. I see Iris’ fierceness. Chuckie’s tenderness.
And I think about my mother.
There will always be a part of me that aches knowing she is not physically here for the small moments or the milestone ones. She never got to hold her grandchildren in her arms. Never got to bake beside them using the family recipes she once promised we would pass down together.
One afternoon, the kids and I were baking together using my mother’s recipe.
The house was loud, the kitchen messy in the familiar way it always is with three toddlers helping. In the middle of it all, I happened to look up toward the kitchen window.
A bright red cardinal sat quietly on a branch just outside, almost as if it had stopped watching us for a moment.
It caught me off guard enough that I just stood there staring.
And for a second, I felt her again.
Not in some overwhelming or dramatic way.
Just enough to remind me that love can still exist alongside us, even after loss.
And yet, somehow, she is woven through every part of their story.
I see it now in ways I couldn’t understand back then.
In the signs that arrived exactly when I needed reassurance.
In the impossible timing.
In the strength I somehow found during the hardest moments of my pregnancy and their NICU stay.
In the quiet sense that I was never carrying all of this alone.
For a long time, I thought grief meant losing someone completely.
But motherhood taught me otherwise.
Love continues participating in our lives long after someone is gone.
My mother may not have been here physically to guide me into motherhood the way so many daughters experience. But somehow, through all the fear, uncertainty, waiting, and miracles, she never stopped mothering me herself.
And maybe that was the gift hidden inside all those blue lobster moments.
Not proof.
Not certainty.
Just love, big enough, strong enough, and enduring enough, to keep finding its way back to me.
Even now, when I need a reminder, she still sends them.
A phone call from the exact family member I needed to hear from.
A not-so-random blue lobster toy, unknowingly gifted to the kids.
The signs are quieter these days.
Softer.
Less like billboards and parade floats.
More like gentle reminders that love does not leave us when a person does.
It simply changes form.
And occasionally, a blue lobster still appears.
Thank you for taking the time to read The Story of the Blue Lobster. If you’d like to learn more about the inspiration behind this award-winning essay and the personal journey that brought it to life, I invite you to read The Story of the Blue Lobster: From Hope to a Writer’s Digest Win.
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