We recently connected with Samantha TRUJILLO and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I wanted to start today by sharing a little bit about myself before becoming a coach.

I joined the Air Force in May 2001. Before that, I was working for a tech company right here in Austin that built circuit boards for some of the up and coming technologies of those days.

Lots and lots of giant laptop motherboards from the 2000s.

I did the circuit board repairs for any that were damaged in the manufacturing process.

But the company started downsizing. I had made it through the first couple rounds of cuts, but I had no idea what I was going to do if I did get cut. I didn’t have any money for school, and I didn’t want to be stuck in the little town I grew up in.

I knew I would just get into trouble.

I signed up for the Air Force at 19 years old, and pretty soon, 4 enlistments came and went, and 20 years had passed.

In those 20 years, I moved 3 times for the Air Force, kept helicopters flying, became a computer guru, and finished my career out as Loadmaster on the Gigantic C-5 airplanes.

And yes, loadmaster is a completely made up term, but it means I kept the cargo and passengers safe in flight and got to do a lot of traveling during the last chunk of my career.

I got married in 2017 to my husband Matt. That’s us on our wedding day. We met on OkCUPID, but I tell everyone that we met at the dog park because that’s where we had our first date.

My daughter, Violet joined our family in February 2019. After COVID hit in 2020, I got to practice being a mom working from home.

I retired from the Air Force in February, 2021, and then my son, Eddie was born one month later in March 2021. Guys, just take a second to admire my cute kids.

We had our girl and our boy. I was 39 years old when I had my son and I had no interest in being pregnant or giving birth ever again!

During my time in the Air Force, I noticed my obsession for all things personal development. I read so many books, took so many courses and tried so many tools.

But I noticed so often that the advice didn’t work for me. I tried implementing the tools as they were presented, and I would fail at maintaining the new habit or practice that was supposed to make my life better.

My first thought when I noticed this was: There must be something wrong with me.

But this wasn’t true. Rarely, if ever, is there something fundamentally wrong with us when we face such challenges.

But I hadn’t learned the skill of meeting myself where I was as WHO I was. Then I discovered coaching in all of my personal development research.

I hired my first coach, started coaching myself, learned how to coach others and began coaching my troops while I was still in the Air Force.

So, why do I coach moms now?

As I said earlier, my daughter was born in 2019. I retired from the Air Force in 2021, just before my son was born.

And what does all of this have to do with helping you find referral opportunities for me?

Because no matter what I had experienced and learned before my kids were born, I wasn’t prepared for the internal shift I would experience. I wasn’t ready for the identity crisis. AND motherhood is HARD.

You can see in the picture on the slide, my daughter has lots of wires and tubes attached to her. She was hospitalized for 21 days after her birth because her umbilical cord pinched in the birth canal and she wasn’t breathing when she came into the world.

No one prepared me or even mentioned it as a possibility.
My doctors mentioned a birth plan, but it was literally them asking, “How do you want to give birth?”

My answer: “Epidural, please.”

But the epidural made my muscles so numb that I wasn’t able to contract and push. Something I didn’t even know was possible.

Five hours of active labor later…for anyone that doesn’t understand what that means, because I didn’t, this is the time I had to actively push trying to get her out. Not all the time leading up to it.

We had to let the epidural wear off enough to make my muscles effective again, but it gave her umbilical cord time to wriggle itself around her left arm.

And right at the end, they had to yank her out because she had turned blue.

They immediately went to work resuscitating her.

I didn’t get to see or touch my baby for over an hour after her birth. My brain immediately went to work looking for all the things I did wrong leading up to that moment.
Why didn’t I let them give me a C-section?
Why didn’t I tough it out without the epidural?
Why didn’t I walk more during the entire pregnancy?

Things that in the moment made perfect sense to me, but after getting my mind back in check, made no sense at all.

My son’s birth was far less emotionally traumatic…far more physically challenging considering I am 5 foot 4 inches tall on a good day and that boy was 5 ounces shy of 10 pounds.

And this kid decided to come into the world so fast that I couldn’t even get a light dose of pain medication.

And one of the first thoughts I remember having as I was getting ready to take him home:

I should have done a better job preparing Violet for being a big sister.

As humans, we are naturally hardwired to ruminate on the negative. It’s what kept us safe back in our cave dwelling days.

When we become moms, our skill for seeing all the things we’re doing wrong intensifies.

The world tells us that being a mom “SHOULD” come naturally, and when it doesn’t, our brain shows us all the evidence of how we are screwing up and how our kids will never recover. Of course, this isn’t true in most cases.

So often as I enter this journey every day, I find so many mothers out there experiencing guilt and burn out, and they feel little to no support. I offer that support through my coaching program. But I also show them ways out of their thinking cycles that keep leading them down the path to guilt and burn out.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have always had a love for personal development. I first embarked upon the journey through self study, and even started going to school for psychology. But something wasn’t resonating for me. It wasn’t until I discovered coaching that I understood why.

Psychology and Therapy are the perfect tools for unraveling the past. If so   mething in a person’s past keeps coming up and blocking their progress, that is exactly what therapy helps with.

But I wanted to focus on where I was going and how I could help others get to where they are going. Future focused thinking. And that’s where coaching shines for me.

After my first pregnancy, I struggled with my mental health and learned much later that I was suffering from some pretty severe postpartum depression. There is so much more understanding of mental health issues today, but mothers are still a very underserved sector, especially after our babies are born. We no longer see our OBs who got us through the entire pregnancy. Our visits are with the pediatrician to check on our baby. Mama gets a short questionnaire that barely captures the experiences women have with postpartum depression or anxieties.

After my second pregnancy, I was able to recognize the symptoms more readily for myself. I used coaching tools for myself as I processed what was happening for me and reconnected with myself.

But most women I’ve worked with have no idea that they are experiencing any sort of postpartum issues. So, now I offer support to women by encouraging them to speak to their doctors when symptoms show up. The issues are normal, but the lack of understanding isn’t.

And it’s one of the reasons I love working with new mothers especially. The transition into motherhood isn’t easy, and because I coach using the Voxer app, I’m available for them to lean on any time. Motherhood doesn’t abide by a schedule, and the support for mothers shouldn’t either.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

One of the biggest pieces in my puzzle is my first marriage. I was 19 years old when I got married. He was a member of the Air Force, and he was also a member of my squadron.

I can look back now and see so many of the red flags, but back then I didn’t know what to look for.

The abuse didn’t start big. And the abuse didn’t last long. But it happened. The first red flag, he accused me of flirting with the guys I worked with when we all went out after work one night.

Flirting meant I laughed at on of our coworker’s jokes.

More red flags…starting fights with me every time I hung out with friends and coworkers.

Needless to say, I married him and things got more and more intense. The last thing he ever did to me was body slam me, spit in my face and call me a very ugly word.

Once I escaped this relationship, I blamed myself for so much of what happened in this relationship. I came out of this abusive situation, and was mentally beating myself up.

But this is the start of my journey. I had a war raging in my mind, and this was the proving grounds for my personal strength. Was I going to let this a**hole turn me against myself? Or was I going to find the strength to fight back against the lies he made me believe about myself? Was I going to be strong enough to love myself?

I chose to love myself, but it was a hard road. But I’m here today, still making mistakes and wrong choices, and I’m loving myself always. It’s something I have to decide to do every day, and that’s part of what I teach the women I help. We all want love, but we have to decide to love ourselves first.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

The best source of clients has been the Peanut App. It’s an app for women, moms and moms to be, to share their journey.

You can connect with local moms using their swipe function (strangely similar to Tinder’s swipe). There are interest based groups where moms can post forum type conversations.

One of the coolest features is the Pods. A host starts a pod, women can join the room and it’s just moms coming together talking and supporting each other.

I host sometimes but I also enjoy just being in the rooms. I learn so much about the struggles other moms are dealing with, and it helps me to find new and better ways to serve.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.veteranmamas.com
• Instagram: @veteran_mama
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/MomGuiltCoach
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-trujillo-4449ab93/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCoY-ggMCOlAl0s_32ATrMIg

Image Credits
Ricardo Montiel-Torres