Sarah Rodriguez and her daughter, Ellis.
Three years after her husband’s death from kidney cancer, Sarah Rodriguez revels in the milestones that weren’t supposed to happen as her 22-month-old toddler, Ellis, scoots across the floor and proudly pulls herself up on the living room sofa.
“She’s feisty and stubborn and she’s determined to walk, so it won’t be long now,” Rodriguez, 35, tells PEOPLE exclusively. “It’s bittersweet because I wish that Joel could be here to see this, but Ellis will grow up knowing who he is. I talk about him like he’s going to walk through the door any minute. I want her to always have that connection and know that her dad was a hero.”
Rodriguez was profiled in PEOPLE last year when her daughter – conceived via in vitro fertilization after Joel Rodriguez‘s death – was released from the hospital following a multitude of health problems. And this week, she published a book about her experiences, From Depths We Rise.
The popular Journey of Sarah blogger, now raising Ellis and Milo, 4, on her own in Norman, Oklahoma, found comfort and healing in telling the intimate story of losing her husband and gaining a daughter who doctors did not expect to survive.
Sarah Rodriguez and her kids, Milo and Ellis.
Sarah Rodriguez
“From the very beginning, I decided to take my pain and give it a purpose,” she tells PEOPLE. “Nobody wants to go through suffering, but you can use it to make a better version of yourself. It’s been really rewarding to see the good things that have come from sharing my story to help others.”
“We’re so proud of Sarah and the choice she has made to be an encouragement to others who are going through their own heartache,” adds Rodriguez’s father, Keith Siess, who lives nearby and often babysits Ellis and Milo with his wife, Debbie. “We always knew she was a strong woman, but never knew exactly how strong until now.”
Sarah Rodriguez and her late husband, Joel Rodriguez.
Sarah Rodriguez
After struggling with infertility for four years until she became pregnant with Milo through IVF, Rodriguez learned three days after her son’s birth in 2012 that Joel’s kidney cancer – thought to be in remission since 2010 – had returned.
When it became clear that Joel wasn’t going to make it, he told Sarah not to worry – he had a strong feeling that she would have another child. “This time,” he told her before he died on July 23, 2013, “you’re going to have a little girl.”
Sarah Rodriguez and her late husband, Joel Rodriguez.
Sarah Rodriguez
Days after his death, Rodriguez remembered that two more embryos were in a freezer down the street at the infertility clinic.
“I had this feeling in my heart that I should have another child and that there would be purpose to her life,” she tells PEOPLE.
Ellis
Sarah Rodriguez
Born on Nov. 6, 2014, Ellis was diagnosed with bacterial meningitis and was in critical condition for three weeks. Doctors finally convinced Rodriguez to take her daughter off life support and say a final goodbye.
But when she held her baby close, determined that she would leave the world knowing she was loved, Ellis inexplicably began to breathe on her own.
Sarah Rodriguez and her kids, Milo and Ellis.
Sarah Rodriguez
“They checked her vitals and everything was normal, like she’d never had meningitis,” Rodriguez recalls. “Nobody could believe it – a real miracle.”
Today, as Ellis reaches new milestones every month, there is no sign of the brain damage that doctors were convinced she would have.
“When she said ‘Mama’ at 5 months, I cried because I was told she would never talk,” Rodriguez tells PEOPLE. “I was told that she’d never be able to give love or receive it. But I’m receiving that love now, every day. I wake up every morning, grateful to see life for the gift that it is.”