Dr. Jayme Garcia, our fifth (Real) Real Housewife of Salt Lake City, is accustomed to success. She earned top grades in high school and college, was accepted into a prestigious pharmaceutical program, where she served for two years as Class President and graduated with a Doctor of Pharmacy.
Yet in spite of all of her achievements, there is still much about Jayme’s life that she never could have predicted.
Utah, for instance.
Born and raised in Southern California, Jayme had never visited the Beehive State when she was offered the opportunity by Roseman University to enroll in their South Jordan campus. It may as well have been a foreign country.
“I truly thought there was no civilization here,” she says with a laugh. “My friends warned me that I would be living in the boondocks and end up as a sister wife.”
She was happy to discover upon arrival that nothing could be further from the truth. Jayme says she quickly fell in love with the area and, nine years after promising herself it would only be temporary, is proud to call Utah home and has no plans to ever leave.
“It’s the people,” she says. “The people here are so welcoming and kind.” She says there is a feeling of community in Utah that she never had growing up. “My entire childhood I spoke to my neighbors maybe a handful of times but here, it’s a whole different story. Everyone is constantly interacting and supporting each other.”
Although, she says, after growing up in California, “I have to laugh when people here complain about traffic.”
Jayme is an active participant of her church, South Mountain Community Church in Draper, which she says has been a tremendous source of strength, especially in recent years as her life has taken another unexpected turn.
The reason she chose to pursue a career in pharmacy, she says, was because her greatest dream has always been to be a mother, and she knew it would allow for the work life balance that requires. She and her husband Jeremi are incredible parents to their son Isaiah and have a beautiful home with “rooms to fill,” but are struggling with secondary infertility.
For years, she has suffered through multiple rounds of failed IUI and a devastating miscarriage. “It’s a constant cycle of two weeks of hope followed by two weeks of disappointment,” she says. “But it’s those two weeks of hope that keep me going.”
Hearing the stories of other women facing similar challenges has helped her through her hardest moments, and inspired her to share her own. “I’ve been blessed with a lot of success,” she says, “but I want to be just as authentic with my struggles.”
Jayme’s own mother miscarried, but she says the two of them never discussed it until she was in her 30s. “But things are changing,” she says. “One in four women miscarry, and one in eight struggle with infertility. They need to know they're not alone.”
And so she tells them. Recently while on shift, Jayme was called up for a patient consultation. When she saw the prescription she knew the woman had miscarried, and was able to offer not only the medical advice she needed, but compassionate tears of someone who understood what she was going through.
Jayme says she never could have predicted the current circumstances of her life - where she’s living and working, or the winding path to expand her family. But in moments like that, connecting with another woman who is suffering, she says it all somehow seems perfectly aligned.
This is how we do it here.
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