I used to think I could explain it — why giving birth abroad mattered, why it was worth the risk, the distance, the uncertainty. I thought if I just laid out the facts clearly enough, she’d see what I saw: the opportunity, the security, the freedom of choice.

But facts alone don’t move us toward life-changing decisions.

Most men in my position know the feeling — the helplessness of knowing something’s important, yet realizing it’s not you who has to live it in her body. You can’t make her feel ready. Logic rarely unlocks the kind of courage these decisions require. And the harder you try, the more it sounds like pressure instead of partnership.

Then one night, everything shifted — and it had nothing to do with me.

My wife had been in a Friday night book club with her friends and her mom. They’d sit around, talk about life, and read their way through stacks of novels. I didn’t pay much attention. She’d been devouring books that year, dozens of them. But two in particular left a mark — Winter Garden and The Nightingale, both by Kristin Hannah.

At the time, I didn’t know much about either book. I only found out later how much one of them — The Nightingale — had shaped her thinking. It’s a story about two sisters in France during World War II, about courage, survival, and what it means to protect the people you love when everything familiar is falling apart.

Looking back, I realize she wasn’t just reading. She was preparing. And she was doing it alongside other women — which mattered more than I understood at the time.

Months after she’d read it, we were home one evening — her, her mom, and me — trying to find something to watch. She was scrolling through YouTube when a video popped up — someone named Haley Pham reviewing The Nightingale. She clicked on it.

A few minutes in, she looked at me and said, “Hey — I read that book!”

We watched together as Haley talked about the story — about Vianne and Isabelle, about the choices they made when their world became unrecognizable. About how they didn’t wait for safety to arrive. They created it.

And then my wife started talking. Not to convince anyone, but just to process out loud what the book had meant to her. She talked about how the sisters didn’t have the luxury of certainty. They had to act on what they knew could go wrong, not what they hoped would stay the same. They had to think ahead — to prepare documents, to secure escape routes, to build options before the walls closed in.

That was when it clicked.

This wasn’t about fear. It wasn’t about abandoning home. It was about making sure our child had a choice we might not be able to give him later. An extra passport. A legal claim to another place. A safety net we hoped he’d never use — but one that could change everything if he did.

The Nightingale hadn’t convinced her to leave. It convinced her that people who love their families don’t wait until the storm hits to build the shelter.

So we chose Brazil. After months of research into healthcare quality, legal requirements, and medical practices, we felt it was the best place in the world for what we were trying to do.

And then something happened that proved we’d made the right choice in ways we never anticipated.

Our baby was born breech — feet first. She’d done everything possible to get him to turn, but he just wouldn’t. In the United States, this means an automatic C-section. There’s no discussion, no alternative. But in Brazil, with skilled physicians who hadn’t lost the expertise for breech delivery, our son was born naturally. No surgery. No extended recovery. Just an option that doesn’t exist anymore in American hospitals.

I didn’t convince her to take that leap. The story did.

If you’re reading this because you’re trying to convince someone you love to take a leap you can’t take for them — stop. Not because it’s not worth doing, but because convincing isn’t the path.

Create space instead. Do the research. Handle the logistics. Remove every obstacle you can. And then trust that she’ll find her own reasons when she’s ready.

They might not be the reasons you’d choose. They might come from places you’d never think to look. But they’ll be hers — and that’s the only way this works.