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Tonya Dorsey sat there, paralyzed by depression, barely able to muster the energy to turn on the television.

Once the TV was on, she was assaulted by a barrage of commercials and programming about babies: Sitcom babies in hospitals; gurgling, happy babies in Hallmark commercials; a baby so excited by her mother's purchase of a minivan that a sonogram showed her jumping for joy in the womb.

That was Dorsey's low point after miscarrying her first pregnancy in 2001, when she lost the daughter she'd named Alexandra Monique. She chronicles her journey out of that depression in a new book, "From Crisis to Purpose: A Mother's Memoir," a book she said she wrote to "elevate the dialogue on loss."

"I wanted to affirm and validate the grief of parents whose children are lost during pregnancy or through stillbirth, who are often told to move on," said Dorsey, 38, of Bowie. "I wanted to paint a picture of what that experience is to help parents — and anyone who's gone through a crisis — be able to move forward and make their loss count for something positive."

For Dorsey, that meant a long, slow journey toward refocusing on the future — including the two children she gave birth to after losing Alexandra, now ages 4 and 6, and on her goal to write a book.

"I was still miscarrying," Dorsey said. "But I was miscarrying time now. I had to figure out how to not see my daughter's life through a lens of crisis, but to see it through a lens of purpose."

So she did what she now instructs her clients to do: She put one foot in front of the other and moved forward.

Once she did, opportunities abounded.

First, the former minister became a life coach after realizing she wanted to help a cross-section of people outside her own faith community overcome the same kind of hurdles she did.

Then, she wrote her book, aiming to get past the suffocating feeling of isolation that came with her loss by learning to share the story of what she describes as "the most devastating occurrence of my life."

Dorsey now shares her experience readily, most recently with medical personnel at Anne Arundel Medical Center at a staff in-service.

"I hope that people can identify with the ability to embrace their story," Dorsey said. "There are chapters in all our lives we like to skip over, or maybe erase. But we are the compilation of our experiences, and it is that compilation that gives us the wisdom we all individually carry. What I encourage people to do is to not look at your life through the lens of regret. Embrace your story, and make it count."