“Angie confided, ‘Why don’t you take our appointment? I will call the doctor and set it up.’ The kindness Angie showed me when I was feeling such deep desperation has always stayed with me. They both shared a positive outlook on life which is contagious. Lizzie and Sam hadn’t seen each other in over a decade!”
“My whole family was paying the price. I began to struggle more with anger, anxiety, and depression. I had to get more sleep. I was happy to breastfeed again.”
“‘I sat in my room, talking to him and waiting for my husband, a start of what was sure to be another boring day of quarantine thanks to COVID-19. ‘I saw something on the news about a shooting.’ He was certain it was my brother. I picked up my phone to discover a 3-minute voicemail from my dad of nothing but screaming and chaos.”
“As your mom, I wanted to tell you that everything would be okay. That the world as you knew it would return to normal soon. But the truth is, it probably won’t. I held you as the first teardrop formed in the corner of your eyes. And, in a blink, the flood gates were unleashed.”
“We were nationally unwanted children. It is not always the romantic picture of children being ‘saved.’ My only connection to my past is my genes.”
“We were newlyweds. I took a pregnancy test, honestly not expecting it to say PREGNANT. I felt a rush of emotions. ‘What are people going to think?’ The morning after the ultrasound, the nurse said, ‘Her esophagus isn’t connected to her stomach.’ She went in for surgery at 4 days old. ‘We found something else.’ How could the doctors have missed this? ‘We need to cut both sides of her chest.'”
“It’s my belief ‘unschooling’ prepares our children for the real world more than any classroom ever could. My biggest fear of walking into homeschooling was teaching our daughters how to read. It seemed so overwhelming. Our daughter wasn’t happy either.”
“I want to cherish these sweet moments of his childhood. Soon, I can no longer protect this beautiful black boy from being seen as weapon. Soon, those ‘cute’ and ‘sweet’ compliments will fade, and none of it will matter because he is BLACK.”
“Within a couple of days, she said, ‘If you want to choose me, I want to choose you.’ It became official. I was shaking. I’m not blind to the fact that in order to call her mine, there was a lot of hurt that had to take place.”
“My daughter has been playing Taylor Swift on repeat. Songs trigger things. Even angsty teenagey songs. While the rain poured down on my drive home alone, I sobbed. I would give anything to hear him say ‘Hey, Mama!’ to my mom again.”
