“I hid big, dark, angry, broken feelings from the world. If I acknowledged their legitimacy, that meant I had to acknowledge that my husband–the megachurch pastor–was my abuser. And I was his victim. No, thanks! I’d much prefer to pretend everything is fine and our family is blessed.”
“A long, lost friend sent us a beautiful Christmas card. She had given birth to twins. I didn’t even know it was possible at our age. ‘My oldest daughter just started college,’ I told her. Yet, I couldn’t stop thinking about the possibilities. The doctor told me all of the egg donors would be Taiwanese. There was a lot of red tape to endure. Cautiously, I walked out the door. I was so fearful the embryos might fall out of me. I didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize this.”
“I went to open my mouth to tell her exactly how I am not a lazy parent and she can piss off, but instead, I smiled. ‘Why do you think it’s lazy?’ Shocked, she replied, ‘Well instead of actually doing things, parents don’t have to parent – they just give them mind numbing devices. Children grow up not normal,’ she said, ever so smugly.”
“I’ve said goodbye to perky boobs and stretch mark-free legs. But THIS. It’s one of MY things. We all have them. The little pieces of ourselves we give away so passively when the world isn’t looking. We talk about the big things we give up—our careers, the way our bodies look. But we also give up what make us US. Tonight, I mourn the loss of something I wanted in my life, in exchange for something I want much more.”
“He kept telling me how beautiful I was and how any man would be lucky to have me. I began hearing the rumors from a few people about the girls he’d been with. ‘This isn’t true,’ I kept telling myself. I barely recognized him anymore. I told him, ‘It’s better if we just stay friends.’ He grabbed my head and slammed it into a car window. I prayed to God to keep me safe. I didn’t want to leave my daughter alone. Within 3 weeks, I found out I was pregnant.”
“During 5th grade, at my father’s office party in some big hotel, I went upstairs to play hide and seek. A completely drunk stranger started following us. When the rest of the group hid behind the sofa, the man pinned me down. After he was done, I ran downstairs to my parents. We were all crying and pointing upstairs. All the adults searched for the man, but he had left the premises. I packed more than 33 pounds. They would warn their kids, ‘Stop eating. Do you want to look like her?’”
“I had 4 children, 3 triplets. Truthfully, none of them were planned. The chaos I created was unraveling at the seams. I was leaving a women’s prison to live in a homeless shelter because not a single person wanted me paroled to their home. If I felt I didn’t belong, I’d draw a line of cocaine. As the need for the next high got more severe, so did the consequences. I wanted the heroin to remove the dirty feeling on my skin.”
“Women have approached my son at the park with my husband and said, ‘Honey, where is your mommy? Do you know him? Do you need me to help you find your mommy?’ He’s assumed to be a criminal while I’m always viewed as the saint, a woman who adopted black children out of the goodness of her heart.”
“One night, my wife couldn’t lift her legs up the two steps on the front porch. She was carrying a bag with a t-shirt in it. The weight of it was enough to make her fall. I went out to find her hunched over, completely unable to move. She stayed there, crying and yelling, ‘Just leave me out here! Let me die!’ I knew something was wrong. In the freezing cold, I dragged her. ‘How do we tell the kids?’ The numbness was unbearable.”
“I gasped. I ran back to the garage, flung open the safe, and patted my hand. I felt the plastic sandwich bag. I pulled it out. And there it was. Two perfect pins. The real pins. Not only that, but his nameplate was in there, too. Tucked away. For the right time. Entrusting a stranger with something so personal, so sentimental, was like entrusting his body with the funeral home. I received the call, drove to the shop, my heart racing. ‘Stunning,’ I thought. When my 2 girls opened the jewelry box together, their collective gasps spoke volumes.”
