“Ever seen a woman who’s just been raped, just had a 3-hour forensic exam, had every surface of her battered body swabbed, photographed, and inventoried for the police walk out of a hospital wearing oversized hospital scrubs and postpartum hospital underwear, her arms wrapped tightly around her chest, ashamed, because she doesn’t have a bra to wear? I have. And I absolutely refuse to ever see it again.”
“Riley was diagnosed with Autism when he was 2-years-old. He is non-verbal and has a lot of sensory issues. He doesn’t like loud noises, or bright lights, but what he does love is Christmas. Since he cannot speak, Riley has learned to sign ‘Riley is good’ and for the last few weeks has been telling everyone he meets he is a good boy. Santa showed up at his house to tell Riley he would go through the naughty and nice list with him.”
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve answered, ‘How are you?,’ with a forced, fake, ‘Hanging in there!’ just to make the conversation easier. We hung her Christmas stocking on the mantle this year. I am painfully aware that on Christmas morning, that stocking will hang empty as the others burst with gifts. ‘Why me? Why our family?’ But for now, we honor her absence. I am finally ready.”
“‘His heart could be repaired,’ I thought. We could get past that, carry on. And then the doctor said, ‘This is very common with Down syndrome.’ That I didn’t want to hear. Surgery wasn’t going to fix that. I put it out of my mind. Our baby wasn’t going to have Down syndrome! Then the doctor said, ‘You have the option to terminate.’”
“My face was red and my eyes were swollen from sobbing. When we were good, we were great. When we were bad, we were absolutely volatile. She dropped the inevitable bombshell. ‘Where do you think this is coming from?’ ‘What he put me through,’ I replied. ‘Deeper, Amber.’ It hit me. There was no miracle. Our marriage was over.”
“We all fall on hard times but there’s always hope, sometimes all you need is a little love and support.”
“Our babies! Were they gone? We drove the 3 hours to the IVF clinic. The doctor informed us, ‘One baby is still there, and next to the baby is a blood clot 4 times its size.’ I remember my eyes filling with tears. I began crying on my wife’s shoulder. ‘What you two are doing isn’t right.’ No one ever tells you how hard it will be to have kids when you’re gay.”
“When we got married, I had no idea how to relax my body. How to communicate without completely shutting down for days. I struggled to show emotion, to be vulnerable. It took 5 years of marriage for me to believe he wasn’t going to hit me when he got mad. The simple act of raising his arms triggered me and made me flinch.”
“Addiction is a room (and whole hospital waiting room) full of brothers, sisters, nieces, uncles and friends beating themselves up because they didn’t save you. It’s a doctor saying the words ‘legally brain dead.’ An empty chair at every family event. It’s a daughter, a son who have to figure this world out without their dad. This is a man who loved with everything he had. Drugs don’t love you. Your family and friends do.”
“The next day, after a well deserved rest, the family appeared to meet our baby girl. With them taking photos and taking turns holding ‘the potato,’ we really starting to notice her face. She was NOT happy with being evicted. I told my husband as he was holding Luna, ‘check out that face.’ She had his stupid mean mug face, but unlike him, she made it look good.”
