“I noticed her stomach seemed very bloated, especially on one side. I asked family members to take a look – no one was concerned. The oncologist asked lots of questions, but one stopped us in our tracks. ‘Has anyone in your families had cancer?’ I looked at my husband, and he looked at me. In that moment, we both knew what she was about to say. ‘I’m so sorry.’ She had tears in her eyes.”
“Your eyeballs are hanging out of your head at 3:00 a.m. while you’re looking at your partner’s worthless nipples. You’re on the couch, barely speaking to each other, thinking every noise is the baby waking. Scrolling through phones to fall asleep, you forget to say goodnight. Conversations were once everything. Now, they’re kept to the point because there’s just no time.”
“I was squeaking down the linoleum hallway with my friend when she informed me with a smack of her bubble gum and a toss of her blonde hair that my sister was in fact, not real. As far as I knew, my sister was real. We had real fights. We exchanged real eye-rolls behind our parents’ backs. We slipped real ‘I’m sorry’ notes under each other’s doors after calling each other names. We were real sisters.”
“‘Hello?’ My son was crying, HARD. I could hear a LOT of noise in the background… he definitely was NOT where I left him. It sounded like wind, or traffic??? ‘Where are you? What’s wrong?’ ‘Mom, I need you to promise me I can come home.’ Even in the pain I could hear my son in, I couldn’t promise him this… I couldn’t LIE to my son. He hung up. He wouldn’t answer his phone.”
“There was signs everywhere stating, ‘Nut-Free facility.’ It was truly dreamy, until I watched a little girl approach us while eating a JIF peanut butter bar. I could have died right then. I notified the employee. He told the little girl’s mom, ‘This is a nut free facility.’ The mom did not care. Brynlee began breaking out in hives. Then she started vomiting. ‘If you waited any longer, she wouldn’t have survived.'”
“This is my first-born child. These pictures were taken 7 months apart. That is how fast someone is affected. The face of heroin and meth. Cody, if you see this, please call us… we love you!”
“I remember lying in bed at night as a little boy, begging God to not let me be gay. Every single night I’d end my prayers with, ‘God, please don’t let me have nightmares, and please don’t let me be gay.’ My dad would call me a sissy and say, ‘Don’t act like a queer.’ When I finally came out, I was so scared. Her reaction was so matter-of-fact. ‘It’s no big deal!'”
“‘There is nothing more we can do.’ We counted her tiny fingers, toes. She had my nose, and the most stunning blue-green eyes. We held her hand, stroked her hair. It was the first and last time my husband got to hold his daughter. The little girl whose name he chose. The nurse wrapped her in a white blanket and handed her to me. I took in every detail of her beautiful face, holding her tiny hand until all warmth was gone.”
“I am writing this to you from the table of our tiny little space. In the room behind me our three beautiful little homeschooled boys are sleeping in bunks and my husband is telling me it’s getting late from our room on the other side of the living/kitchen/dining area. We could go out tomorrow and be approved for monstrous debt, we just don’t want it.”
“After my first round of chemo, my husband left me. His family told me he ‘couldn’t stand by and watch the girl he loves, die.’ I filed for a divorce. After 2 more rounds of chemo with my daughter, she was born 6 weeks early. ‘I am leaving this hospital with or without your permission so I can spend Christmas at home with my two daughters.’”
