“I remember calling my sister to tell her our ‘news.’ Maybe it was funny at the time, but as the years went by and my womb remained empty, this prank became cruel and nowhere near funny. I know this is typically just an innocent prank, but to others, it might not be funny at all.”
“Emily was such a gifted kid. I was the jealous older brother. I always thought she would be going places. Until things changed. We received a large inheritance from our grandmother’s passing. It was like a switch. ‘I never want to see or speak to you again,’ I said to my sister.”
“I went to bed, buried myself under the comforters, and cried until there was nothing left. He would never work at his father’s firm, never give me grandchildren, and would probably never live independently.”
“My kids went to bed at 9 p.m. every night. They weren’t pathological liars. They weren’t violent. They didn’t disrespect authority figures. If anyone has tried to talk to you about the behavior of your kid, instead of getting offended, get better.”
“I’m sitting here shaking my head at the age of 35, because I still feel guilty for my careless words that afternoon.”
“On my first day of high school, in walks a new boy with familiar bright blonde hair. His name was Briggs and for some reason I couldn’t get it out of my head. I still remember the first time I went into his house. His mother led me to an old photograph hanging right on the wall. It was me. In that very moment, I thought to myself, ‘This is the man I want to marry.’ I felt completely at home.”
“Two years later, it happened again. I was at a cancer specialty hospital with my now late husband, who had been diagnosed. I was scared. As we were walking out to the car, I saw her again. She was crying.”
“Let me tell y’all something! Sometimes I have some REALLY grumpy boyfriends and husbands come to my sessions. Dudes who are on their phones the entire time, saying, ‘Are we done yet?’ But every once in a while, you get a gem.”
“Every day that went by, we didn’t know if it would be our last together. Every time the phone rang my stomach was in knots. There were a few times I remember looking at each other like, ‘What the heck did we just get ourselves into?’”
“The friends I had gone to high school with tore me apart online for posting a picture of my baby and saying I loved him. ‘How can you say you love him when you didn’t even want him,’ they wrote. ‘You didn’t even want to be a mom.’”
