“I must have looked terrified. The nurse said, ‘Don’t worry, this may be your first time, but it’s not our first time doing this.’ I strained to hear what the doctor was saying but couldn’t make it out. They’d occasionally laugh so I thought everything was going well. I felt a tug and I suddenly felt hollow. I remember asking, ‘Is she ok?’ She was only 2 pounds. The tiniest baby I had ever seen.”
“Wherever you stand, wherever your heart is, wherever your head is hitting the pillow, rest easy. If you are feeling like all the loose strings are about to come magnificently unraveled, you are not alone.”
“One tall football player who looked like a grown man, beard and all, pressed me with questions I didn’t want to answer. The classroom was full, and all eyes were on me. A group text with my colleagues had begun. Rumors of a gun in the school. My insides knotted up.”
“He crossed the road, climbed the bus steps, and I watched this time as his face appeared in the window. I waited for him to see me, to smile or wave or even to cry, but he never even looked at me. Instead, he looked at his wrist.”
“‘I never want you to meet my mother,’ he would tell me. I assured him she couldn’t scare me away. The cops told him to pack clothes and leave his mother’s house. ‘You aren’t going to arrest her for assaulting me?’ The cop replied, ‘You’re a big guy. There’s nothing I can do.’ I remember just shaking my head, leaning in for a hug. I love you more, Michael. But that love wasn’t enough.”
“24 hours after my daughter developed a cough, we were rushed down the halls of the children’s hospital. I asked the nurse if she was going to be okay. She told me, ‘I can’t tell you that she is. We will try our best.'”
“Every mama’s heart is burdened with the weight of her children’s fleeting childhoods. But the beauty is that we are still Mama. They may be too big to carry, or are living with their spouses, but we are still Mama.”
“The dads who said, ‘It’s okay,’ even when it wasn’t…”
“The purpose of me writing this piece is about people constantly feeling the need to make unwelcome comments and scrutinizing women’s bodies in particular.”
“Then one day you won’t have to search any longer, because you’ll find her.”
