“My children are playing way too many video games. My husband and I are constantly butting heads. I miss seeing faces without masks, miss asking my babies how their day was at school. I miss not having to stand in a line. AND WHY DO I HAVE SUCH A HARD TIME FOLLOWING THOSE DANG ARROWS?!”
“There’s been a shift in the world, in the way in which we treat one another. No longer do we see the common threads that bind us.”
“When I was a kid in the 80s, we lived a very different life. We had lives our parents never really knew about. I didn’t grow up with someone micro-managing my childhood.”
“My heart nearly exploded. I started to cry and said, ‘Lets do it!’ I vowed to step up and parent a little boy, but truth is, he taught me more then I could ever teach him.”
“I tried all of the creams. For years, I wore only high-rise pants and would turn away from friends when we were getting dressed. I hated what I saw in the mirror. But one day, I looked down at my tummy and saw the ripples, the marks, the stretched belly button. And I smiled. This body is my home.”
“My husband and I ever-so-reluctantly agreed to foster a dog. And foster we meant! Then, we got the call. ‘Can you bring Layla to meet her new mom tomorrow?’ New mom? Tomorrow? I did not like the sound of either of those things. She still belonged to my family.”
“I wrote a list of things down I wanted in a man and circled the list in prayer. Two months after I finally stopped fighting for my old life, I met Ryan. ‘If you want to date me, you have to date my daughter.’ I was tough. I pushed back. I shared the good, the bad, the ugly. Without question, without a pause, without a doubt, he chose me. And he chose my daughter, too.”
“When she was born, everyone in the room gasped. Our rainbow baby became our miracle baby.”
“I had very little information in my adoption paperwork left by my biological mother. I wanted to try to connect with my biological family. My adoptive mom ended up finding my older sister. She was in shock, as they didn’t know about me at all.”
“We cried loud and hard and basked in that moment of complete shock and joy. The room seemed so loud, when suddenly somewhere in the room I hear the words, ‘What about the lip…’ and then deafening silence. I shot straight up, picked her up, and flipped her over. The world stopped. ‘Babe look….’ My husband turned pale.”
