“I always have the perfect response in my brain, but I was stunned and speechless. She cut me off and said, ‘I’m pretty bold when I’m asking questions.’”
‘I was getting my meat at the butcher. She proceeded to ask me, ‘You gonna get your tubes tied then?’ HALT.’
‘When she dies you’ll search for her, no matter how long she’s been gone. When you are walking down the aisle, when your baby is born and when the holidays come around, you’ll search the room for her.’
“Then one day you won’t have to search any longer, because you’ll find her.”
‘I open up a box of tampons and they all come falling out. My son asks, ‘what’s that?’ I say, ‘they’re baby mice!’ ‘Aww cute!,’ he said, while I’m internally laughing.’
“My son starts saying cute things at the doctor. He looks her in the eyes and says, ‘My mommy puts baby mice in her bum bum.’ The doctor looks horrified and says, ‘pardon?'”
‘He was 6 months old and only 9 pounds. I am a living nightmare. They knew it was all a tremendous f*ck up. They knew he was like this because of them.’
“I got the call around 3:30 a.m. I spent 9 months preparing for that call. 9 months worth of nights obsessively checking the volume on the phone, making sure it was charged, that it was close by, that I hadn’t somehow missed any calls. Well I got my call. Loud and clear.”
‘How much will it take to make this man drool?’ Prostitution sounds like an okay option. Pole dancing looks fun too. Why not? These were serious questions I was asking myself at 17.’
“My life seemed to have no worth. I tried to avoid being home at all costs. The next week I made the phone call that would change the course of my life. It was a crazy idea and I knew it.”
‘We brought our newborn home from the hospital and she was showered with attention and gifts. When we brought our 1-year old foster son home, he was not.’
“People did not come banging on the door to see him and hold him for the first time. People did not ‘Oooh and Ahhh’ over him. When we first told family we were adopting, we were greeted with….’That’s scary!’ ‘Are you sure?'”
‘You wouldn’t have lost weight at the holocaust.’ I had things like ‘fatty’ and ‘ugly hippo’ scrawled across every school book page. I felt like dying. I felt like giving up.’
“I was shoved down the stairs by a drunk guy at a party. ‘You are going too slow,’ he said as he pushed me. Once again, visuals of high school flooded my head, and I started to feel myself giving up.”
‘He didn’t want what he’d been given. He would hardly even look at it. He wanted the gift that had been presented to somebody else.’
“He didn’t want to trade. Punches were thrown. Timeouts were given. But I get it. I totally get it.”
‘You’re so damn tired you don’t want to be touched. When it came to sleep or sex, sleep always won.’
“Our first year as parents, we had sex maybe 5 times. I was neck deep in my postpartum depression and anxiety, which didn’t help.”
‘I did something horrible. I broke all my rules. I told my son not to eat too much crap or he will get fat.’
“I can’t believe I said it. The words rolled out of my mouth and I immediately regretted it.”
