“You yell at your children to just ‘listen, for goodness sakes,’ but can tune those monkeys out like it’s nobody’s business. You gain 50 pounds and yet you’ve never sat down to have a proper meal ever! You spend all day waiting for those stinkers to go bed, but when they fall asleep, you stare at their little faces, your heart so full of love.”
“Nothing can or should justify why I engaged in a virtual online affair with someone else while being with you. I am explaining what led me to doing it, and why it meant nothing to me. It’s here, in this moment, that I broke and made the worst decision in my life.”
“She was my understudy. A woman I would never know. We didn’t want to have to explain why I gave birth to a half Asian baby. By this point, we had spent SO MUCH MONEY, and to walk away without trying one more option seemed like we just blew it all for nothing.”
“You picked on her. You were extra rough and rambunctious as a toddler. You were jealous. It was hard. I made it a point to explain…over and over again… if you were on the same side, at least you’d always have a friend. I’m awestruck when I see you protecting her from harm.”
“I get defensive about anything and everything. I immediately feel like everything is my fault and there is no way I can be enough. I turn into someone who is unrecognizable to the people who know me, as I’m simply the worst version of myself.”
“I can remember my grandmother’s engaging and sometimes horrific stories of sacrifice. She could cook big feed the masses until all of our buttons burst. And she did this with a very limited fixed income. No part of a chicken roast was ever wasted.”
“You see, she’s been fighting mental illness on top of a pandemic. She’s been worrying about her kids every second of the day. She’s been trying to make everyone’s world as normal as possible, and guess who’s forgotten? Her. Don’t let her carry all the burden alone.”
“My husband called his family to say, ‘Mom and baby are okay.’ When he stepped out of the room, my blood pressure dropped. It was my worst nightmare all over again. I don’t know if others would make the same choices I did.”
“I always had a perception of what ‘outside people’ would act like when I told them, ‘I carried my son as a dad.’”
“As I type this out, my son is outside earning money by cleaning out part of the garage and cleaning up the flower beds. Guess he wants that video game pretty bad! Allow them to earn money through good ole work.”
