“Stay in tune with your stress levels and monitor your emotions.”
How To Keep Christmas Magic Alive: 8 Parenting Tips For Conquering Holiday Stress
‘He was only 2-years-old. She was only 5-months-old. It was as if they knew. I never witnessed anything like it.’: 47-year-old mother fosters, then adopts siblings, celebrates ‘resiliency’ of children
“We received a call from a very desperate young man named Jonathan. ‘My wife is not properly caring for our 4-month-old son.’ He very was concerned about the welfare of his baby and convinced his wife to allow us to help. My husband and I are 47-years-old, we are sometimes mistaken as the grandparents. We know we probably won’t have an empty nest and that’s just fine with us.”
‘He got cold feet on our wedding day. ‘You aren’t worthy of me.’: Woman takes ‘leap of faith’ and escapes domestic violence, re-marries ‘amazing man, father’
“He said, ‘I made you a mother and nobody else would ever marry you.’ He spit on my face. I worried about how others saw divorce. I looked at my life and my innocent girls who didn’t deserve the hand I dealt them, and suddenly I saw the reality of our situation. I chose to JUMP! My daughters were better off with a divorced, living mother, than a dead, married one.”
‘You’re stupid, and you’re worthless, and you’re a failure, and you should just die.’: College graduate discusses battles with Depression and PTSD
“My own self-worth was now completely dependent on how well I was doing in school. I turned to binge drinking and partying on the weekends to cope with the immense pressure I felt throughout the week. I did not know how to express my pain or ask for help, I only knew to bottle things up and press on, and so I did. I felt dead inside already, I’d hit my rock bottom. I decided I was going to get serious help.”
‘Only 6 months after our divorce was final, my ex-husband ended his lifelong battle with mental illness.’: Woman’s journey to discover her ‘self-worth’ after ex’s suicide
“I kissed, hugged and squeezed him, laughing and crying, in shock. The crazy thing about it is that even though our marriage was always hard – he was abusive and constantly tormented by his own mind – I loved him. I still do.”
‘My card got declined in the checkout line. I was a new mom with 2 kids under 3. I felt like I could just melt into the floor.’: Mom pays it forward after stranger’s act of kindness
“My two-year-old was asking for bubble gum and chocolate bars. Without missing a beat, the man behind me in line handed the cashier his card. ‘I’ve got it.’ He said. My friend at the cash register was near tears by the end of her shift. I won’t ever forget that day and I doubt she has either.”
‘We won’t have a little voice waking us up Christmas morning, no opening presents. We put up lights, even though they can’t express their excitement.’: Special needs mom shares reality of Christmas season, ‘Our babies are the gift’
“Our Christmas is different than yours. We get no excited screams when they see what Santa brought. It’s struggling with gift ideas. What do you get a non-mobile, non-verbal child? It’s walking past all the cool toys at the front of every store, wishing our child could play with them. Our Christmas is different, but it’s still so magical.”
‘Y’all, I was too embarrassed to go to the car wash. ‘Everyone pick up their stuff.’ I just wasn’t willing to listen to my husband.’: Mom shares hilarious car wash fail
“Basically, my car was too dirty to go to a car wash. I chose the vacuums as far away from other people as humanly possible, sure no one would notice the avalanche of crap about to fall out of my passenger side door. I was so very wrong. Up pulled a man in a light blue, flawless car.”
‘We can’t do anything else.’ I was 18 with a deceased baby. They pulled a drain tube out and her little belly filled with blood.’: Teen loses daughter to congenital heart disease, donates 455 oz. of breast milk to save sick NICU babies
“She had open heart surgery at just 1 day old. I was terrified. My little girl was on full life support. ‘Why would God give me a sick baby?’ She was bleeding out. I decided to turn something so painful into something beautiful. Even though I couldn’t save my baby, I decided I could save others.”
‘Wait. Is this normal?’ He turned his neck. My first thought, as a mama of 10, was lymph node. Then, I touched it. I knew.’: Mom admires 11-year-old son’s tenacity during cancer battle, ‘Told you I’d live’
“My husband and I decided to stop fooling around. I loaded up 10 kids, rented a house in another state, and we hit the road. I waited for the final lab reports. I was making sandwiches. I’ll never forget which step I was on, because that’s how they stayed. Pregnant with our 11th baby, the surgeon’s number popped up on my phone. He asked me to walk away from the children. My heart screamed, ‘NOT MY BABY.’”