“She was perfectly formed. She had long, narrow toes like her Mama, full beautiful lips like her Daddy. It took my breath away. I was in love. But our sweet baby wasn’t there. We held and kissed her 1,000 times. ‘We will miss you every moment of our lives,’ we told her. I could almost hear her coo. We said goodbye to her little body. They carried her away.”
“I was 24 years old when I watched my husband suffocate to death. I destroyed the hospital room. I threw things. I screamed. I tried to resuscitate him. And then I lay helplessly on his cold chest and sobbed. But I was not alone that day. Jon was a dear friend of Jordan’s. In our wedding, Jon was one of our ushers. He paused to let me take in what he was saying. ‘I just want what is best for you. If you want me to wait for you, I will.’”
“The week before, we were celebrating our 8-year wedding anniversary and my 5 years being in remission from my fight with cancer. For 5 years, we held our breath – hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. The week before Brad’s ER visit, we finally exhaled. We talked about our future. Whether or not we wanted kids. Where we’d retire. And then, Brad started having fevers and night sweats, symptoms I was all too familiar with.”
“If it weren’t for my sister calling me right before, I wouldn’t be here. She had no idea I’d just written a letter saying ‘goodbye.’ No one knew I was suffering. No one asked if I was okay. I shared only the good parts of my life, never the struggles. My family thought my life was beautiful and amazing.”
“We got a knock on the door. ‘I’m sorry for your loss, I’m here to take Ren.’ I couldn’t get myself to physically lay Ren in the box. I turned to my husband and asked if he was okay to do it. I saw his heart rip in two. Tears streamed down his face. We tried to take in every detail, remember his newborn smell. We gently took off the cap they gave him. He had tiny little blonde curls.”
“She was a stripper, and she introduced me to the lifestyle. I was infatuated by it. Fast money, flashy life, and drugs galore. It wasn’t long before I started working as a dancer in the strip club, and my life took an even darker turn. I was in the bathroom doing lines of cocaine. She pulled out another bag of drugs that looked different. ‘It’s heroin. Do you want to try it?’ Biggest mistake of my life.”
“At 11, they draped a pale, unfamiliar version of my dad in white. ‘Are you alone?’ I watched a flurry of red and blue police lights dance across my ceiling. Alcohol poisoning. He never returned. You knew my past. Yet, you judged me when I turned down your drink. Did you know, I saw my father in my nightmares that night? Did you know, I was smiling, but dying on the inside? My trauma is more important than your right to a fun time.”
“We decided we were done having children, but still had 6 embryos frozen. I created a Facebook profile in hopes of finding a deserving family. I didn’t expect much. Within hours, we had EIGHT families interested. Kate and Seth were put in our path for a reason.”
“‘Sir, you have kidney cancer.’ My husband was 32. It was shocking. Before cancer was our biggest obstacle, infertility was. We chose to freeze his sperm – a decision that would change our lives forever. Two embryos were left over. Our hospital didn’t believe in destroying them, so I had to decide what that meant for me. Before he died, Joel told me, ‘You and I are going to have another baby. It will be a girl, you know what to name her.’”
“When my husband and I were told our child had a lifelong and severe medical condition, things changed. I feel no bitterness, no resentment, no envy for others who don’t have to consider these things. I do, however, feel sadness.”
