“I heard her whispering on the phone. It sounded like something was going on, but she was trying to hide it. I was completely caught off guard. She had found a lump in her breast. I immediately asked her if she was going to die. I never told anyone about any of it.”
“I’d watched life treat my brother Glen so unfairly. I wanted so badly for something to go right for him. One night, he was extremely upset. My father picked my mom and I up. Glen called us to see where we were, and I still remember her last words to him. ‘We’re giving you space for the night, but we want to help you, Glen.’ The next morning, we were greeted by my dog at the front door. She was crying.”
“The ultrasound tech brought me a box of tissues, tears welling up in her eyes. ‘What are the tissues for?’ I asked, confused. ‘There’s an 80% chance it’s cancer.’ I was completely shell-shocked. Numb. I couldn’t get out of the room and building fast enough. While others continued living their lives, I was stuck, sick. My life was put on hold.”
“She still cares about me like she did when I was a kid. She can’t help herself. As I’ve gotten older, my mom still does the same motherly things she’s always done, now for me and my babies. I love how precious she is to me.”
“You’ve felt like because one group didn’t want you, something must be terribly screwed up with you. But it’s not true. That ain’t nothing but dirty, nasty lies. I believed them for a long time myself.”
“When I first met my wife, it was love at first sight. Looking back on that night brings back great memories, but for my wife, those memories are gone. A quick trip to the hospital turned into an absolute nightmare. We found out she had preeclampsia, but by then, it was too late. ‘Steve, this is not easy to say, but she suffered a severe brain injury. She has lost all her memories, long and short,’ the doctor told me.”
“It’s been 7 years, so this ‘thank you’ has been a long-time coming. I wasn’t trying to be rude. I was just scared.”
“A stray bullet killed my husband 3 days after I delivered our son. His cousin Shelby was holding my baby boy moments before he died. She started sleeping with me that night and over the next year moved into the room with my son and I. For us, this PTSD was life. We couldn’t see past the blood, hear past the screams. Our brains were frozen in time, and the only way for us to climb out, was to be with each other.”
“I didn’t leave my bedroom for 7 months or my house for 11 months. Once every two weeks I was carried from the bed to the bath to be washed and changed into Pjs, then back to bed. This was my routine for 7 months.”
“Snnniiipppp. My doctor used scissors to cut me open ‘down there’ to make it easier to push the baby out. ‘What did you do?!’ I asked the male, 50-year-old doctor, with fear in my voice. Even the nurses paused. Just 30 minutes before, my doctor told me, ‘I have somewhere to be at 7 o’ clock, so you better be able to push this baby out soon.’ My husband’s rage was rising. I squeezed his hand. ‘We can’t do this now.’”
