“Where were the exits? How would I protect my kids? I hate that my mind was in a place of fear in church of all places. I often run to the grocery store or Target with all 3 of my kids. How will I protect them if someone started shooting? How can I keep them safe? How can I teach them to protect themselves? Fear can be crippling. But there will also always be light.”
“‘Why don’t you just ride with Trevor? I’m sure he’d wait for you,’ I told my husband. ‘Nah, it’s okay.’ I attempted to kiss him, but his helmet was in the way. He started up his bike and blew me a kiss. Then I remember being frozen. It was weird. Like something stopped me in my tracks and made me turn around to watch him leave.”
“Leaving meant dying and staying meant torture. My mornings consisted of figuring out how much time I had to dry my eyes and wash the blood off before work. How much time I had before he came home to get on my hands and knees and pray for my life. On average? 11 minutes. Then the abuse clock started again. It’s not easy loving a domestic violence survivor, but my partner makes it look easy.”
“From the moment we got around the corner, things felt off, eerie. As this man came closer, I realized something was very wrong. ‘You’re going to come with me and do what I say,’ he said, holding me. I would do whatever it took to keep my daughter safe. If I get a feeling, I listen.”
“After struggling for YEARS to have baby, we were going to have TWO! Our friends planned a gender reveal party for our biological baby and at the party, we also announced to everyone that a birth momma had chosen us to be parents to her baby. You should have seen everyone’s faces.”
“About 30 seconds after accepting the ride, the rider sent me a message via the app. ‘I need you to act like you know me, and that you’re not my Uber driver’. When I got there, I had my window rolled down. She looked over and yelled, ‘Hi, Babe! I’ll be right there!’”
“To us, there was never a question. In room 117, he came into this world. Crying, alive, and doing it on his own! The doctors were wrong. Was he perfect? No, he was perfectly imperfect, and he was HERE. Alive, and a fighter.”
“I remember the phone call as clear as day. I was home, and our daughter was playing in her room. The phone rang. We were told that our baby did not have Down Syndrome. There was a ‘but’ at the end of the sentence. Then the tears came. Loud obnoxious tears. I hung up the phone and cried as hard as I ever have. She wasn’t going to live.”
“There was a chill in his voice. ‘Nobody will even miss you. No one cares about you. No one loves you.’ The torture went on all night into daylight. I ran out the front door looking for help. The only person that would help me was a young mom.”
“‘We’re going to die, oh we’re going to die!’ cried out our youngest, sounding more like his brother than himself. Secretly, I feared that myself, but I wasn’t about to say that to him! I closed my eyes in terror. I wanted to put on a brave face for our son who was being even braver than me, but I couldn’t do it. Then came the screams.”
