“Rory, my nonverbal son with autism, doesn’t make eye contact. At times, he approaches other moms with hair like mine. Sometimes, he approaches other dads who are tall and thin like his dad. For a long time, I thought he didn’t really know who we all are.”
“You know it isn’t good when the doctor sits down at eye level with you. Josh and I took turns holding Holden and crying. We could feel how they all pitied us. We prepared to fight.”
“At 6 weeks old, her breathing became worrisome. She had spells of turning blue in the face. She sounded like a baby piglet. The skin around her neck sucked in with every breath. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but she was just different.”
“I vented to a friend. I asked her, ‘What is wrong with me?’ She wrote back. There is only so much one can take.”
“I need you at 2 a.m., when the rest of the world has gone to sleep. I need to fall asleep next to you, with our legs entangled in one another’s. I don’t need a huge fancy house. I just need you to come home to.”
“Really, it’s just a sugary, Southern way to say, ‘Get back in your lane.’ The highest compliment a young lady could receive was to be seen as ‘a sweet girl.’”
“My friends and family were very concerned for my safety, but I knew in my heart I could trust him. His friends believed he was being catfished. My heart was pounding in my chest. I walked out and there he was, the man I had known for five years and fallen in love with, was finally standing in front of me.”
“At 12 years old, everything shifted. My life as I knew it changed forever. Our family physician called us late one night when he saw the test results. ‘I just don’t know what to make of this.’ Even the lightest touch of a cotton ball could bring me to tears. My foot was drastically changing colors and temperatures.”
“Whether I’m sitting, standing, walking, running, my thighs touch. I don’t have eyebrow hair. At my height of 5’3″, my BMI is in the ‘overweight’ range. I never wear shorts anymore. You see, I’ve always been body-conscious.”
“As an adopted child, feeling like you are ALONE is often just a part of the territory. Feeling that way when I’d been given so much was difficult and made me feel so guilty. With sadness and the ever-growing ‘birth family’ hole in my heart, I moved forward with my life. These ‘search angels’ did more for me than they will ever know.”
