“He told me, ‘Go ahead and try to leave b***h, you’re nothing. Nobody will believe you.’ I discovered I was pregnant. This was my worst nightmare, but also a glimpse of hope. He started using heroin. When she came, she brought me power. ‘If you try to leave me and take her, I will kill us all.'”
“At this point, I was devastated. Some believe being overweight can cause it. I was told that if I did not lose weight, I would go blind. I had no will to do anything anymore. It seemed that just when I made it through one obstacle to being healthy, I was facing another.”
“I tried to say to Luca that we calmly needed to go, ‘But you said we would go on the swings,’ was his response to me. I couldn’t even make it to the swings where I couldn’t stop crying. We were there for 10 minutes.”
“We ended up talking. I opened up about my grief and he shared that his father had passed away. We had been very good friends for years and helped each other through battling the same demons… And then I got the call, he had been robbed and shot in a parking lot. My world crumbled. Why him? Why now?”
“After the first incident, he had parental locks put on my phone, like I was a child, his property. I blamed myself for what happened. He convinced me if I hadn’t had been talking to my mother that night, nothing would have happened to me. I believed him.”
“Today this beautiful young child approached me and thanked me. I know some people hate police, but it’s days like today that reminds me of those who love, honor and respect the badge and uniform.”
“We woke to a text. These people helping us couldn’t understand how we could move forward with adoption until we were certain SHE WOULD LIVE. I responded verbatim, ‘WE WANT THIS GIRL NO MATTER WHAT. ‘Her piercing blue eyes were mesmerizing.”
“He panicked and tried to yell for mom and dad, but nothing came out. We heard a loud thud. It will forever be ringing in my ears.”
“In a blink of an eye, ‘it’ came. I refuse to call ‘it’ my mom, because in that moment, she wasn’t mom. Her grief had overtaken her, and ‘it’ was what she unintentionally became. And ‘it’ turned and said to me – ‘How could you let this happen?'”
“I did not want anything to do with my new son. I refused to touch him or hold him. I did not even want to see him. I am so truly sorry. I am sorry I let you down. I promise you there will be no other person in this world who will fight harder for you than I will.”
