“I didn’t think about the dangers, even though my husband and I argued every night about it. He’s not my husband anymore. My other two children have now been adopted by another family. I lost everything – just because I took that risk.”
“I didn’t think about the dangers, even though my husband and I argued every night about it. He’s not my husband anymore. My other two children have now been adopted by another family. I lost everything – just because I took that risk.”
“The last time a police officer came to my house, he asked, ‘Do you want to go get a cookie?’ I was only 5, so that was a big deal. I didn’t understand why my biological mom was crying as we drove away. We picked up my sister at school, then waited at DHS to drive us to a foster home. All we had were the clothes on our backs, and even those were dirty. ‘I need a place to stay until I figure out where to go,’ I said.”
“In weeks, my husband went from being able to drive to and from work, to having to be driven to work, to working from home. One day, got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He was so unsteady that I held my breath while I listened for him to return to bed. He made a stop in our children’s rooms to give them each a kiss. I had this terrible thought it would be the last time he’d do so.”
“At the end of this long, exhausting appointment, Charity says, ‘Oh, and congratulations on your baby.’ Congratulations on our baby? You mean the one you told me is going to die? I ran out of that room so fast. Despite it all, his broken heart kept beating. I recall a single tear escaping my eye and falling on his face.”
“I made the decision to keep the baby. As word spread, I could no longer bear going to school. I gave birth, terrified. My nurse had been a teen mom. She stayed with me the entire time. ‘I see something special in you, you can do this.’ In that moment, I knew I was going to be a good mom. For you Ella, I would do it all over again.”
“My poor baby was found with finger marks around her throat. Her phone was factory reset. The apartment smelled of bleach and ALL her clothes were washed. He tried to hide her laptop and stole personal items. Yet, he was only charged with drug trafficking. And here we are, living a life sentence without our girl.”
“He looked at me and said, ‘We have to get out of here. We can’t stay here. It’s not safe.’ We just started to run.”
“Everything was running smoothly until she came upon my bottle of wine. Apparently, they don’t sell alcohol until 7:00 a.m. She said I could wait. After all, it was only 23 minutes. ‘Mmmhmmm, she’s waitin’ on the alcohol.’ I started waving and threw in some ‘hey’s!’ But then Shirley started telling me about her life. I began crying in line.”
“She’s going down the slide, butt naked, COVERED in poop, leaving a long skid mark of poop allllllll the way down on her way.”