“‘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.”
“This expectant mom knew we were the right family for her baby. And so we leapt. She sent pictures of her ultrasound with sweet messages like, ‘That’s your baby in there.’ I let myself fall hard and fast. To say I was wearing my heart on my sleeve is an understatement. My heart was showing everywhere. It was an open target…free for the breaking.”
“The kids cry, fight. The toilet clogs again. I buy $200 of groceries for the week and we run out of milk. I can barely fit into my mom jeans because my gym time has been sabotaged by my kids. There are days where my children run wild and they don’t seem to care what I say or do. Then, there are days I just want to lie on the floor, listen to them breathe, and soak in their innocence.”
“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!’”
“I had just dropped my son off at college for the first time. The hostess smiled. ‘How many in your party?’ I stood there, stunned, as my heart jumped into my throat. There was awkward silence. I knew she was going to make me say it. ‘Three.'”
“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.”
