“My wife knew being out in nature, amongst the wind and the rock, would be my medicine for grief. Two months after she passed, with a map and her ashes, I set off on a journey that would take me 12 weeks, 19,000 miles. I was on my own, but I wasn’t alone. Her urn sat in the passenger seat as she always did. Her spirit was there, guiding and comforting me.”
“No soldiers deal well with a sucker punch.”
“She explained it would be extremely hard for me to become pregnant. I broke down in that cold exam room. The only thing in my head was, ‘I can’t have kids. I can’t be a woman for this amazing man who is counting on me.’”
“As soon as I walked in I was asked, ‘Why are you friends with Sarah? She’s gone wild now, she’s got all these tattoos, she dumps her kids so she can go out partying. I heard she’s got another boyfriend already! Those poor kids!’ Because she’s moved on, she was called a sl*t.”
“I’ve always been ‘tiny’ and never struggled with weight loss, only weight gain. This struggle was so unfamiliar to me, and no amount of clean eating or working out was helping. It was trying to tell me something was wrong, but I ignored it.”
“That was just about enough to shatter my heart into a million pieces. My kids’ grandparents live 970 miles away and 2,437 miles away. We chose this life for our children. We chose to pursue opportunity in states far away from our own parents, their grandparents.”
“This lady patted and rocked Isaiah to sleep like she had given birth to him.”
“It was love at first sight. Every time she entered the room, it felt like the world stopped turning. Life had different plans for us, and it wasn’t quite our time. I was deployed and we lost touch. After returning from Iraq alive, I had a fresh perspective on life. There was an instant bond between us.”
“I honestly thought he would just ignore her, laugh and be on his way.”
“We are mamas, and we are meant to forget.”
