“Everything was so perfect. The possibility of anything being ‘wrong’ was just too much of a stretch. Stifling the tears, I clamped my eyelids shut. I had no idea that hours later I would be sitting on the floor, waiting to die.”
‘My perfect baby girl was laying on my bare chest. I spoke lies to myself. ‘I’m fine.’ Everyone told me this was ‘part of being a new mom’ and ‘just a lack of sleep.’ This was not a phase.’
‘She started breaking into my room, forcing her way in, terrifying me. I was yelling at her to leave me alone, asking her, ‘haven’t I been through enough?’ I saw no way out.’
“He is biting me again!’ She turned around and pushed him and yelled, ‘YOU CAN’T BITE HER!”
‘Mommy is sick and needs to go to the doctor.’ I begged them to admit me to a psych ward. ‘You don’t fit the criteria,’ I was told. It was a hard pill to swallow. So, I admitted myself.’: Mom urges ‘it’s totally okay to ask for the damn help’ when struggling with mental illness
“I didn’t know what to expect. I thought, ‘Where am I sleeping? Should my kids come visit? Can I get fresh air?’ I remember feeling like a lab rat. The doors were locked and I needed to be buzzed in and out. One day when eating, I felt a presence. It was him.”
‘I got a call from a strange number. I immediately trembled. Inside I was screaming, ‘Answer the phone! It’s her!’ Then came a voice I’ve waited my whole life to hear. ‘Hello, is this Heather?’
“The floodgates opened and all I could do was cry. I had gone over this conversation in my head a thousand times, but I couldn’t get a single word out. I had so many questions. Up until this point, I kept it a secret from my dad. I was afraid of him getting hurt.”
‘Where is she?!’ There was no time to call for help. With one forceful kick, the lock snapped. I ran around the house, my mind racing. Then, I opened her bedroom door.’
“My body was in complete panic. A high-pitched ring pierced my ears. I held her in my arms. This wasn’t part of the plan. This was supposed to be her fresh start.”
‘I said I was going to the lounge. ‘I’ll be back .’ I took about 10 steps. That’s when I heard. Heavy footsteps. Then they sped up.’: Woman survives attack, reminds people to ‘be smart, be safe’
“His arms wrapped around me and he started pulling me into an unlocked maintenance room. This man thought he killed me, but he failed. How do you explain to your kids, ‘Mommy is coming home, but I don’t look like myself?'”
‘It’s a girl!’ My heart sank. On the way home from my gender reveal, I cried. Hard. I was hoping it was some mistake.’: Woman candidly shares reality of ‘gender disappointment’ after years of mother’s abuse
“‘Wow, she must be shallow to care about the gender of her unborn baby.’ ‘She should just be happy to have a healthy baby!’ ‘How selfish! Some women dream of getting pregnant and can’t!’ Gender disappointment is real. We are afraid to speak about it. We fear judgement.”
‘The intensity of our fights made me think he loved me. We’d break up, get back together. I was addicted to chaos. When he returned from Iraq, he said, ‘Bad news. You’re both going to jail.’
“I saw his eyes change and I knew I was in trouble. My jaw dropped. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. We figured once we moved, our problem wouldn’t follow us. Turns out, wherever you go, your problems follow you!”
‘That wasn’t our baby, and he got to stay with his mama.’: Couple’s failed adoption leads to beautiful open relationship with new birth mom, ‘I never felt a love so strong’
“She was only four months along, I felt my nerves spike. She and I held hands and laid eyes on that sweet boy together for the first time. We both cried and cried. ‘This is the moment our lives change forever,’ she said. He loves and adores her, but that doesn’t make us any less of his parents.”
‘Stop saying adoption rocks. It doesn’t. And there’s a side to it no one wants to talk about.’: Adoptive mom gets real about adoption, ‘It is a beautiful, painful, heartbreaking journey’
“The part where I cried when I couldn’t have children and the doctor told me to ‘man up’ because ‘the world population is too big anyway so just get a dog.’ The part where, despite my best efforts to love my child, she still says, ‘I want my other momma.'”
‘There must be a mistake.’ Our fling turned into something more. My parents claimed they did something ‘wrong’ in raising me.’: LGBT couple marry, conceive baby through IVF, ‘Our hearts couldn’t be fuller!’
“While working together, our ‘fling’ turned into something much more serious. We realized we didn’t want to be without each other. We decided it was time to come out to our families. Until that point, they’d presumed we were just good friends. Laura’s parents were accepting, unfortunately mine were not. In fact, it went as badly as it could have. Laura was not allowed in the house. I was asked to keep the relationship a secret.”
‘In a blink, we sold absolutely everything, put our house on the market. We were DONE with the American dream. The waiting for our kids to grow up, for our house to be paid off.’: Woman urges ‘live fearlessly and chase your dreams’
“We traded our passion for the typical American dream. The house, the yard, the white picket fence. It seemed we’d spent all of our time waiting for retirement age, for the kids to grow up, for the house to be paid off. Among all the waiting, there was no time to bring our beautiful dreams into reality.”
‘My head and spine rolled. The playground monitor watched me fall off the monkey bars. Kids called me ‘freak’. I didn’t see my spine tic as a problem, but her concern made realize something was wrong.’
“I could hear unkind comments coming from behind and in front of me. I broke down crying and tried to get away as fast as I could. When I got the news, it was a relief to say, ‘This isn’t me trying to be annoying.’ It was uncontrollable.”
‘The ambulance will be here soon. Want me to go with you?’ He was a stranger, all alone, with a bloody gash above his eyes.’: Woman finds man of her dreams in ‘random chance meeting’
“The EMT arrived. ‘You don’t know him, do you?’ I felt totally called out! ‘Well, he’s cute. Maybe you’ll get his number.’ As we chatted, his deep dimples began to show. Once I knew he’d be okay, I checked him out a little more. ‘Okay, he looks kinda tall lying on that stretcher.’ I thought I was helping a stranger. Turns out I was setting myself up to fall deeply in love with the man of my dreams.”
‘I was gay. I knew what would happen if I came out. Family, friends, church – all gone. So I lived blindly, losing more of who I was by the day. ‘: Gay dad describes fear of coming out to family
“She cried and brought out the Bible. She read passages aloud while sobbing. She truly believed I was going to hell and she fought tooth and nail to make sure her baby wasn’t going there.”
I Kicked My Son Battling Addiction Out, And It’s The Hardest Thing I’ve Ever Done
“I live in fear he will become just another statistic.”
‘I was 17, in love with a dad twice my age, and preparing my son’s autopsy.’: Teen mom loses son to SIDS, re-discovers herself after ‘flailing through life in destruction mode’ for decades
“The clock reads 5:36. I hear him yell. Blood is trickling from his mouth. Shock. Fear. Confusion. Put him in the car. Stop. No time. He’s not breathing. Cry. Scream. Beg him to breathe. The police are here to question us. Why aren’t they doing anything? It’s too late. We have to plan a funeral. Shortly after, my relationship ends. The burden of a dead baby is too much. I fall asleep crying on my son’s grave frequently. I cannot breathe. I am a disaster trying to maintain normalcy.”
‘What are they going to say today?’ I missed 2/3 of school, my teachers never batted an eye. By the end of middle school my life felt surreal, I thought ‘this will never change.’
“Just a simple phrase ‘you know if you ever need to talk, I am here’ became the foundation for one of the strongest relationships in my life.”
‘In the shower, he felt a dime-sized lump behind his nipple. Examination signs boldly exclaimed ‘WOMEN ONLY’. The c-word never crossed our minds. We didn’t even know it was a thing.’
“Every appointment was in a pink-laced room. Coming to terms with it was difficult enough, but the ostracizing sea of pink ribbons and pink hospital gowns only added to the emasculating nature of it. I felt such guilt in allowing the delay in getting the lump checked.”
‘I stayed in a destroyed marriage for a year, convinced we could make it through. It didn’t matter he was in love with another woman; I KNEW he would come to his senses.’
“I would hide in vain in my closet. ‘Get up!’ I would tell myself, ‘Get up!’ I wanted to get up; I didn’t want my son to find me like this- to see me like this. But he would and it started to become a regular occurrence.”
‘My son’s teacher recently friended me on social media. I came upon a picture of her holding a chalkboard sign that read, ‘I said YES!’ She’s already married, so it struck me as odd.’: Mom thanks ‘hero’ teachers
“Until I read the caption. I couldn’t stop crying.”
‘My father sent me out for cigarettes. I decided to run away. I needed to find a place he’d never find me.’: Man rescued from abusive family, returns favor by fostering children in need
“After a year of living on the street, strangers approached me and said, ‘We want to take you to school.’ Coming from an abusive household, I had never really learned to trust. I said yes, not really sure what I was agreeing to. I had no home, hope, future, and they gave me all of that and more. I knew I wanted to do the same for other kids.”
‘I cleared out my boyfriend’s savings.’: After losing love of her life, child trauma survivor overcomes kleptomania addiction
“Please understand that people like me are not evil. We just come from it. And we spend our entire lives running away from it, never realizing when we slowly start to become it.”
‘This was the house we intended to raise our babies in. We were here to stay. But then he died.’
“I joke that we really bought my clawfoot tub and the house came with it. We had only moved in 6 months ago and we were so excited to make it our own. Then everything I thought was real disappeared before my eyes. Until I then I saw this.”
‘I lied to you,’ my fiancé said. ‘It has all been a lie.’ I felt sick to my stomach. He told me there had been another incident with the woman from work. Turns out, that was the LEAST of my problems.’
“‘I don’t want to get involved in a relationship with you until she is out of the picture,’ I told him. I asked him outright, ‘Is there anything I should be worried about?’ He reassured me, ‘no.’ I could see there was something on his mind. Nothing prepared me for what followed.”