“I thought, ‘Well, what the heck.’ A lovely young lady messaged me. Turns out, her girls needed a grandma in their lives just as much as I needed grandbabies to love. She has struggles she is unable to disclose to her own mom, so I have become her confidant. All I ever wanted to be is a good mom, and an even better Grandma.”
‘It finally happened. I was introduced as her ‘new Grandma.’ My heart was so full. This is what I’d been missing for so long.’
‘I knew our marriage was over. He began feeling the weight of not being true to himself as a gay man. We were now entering uncharted territory – co-parenting.’
“I got off the phone devastated. Bawling. I felt like a failure. Losing a partnership like that, a friendship, felt like death. I began to picture all the holidays – separated as a family, and the awkward meet ups to switch the kids on our given days. I pictured being cold and disrespectful to other. It was the most painful things I could imagine.”
‘Is she your real daughter? Who does she belong to?‘ At 4, I was adopted with my twin sister by a white Mennonite family in the heart of Amish country.’
“‘I bet you are so glad someone actually wanted you,’ a stranger told me. I am running through the grass, almost to the woods to find my biological mother. ‘My real mother!,’ I shout. ‘Hold still,’ my mom shouts, before I trip. She chased me, and scoops me up.”
‘He had filed for divorce without my knowledge, and was granted full custody. Everything was chaos. It was my worst nightmare. I had to drop my 18-month-old daughter off with strangers.’
“I remember panic started to set in. Time went by, and no one showed up. Finally someone answered his phone. My knees buckled. I dropped to the ground. They weren’t coming. They wouldn’t tell me where she was. My daughter cried in the background. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again.”
‘If you do that one more time, you’re going in TIME OUT.’ As soon as that door shut, she ran over to the couch. I thought, ‘Please get down. Don’t you know I’m the fun parent?! I do books, not time out!’
“Being a stepmom is so complicated. She’d only ask her dad for things. But then, hand-foot-and-mouth disease struck our house. My husband was down for the count – which left my stepdaughter completely reliant on me. Let the games begin.”
‘I was okay with him having a daughter, but NOT an ex. ‘I wonder where she’s sitting? Are they on the same couch? Why hasn’t he texted me? They’re back together, in Vegas getting married.’
“If there was a woman coming into MY daughter’s life, I would need their social security number and 20 references. When I met her, she said ‘hi,’ and walked away. Hi. Hi? That’s it? Where’s the interrogation? Where’s the drug test? I told Sam, ‘She hates me! I should text her.’ I was a total crazy person.”
‘We were court ordered to conduct drop offs and pick-ups at the police station. We were a mess. A disgrace. I knew this wasn’t healthy for our children.’
“Divorce. There we were, in and out of court, screaming in the street during drop-off like a Jerry Springer episode. At some point we realized it’s easier to put our differences aside and to co-parent these kids together. Do it for the kids.”
‘I vividly remember looking into her eyes, sensing her vulnerability, promising to guard her. It was my job to be brave, but I doubted my ability. We heard ‘I’m so sorry,’ which prompted more tears.’
“When I found myself unexpectedly widowed at 39, I couldn’t have imagined what my life would look like 5 years later. We met on a dating website. Blending our families was a complicated task, accommodating the needs of 9 children between the two of us.”
‘Good job Mommy. You came just in time.’ I asked her why. She replied, ‘I didn’t want Addison to feel bad that I have two daddies, and she only has one.’
“‘Why would she feel bad?,’ I asked. It was in that moment, I knew I would never have to worry about Emma missing a piece of her heart. It never left her. Unlike her younger siblings, she has two daddies that love her. Her daddy here at home, and her daddy in heaven.”
‘Once again, my cousin was pregnant and expecting a boy. She was due 6 months after me. She was in a toxic relationship with a man hooked on drugs.’
“We found out she was pregnant with baby number 5. She had decided she just couldn’t parent the kids. My husband and I knew we couldn’t do two babies so close together. My son was only 11 months. Having three kids, two of whom had special needs, it just was too much on us.”