“For years, I’d been caring for babies as a nurse. I would clock in to take care of a postpartum couplet for 12-ish hours and clock out. But you know what I hadn’t done? Stayed up all night with a baby for days on end. I hadn’t tried to invent new ways to soothe a screaming baby on ZERO mental reserves. I hadn’t worked a 24-hour on-call shift taking care of someone elses baby while my heart physically ached for my own.”
‘I know having a baby changes your life, but there’s no way it can be THAT hard. I take care of babies for a living.’: Nurse pokes fun at herself after learning the trails of motherhood
‘Donald, will you wash my hair?’ I sunk into the tub, defeated. He heard my desperate plea through the bathroom door.’: Woman urges ‘ask your spouses for help’ after husband’s act of kindness
“You know those kinds of days where everything that can go wrong does? Yesterday was that day. I’d gotten no sleep before the littles began stirring. The rest of the day was a blur of school lessons, cleaning, runs to multiple stores for ONE thing. Supper was a complete FAIL. I needed to wash my hair because, let’s face it, one can only use dry shampoo for so long, but I hadn’t any energy to muster for that daunting task. Then a thought silently crept across my mind: ‘Ask Donald.’ I had to lay my pride aside.”
‘I promised I’d never divorce him. I was an Evangelical Christian woman. I wasn’t about to give that up because my disturbed husband couldn’t stop screaming at me.’: Woman leaves her abusive pastor husband after 10 years, ‘I never looked back’
“I hid big, dark, angry, broken feelings from the world. If I acknowledged their legitimacy, that meant I had to acknowledge that my husband–the megachurch pastor–was my abuser. And I was his victim. No, thanks! I’d much prefer to pretend everything is fine and our family is blessed.”
‘We chose RV life, RV life didn’t choose us!’: Family of 4 upgrades to an RV, ‘The only word we could use would be ‘freeing.’ You don’t realize how much things weigh on you.’
“The questions started to roll in and the eyebrows started to raise. ‘You live in what?’ We decided to live full time in our RV, for multiple reasons. We wanted to try it out. Going through our items one by one took a lot of weight off of us. We felt like we could breathe again. We could easily question, ‘What happens after this?’ The beauty is, we don’t have to know all the answers!”
‘I filed for divorce after only 7 months of marriage. I was humiliated. People would talk in our small town.’: Woman made drastic decision to better herself, ‘I knew I had to do something’
“He was my partner in crime and he always took me back. The feelings I SHOULD have for my husband simply were not there. I was not in love… at all. I began to resent him and knew I had to do something.”
‘Why do my kids not want to talk to me?’ My mom replied, ‘You have nothing to do with them, why would they?’: 18-year-old adopted by uncle’s best friend, the ‘most selfless’ man she knows
“I met my adoptive dad while my bio dad and mom were still together. He was my uncle’s best friend. At 18, I made a board that asked, ‘Will you adopt me?’ He hugged me and cried. ‘Let’s get the paperwork started,’ he said without hesitation.”
‘I have a secret. Somebody we know is hurting tonight. Somebody we know is watching their clock and praying for bedtime to come quickly.’
“There is a dirty little secret hiding behind the curtain. You are not the only one who crashes at the end of the day and needs everything to be silent, easy and invisible, so you can just BINGE OREOS IN PEACE FOR TWO FREAKING MINUTES.”
‘You guys did great. You did great 3 times,’ our doctor said as she laid out our sonogram with three little sacs. My mind was racing. Shock and fear set in.’
“Mike couldn’t speak. In fact, the doctor looked at him after we covered all the basics and said, ‘Dad, are you OK? You haven’t said anything.’”
‘A 4-pound bundle of goodness was placed in my arms. By a stranger. In the middle of my street. Just before 10 p.m.’
“As the effects of cocaine crippled his central nervous system, we fought. We walked and bounced and rocked, and walked more. And here’s the thing… he will never remember me.”
‘From the very beginning I knew something wasn’t right with me. I never got married and never had children. I kept using drugs to forget the pain I felt in my soul.’
“It was always someone else’s fault. My father was a drug addict and died of AIDS on my 20th birthday as a result of his heroin addiction, so I blamed him. I was never willing to take responsibility for myself and my decisions.”
