“My heart dropped. All I could muster was, ‘What?’ She tried to hold my hands, but I pulled away. ‘We can’t choose who we love!’ It was surreal to take in. I pictured her in my future. Now I can only tear up thinking about it.”
‘I need to talk to you. Please.’ My best friend sat me down. I knew she did something really wrong. ‘Promise you won’t hate me.’ I didn’t see it coming. I had no idea.’
‘I was sitting in a hotel room. I had on a tight black dress, listening to my client say what ‘he wants to do.’ My gut was screaming to leave, but if I left, there is no money, and my ‘boss’ will be upset.’
“I begged my loving and supportive parents to please take me home. I begged and pleaded with my dad and promised I’d be good. But there were 11 charges, and a few were felonies. Bail was set at a million dollars.”
‘My son was screaming, ‘That thing on her chest popped!’ The doctor bandaged it up and told me to change it once a day. Um, yeah. Ok. Have you ever tried taking a bandage off a 4-year-old? Like giving a cat a bath.’
“My son came in. He knew he had to act. He took a bandage from the counter and presented his little sister with a simple question. ‘If I put this bandage on me, and let you take it off, will you let Mom take off yours?’ She pondered the idea, then nodded in agreement. He was going to protect her forever.”
‘I was scrolling photos and came across this – 24 bottles of breast milk. This is what a FULL day of feedings looked like for our triplets. We fed every 3 hours, and it was exhausting.’
“I didn’t experience the ‘bond’ I often heard of when it came to breastfeeding. But perhaps the ‘bond’ is formed by simply FEEDING your baby? Each time I held one of my babies, I cradled them in my arms as they received their bottle. I knew this was OUR kind of bond.”
‘If my mom wouldn’t have called the cops on my brother, I would have, without thinking twice. He is on a $10,000 unsecured bond. The person pressing charges—our mom.’
“He made the decision to uproot his life and move 1,200 miles to become our full-time ‘manny.’ Sadly, today, I wouldn’t DARE leave her in his care.”
‘I’m sorry, but we found a mass in your daughter’s brain.’ I thought that would be the worst day of my life. Little did I know, only 13 days later, THAT would actually be the worst day of my life.’
“In a different ER, a few floors below from where my daughter was, another doctor pulled a different curtain, looked at my husband and me, and said, ‘I’m sorry.’ Time stopped at that moment.”
‘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.”
‘We learned he had cancer. The whole thing felt very surreal. We were reliving the nightmare all over again. Surely we both can’t lose our dad’s to this disease, right?’
“I wanted to tell him everything would be okay. But I didn’t know, and I certainly wasn’t going to lie to him. I silently prepared for the worst case scenario. I thought a lot about their trip that never happened. What if he never did get the chance to take his dad?”
‘Loving the girl who lost her father. This role isn’t for the faint of heart.’
“You adore a woman who will forever be a little girl who lost her daddy. The very first man who loved her is no longer hers to have.”
‘I had never seen my dad cry before. He had already seen my dress, that wasn’t it. It is almost unexplainable.’
“This was one of the most nerve wrecking moments in my life. He kept slowly telling me to ‘breathe.’ I knew this was actually a reminder for himself.”
