“My dad was the disciplinarian at home. DO NOT MAKE DAD ANGRY. I don’t remember hearing ‘I love you.’ From my dad. Ever. He was brought up in the traditional ‘macho’ way. He’d constantly tell me, ‘I had it MUCH worse than you growing up!’ But then something really weird began to happen at school – it made me feel warm and fuzzy. I was validated and encouraged by teachers. Wait, what? A hurricane of hormones was wreaking havoc on me. I was an angry teen who needed to fill the hole in my heart.”
‘You are GOOD FOR NOTHING!’ I sat in the bathroom, crying, asking, ‘Please, send me a new dad. Please!’: Young man creates his own adopted ‘family’ after surviving traumatic childhood, ‘We may not have the same bloodline, but they gave me life’
‘Be baseball ready!,’ coaches yell. Each player squats down for 4 seconds before returning to shenanigans. Honestly his favorite part? ‘The snacks!’: Mom hilariously describes 5-year-old son’s ridiculous ‘zero attention span’ during T-ball
“For 20 minutes, these boys stand in the outfield waiting (hoping!) for a ball to get hit their way. Do you know what those boys are doing during that time? They’re looking at flowers growing in the grass. They’re kicking dirt around. They’re discussing the Paw Patrol episode where they save some big purple dinosaur. They give ZERO cares about the other team batting. Like, at all.”
‘At the top of my lungs I was screaming, ‘Please God, please don’t take him, I know you hear me, don’t take him!’ I looked down and saw his eyes rolling back in his head.’
“He was a Marine, tall, handsome, had every quality I dreamed of as a little girl in a husband. He was my ‘rock.’ Years went by, and we continued to drift apart emotionally. Then, our lives changed that day.”
