“He said, ‘They look hungry. Can we feed them?’ I paused because I really didn’t want my 4-year-old subjected to everything on the streets. He walked up and said, ‘Would you like a sandwich?’ At that point, I made the decision to do it once a week.”
‘Dad, what is homeless?’ I said, ‘It’s when you don’t have food to eat.’ I thought this would be the end of the conversation.’ Little boy’s inspiring cross-country journey to feed the homeless
‘A stranger helped me with my black daughter’s hair. I desperately want to do the right thing. Our world needs more people like this.’
“As a white mama, I felt like a failure. I was sure I was missing something simple.”
‘Babe there’s no way I’m going to survive this. Fire surrounds us, transformers are blowing up and the winds are fierce.’
“It only seemed like seconds when we heard the ambulance in front of us was on fire.”
‘But Daddy never messes up,’ my son added. ‘Yes, I know, little one, he was one of those who was born perfect.’
‘I want you to mess up. I want you to get distracted by your phone at story time. I want for you to fight in front of your kids. I want you to leave your power-sliding van door open. I want you to yell.”
‘When I lost my father at 18, you were there. You didn’t force me to talk about my emotions. You shared your father with me when I no longer had one.’
“As young parents I would call you crying because the task of being an adult was too overwhelming. I didn’t feel like enough of a wife or mother. You were kind to irrational postpartum me.”
‘His dying wish was to be home. I never got to thank him for drying my tears when I was broken inside as a victim of bullying.’
“It’s the things I no longer remember that hurt so deeply. What it feels like to wrap my arms around his neck to hug him. I no longer remember the feeling of joy he brought me. Loving him feels like a lifetime ago.”
‘I was 17 years old, one month away from graduating high school. I was hanging out with a ‘friend’ who wanted to have sex, but I did not. He chose to rape me and the condom broke.’
“I received a phone call from my cousin who had just turned 14. She was calling to tell me she was pregnant. We ended up being due 3 weeks apart. I was shocked.”
‘I am the Jewish nurse. The one people are talking about in the Pittsburgh shooting that left 11 dead. The nurse that cared for Robert Bowers who yelled, ‘Death to all Jews,’ as he was wheeled into the hospital.’
“I’m sure he had no idea I was Jewish. I wanted him to feel compassion. I chose to show him empathy. I felt the best way to honor his victims was for a Jew to prove him wrong. Love. That’s why I did it.”
‘Turns out, some people HATE a man in a dress.’
“My husband makes a hideous woman. My kids thought it was hilarious that daddy had boobies and a big wig. It didn’t take long before I realized my husband dressed-up as the bearded lady was not as charming to others as I thought it was. I was shocked.”
‘To the nurse who held my stillborn baby, unfazed by the appearance of a tiny child born 20 weeks too soon. You stroked those itty-bitty fingers and toes. You talked about those eyes.’
“You told me my baby was beautiful, although the rest of the world would likely have disagreed. As you placed my breathless baby into the palms of my hands, I too became breathless.”
