“I went downstairs to get the laundry and crumpled down on the bottom step. That’s when I felt the shooting pain of the latest round of laxatives attempting to kick in. I dropped the basket and crawled on my hands and knees. I could feel my stomach contracting fiercely. I didn’t even have the strength to hold a phone to my ear.”
‘I cried, ‘Make it stop! I can’t take it any longer!’ I downed laxatives to ’empty out’ whatever I’d let inside my body.’: Woman battling anorexia survives laxative suicide attempt, ‘EVERY one of us need to reach the end, even if we can’t always see that’
‘My husband divorced me after my baby was born. At 28, I had to move back in with my parents as a single, special needs mom.’: Mom to daughter with Cerebral Palsy finds new perspective on ‘true happiness’
“Emily was only 2 pounds. She was so small my husband’s wedding band fit around her tiny wrist. She was crying, but I could not hear her. It didn’t seem real. Quickly, I was told by nurses, ‘You cannot touch her.’ I felt helpless. With each day, it became more and more evident my marriage was not going to survive this horrific ordeal.”
‘While waiting to board our plane, my daughter was being her inquisitive self, meeting and saying ‘Hi’ to everyone she could, until she walked up on this man.’
“This wasn’t a short, little exchange.”
‘My daughter said, ‘There’s a light coming into the picture.’ It wasn’t just any light. This was a beam straight from HEAVEN itself.’
“This pregnancy has been exceptionally harder for me emotionally, knowing I won’t have any pictures of my dad holding this baby. I keep praying for him to show up in some way or another. And boy, did he.”
‘To some, Maddie was just a junkie — when they saw her addiction, they stopped seeing her. And what a loss for them.’
“Though we would have paid any ransom to have her back, any price in the world, this disease would not let her go until she was gone.”
‘I got a call from a reporter asking about my ‘Autistic kid’ today. Honestly, I made the same word choices before I had her. It used to make me angry.’
“Audrey isn’t an Autistic kid. Audrey HAS Autism. Autism shouldn’t be an adjective. It’s a noun. It’s a medical diagnosis. It is not the defining descriptor of my child.”
‘How did I not see the signs? We made it to the children’s psych ward. I wanted to kiss the boo boos away, but I couldn’t.’: In the wake of 12-year-old daughter’s ‘suicide plan,’ mom says we can’t be ‘the perfect parent’ no matter how hard we try
“The doctor comes in. ‘Can I speak with you in private?’ I feel on the verge of a panic attack, but I simply smile and follow her to the nurse’s station. ‘So, what do you feel is going on?’ I explain the events of the phone call from school. She says, ‘We have no choice but to admit your daughter. She has a clear plan to commit suicide.’ My stomach is in knots.”
‘I don’t want to raise church kids.’
“Matter of fact, it’s one of my biggest fears. That they would go to church every week of their lives and never experience what the whole purpose of church is really about.”
