“I spent many nights with her crying in her bed asking me questions I couldn’t answer: ‘Why don’t I have any friends? Why don’t I get invited anywhere? What is wrong with me?’ I had no answers as I laid beside her as she sobbed. As important as it is to teach our children to study, to get good grades, it is also important to teach them to be kind.”
‘It wasn’t bullying because she wasn’t picked on. It was almost as crushing – she was ignored.’: Mother urges school kids to reach out to ‘lonely’ students, ‘include them in their circle’
‘As my daughter was giggling, bursting with love in the next room, I was learning she wouldn’t be growing up at all.’ Mom’s 18-month-old daughter diagnosed with ‘Childhood Alzheimer’s’
“The phone rang. I grabbed a notepad, a pen, took a deep breath. How do you prepare yourself to answer a call with the results of whether your 18-month-old daughter is going to die? My mind shut off. All the air left the room. ‘Very serious, no cure yet, not sure, lots of research.'”
‘It is never enough. You can see the loneliness in his eyes when he hugs us goodbye.’: Daughter’s ‘gut wrenching’ nightmare makes her realize just how lonely her elderly father is after wife’s death to dementia
“I had a nightmare. I was being taken to a home I didn’t recognize and into a room I had never been in before. I was in a wheelchair. My mom is telling me it will be OK. She is holding my hand, and I am crying. I tell her I want to go home, but she is telling me I am home. My heart aches for dad on the other side of the door, knowing he will lie there, waiting, for the next visit.”
‘My husband left me after going into a depression. He just kept saying it was ‘his problem.’ He decided this life, our life, wasn’t for him.’
“He was stuck in a marriage he didn’t want to be in. The night we separated he told me he loved me but, ‘Not in that way’ anymore. He told me not to cry, he couldn’t handle it. I couldn’t breathe.”
‘I thought, ‘How is THIS nothing to worry about?’ The walls were closing in. Everything turned black and I couldn’t move my body. ‘It’s common for college students to be under a lot of stress.’
“I decided to request one specific blood test; one that was much harder to receive than it should have been. I had to basically force my doctor to test me. One week later, I was finally given the answer I had been longing so badly for.”
‘My husband and I decided during his deployment we would try to get pregnant as soon as he got home. I got pregnant the first try. But, I wasn’t supposed to mother this baby.’
“It was hell. My doctor removed it and sent me on my way. And then I was alone.”
‘Baby, when I hear you say you’re pregnant what I actually hear is ‘life destroyed.’ He was right. The Universe had been playing this cruel joke on me for 4 years.’
“Surprisingly, the doctor pulled me into her arms, ignoring professionalism and boundaries, and held me. She whispered in my ear, ‘I heard you talking in the change room. I know how badly you wanted this. Don’t give up yet.’”
Celebrating your teen pregnancy is not sticking a neon sign to your head saying ‘HUGE TEEN PREGNANCY ADVOCATE RIGHT HERE.’ No. She’s judged. Frowned upon.
“When I got pregnant at 19, I found this out the hard way.”
‘I am 1 in 4’: Nine years after miscarriage, mom takes heart wrenching self-portrait releasing emotions
“If I didn’t give my loss a face in that moment, I never would.”
