“I don’t feel brave in sharing my story of sexual assault or the assault of our daughters. I feel afraid of what happens if we don’t. I’m claiming my story and revealing HIS shame.”
‘It’s not remarkable to talk publicly about it. I don’t feel brave. We aren’t the ones who did something wrong.’: Mom and 2 daughters experience sexual assault, ‘All 3 of us are survivors’
‘I hired a private detective. ‘For a few hundred more bucks, I can bring you face to face with your mother.’ Every time the phone rang, I hoped it was her missing me.’: Woman details life with addicted mother, ‘I vowed to be the best mom I can be’
“The doorbell rang at 6 a.m. I opened the door to see my mom standing between two policemen, muddy and handcuffed. She’d call me ‘Bucky,’ knowing I was self-conscious about my teeth. When I was 19 and getting married, no mom. When I was 20 and having my first baby, no mom. I had the same phone number for several years, but she never dialed it again.”
‘I didn’t want to watch 2 of my children die. I couldn’t walk away once, but twice, and not see them again.’: Woman loses 2 babies to congenital muscle disease, says her story is ‘tragically beautiful’
“I didn’t want anyone to die, especially not my child. Especially not two of my children. But that’s what happened.”
’I woke up hanging from my seat belt. ‘Can you move your legs?’ They hung like dead meat.’: Woman paralyzed from car accident, ‘My mind, soul, and spirit remained untouched’
“My last thought before losing consciousness was that I had killed the car full of people, and those people were my family.”
‘Your birth daughter would like to meet you.’ I stood in disbelief. I was terrified she wouldn’t love me.’: Woman overcomes fear, ‘I wasted too many sleepless nights’
“There was the answer I had been praying for. ‘Is this Raquel?’ It left me frozen.”
‘My mother and stepdad sent me with a strange man in the middle of the night. ‘Was I traded for drugs?’ I was ten years old.’: Woman overcomes childhood trauma and rape, ‘I learned the power of letting go’
“As I threw the rock into the river, I said, ‘I forgive you,’ letting go of all the pain and resentment I had been carrying. Don’t get me wrong… the people who abused me in my past, who were supposed to care for me and protect me, did NOT deserve my forgiveness.”
‘My scream was something you’d hear in a horror movie. My knee was dislocated, deformed.’: Woman overcomes years of severe knee issues, ‘I’m going to come out stronger than ever’
“I couldn’t move my toes. I couldn’t move anything without excruciating pain through my entire leg. I was screaming, freaked out at the sight of it. ‘Haven’t I been through enough?’ I was DONE.”
‘My husband was shaken. I reached my breaking point. The dam broke loose.’: Woman struggling with mental health says, ‘one of the most loving things we can do is take charge of our health’
“A lot of it’s a blur, but it scared me. I truly believed I would be okay if I could just stay positive and present. I was wrong, I was so wrong. It scared all of us.”
‘I got pregnant a month after turning 21. I am living through a deployment and now, like everyone, surviving a pandemic.’: Mom asks others not to judge, ‘They should feel validated in their sorrow’
“After being on my own for five years, I moved in with family again (thanks deployment). Every single one of those situations brought a screeching halt to what I had planned ahead. People who imagined 2020 to be THEIR year, I absolutely see you.”
‘Maybe her shorts are too short, her jeans too tight. Maybe you think her dress is too revealing. What you don’t see is a woman falling apart.’: Woman urges ‘we are all just trying to do our best’
“You deem her unworthy before she even has the chance to speak for herself. She’s not a woman who finally found the courage to be who she is, dress how she wants, stand up for what she believes in. Trying not to let the coldness and cruelty of this world break her. Instead, she gets labeled. Simply because she just exists.”
