“If you had told me 4 years ago I would be sitting in a waiting room with my husband, my children and his affair partner, I would have laughed in your face and called you a liar. But here I am, sitting in a waiting room, preparing for my eldest daughter, my husband’s daughter, to go back for surgery.”
‘I cheated on you with a woman I met at the gym. She has a daughter, and I’m her father.’: Woman learns to ‘truly forgive’ after husband’s infidelity left her ‘hurt, betrayed’
‘I can’t believe I’m sharing this photo. An in-the-moment meltdown. Raw, vulnerable and unattractive. I accidentally snapped this pic of me in tears.’
“My anxiety was at an all-time high. I was embarrassed and ashamed of my kid’s behavior. I needed a mental break. I needed to be alone. The very next day, the triplets’ Pre-school teacher recommended therapy for my boys. I was devastated. Defeated. How has it come to this? Is it really that bad?”
‘Acid from the airbag burned my eyes. My first thought was, ‘Call Mom.’ I climbed out of my window, dripping in blood. ‘Mom, I crashed the car. I see cops coming. I love you.’: Man overcomes addiction, ‘I own my truth today’
“I walked to my church, 5 miles away in the freezing rain, knowing I may have just seen my father and mother for the last time. I sat in the fourth row. I stared down at the ground, tears still running down my face. I wanted to be able to apologize for what I was about to do.”
‘I had one job: protect my children. The next day he was gone and there was no way to get him back. I felt myself slipping away from reality.’
“On my son’s birthday, I laid on the floor, belly-down, with my hands on my chest to force myself not to hyperventilate. Minutes later, I rejoined the party with a smile on my face. ‘I am fine,’ I told myself.”
‘I bawled to my husband, ‘I came in for kidney stones. Now I’m praying we don’t have a micro-preemie in the NICU in California when we’re moving to Colorado in 3 weeks.’
“Nurses were rushing in. My baby’s heart rate was dropping. ‘Something’ was wrong, but nobody knew what. I started preparing myself for the reality of having one child in the hospital in one state, while we all lived in another.”
‘When you hear, ‘twin one is fine, but…’ your life is about to change. When I finally saw him after his birth, I could hardly process the absence. It was a blank, featureless canvas.’
“When I woke hours later, my partner and I were met by the serious face of one of the pediatricians. There is no way to explain how I felt at that moment, other than devastated. I was convinced I must have done something during my pregnancy to cause this.”
‘I couldn’t catch my breath. I tried to call my husband, but I was shaking so much I couldn’t even hit the call button on my phone.’
“Things escalated so fast. But, truthfully, I didn’t have a choice.”
‘I had a panic attack this morning waking up to my children. Chest pain was the first thing I felt.’
“I could feel the attack starting, convincing myself it was only because I was disturbed in the middle of a sleep that my body was panicked. An hour later both children are screaming and fighting.”
‘Goodbyes are harder now. When my son left for the military, he was 17. The next time I would see him would be when Chad died.’
“After 1 year, 7 months and 4 days, I got to surprise my son. All was right in the world for 14 hours. And, then it happened. He had to leave. It all came back. Panic. Fear. Tears. Why did he have to go?”
‘Immediately after the judge said, ‘You may kiss the bride’, we heard a THUD. We looked down and saw my sister on the floor.’: Sister faints during wedding ceremony after venue turned into a ‘greenhouse’ in heat
“It took a moment to clock what had happened. Everyone was stunned. My sister kept screaming that she’d ruined our wedding.”
