“I hadn’t laid eyes on him for at least 10 minutes — or had it been 20? Immediately, everything around me swirled and blurred. The only thing in focus was the red flag flapping violently above the lifeguard station. The white-capped waves were deafening. Horrible scenarios flooded my mind.”
‘I lost one of my kids. As the crowd dispersed, two of my boys walked over to me, but my son was nowhere to be seen. I called his name, paralyzed in fear.’
‘It was my daughter’s birthday. I was sitting, my feet in the river. I heard a yell. ‘She’s in the water!’ I turned. She was completely under water, face down. Pure panic went through my mind.’
“Rylee wanted to get closer to the other kids and went forward on the step more than she should have and slipped in. She was completely engulfed. I could see about half an inch of the top of her head. Without hesitation, I dove in after her. The current was taking her away rapidly. I could barely keep my head above water.”
‘I dropped my 18-month-old daughter off with strangers. She cried and hung onto me. Why was my ex doing this? I hired a private investigator.’: Woman details divorce, custody battle with ex, ‘Even when it doesn’t make sense, keep fighting’
“Panic started to set in. Time went by, and no one showed up. Finally someone answered their phone. My knees buckled. I dropped to the ground. They weren’t coming. They wouldn’t tell me where she was. My daughter cried in the background. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know if I would ever see her again. He had filed for divorce without my knowledge and was granted full custody. Everything was chaos.”
‘My dad began boarding up the windows for fear of people watching him. Spending nights in our attic filming neighbors. Insisting there was footage of a red laser being shined into his room.’
“My father was not a part of my life early on. He was successful businessman and wasn’t ready for a kid. But my mom was struggling, and he could give me what my mom couldn’t. Until he changed too.”
‘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’
“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 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.”
