“There’s nothing I want more than to see his beautiful smile. But part of being in love with someone struggling with mental health is dealing with the ugly. It’s true what they say. There is always a light at the end of the tunnel. But there’s also a damn dimmer switch in that tunnel too.”
‘There’s no quick fix. There WILL always be a next panic attack, a next day of self-harm or cloud of doubt. I started to feel I wasn’t enough for him. I couldn’t pray away the dark times.’
‘Today I learned I am raising the kind of kid who sees a waitress drop the stack of plates and cutlery she’s carrying, and leaps out of his seat to help her pick them up.’
“I don’t care that he gets good grades. I don’t care whether or not he is popular. I don’t care whether or not he is talented.”
‘At 13, I arrived at the hospital to be drug tested. ‘Is there any chance you could be pregnant?’ the nurse asked. ‘I don’t know!’ I just SOBBED.’ Young girl discovers pregnancy after ‘downward spiral’
“Attending 8th grade with terrible morning sickness was especially challenging. The rumors started. I began receiving notes. ‘I heard you’re pregnant. Is it true?!’ I was advised to have an abortion by everyone, except my mom. Even after sneaking out, stealing her car, skipping school, alcohol and drugs, she NEVER gave up on me.”
‘You are a boy, hunny,’ I would say to him gently. By age 4, he was flat out denying this could be true.’: Mom reflects on when her daughter ‘was born my son’
“Matthew was constantly asking to watch Disney princess movies. ‘Kids are kids,’ I thought. I loved my feminine, eccentric son. The problem was, the older he got, the more he did not love himself. He was always angry. He’d flip chairs at school. He was misunderstood, but to what degree I had no idea. ‘When I grow up and I’m a girl…’ My husband and I would correct him, and often, he’d be sad with the reality.”
‘How can you treat me so well, after all I did to you?’ Daughter forgives dying, abusive mom to ‘show her what unconditional love really was’
“I didn’t ask for this. I didn’t ask to cry myself to sleep every night. I didn’t ask to be verbally abused, nor did I ask for a mother that had not one nurturing bone in her body.”
‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’ How stranger’s small gesture for ‘disheveled, dirty man’ at Taco Bell taught them both a lesson
Yes, he has a messy life. I have a messy life too. We all do! It would have been easy to ignore Mark.
‘Is this a gay bar? My son just came out to me and I don’t want to say anything that may mess him up.’
“She called a gay bar for advice. I told her, ‘Tell him he is loved and accepted.’”
