“‘Click, click, swoosh, swoosh’ was all I heard as my 8-year-old daughter emerged from her bedroom. It was just after 7:30 a.m. – she was wearing silver high heels and a floor-length, red, jeweled, ball gown. My initial thought was, ‘She must think it’s Saturday.’ It was indeed a school-day. Not only that, it was the all-important, everlasting PICTURE DAY! Oh, she knew.”
‘It’s not how you look, it’s how you FEEL!’: 8-year-old rocks red ball gown in school pictures, mom can’t argue with her confidence
‘As I looked in the mirror, I immediately started critiquing myself. Then I heard my daughter tell my husband, ‘She really IS Wonder Woman.’ My heart just stopped.’
“I go to bed and beat myself up for all the things I didn’t do perfectly that day. They go to bed with smiles, and I fall asleep with a panic attack. I see scars everywhere from the life I’ve survived.”
‘The wildest part is the hallucinations. She thinks her reflection is another person, whom she has named ‘Sharon.’ She has always been ditzy and silly, so it was harder to catch the changes happening as time went on.’
“Usually ‘Sharon’ is a good friend, but sometimes she gets messy, so I have to take the bathroom mirror down. She will have bursts of anger, and has tried to run away. We had to get an alarm for her bedroom.”
‘I could not mentally prepare for what I was going to witness. He had been hospitalized due to Shaken Baby Syndrome. My heart immediately sank.’
“I asked if this was the same child I had seen in on the news, and she confirmed it. I knew in that moment I had to put my whole heart in it for this family.”
