“You’ll study her face and worry. What if she gets lost in the hall? What if she doesn’t make a single friend? What if she doesn’t think about you at all? Does she know every sandwich, every pool day, every morning we snuggled in bed, I didn’t want to be anywhere else? It’ll feel like forever ’til you see her little face on that sidewalk, but I guarantee you, it’ll be smiling. She’s a different kid. She grew up today.”
‘The night before you send your kid to Kindergarten is a strange place. You’ll feel pain your heart hasn’t felt before.’: Mom reminisces about first days of Kindergarten, claims ‘you’ll survive this, too’
‘This is what my house looked like for 3 weeks. This is depression.’: Woman explains why depression ‘isn’t you,’ claims there’s ‘light at the end of the tunnel, even if your brain tells you there’s not’
“I had no motivation to brush my teeth, shower. No motivation to play with my kids. I was anxious my husband was going to leave for someone better who had their stuff together. It was me sitting on the couch responding to messages of ‘How are you doing?’ and replying ‘really good’ knowing it was a lie. You need a friend that doesn’t care if your house is a mess because you need to clean your mind before your house. And you need that friend to be you.”
‘Did she want another woman in her life? I waited to meet my stepdaughter for the very first time. My heart pounded as she stepped in the car.’ Woman explains there’s ‘nothing natural about a blended family’
“Trying on my wedding dress, I sensed tension with my boyfriend’s daughter. My mind raced, and I pulled her aside. ‘I’m not trying to replace your mom.’ I never expected to start a family like this.”
‘My pregnancy crushed my stepkids. The mom and dad they’d known were gone, and now we were bringing a baby into their lives.’ Mom feels ‘remorse’ for bringing child into ‘complicated’ home
“I mourned that my daughter couldn’t be welcomed into the world with joyful innocence. She’d be born into a life of sharing Christmases and summer vacations. A life where daddy couldn’t tell mommy she was his first and only wife. I had to bury the dreams of what I THOUGHT motherhood looked like.”
‘We were both speechless. ‘We’re almost 40 and we’ll be changing diapers again!,’ my husband finally muttered. I didn’t say a word. I was so shocked, my jaw on the ground with tears in my eyes.’
“Two children in Heaven, one here on earth; we were at peace. We signed the paperwork with the fertility clinic to finally close that chapter in our lives. Six months later, we were relaxing with a bottle of wine. Before I poured a glass, I ran upstairs. I was ‘late.’ I barely glanced at it, assuming it would be negative.”
‘Really, Daddy? Are you really going to let them CUT MY ARM OFF?’ My son’s face fell. A silent tear trickled down his cheek.’
“He looked in horror at me and his daddy. My husband held my son as he became frantic. It hurts to know my child worried so much, and never brought it to me.”
‘I place my son on the table. I’m concerned about the size of his belly. ‘Does it look too big?’ I see the fear on her face. My heart drops.’
“Sobs come from my chest, uncontrollably. This cannot actually be happening. I tell my husband to get Jameson dressed, in his car seat, and out the door now.”
‘I was home alone one night. I was getting into bed when I took off my bra. That was when I felt it. It literally took my breath when I felt it.’
“When I was 24, I had everything. An amazing job, a home I loved, and a boyfriend I knew was going to be my husband. I couldn’t imagine life being more perfect, and at that age didn’t even think that life could take a turn. But it always does, doesn’t it?”
Celebrating your teen pregnancy is not sticking a neon sign to your head saying ‘HUGE TEEN PREGNANCY ADVOCATE RIGHT HERE.’ No. She’s judged. Frowned upon.
“When I got pregnant at 19, I found this out the hard way.”
‘Have you ever had a child who has anonymous notes in her locker telling her to ‘kill herself”
“How about a child who begs you not to call the school because she is scared of the repercussions?”
