”There were times I would say to him ‘Is that how you speak to the mother of your child?’ He threatened to get someone to ‘shoot me in my face.”
‘After visiting our daughter in the hospital I came home to find all his stuff gone. The cat was out of the bag. Our daughter was born at 28 weeks and that’s when the real problems set in.’
‘Mom, I made a mistake.’ My boyfriend left me on the side of the road, a burning sensation on my face.’: Young woman escapes abuser, ‘I only survived for my child, but now I survive for myself’
“While I was asleep, he took my phone and began browsing through my messages. I awoke to his voice. ‘Who is this guy you’ve been texting?’ He looked angry. ‘That’s just my friend,’ I explained. ‘Well, don’t text back. You’re flirting with him by texting back.’ I tried once more to defend myself, but ended up pinned down for hours while I sobbed and begged for him to let me go.”
‘I was pregnant with a little boy and a little girl after a decade of trauma. I limped out of his house and drove home over 100 miles away with $20 in my pocket.’
“A handsome former-classmate wrote me on Facebook: ‘I had a dream about you.’ I was thirty four weeks pregnant when my water spontaneously broke and suddenly the pain and trauma resurfaced. Were my babies okay?”
‘Where is Gabriel?’ I remember screaming my boyfriend’s name ‘Gabriel!’ but no reply. My sister found me and said, ‘You are okay, they are coming to help you’ that night was the most confusing and heartbreaking of my life.’
“I saw myself laying in the grass listening to my sister screaming my name looking for me. ‘Marcela! Marcela! I remember her screaming, ‘I’m here but I cannot move!’”
‘My doctors discharged me early so I could chase behind the ambulance that held my tiniest love inside. My biggest fear is living in a world without her.’
“I spent years praying for a baby and now my only child was being diagnosed with a life-threatening condition. You can only imagine the feelings I had. Like most people who have questions, I took to Google.”
‘I found myself gasping for air. It did not matter how much I tried to breathe in, it felt as if nothing was going inside my lungs. A few days later I developed a bit of a cough. I could have died while on the mountain.’
“It took nearly 2 days before a helicopter arrived. 2 days of freaking out in subzero temperatures. I spent the entire time in a room where various people would pop their head in to make sure I was still alive.”
‘The doctor called…the blood screen came back, it’s not good.’ My heavy 22-week pregnant body fell to the floor. It’s normally at this point people want to talk about their options.’
“At worst he’ll never be able to feed himself and at best he’ll mop the floors of a fast-food restaurant one day,’ he said with a wave of his hand, dismissing any room for hope. Option 1 is you terminate the pregnancy. We don’t do that here, but we have a clinic we can send you to.”
‘I said ‘I don’t want to live anymore, my kids deserve better than this, I should have never had them and dragged them down with me’ I wanted a lifeline. I wanted that chance of hope.’
“But instead I got ‘you should feel so lucky! You are blessed.’ Imagine telling yourself you’re so worthless, you’re not deserving, that you literally mess everything you touch and feeling guilty for all of that, like a tumble dryer in your head, swirling around and then someone says, ‘be grateful’”
‘Yesterday we broke down 2 hours away from home on a busy interstate with three kids in tow. It wasn’t exactly ideal, especially with a hungry newborn. It was late, nothing was open, and we couldn’t get a rental car until the morning.’
“We called dispatch and AAA and an Alabama State Trooper showed up to help. I thought he was just going to divert traffic away from our lane, but he did so much more than that!”
‘When our son was 7 months old, we stumbled upon heroin. I never imagined my daughter would call another man ‘DaDa.’: Woman recounts losing partner to addiction
“I was covered in puke, knees scraped from the driveway. For 45 minutes I walked around holding my 3-month-old to my chest, just praying for a miracle. ‘We did everything we could, but it just wasn’t enough.’ I was living in my worst nightmare. ‘Can God give my Daddy back?’ Telling my son was the hardest thing I’d ever done.”