“There I was, a single 26-year-old woman. I can’t relate to abuse. I can’t relate to being moved to 5 different foster homes in a 4-month time frame. I can’t relate to being homeless and sleeping in a car. But what I can do is wrap my arms around them, hold them, and tell them their story doesn’t end here.”
“She was my understudy. A woman I would never know. We didn’t want to have to explain why I gave birth to a half Asian baby. By this point, we had spent SO MUCH MONEY, and to walk away without trying one more option seemed like we just blew it all for nothing.”
“You picked on her. You were extra rough and rambunctious as a toddler. You were jealous. It was hard. I made it a point to explain…over and over again… if you were on the same side, at least you’d always have a friend. I’m awestruck when I see you protecting her from harm.”
“I get defensive about anything and everything. I immediately feel like everything is my fault and there is no way I can be enough. I turn into someone who is unrecognizable to the people who know me, as I’m simply the worst version of myself.”
“I can remember my grandmother’s engaging and sometimes horrific stories of sacrifice. She could cook big feed the masses until all of our buttons burst. And she did this with a very limited fixed income. No part of a chicken roast was ever wasted.”
“Both have settled at this time on their assigned gender at birth but for both, there was a time when that wasn’t what they felt was true for them.”
“You see, she’s been fighting mental illness on top of a pandemic. She’s been worrying about her kids every second of the day. She’s been trying to make everyone’s world as normal as possible, and guess who’s forgotten? Her. Don’t let her carry all the burden alone.”
“At the same time as this, I had two other kids hopping on their google meets, I had to pull my oldest from her work to hold the baby, the kids’ Dad had a call just starting, and as I struggled with my laptop to even find which Godforsaken link I needed to even click, I was ready to crumble.”
“My husband called his family to say, ‘Mom and baby are okay.’ When he stepped out of the room, my blood pressure dropped. It was my worst nightmare all over again. I don’t know if others would make the same choices I did.”
“I always had a perception of what ‘outside people’ would act like when I told them, ‘I carried my son as a dad.’”
