“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.”
‘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’
‘This is DFS calling. His name is Baby Boy (he hasn’t been given a name). His mother abandoned him at the hospital. He is currently in the NICU ready to be released.’
“Just that morning I was sad I wouldn’t have a ‘baby’ anymore because mine was turning 3, and now I was picking up a baby.”
‘I climbed the metal ladder and saw my daughter lying face down. ‘Please Mom, don’t do that.’ If I fell, no one could use the Narcan.’: Mom shares harrowing journey finding daughter overdosed
“My heart sank, and I begged her not to go. My premonition was right in front of me. ‘Please, you have to come home…I’m hearing noises coming out of Monica’s room.’ I found myself breaking down her door. She was grey and purple, her fingers were clenched closed. To our horror, we saw her ‘works’ by her bed.”
‘Graduating isn’t possible.’ My body was shutting down. But I was going to get my degree one way or another.’: Woman finds ‘strength, faith’ among tumor discovery and multiple chronic diagnoses
“She had only ever seen once in her career. My world completely stopped. I had to quit all my activities. I was separated from everyone. And just when I thought there might be light at the end of the tunnel, we got more life changing news. I bet you’ve never heard someone wanting to go to school so badly, but I did. I just wanted to feel normal again.”
‘I knew something was wrong. No matter what is happening with his chromosomes, the love these two have for each other is unmatched.’: Son diagnosed with chromosome 7 inversion
“He was just a rag doll — he didn’t seem to have hardly any muscles or fat on him. But I know with Cecilee by his side, Kai will be OK.”
No One Teaches You How To Love A Child You Didn’t Plan To Have
“When the same people who told you that you ruined your life are smiling ear to ear at your baby shower a few months later, it’s hard.”
‘I’m going to miss him, but I’m glad he’s feeling better.’ This butterfly would make it to the top of the hill if it was the last thing he did.
“‘Butterflies fly mom. This butterfly can’t do that,’ was his obvious statement to me, asking him not to do what I inherently knew what was coming…”
‘This woman you are doing this for, this is her first baby?’ I nodded. ‘Should you tell her?’
“I looked away from what I was doing, over the mess of dirty children with fingernails that needed to be clipped, and asked her what she meant. This girl. She’s young. And she was so spot-on that I started to cry a little.”
‘For a brief second, I thought this was the same old hustle where a homeless guy just wants money for drugs.’
“I could see in this man’s eyes and humble demeanor he was serious.”
Inside The Life Of A Former Closeted Drunk
“Sobriety is truly society’s best kept secret.”
‘You are not old enough to be going through this.’: Husband’s resilience and positivity ‘stuns’ wife after her ‘life-altering’ chronic disease diagnosis
“We vowed to love each other ‘in sickness and in health.’ Little did we know how vividly those vows would be tested. I became acutely ill. I remember running out of a patient’s room to throw up. I felt as though I was the one who ought to be in the hospital bed. I was diagnosed with a total dysfunction of my autonomic nervous system. Illness has taken away much, but it has taught me even more.”
‘I worried my wonderful southern knight would leave me because I couldn’t give him the family he wanted. I started to break down, slowly. I felt so alone.’
“We officially got the great news and shouted it loud for all to hear. We were on cloud 9. Everything was fun and exciting. Until it wasn’t.”
We Only Fall in Love with 3 People in Our Lifetime — Each One for a Specific Reason
“Often our first is when we are young, in high school even. It’s the idealistic love—the one that seems like the fairy tales we read as children. In this type of love, how others view us is more important than how we actually feel. It’s a love that looks right.”
‘My oldest son wanted to ask his Dad (as he calls him) to adopt him, and officially take his stepfather’s last name.’
“When the day got here, even I was unaware of what was going on. I was just as shocked as he was.”
Recycling Hack For Crayola Markers To Help Keep Oceans Clean
“If our kids learn habits that can be sustainable and responsible young, they’ll stick with them into adulthood.”
‘The man at the grocery store said, ‘So he is your last then, the baby of the family?’ The tears I’d been containing started pouring again.’: Mom with PCOS suffers miscarriage, ‘Please know we loved you already’
“He pats my shoulder kindly and before walking away he says, ‘Everything is going to be okay. God always has a plan.’”
‘This picture of me is blurry, and so is how I have been feeling. I am crapped out.’
“The truth is that, in the summertime, while I enjoy these extra moments with my children, I am also a mess because of it.”
‘I grew up in a time where you could drink from the hose. And I survived.’
“Nobody told my mom she was ruining our lives because we played until the street lights were on. But now as moms, we don’t survive.”
‘He was so wiggly coming out he made it hard to catch him! We were so overwhelmed, he was so beautiful.’: Parents welcome ‘perfect rainbow baby boy’ after pregnancy loss
“We had a surprise pregnancy. Unfortunately, that ended in a loss of our little one which hit us pretty hard. We choose to leave everything up to fate and not prevent another future pregnancy. Sure enough, 5 months later we were expecting another little one! And again, it ended in a loss. So, we chose to hold off on the idea. Turns out fate had other things in mind.”
‘I throw one of these in the skimmer basket and… holla bing holla boom! The cloudiness left and my sponge looks like this.’
“Everyone knows my pool is green by this time of the year. My daughter spotted this idea and I figured why not try it.”
‘I was living a double life. I’d go to college. Then I’d hang out at trap houses, cut dope and use drugs intravenously.’: Addict says he was ‘miraculously healed’ and had ‘no withdrawals symptoms’
“The first time I ever injected methamphetamine I knew I was going to have a problem – because it was the best feeling I had ever felt. I dropped out of college and went on a binge. I was now forging checks, stealing from my family, selling drugs, and breaking into houses to support my habit. I never thought I would be able to get clean and sober.”
‘Who do you belong to?,’ asked the wedding photographer, to our 19-year-old foster son.
“’He’s ours,’ I said. His eyes met mine for just a second. He smiled.”
‘Every one of the police officers and EMT’s agreed, his car seat, and the fact he was properly restrained in it, is what kept him from being seriously injured or killed.’
“I could hear my grandson crying behind me, yelling ‘YaYa, I falling!’”
‘I got out of bed, got dressed, and left my apartment with no intentions of ever returning. I then pulled out my phone to request an Uber to a bridge in my area.’
“I began walking onto the bridge, passing a sign that held the suicide prevention lifeline number on it. ‘They can’t help me,’ I thought.”
‘As the contractions grew closer together, with each ring I was nervous his Wi-Fi had gone out.’
“My first pregnancy ended in an induction that lasted 3 days. I was terrified that was going to happen again. I knew John would not be able to sit at his computer for 3 days, and the longer labor was, the less likely he would be able to stay by the computer.”