“I knew this was bad, I felt like that same 15-year-old girl having to make the decision whether or not to let my mom live.”
‘When I got there I saw the saddest bracelet on my grandma’s fragile, bruised wrist. A purple band that said ‘DNR/DNI.’ I couldn’t hold it in anymore. The tears were now streaming.’
‘As soon as we took our baby home, I didn’t feel right. I started having graphic thoughts – throwing or shaking him would cross my mind. I’d imagine myself smothering him with a pillow.’
“I was scared to care for him in fear of acting on one of these thoughts. But I also had a hard time letting go of him for even 10 minutes to give myself a break.”
‘Maybe, just maybe, if you wait it out and let your child recover before taking them out, you will protect a child that has been through hell and back. Just wait until the cold is over. I beg of you.’
“That’s when she walked up. A darling little girl who wanted to play with Jude. My heart melted as he looked up and smiled at her. In that moment, she let out the wettest, most mucous-y sounding cough right in his face. I was horrified.”
‘Oh God. I am about to puke.’ All of a sudden, I see a white van and someone whispers, ‘There he is.’
“I couldn’t wait any longer so I drove myself to the hospital. They told me there was nothing they could do to stop this baby from coming today. Alex was set to leave for deployment in 17 days.”
‘I was 10 years old when my ongoing sexual abuse at the hands of a male relative finally ended. My abuse ended not because I spoke up, but because my abuser was caught abusing another little girl.’
“I don’t recall the specific tactics my molester used to ensure I wouldn’t talk. Only that they worked for years.”
‘Wait, really?’ As he started to cry, he says, ‘Why?’ He walked over to my guitar case and he took 1 single dollar, not all of it, just ONE DOLLAR.
“He says, ‘Is it okay if Michael and I distribute the money evenly between other homeless veterans we know?’ I asked, ‘You all are veterans?’”
‘My baby was born perfect, except for the knot in her umbilical cord. That day I was introduced to 2 concepts: stillbirth and grief.’: Mom loses daughter at birth, thanks friends who ‘saved her life’
“What I didn’t know was my daughter had died earlier that morning. After what I had thought was a normal day, a sonogram showed a black and white blob of static, unmoving, rather than the beating of her little heart. Grief has been called a journey, but journey’s imply an endpoint, a destination. Grief is more like an ocean; it’s being thrashed around by waves, trying to come up for air, in a world where you must learn how to swim.”
‘There are 3.’ My mind started racing. 3 what?!’ He said, ‘You’re going to have triplets. 3 babies.’: Woman gives birth to ‘non-NICU triplets’ after struggling with infertility, says ‘it was unheard of’
“I sat there in shock. My husband danced around the room, whooping and hollering with his hands in the air like Rocky Balboa. Before I could even share in his excitement, the door closed. He told us the road ahead would not be easy, and I could ‘reduce’ down to 1 or 2. That snapped me back to reality. I told him I absolutely DID need to keep all of them.”
Dear Society: Teen Moms Are Allowed To Celebrate Their Pregnancies
“Young moms are capable of doing great things with their lives with support and encouragement. Don’t write them off before they’ve even had a chance to prove you wrong.”
‘I was divorced, he was divorced. There wasn’t a light at the end of the tunnel. It was there, in each other.’: Mom re-marries after ’emotionally abusive’ relationship, now ‘beautifully blended family’
“I prayed every night I’d find someone to love my daughters as their own. I just wanted them to have a daddy. Out of curiosity, I signed up for a dating site, but didn’t do much with it. The last day of my free trial, I found a picture of a man and a beautiful little boy. Something about talking to him just felt right. Like all the horrible things that happened to me had been wiped away. The hard times brought us together.”