"I felt the tug on my sleeve and looked down to find him standing motionless. His mouth was moving but I couldn’t make out his words. His quiet body in the noisy room caught me off guard. I bent down to find his voice."
"I don’t know who this lady is... she waved at him and he made his way up to her. I thought their interaction would be the same as last time but I was wrong. "
"A few months into new motherhood, I learned the hard reality that mean girls still exist—they just become mommies too... But the good news is: we are allowed to excuse ourselves from the table. Isn’t that freeing? No permission slip necessary. Just get up."
"I’m not sick. I’m not undergoing trauma. I’m not physically hurting, and so I suck it up because there are real people going through real things and I’m not supposed to be sad. I’m supposed to be okay."
"My dad wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone or by text and insisted he would meet me at home... There’s no way this was happening to me and my family. There is no way this could be real. Well, in fact it was real."
"Clearly, she didn’t think she was allowed inside. Conviction crashed over my spirit. Having a child think she can’t come inside my home goes against everything I believe about hospitality."
