"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. "
"How do I explain to my children this injustice? My children and I have never felt so disposable…Imagine if this was your family. Who will fight with me for change? Who will spread this like wildfire?"
"They had a hole in the knee. In the middle of a quiz in her IB History class, a male administrator came to the classroom, told her she needed to consider the guys in her class and their hormones when choosing her wardrobe, yanked her out of class and threw her into In School Suspension."
"If I could take back that selfish, missed time over the years I would pack it all together and take us on a trip to the beach. I would hold her hand as we walked along the seashore. I would laugh deeply at her crass jokes, I would soak up her smile even as she shyly tried to cover her mouth with her hand like she tended to do. I would say, 'I love you, Momma,' cause I’ve decided you can’t say that enough."
"I draw a line down the middle of a chalkboard, sketching a male symbol on one side and a female symbol on the other. At first there is a kind of awkward silence as the men try to figure out if they've been asked a trick question..."
"If you tell a person with anxiety to 'just stop,' well you might as well just stop your mouth from spitting any more unhelpful garbage that your conversation counterpart will want to take it right to the trash."
"I was watching her sleep next to me and realized it didn’t look right. I unbuttoned her onesie and this is what I saw...Get your baby to the hospital."
