On Friday nights, I would rush through my daughter’s bedtime books, slurring words and skipping full pages. By Shelley Mann Hite
Family
I ignored her recipe for many years as a way to avoid the loss. By Marcia Kester Doyle
I’m surprised by how many moms give me the thumbs-up for “letting” my daughter be a pirate. By Mimi Lemay
After bursting into tears, you text your brother-in-law: “Sorry, this is awkward, but make sure she doesn’t use a tampon for the bleeding.” By Lorren Lemmons
As much as I love Christmas, without Santa I felt only glee and relief at the massive reduction in my December workload. By Michelle Deininger
What if birth certificates reflected reality? I imagined three spaces, one for our daughter’s biological mother and two for us. By Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser
I’d raise my family differently, not because of the mistakes I made—though I certainly made my share—but because time means so much more to me now. By Melissa T. Shultz
They arrived. One after the other. In snowstorms. On holidays. From foreign countries. In succession—as inevitable it seemed as midterms and finals. By David Joseph
My eyes focus on my abdomen, the bulge pregnancy has left behind. My inner critic opens her mouth…but then I take in the whole picture. By Chrissie Dunham
Cell phones do not work here, and on a good day it takes only ten minutes to open email. By Mindy R. Roll
My mom took off her scarf and revealed her bald head. We all braced ourselves, but the woman at the shop didn’t flinch. By Kandace Chapple
My parents grew up in the shadow of the Holocaust. Neither one of them knew how to tell me what had happened, so instead they said nothing. By Elissa Jacobs
My father was an every-other-weekend dad, then a once-a-summer dad and, finally, a phone-it-in dad. Then we lost touch. By Stephen J. Lyons
These words by Joan Didion summed up my twenties, but they also capture the predicament of my current midlife crisis. By Elizabeth Newdom
We already lived paycheck to paycheck, how in the world would we scrounge up the money to stay in even a cheap hotel near our daughter? By Anna Whitlock
Actions speak louder than words. Take your kids to the library once a week or make regular outings to your local bookstore. By Regan McMahon
Why in the world had I even brought the kids to the store? I just wanted to go home, have a good cry and forget about autism for a while. By Jennifer Jones
My sister had asked me to bake. “Keep her busy” was the secret code among my family members that season. By Nancy Payne-Hambrose
It had been a long time since I’d heard her laugh. It felt like clouds parting. By Stewart Lewis
Time heals so much of what goes wrong in life, but the memory of what happened to Mum on that day still makes my body react. By Clover Stroud
After we gave it all to Goodwill, I lived in fear every day that I would see somebody else wearing my mom’s clothes. By Kandace Chapple
“Momma was crying last night,” my seven-year-old said. “She was crying because you left our family.” By Erik Raschke
I can’t imagine a time without children in my house, just as one month ago I could not imagine an evening without bath time. By Kelli Kirk
Eighteen years later, nothing has changed. All the firsts I had been praying for never came. By Shauna Actis
Fourteen teenagers and three teachers are dead who were not dead a few of weeks ago, and my house is falling apart, and my children are at school. By Brianne DeRosa