Tysha was basically born wanting to have a family of her own, with as many children as she could handle. But she got a late start, and it seemed as though she might never reach the destination she’d had in her heart when she started. photos by Tysha Carter
For 17 years Jamie had hoped to have a baby but only experienced loss after loss after loss. Meanwhile, her cousin Bonnie was watching and waiting—knowing and hoping that she could offer a solution that would bring healing to both of them.
Valerie and I often talk about how, no matter when we talk to someone, we are always in the middle of their story. We continue to change and evolve and process and grow. Our priorities change, our circumstances change, our lives change. We adjust, we readjust, we find balance—and then we fall again. And begin again.
We all know that in family planning there is no “one size fits all,” there is no, “take this quiz and find out how many kids you should have!” there is not necessarily a magic number or a magic feeling.
November is Prematurity Awareness month, and we have a story from Kelli Kelley, the founder of Hand to Hold on her experience watching her premie babies grow in the NICU.
When Kristy went into labor at 33 weeks gestation and had her baby via emergency c-section, it seemed like a series of small miracles took place. She and the baby would have the healthiest outcome in a scary, unpredictable situation. End of story. But week after week, as Kristy and her family learned more about […]
The relationship we have with our moms can be fraught and complicated. We must differentiate ourselves from our moms, but no matter what we do or who we become, they are always guides or shadows on our paths. We can never fully disentangle ourselves from their influence—and in the best case scenario, we probably would […]
I knew that it wouldn’t do me any good to say, well, I’m going to have a baby and then I’ll figure out my life because I’d already made pretty much made a solid decision that I was going to place him for adoption and I didn’t want to put my life on hold any longer.
When Grace was 28, she had just finished breastfeeding her 2nd daughter. Her husband, Dave, was working through his residency as an ophthalmologist. And their life in the Bronx, New York, was busy and mentally and physically taxing. And then she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
If you really understand what is going on for them, then you can actually take better care of them. It’s about being open to what people are experiencing and not having an agenda for them, or making assumptions about them, or these plans for them, or clearly they would want this, this or this. It isn’t clear. I have to set down my expectations and my baggage around anybody else’s issues as best I can and be open to what they need.
