As a young single woman living in a punk house in LA, Sarah made an unusual choice: to become certified as a foster parent. Over the next few years Sarah welcomed young traumatized children and surly teenagers into her home and gave them all the love she had to give. Then, after days, or weeks, […]
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.
More than 4 years ago I wrote about what it was like trying to rebuild my life after a devastating miscarriage knocked me off my feet. I’ve revisited that idea here to give an update on what feels like a continual rebuilding and readjusting to a new life. You can listen to me read the essay here. […]
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.
It wasn’t too long after her mother died that Meg began to feel . . . tired. Maybe a little under the weather. Possibly depressed. But it was winter—cold and gray. She was grieving. And her life was hectic with house renovations. And then a more familiar nausea set in . . . . For […]
Natalie was 19 when she got pregnant. Plans to marry her boyfriend quickly fell through and she was left with a choice to keep the baby or place the baby in a closed adoption. With her parents’ help, she chose adoption. And then she found out it was actually twins. And that there might be […]
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.
by Shelley Sadler In July 2010, I had a miscarriage. To say it was hard is an understatement, as anyone who has gone through one can attest. At this particular moment, we were having some personal struggles in our family, so that made the loss of something so special even harder. My youngest child at […]
In this week’s mini episode JoAnna reads her essay about her baby Levi, who, after being diagnosed with trisomy-13 at 18 weeks, beat the odds and was born alive at 35 weeks gestation. Levi may have lead a tiny and quiet life, but his existence was like a firework that bursts onto the scene leaving wonder […]
Bente kept a journal when she was growing up in which she wrote that she would have 12 kids: 2 boys, then 2 girls, then 2 boys, and on and on. A couple of decades later we meet up with her and find that things went surprisingly well for her.
