Danielle Campoamor

I smile because I’ve been lost.

We used to scribble them in heavy yearbooks. We wrote elongated promises of endless summers and forever friendships, all laced with the hopeful assurance that we’d never change.

We didn’t look like an abused family.

He didn’t look like an angry, abusive man.

My mother, through violent nights and lonely days, taught me more about fathers than her husband ever did. I looked to her – trapped in a cycle that made her feel too worthless or powerless or insignificant to leave – and admired all the things a father should be.

The overall societal sexualization of women, to me, is fascinating.

Why do we – as mothers – feel the need to pat our partners on the back for doing what can only be described as their job?

Yes, mothers – hell, women – should support one another; regardless of their differences in faith, friends, parenting and overall life choices.

Have you ever sat and pondered the comical fickleness of human life?

It was because only one child was alive. 

It just, is. Whether you understand it or not.

When I announced my pregnancy I swore I could hear the whispering.

I believed marriage was a lie and love was an illusion before I knew the name of the first boy I’d kiss.