Latest Stories
Most recently published stories in Families.
A Hypothesized Barn Owl
My early childhood is blurry, specifically memories with family. The blurriness focuses around the age of seven- which how incredibly convenient, considering the most impressionable years of a child’s life are their first seven years. My foundation was beautifully damned from the beginning. Beautiful, because if it was not damned, I never would have known resilience. When trying to access and reflect upon these aged memories, I’m met with flashes of emotionally charged situations a seven-year-old child has no business being a part of. Most of those emotions fueled of anger and spite, stemming from personal unsatisfaction. My parents were unhappily married with troubled backgrounds themselves, so they did the only thing they knew how to when being faced with unprocessed emotions. They would take out their frustration on whoever or whatever was around them, or they would run from their demons- and their children. I can attest to the saying “you are the natural byproduct of your environment.” As a result, I become an anxiety-induced, socially awkward kid and later teen. However, opposed to the voluntary element implied in that saying, there is not much a child can do to change their surroundings. Despite the limited freedom a seven (or so) year old has, I was lucky enough to discover an escape of sorts. The tiny blue barn offset to the right of our cookie-cutter farmhouse.
By Finley Gray5 years ago in Families
It's ok Mom... Your doing great!
I question my parenting a lot! "Am I a good mom?", "Do I show my kids enough attention?", and, "I hope I'm raising them right.", are my all time concerns. I want them to grow up and be happy and to know that I will always be there when they need me, no matter what! I love helping people. It may sound strange but I am such a people pleaser that I will go above and beyond to make people smile. I'm the type of person that lives my life like, “ if i've got it, I'll give it”, and I won't ever expect anything in return.
By Valerie Martinez5 years ago in Families
You Saved Me, Son
There could be no possible way. I literally almost died from a fentanyl and cocaine overdose a week prior, where they had to give me Narcan at least three times that I can remember. The nurses had asked me at the hospital if I could be pregnant, and I laughed it off. How could I possibly be pregnant? With my life? What a joke? They did not test me that day, which they probably should have.
By rachel west5 years ago in Families
Birth Plan like a Boss
What you don't expect when you are expecting. Pregnancy is one of those magical times in life when everyone wants to put in their ten cents worth of unsolicited advice. Your mother, mother-in-law, sister, friends, random lady at the coffee shop, your mechanic, dentist and pretty much everyone you happen to cross paths with has some pearl of essential wisdom that they feel compelled to share with you. While it is all well intended, do you really need to know that your sister-in-law tore from here to there and things were never the same down there, so a caesarean is the only way to have a baby? Or that the checkout chick at woolies was in labour for a week and it was the worst experience of her life? Or that if you love your baby you simply have to have a drug free labour according to a woman you met through a Facebook group who had 5 babies all without pain relief? No you could very possibly live a happy and well adjusted life with out this knowledge that you are now privy to in your impregnated state.
By Rebecca Speirs5 years ago in Families
The Power Flower
My dad’s mother passed away when I was fifteen. October of 1991; I remember like it was yesterday. I was a freshman in high school and the typical self-absorbed teenager. I knew way more than my parents. Of course, in retrospect my parents were, and are, quite wise people. So being the hormonal monster that encompassed my essence so well, I wasn’t getting along with them. At all. We constantly argued over issues like the fact that I wasn’t yet allowed to date, my curfew, and my need for expensive clothes (because I was foolish enough to believe that my value derived from having a brand stamped on my ass). My life seemed wretched.
By Kellie Berry5 years ago in Families
