I had a hard time choosing which woman in my life to share today. Mostly because I feel like these women’s stories aren’t mine to tell. I flay my life out on the internet, but to put a photo of a women whom I love and share her stories seemed hard for me somehow.

So I struggled. Until I occurred to me that the strongest woman I’ve ever known was my Aunt Paula.

I was seven when she passed away, but my memories of her are vivid. Granted, most of what I know of her is through family stories, but isn’t that enough?

She was a single mom doing her damndest to work hard and save money for her daughter, my cousin, to go to college and travel and live a full life.

She was a woman with breast cancer, so stubborn and determined. When she was diagnosed, I’m told they gave her a small time to live, maybe a year or two. But my Aunt Paula wasn’t having it. She wanted to live until her daughter was at least 12, because she believed that give her some time to give my cousin what she’d potentially need. to teach her what she’d need to learn. And she did. She lived seven more years and died not long after my cousin’s 12th birthday.

This is what survival is.

I’m told that’s how she always was, determined to learn and live and do whatever she was told she couldn’t.

I’m told I’m a lot like her. For me, there is no greater compliment.

My Aunt Paula was pure joy and grace to me.

My best memories are sleepovers with just the two of us, going to breakfast in our pajamas (which my parents would never have allowed), and riding on her lap in her wheelchair at the county fair.

I still remember her smell, the feel of her clothing, the sound of her laugh.

I still hate the smell of rubbing alcohol because that’s how her bathroom always smelled when she had one treatment or another.

I can only hope to have one tiny bit of her strength and love.

Aunt Paula, 1981

Andrea (Andy to her friends) blogs at Crazy with a Side of Awesomesauce, and Sprocket Ink. She can also be found sharing a little bit of her crazy on Twitter @andygirl and on Facebook.

Looking back, it had been a long time coming. I was bound to blow up. 27 or so years of holding it all in, the physical and emotional abuse, the never being good enough, the never existing except as a prop in someone else’s existence. It had to come out some time.

I had just started therapy a couple months before, not even to deal with these issues in particular, but mostly to deal with my stress at work because I was not balancing my life well. I never realized it would all be connected to one massive epicenter of emotion.

So by that night, I was already pretty tightly wound up. So ready, though not realizing just how ready I was, to let it all burst out. Like popping a cork off of my past.

I was driving to dance class, my one release where I could be completely happy and not think about anything, when she called, my mom that is.

Now, talking to my mom is a serious endeavor. Once that woman gets talking, there’s no stopping her. This is common knowledge; how she beat me down my entire life wasn’t.

So I grudgingly answered as I maneuvered my car into a spot on the street, knowing I had maybe ten minutes before class started. She dove right in, ready to lay into me for my political beliefs, I guess. See, an election was coming up and she did not approve how I planned to vote on the gay marriage issue. She had just called to tell me how wrong I was, how misguided, how sinful.

Now, this was not my first political debate with my mother. I knew how she felt about these things and I tried not to engage because it’s like a fist fight with a brick wall; only I would get hurt.

But as she just ranted on and on about it, I realized it wasn’t even about politics. It was about me. About how I’m always failing her, how I’m no ever living up to her perfect image of what I should be, about how I would never, ever be good enough.

She wasn’t attacking my politics. She was attacking ME.

Like she’d done countless times throughout my life, but I’d chosen to not hear it. Because I couldn’t.

I snapped.

I called her an insensitive bitch (and I’d never cussed in front of, let alone at, my mother) and I hung up. Or I said something like that. I don’t honestly remember my exact words. I do remember calling her a bitch. I doesn’t sound like much, but it was a powerful move. Felt for me the equivalent of walking out of an abusive relationship, though I couldn’t anticipate just how monumental at the time.

Then, I went to dance class and danced it out while crying, which my dance teacher was more than supportive of.

Oodles happened after that, my dad furious for how I treated my mother (irony?), memories and emotions pouring out of me at an incredible and uncontrollable pace, therapy becoming the best thing I ever did for myself.

And I never spoke to my mother again.

It’s been the happiest years of my life.

Andrea (Andy to her friends) blogs at Crazy with a Side of Awesomesauce, and Sprocket Ink. She can also be found sharing a little bit of her crazy on Twitter @andygirl and on Facebook.

When I found out about this assignment, my friend Nicole’s name immediately popped into my head. I just don’t think there’s anyone more deserving of a moment in the spotlight for all that she does. So, my dear: this one’s for you.

Nicole and I met many moons ago while we both worked for a children’s book publishing company. Our friendship developed to the tune of life’s ebb and flow. I remember the day her father passed away, visited her at the hospital when she gave birth to her beautiful daughter, and tried to get her out of the house whenever she needed a girl’s night out. She sent a basket to my family when my grandmother died, got me on my feet again when I ended things with my ex, and has been a rock whenever I needed an ear, a hug, a laugh, a lift, or a drink.

She is a remarkable friend to have.

In December 2007, Nicole gave birth to her second child: a baby boy by the name of Nicholas. Though I was on a cruise at the time, I was expecting the text to come in and was surprised when I heard from a mutual friend instead.

It wasn’t until I returned home a few days later that I learned that Nicholas was born with Down syndrome.

“I will never forget the moment the director of the NICU came to see us in Nicholas’ ‘room,’ pulled a wretched putrid-colored curtain around us (like that flimsy curtain could shield me from the horrifying news), and told us that ‘the third chromosome is present…your son has Down syndrome…I’m sorry.’ I let out a guttural scream and basically folded in half. My husband, ever the logical thinker, asked, ‘Will this affect his life span?’ The doctor answered simply, ‘Yes,’ but that single word was like a hot poker in my heart.”

That winter I watched her go through the various stages of guilt, grief, sadness, and heartache, unsure of how to respond. I needed her to know more than anything that I loved her and both of her children equally. Nicholas would always just be Nicholas to me: a beautiful, happy baby boy.

Over time, the grief melted. Acceptance took root in Nicole’s life. She devoted herself to fully research what she was up against and made the decision with her husband to get Nicholas the therapy he needed as soon as possible. She found a support group for mothers of children with Down syndrome, participated in walks to fund DS research, and she began to bring both of her children to social events once she realized how much her friends loved to interact with the oldest and newest addition to her family.

One day, not too long ago, Nicole sang her son’s praises over dinner and the various milestones he had achieved against all odds. It was music to my ears. She was so overwhelmed with emotion she had to choke back tears. And she told me that her son has taught her the most invaluable lessons in life.

“He may not fulfill all the dreams I had for him before he was born, but I know he will continue to meet his milestones and accomplish great things in his own time. He makes his parents and his big sister so proud on a continual basis.”

The love that Nicole has for her family is nothing short of extraordinary. And to have been given the chance to follow along on this journey is something I’ll never forget or ever take for granted. Thank you, Nicole, for inspiring me with your strength, compassion, and insight. I’m always proud of you, too.

Nicole and her Family

Charlotte blogs at My Pixie Blog, can be found on Facebook and chatting on Twitter @MyPixieBlog

Twenty years later

It’s a story I don’t often tell. While it’s perhaps strange to put it on the world wide web for all to read, with an anniversary just around the corner, it just seemed appropriate to write it out once and for all. To share a secret many of my closest friends don’t even know; to purge and let go of a day that forever changed the way I approached life.

It was August 13, 1991, and I was in Germany visiting relatives and friends that summer. At 12, I was awkward, uncomfortable, shy, and bookish. From my unmanageable curls to my oversized glasses, I had clearly not yet settled into my own pale skin. But none of that mattered here, which was why I loved spending my summers in Europe.

It was a warm day not unlike any other that season. After a beautiful afternoon spent walking through Carlstadt, my mother’s longtime friend Gisella unlocked the doors to her car and we all jumped in: my mother kept Gisella company in the passenger’s seat and my brother, Gisella’s son, and I piled in to the back. Gisella had just tried on shoes at a local shoe store. If they had only fit, things may have ended differently.

The details of that day in August are foggy. There was laughter. The sound of two women reuniting after too many years and too much distance apart. The silly antics of three hyperactive children in the backseat. And then a swerve. A startling jolt. The deafening noise of glass breaking. Frantic screaming and the bright lights of an ambulance.

I was later told that a car wanted to pass another on the very narrow and windy road we were driving on but failed to see us ahead. Not left with much of a choice, Gisella headed straight into an embankment instead of driving over a cliff, sparing all of our lives that day. She was killed instantly.

I lost my glasses in the accident, which I think was a blessing in disguise all these years later. I couldn’t see Gisella pinned to the steering wheel or the passenger from the other car who had landed not far from us. Many hours later after I came to in a clinical white hospital room my mother sobbed and told me how she had tried everything to save her best friend’s life. She said there had been another life lost that day: a young man who wasn’t wearing his seat belt.

I pulled shards of glass from my hair and listened to the soft crunch they made under my weight on the hospital bed. I asked for my brother and Ralph, afraid of what she hadn’t yet told me. They would be okay she said, looking wistfully out the window, tears springing from her vacant eyes. My brother suffered from internal injuries and Ralph, who had been sitting in the middle, had broken several of his fingers when he braced for the impact. I left relatively unscathed, save for a grapefruit sized rainbow patch on my forearm.

Four years later, I found myself fearful of the license to freedom my friends couldn’t wait to hold. When I passed the driving test, I drove with caution. I was never a fan of taking the wheel and now that I’ve sold my dusty clunker, I have to admit I’m a bit relieved. I prefer to walk and take public transportation wherever I go. I guess some scars do transcend the test of time.

But the most valuable lesson is one I’ll cherish forever; the only good to come from a day that forever haunts my memory. I’ve learned never to take anything in life for granted.

Because all it takes is one swerve to change everything.

Charlotte blogs at My Pixie Blog, can be found on Facebook and chatting on Twitter @MyPixieBlog

Is it corny to write a post about how your mom is the strongest woman you know? If so, I don’t want to be un-corny.

My mom is the strongest woman I know.

I came on the scene a little earlier than she and my dad expected. She was young. He was young. I was loud. And still, they made it work. She finished college. And kept finishing college. She pursued the heck out of her education, even though I was always there, being loud. And then she pursued her career, first with me just being loud and then my brother joining in with his volume.

In doing so, she taught me that being a mother doesn’t have to define who you are. She was always there at our stuff — softball, concerts, plays, awards banquets — but she had a life, a career, a set of friends. She pushed me harder than she pushed my brother — because I was going to be a woman someday. She endured horrible things at work simply because she was a woman and wanted me to understand what my journey could be like.

She has beaten breast cancer. She has lived through relationship woes with my dad and come out on the other side. She has taken care of my grandmother since grandpa died. She has loved my sons more than any Grandma on earth has ever loved a grandson. She is patient. She is kind. She is funny. She is tough, but she is real.

And she loved me even when I wasn’t all that love-able.

Jenna blogs at Stop, Drop & Blog and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. She has been blogging for ten years. She is a freelance writer and photographer living somewhere in Ohio with her firefighter be-mustached husband. She is an everyday mom to two little boys and a birth mom to an amazing Munchkin. Her photographer is Courtney Paris of Lousville Boudoir.

Two lines. Sunset outside the window of the cold, tiled bathroom. He stood outside waiting, pacing. I didn’t want to tell him. I knew where this would go, what road we were going to head down. He knocked. I opened the door.

The next day, he called and scheduled my abortion. I sat on the couch with my hand over my belly; young and tight and flat still at that point, but I knew I loved her. I felt my Mama Bear starting to form.

I left while he was at work. I packed everything I could fit in my car. I left behind a volume of William Carlos Williams poems, my favorite jacket as I forgot it was hanging in the closet and my glasses. Other odds and ends. In the end, they meant nothing compared to what I was escaping to save.

–

At 18 weeks pregnant, I felt tired, hot and weak. I napped and awoke to a fever of 104. In the emergency room I was informed that I had an undiagnosed kidney disorder. I needed surgery. To save myself, to save her. I was placed on Level III bed rest, unable to work.

The plans came crashing down around me.

–

I went into labor at 28 weeks. An ambulance ride later, I found myself in a big hospital connected to lots of things. I accepted the steroid shots to strengthen her lungs. I endured the shakes from the mag drip to keep her inside. My skin crawled when they gave me terbutaline to stop those contractions. I went through another surgery in hopes that it would make a difference.

In hopes that we would both survive.

They almost lost me then; lost both of us. But we survived.

–

I was pushed to the front door of the hospital with her in my arms. I wasn’t even sure how to hold her. She was beautiful. Healthy, despite everything we had been through together. And now we were parting. My father handed her to her new parents.

I got up and walked out the door. Without my baby. Without my soul.

–

I watched her play the guitar last week while we had a visit. She’s so beautiful, so tall. So very talented. I am amazed by who she has become. I’m equally amazed by who I have become. I am not the same young girl I was 8 years ago. I have been changed by chance, by choice, by life itself. Despite the lifelong grief and loss that I live with, despite the scars — physical and emotional, despite the hell I went through to keep her safe enough until she could be born — I wouldn’t change a second of it. I’ll endure whatever I have to endure as long as she’s okay.

–

Jenna blogs at Stop, Drop & Blog and The Chronicles of Munchkin Land. She has been blogging for ten years. She is a freelance writer and photographer living somewhere in Ohio with her firefighter be-mustached husband. She is an everyday mom to two little boys and a birth mom to an amazing Munchkin. Her photographer is Courtney Paris of Lousville Boudoir.

Please meet my beautiful and remarkable friend, Jessica, a woman who has been dealt tremendous heartache, but whose strength never fails to take my breath away.

The tagline to her blog, Four Plus an Angel, tells the barest part of her story … “life after loss – with one teenager, two surviving triplets, and a rainbow baby.”

Jessica is an amazing mother, a woman who describes herself as “the mother of four living children, and the mother of one who is not.

The loss of a child is unfathomable for most of us, but Jessica suffered this unspeakable loss and has gone on to show that grief and happiness can truly co-exist.

For me, strength is about more than surviving. It’s about finding a way to see the beauty around you while never forgetting all that you’ve lost.

Her grace and strength inspire me to be even more appreciative for all that I have.

To learn more about Jessica and the loss of her precious baby girl, Hadley, please read A Touch of Life, Today, and Thoughts on Thanksgiving.

Much love to you, Jessica.

Nichole, Ms. March, authors in these small moments, her blog about finding meaning and beauty in the ordinary moments of parenting, of life.

Summer nights in Maine are amazing. The days can get so unbearably hot…the humidity just hangs in the air and can feel so suffocating. But, after the sun sets, that same humidity that made you completely miserable during the daylight, becomes a comfortable, delicious wrap in the evening, a thin layer that shields you against the cold.

My stepfather and I would often sit outside, just beside the front door. We sat side by side in our folding lawn chairs, the aluminum kind with the woven plastic mesh seating. The ones that lasted just a handful of summers before the webbing frayed. (I’ll never forget how the hard edges of that plastic webbing cut into my plump adolescent thighs, the way I had to peel my skin from them when I stood.)

We would just sit and, there in the peacefulness of those humid evenings, we would talk. Or we would simply take in the silence. But the distinguishing part was that whether we spoke or not, we were comfortable. There was no tension. It was as though in the relative darkness, we saw each other. He was kind in those moments, which made the horrible ones even more painful.

There were nights when he would ask me if I wanted to go nightcrawling. We would gather up the necessities, a good flashlight with fresh batteries, a bucket, several handfuls of wet dirt. Out on the moist lawn, I was tasked with shining the flashlight beam and holding the white plastic bucket while he grabbed hold of the earthworms before they shimmied back into the warm, dark earth.

There’s a technique to nightcrawling, you have to be so quick…good hand-eye coordination is key. We filled our bucket with the squirming, fleshy worms and placed a snug lid, complete with air holes, on top to keep them for fishing the next day.

I remember many nights of nightcrawling, but so very few days of fishing. Perhaps I didn’t get invited on those fishing trips. I only remember the nights prior, the nights when I was his helper. When I was good enough and he went easy on me. Nights when I hoped that he would come to see that I was a good girl. That I was good enough.

But, those nights didn’t last. In the light of day, I was no longer his helper, his right hand, his companion.

When the sun rose, I was stupid, lazy, and fat. My name was no longer Nichole, Babe, or Hon, it became Idiot, Dumbfuck, Moron and a slew of others.

He never hesitated to lay me bare in the daytime.

In the day, he probably hated his life. In the evenings, when regret kicked in, he was softer, more able to see me, to pull me in.

If he had been consistently mean, I could have disengaged, written him off as a horrible human being, devoid of any redeeming qualities.

But, it wasn’t that simple.

None of it was that simple.

But, those days…those nights…made me stronger.

I survived the love given and the love taken away.

I learned that I was strong.

I learned that love should be unconditional. It should be the same in the day as it is in the evening…when you fail and when you succeed.

That is the love that my husband and I share with one another and our children and for that, I am so incredibly grateful.

Nichole, Ms. March, authors in these small moments, her blog about finding meaning and beauty in the ordinary moments of parenting, of life.

This is Maria and her daughter Gladys; we met them and became friends when we lived in Mexico. Maria had just bought her first home and Gladys had just begun her first year in college when this photo was taken. They supported themselves by cleaning houses. These women are just kick-ass.

Maria and Gladys

Meredith Groenevelt is the voice behind BuenoBaby; a humorous, candid, raw look at a life, a marriage and a mommy-hood. Along, with publishing her blog, she also freelances as a web designer. Occasionally she spends time on Twitter, and by occasionally, I mean she’s legally changing her name to @BuenoBabyGirl.

Today she lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their three daughters. She thinks she might have a cat.

I look back now and wonder if she was dying that day at the beach, or that weekend at my cousin’s wedding. If the monster was already there, breaking her body down one cell at a time. Stalking her organs and ambushing her insides. The cancer had won before she even knew to fight.

I was 24 years old when my mom was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and I was 24 years old when she died from the disease. The whole experience organized in my mind by numbers. On the day she died, I was 24 years old, my baby was 1, my brother 22, my dad 66 and my mom 57. She was diagnosed when she was 56; the cancer was in stage 4. Before the diagnosis, she’d been sick for 3 months. After the diagnosis, she was burdened with pain and nausea for 7 months, before dying at 6:30pm on 10/1/99. I was 45 minutes from home when she slipped away.

In a period of 18 months, I brought one life into this world and helped another leave. Everyday, I packed up my toddler and drove the 35 minutes to my parents’ home where I spent the days feeding my mom food she wouldn’t eat, driving her to doctors who did nothing, and brought her water for pain killers which did little.

Weeks before she died, high on narcotics, her eyes fixed on the living room sliding doors, she said, “At Christmastime, you’ll put the tree there, and the lights will sparkle.” She didn’t survive long enough to see that Christmas tree. But I did…somehow…I survived.

Meredith Groenevelt is the voice behind BuenoBaby; a humorous, candid, raw look at a life, a marriage and a mommy-hood. Along, with publishing her blog, she also freelances as a web designer. Occasionally she spends time on Twitter, and by occasionally, I mean she’s legally changing her name to @BuenoBabyGirl.

Today she lives in Wisconsin with her husband and their three daughters. She thinks she might have a cat.