HuffPost Personal

"The original charge carried a possibility of five to eight years. In the meantime, it would be the better part of a year before I knew what the outcome would be."
"Why are we not talking about the painful reality of this disease?"
"She was wrapped in a pink knitted Barbie-size blanket. Her skin looked like tissue paper ― translucent and fragile. Her face, not fully formed, resembled an alien. She moved her arm once."
"Walking away from my engagement meant exchanging the delights of a bride for the embarrassment of a deserter."
"Like a third of Americans trying to conceive, our path to parenthood was the complete opposite of a textbook experience."
"Things were going well until a couple invited me into their completely white living room ... It was my perfect nightmare."
"I’d felt an intense, stabbing pain on the side of my stomach earlier that day at work. It was so severe that it caused my knees to buckle beneath me at my desk."
"By Christmas, the purple velvet robe he wore, as the King carrying frankincense to baby Jesus in the preschool reenactment, dwarfed his rail-thin body."
"I was charmed by a charismatic, exciting woman who injected herself into my life and became my best friend. In reality, she was an international con artist on the run from the authorities."
"The allegation that I had been somehow inappropriate, the implication that I might be harming my son in some way... hit me in an emotional place."