I was nine years old when my parents told me they were getting a divorce. I was coming home from summer camp. I’d had a horseback-riding accident at camp and fell on my arm. I needed to see a doctor. My parents picked me up together. I told them about my arm, but they...
Stories
Julia’s story | “For 20 years I experienced severe emotional pain feeling rejected and unimportant to my parents.”
I grew up with an amazing family. My dad is a loving, tender dad and has always been a good provider for his family. My mom was a nurturing, intelligent, and fun-loving stay-at-home mom who gave everything for her kids. I’m glad she was a dedicated mom during our...
Christie’s story | “I’m in my 60’s and I’m still unpacking what happened to my sister and I as children.”
Thank you for getting the word out on what happens to children when the adults break the traditional family structure. I've been wanting forever to somehow get out there what happens to the emotional life of a child when you don't have parents, family, a mother, or a...
“To be loved by the two who created you and not from the strangers who bought you, is natural and beautiful. But I was denied this primal family structure to support a business and an unfamiliar infertile couple.”
(Originally published at Anonymous Us) From the eyes of a donored baby: I’m told to be thankful for my donors because they gave me life, but this life is not merely a kidney transplant, this life is 50% of who I am genetically and biologically: my heredity, the...
J. Chen’s story | “My family ideal won’t simply revolve around my desires and what I think could make me happy, since the purpose of having a family is to make one another prosper.”
In 1997, at three months old, I was sent back to my parent’s hometown in China. They came from the southern part of China, in a province called Fuzhou, where many immigrated from to seize economic freedom. My parents had an arranged marriage, as was common in China....
Stephen’s story | “Some things that you’re supposed to learn from your father, I had to learn from other people or figure them out on my own, because Dad wasn’t there.”
For the most part, Dad was the breadwinner and Mom was the disciplinarian. There were times when Dad would discipline my brother and me, but mostly he just wanted to horse around with us. He was a big kid himself. Perhaps because I’m the younger child, or because I...
Elizabeth Garrott’s story | “To me, my father had died, and there was no changing that. I was looking at a shell of the man I once knew.”
My parents were married in their early twenties as a lot of couples typically do. I was born a couple years later in 1976. I grew up knowing the love of my mother and father in a normal household. I was particularly close to my father as a lot of young girls are. They...
“No one should have to spend hours on hours feeling alone and wondering about half of their biological family. I wouldn’t wish this pain and wondering on anyone.”
(Originally Published at Anonymous Us) I am an 18-year-old female and I was conceived using an egg donor. My dad is my biological dad and I admire him beyond words. I’m not at all close with my mom. My parents told me they used an egg donor when I was 10-12 years old....
Maggie’s story | “I’ll never fully heal from having an absent father and being raised by a single mother.”
I grew up as an only child of a single mother, and as a young kid I never really questioned it. My father had been around briefly when I was born up until age 3. I saw him a few times a year after that, and then not at all from ages 5-11. It seemed so simple to me...
“My parents’ divorce had left me with a deep wound. One that affected my marriage, my motherhood, my friendships and my life as an adult.”
(Originally Published at Born To Do This) “Dad seems sad…Can dads get sad?” I said to myself, bewildered as my four-year-old hand reached desperately for whatever scratch paper and pencil I could find. Like looking for a clean rag to put pressure on a bleeding wound,...
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