My dad walked out when I was nine years old. He didn’t leave because of a job or some adult decision between him and my mom. He left because he fell in love with someone else — a woman named Elaine. And after that, I learned not to expect much from him. Not a call, not a birthday card, not even an apology. So when he offered to walk me down the aisle at my wedding, I was shocked. And just for a second, I let myself hope. Maybe this

When my dad showed up on our doorstep at 11 p.m., holding a packed bag and telling me he was divorcing my mom, I felt like the floor dropped out from under me. I was shocked—no, beyond shocked. But as the night went on, I started to see something wasn’t right. And what I thought was just about their marriage turned out to be something much stranger. Up until that moment, life had been wonderful. I was seven months pregnant with our first baby, and Peter—my sweet, calm, always-there-for-me husband—kept

One normal morning, I stepped outside and saw something on the back of my boyfriend’s car that stopped me cold—a bright sticker that read, “Just Had a Baby.” We’d been together for two years. We definitely did not have a baby. That moment shattered everything I thought I knew about us. Life can be terrible sometimes, can’t it? No, scratch that. Life doesn’t just get bad—it can completely fall apart when you least expect it. And that morning was the start of my world falling apart. But hold on, I’m