by Emily Wierenga

It’s just a shoe, a pink baby shoe, but it shatters me like glass on the road where I walk, and I can’t go on...can only cradle myself against a tree as I would have cradled my child, the one who bled red from me.
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by Jennifer Dukes Lee

After 42 years, my parents are leaving the 110-year-old, three-story house that served as the backdrop for my growing-up life – a silent witness to my first teetering steps, first fumbling prayers, first teenage crushes. I remember standing at the top of those wide wooden stairs at age five, in pajamas on Christmas morning.
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by Jeanne Damoff

Somehow it happens. Between listening to bedtime stories and skinned knees and first dates and college and a wedding, and then you’re the mom telling bedtime stories and kissing skinned knees and going to graduations and weddings, and can it really be that your babies are all grown up and having babies of their own?
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by Amber Haines

Seth and I sat entwined in our University Student Center, deep in conversation. There was the smell of sausage and the hum of dawn, and we leaned back, like a pull away, outlining what we believed. In a conversation that felt as if it would define us, Seth put orphan care on the table, what little he knew, and I agreed.
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by Helen Lee

I now understand that my parents placed high expectations on me because they loved me. But that head knowledge has never been able to replace what my heart experienced, which was the message that their love was to be earned by being “successful” in traditionally Asian-accepted ways, and my relationship with my parents has never been close as a result.
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by Kathy Bruner

Kathy Bruner, nurse, wife, and mother, talks with us about the high calling of marriage. Her wonderful personality shines through in this video . . . one that makes us smile every time we watch it, because she shoots straight with no pretension.
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by David Rupert

"Daddy," brown eyes pleading. "Stay home and play." I stammered, unable to make a good excuse. While it was true that Mom would be there, and his brother, too, something cut to my heart. I believed I needed to be at work early, hoping to beat my boss to work to make that good impression.
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