What I Want You to Know is a series of reader submissions. It is an attempt to allow people to tell their personal stories, in the hopes of bringing greater compassion to the unique issues each of us face. If you would like to submit a story to this series, click here. Today’s guest post is by Briana Meade. For a long time, I've had this "perfect" version of a mother in my head. She looks a lot like my mother-in-law, who once-upon-a-time raised four kids seemingly . . .

What I Want You to Know is a series of reader submissions. It is an attempt to allow people to tell their personal stories, in the hopes of bringing greater compassion to the unique issues each of us face. If you would like to submit a story to this series, click here. Today’s guest post is by  Samantha. What I want you to know about being a stepmom is that not all of us make our stepchildren scrub our stone floors. (Mainly because I don't have stone . . .

What I Want You to Know is a series of reader submissions. It is an attempt to allow people to tell their personal stories, in the hopes of bringing greater compassion to the unique issues each of us face. If you would like to submit a story to this series, click here. Today’s guest post is by Lexi.  As a foster parent, the number one excuse people give me for why they could never be a foster parent is “I could never let the children go.” This reasoning has always . . .

What I Want You to Know is a series of reader submissions. It is an attempt to allow people to tell their personal stories, in the hopes of bringing greater compassion to the unique issues each of us face. If you would like to submit a story to this series, click here. Today’s guest post is by an anonymous writer. Shortly after our son came home from Africa at 8 months old we knew that he was not neurotypical, but we didn't know to what extent. We had him evaluated . . .