“One lastpush.”

Exhausted and confused, I heard the sound of a grumble. Not a cry, but almost the sound you would expect to hear from a grumpy old man. They placed you upon my chest and I looked down. Hesitant. Yet amazed. Scared. And excited, all at once. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Healthy. And so incredibly beautiful. I noticed the furrow of your brow. The smallest fingers I’d ever seen. The dimples in your cheeks. And then I noticed your eyes. Those big, beautiful brown eyes. I could gaze into those eyes for what seems like aneternity.

In those eyes, I seeinnocence.

I recall what it was like to feel as though I were opening mine for the first time. I, like you, was born to a very loving woman and family in 1993. I was raised in a church of Apostolic Faith that my great-grandparents founded. I was raised to be polite, responsible, trustworthy, and above all, to put God first. I was beautifully pure and wonderfully innocent. Strong, intelligent and fearless like the women who raisedme.

In those eyes, I seenaivete.

As I grew in age, I began to witness the actions of those surrounding me that were so different from anything I had experienced in my little journey to teenagerhood. I remember walking around town with my girlfriends as the boys rode their bikes. Spending hours with them watching movies in someone’s basement, or having the summer pool parties I was so excited to be attending. I considered myself your average teenage girl. And like most teenagers, I became curious. I, like others, wanted to understand the sensations they were talking about. The feelings they experienced when they looked into another person’seyes.

It was my first year of middle school, and I sat behind one of the funniest people in class. Teasing and giggling with each other, I quickly fell in love with your father. Up until that point, no one had made me laugh as hard as he did. And instantly, nothing else mattered. We had common interests, and he seemed to care about me like no one else did. I found it. This is the love everyone was talking about. And it felt beautiful. It gave me the butterflies I was expecting. But what none of your peers can tell you at that age is that things will get rough. So immature and inexperienced, we be