Stacie Sherman

It’s that time. I’ve thought about writing this post for so long, but I didn’t want to give my husband too big of an ego. Kidding! Love you, babe.

This one has been tough to write. But once I started it, I couldn’t write another post until I finished it. (For my family members who have asked me to warn them of potential tearjerkers, ding ding.)

I’m going deep, and way back, because you’ve got to understand the past in order to understand my present. It’s about how my husband got me to open my very closed heart. And how once I was able to trust and understand him, he became my true partner in life and in love.

We have been together for more than 17 years now. And if I’m being honest, it’s only about the past few that we’ve reached this incredible, inexplicable place where we are truly a forever kind of unbreakable team. And that’s because for the first time, I have allowed myself to fully trust someone.

My inability to trust stretches back more than 35 years, when I lost my mom to cancer pretty suddenly. I was 14 years old; she was 42. She was a single mother for years, and then she had remarried a nice but complicated man some years later, when I was in middle school, I think. It’s all a bit fuzzy. What isn’t as fuzzy is the summer day I was at sleepaway camp, and I got summoned to the front office, where my dad told me to pack all my stuff and get in the car. He then drove me to the hospital, where my mom – his ex-wife of several years – lay in intensive care, battling lung cancer that had been misdiagnosed months earlier as pneumonia. I got one glimpse of her, hooked up to machines, struggling to breathe, and then was brought to the waiting room. Eventually the crowd of family cleared out, leaving only me, my brother and my stepfather. Hours later, in the middle of the night, the doctor and nurses woke us from our waiting room chairs to tell us she was gone.

What followed next is also a bit fuzzy. But it goes something like this. I stayed with my stepfather after my mom died. He was a very nice man, but he had some rough spots. He wasn’t often home, and he quickly moved on. I then went to live with my wonderful aunt and uncle – my mom’s youngest sister and her husband. As much as they treated me like one of their own, I wouldn’t let them. I couldn’t — wouldn’t — allow myself to trust and feel like a real piece of their family.

Then I moved to my dad’s house. My dad had remarried when I was just 5 years old, and his wife didn’t love the idea of raising her teenage stepdaughter. I never felt like that was my home, either.

The next few years I lived at college. During my breaks I lived with one of my two sets of aunts and uncles and their families, and there was no shortage of love and care on their part. Nevertheless, I chose to get my own place after graduation. I had no money, it was a crappy place to live, and I never felt more alone.

Enter the father of my children. Our relationship moved quickly – dating, moving in, getting engaged and married and having children. Then came our kids’ diagnoses, which traumatized us and ripped us apart. We did awful things. There was no trust or bond, only lies and distance and loneliness. We were a mess, and we did not last. We divorced, and I found myself a single mother of two.

No shocker, then, that I was really untrusting when I started dating my current husband. As much as I grew to love him, I remained untrusting for many years. I put my husband under a constant microscope, distancing myself at any tiny sign I perceived to be him not wanting to be my forever person. Every phone call, every text, I was testing him and expecting him to fail. Sometimes I’m surprised he stuck with me.

But he did. He stuck and he became my very best friend, and I slowly opened my heart. We have had our ups and downs, but we have grown closer and better with each passing year.

“You’re so lucky to have him,” I’m told often by friends and family. And they are so right. The longer I am with this man, the more I realize it. But what gets me the most, what makes me love him so much, is not only that I’m lucky to have him. It’s that he feels lucky to have me.

About a year ago, we decided to take a leap together. We put our big house on the market, sold or trashed a ton of our belongings, downsized and moved about an hour south into a new home and community. It was the best thing we did. We are grateful for our beautiful home and our wonderful and accepting neighbor-friends. My daughter loves it as well.

At the same time, we had to adjust to me moving far away from my work, and my daughter moving into an adult day program from school. Both those changes required me to lean more on my husband in caring for my daughter. I was hesitant to lean more on him. He always helped me when I asked, was happy to do so. But I hated to ask. My daughter is my responsibility, I didn’t want to put any of that on him, that’s not why he married me. But now in a new home, with new logistical challenges, I didn’t have much choice.

On mornings that I must work in my office, it is now my husband who wakes, dresses, feeds and medicates my daughter, and then drives her to meet the bus.

Their time spent together has created the most beautiful bond. My daughter absolutely adores my husband. I mean, she’s always adored him – he has been a part of her life since she was 5 years old. But the adoration is on a whole new level now. She smiles when he enters the room. She approaches him and puts her head on his chest. She walks up to him and kisses him without prompting. She touches his shoulder from the back seat while he drives.

Not only have I seen my daughter’s love for my husband grow. I have seen his love for her grow as well. He sees how special she is. He understands her like few can. Without asking him, he has accompanied us on more trips to doctors. He has appeared on video calls with Bree’s support coordinators. He has joined us on our evening walks.

As each day passes, I grow more grateful. Which is why my Mother’s Day 2024 blog topic is my husband. He is my gift. Together we have a beautiful life, six children between us, good jobs, great families and friends. Happy Mother’s Day to me.