+
More

The internet is falling in love with this mom's note to her ex-boyfriend's new girlfriend.

Stepparents deserve a 'thank you' every now and then too.

Audrey Loving, her daughter Riley, Riley's father Corey, and his girlfriend Whitney are just one example of a functional family.

They may not look like a traditional family, but not many families in America do these days. According to a 2014 Pew study, less than half of kids in the United States today live in "traditional" households with two married, heterosexual parents.

Photo by Audrey Loving, used with permission.


Loving and Corey had Riley during their long-distance relationship, which spanned several years, though they never married. The distance ultimately separated them, but today they both take care of their daughter amicably, and, yes, that often includes help from Corey's girlfriend, Whitney.

While the expectation might be that relationships between moms and new stepmoms will be tense, that's not how things are for this family.

"I've always had a good relationship with [Whitney]," Loving writes in a Facebook message. "My parents raised me to love and like all. I hit it off with her instantly. She's a doll."

Loving herself grew up in a blended family, complete with stepparents and stepsiblings, so she's familiar with how easily a stepmom can be labeled negatively. However, she also had loved ones who taught her a family doesn't have to look any one way.

"I don't want someone to feel awkward or unwelcome, because I've felt it before, and it doesn't feel good. So I showed her the love I was taught growing up," she writes.

To show how grateful she is that Riley has such a wonderful second mom, Loving wrote Whitney a thank-you note on Facebook.

She wanted the world to see just how much love can exist in a nontraditional family.

This is my daughters fathers gf. The sweetest thing ever! I'm super thankful for her because when she visits her dad she...

Posted by Audrey Nicole on Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Here's the crux of her touching message:

"No one said it was easy trying to be a mother to a kid you didn't have. So when there is someone trying, don't push them away! Because they don't need the drama, they will leave, and then you're stuck with someone who is the evil stepmom. Yes they exist! I see them everywhere! A kid can have two moms, because, in my eyes, the more people that love her, I'm happy!!! I would never make her feel like an outsider. I'm extremely thankful for this girl."

Loving's original post has been Liked over 351,000 times and shared over 145,000 times. Many of the tens of thousands of comments are from parents and stepparents who've been in similar situations and share her sentiment 100-fold.

Loving hopes her message will resonate with her daughter most of all.  "If we start teaching [love and respect] early, it will just go down the line," she writes.

Photo by Audrey Loving, used with permission.

The amount of love a family has to share has nothing to do with its size or shape. Love is love is love is love.

"I'm lucky to have the family and friends that I do," Whitney wrote in response to Loving's Facebook note. It just goes to show how important it is to take time to show appreciation for the people in our lives who might get overlooked, or who might find themselves the target of unfair stereotypes and assumptions because of the role they play in it.

Of course, not every family functions or co-parents as amicably as Loving, her ex, and his girlfriend do, but their story is a wonderful reminder that there's no one way to build a family. If you happen to have someone who could use such a reminder or a note of appreciation, there's no better time than the present.

All photos courtesy of The Coca-Cola Company

Behind the Scenes Making Recycled Records with Mark Ronson

True

You’re walking down the sidewalk, earbuds in, listening to your favorite hip-hop beats. As your head bobs to the sounds, the sun warms your back. It’s a perfect day.

When the chorus hits, the empty Sprite bottle in your hand becomes a drumstick, passing traffic becomes a sea of concertgoers, and the concrete beneath your feet is suddenly a stage. Spinning on your heels, you close out the song with your face to the sky and hands in the air.

Keep ReadingShow less
@penslucero/TikTok

Pency Lucero taking in the Northern Lights

Seeing the northern lights is a common bucket list adventure for many people. After all, it ticks a lot of boxes—being a dazzling light show, rich historical experience and scientific phenomenon all rolled into one. Plus there’s the uncertainty of it all, never quite knowing if you’ll witness a vivid streak of otherworldly colors dance across the sky…or simply see an oddly colored cloud. It’s nature’s slot machine, if you will.

Traveler and content creator Pency Lucero was willing to take that gamble. After thorough research, she stumbled upon an Airbnb in Rörbäck, Sweden with an actual picture of the northern lights shining above the cabin in the listing. With that kind of photo evidence, she felt good about her odds.

However, as soon as she landed, snow began falling so hard that the entire sky was “barely visible,” she told Upworthy. Martin, the Airbnb host, was nonetheless determined to do everything he could to ensure his guests got to see the spectacle, even offering to wake Lucero up in the middle of the night if he saw anything.

Then one night, the knock came.

Keep ReadingShow less
Democracy

Reporter reveals she's a school shooting survivor on air and offers advice to Covenant parents

Even while struggling through her own grief, she was able to provide guidance to parents.

Photo by Heather Mount on Unsplash

Tennessee reporter and school shooting survivor gives advice to parents.

On March 27, the Covenant School, a private elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, experienced a school shooting where three 9-year-old children and three staff members lost their lives. The news of the event took over the airwaves as more details were released.

But for one reporter covering the shooting live, the event hit close to home in more than one way. Joylyn Bukovac, a local reporter for WSMV 4, was reporting live from the scene at the Covenant School when she revealed that she was a survivor of a school shooting herself. Bukovac explained that when she was in the eighth grade, someone opened fire at her school.

"About 380 school shootings have happened since Columbine, my middle school being one of them, this school being one of them," she said. "Some people have been reaching out to me saying, 'Enough's enough. When is all of this gun violence going to change?'"

Keep ReadingShow less
Image by sasint/Canva

Surgeons prepared to separate 3-year-old conjoined twins in Brazil using virtual reality.

The things human beings have figured out how to do boggles the mind sometimes, especially in the realm of medicine.

It wasn't terribly long ago that people with a severe injury had to liquor up, bite a stick, have a body part sewn up or sawed off and hope for the best. (Sorry for the visual, but it's true.) The discoveries of antibiotics and anesthesia alone have completely revolutionized human existence, but we've gone well beyond that with what our best surgeons can accomplish.

Surgeries can range from fairly simple to incredibly complex, but few surgeries are more complicated than separating conjoined twins with combined major organs. That's why the recent surgical separation of conjoined twin boys with fused brains in Brazil is so incredible.

Keep ReadingShow less
Education

Germany's most famous castle isn't a real castle. It's an elaborate 'work of fan fiction.'

Though it looks medieval, it was built in the 19th century by an eccentric "fairy tale king" who spent much of his life constructing his own elaborate fantasy world.

Neuschwanstein Castle sits atop a rock ledge in the Bavarian Alps.

Even if you haven't heard of Neuschwanstein Castle, there's a good chance you've at least seen pictures of it. Set atop a tree-covered rock ledge in the Bavarian Alps, the picturesque castle looks like it was conjured straight out of a fairy tale. In fact, it served as inspiration for Disney Imagineers as they designed "Sleeping Beauty's Castle" in Disneyland, and it's regularly named the top castle to visit in Germany.

There are estimated to be around 25,000 castles in Germany, but Neuschwanstein is unique among them. Most notably, it's not a real castle and never was. While it bears the look and feel of a well-preserved medieval castle, it was actually built in the 19th century, and rather than serving as a fortress, it served as the fantasy castle of an eccentric king obsessed with Richard Wagner's operas and medieval mythology.

Ludwig II came to the Bavarian throne in 1864 at age 18 with no experience in government or politics. Two years later, Prussia conquered Austria and Bavaria, and Ludwig's powerful status as king was greatly diminished. Not that he was particularly interested in governance anyway; he was more drawn to the romantic idea of having his own kingdom.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pop Culture

People share the 18 things that are a 'subtle sign' someone is really smart

"They effortlessly communicate complex concepts in a simple way."

Albert Einstein

One of the strangest things about being human is that people of lesser intelligence tend to overestimate how smart they are and people who are highly intelligent tend to underestimate how smart they are.

This is called the Dunning-Kruger effect and it’s proven every time you log onto Facebook and see someone from high school who thinks they know more about vaccines than a doctor.

The interesting thing is that even though people are poor judges of their own smarts, we’ve evolved to be pretty good at judging the intelligence of others.

Keep ReadingShow less

A father tries on a shirt that his 9-year-old son sewed for him.

There's always something very touching about receiving a gift from your child, especially when you know it's something that they really put their heart into creating. A video posted to TikTok by Aaron Gouveia shows that sometimes a child can give a gift that’s so surprising it’s almost too much to handle.

Gouveia, 43, is a Massachusetts father of three who posts videos as “Daddy Files” on TikTok about the joys and challenges of family life. On March 26, he posted a video featuring his son Sam, 9, that was so heartwarming it has received over 12.4 million views.

Keep ReadingShow less