I was a teen mom. I was 16 when my daughter Corrine was born and she was 4 months old when I graduated High School at 17. She is the same age today as I was when she was born and I can't imagine her having a baby right now. I was a child raising a child. I honestly don't even know how I did it, but she's literally one of the most amazing, grounded, intelligent human you'll ever meet, aside from her being the best teen a mom could ask for.
So back to my HS experience being pregnant in school, I was quietly asked to leave school when they found out. I was 3 months along and had to inform my school I wasn't able to participate in physical education anymore. Apparently they thought pregnancy was contagious, but I was a 4.0 student, on the student body, in band, in choir, and head of my Matheletes team, and here I was leaving school to go home study.
But I graduated a year early, with a presidential award and scholarship. So take that sucky school! I never used my scholarship though, but that's another story. I'm also not with Corrine's father, we divorced when she was a baby and he hasn't seen her in years….also another story.
Today I'm going to share with you some of the challenges I faced as a teen mom. There are a lot of bad times in life and a lot of good times. Sometimes my posts may seem sad and bad, but in the end we made it and we are happy and good, so don't feel bad for us, we're just sharing our stories with you. And it's actually super therapeutic for us to write these. So thanks for saving us a therapist bill, yayy for friends and there free shoulders!
So a lil background on me, I'm an Army brat. My dad was a drill Sergeant in the Army for 23 years, so we traveled a lot. Every 2-3 years we'd move, my father would go over seas a lot, my mom had to work a lot to help support the family, and I helped take care of my younger brother and sister growing up. My parents were strict, I mean my dad was a drill Sergeant. We never had sleep overs, boyfriends, bad grades, hence I fell for the first boy who payed attention to me when I was 14, and two years later we had a baby, and two years after that we got married.
My parents were not into helping us out, they told me that I decided to have the baby, so I would own full responsibility of that. They loved her, they loved her so much, but they never helped in terms of making things easy for us. We figured out a way to work and go to school, AND graduate, just between my schedule and his schedule, without any help. Then we divorced in 2002, Corrine was still 4 at the time, and coming out of a bad relationship, not knowing any type of independence, being co dependent for most of my life, it was all such a struggle for me. I had to work 2 jobs and take Corrine into the office with me at 4 am on the weekends to pull in over time, all the while fighting with my ex, and really trying not to have a mental break down each day.
I tried not to break down in front of Corrine because I figured she didn't deserve that. I'm her rock, I'm not supposed to dump my crap on her, she grounded me so much and still does. But I was supposed to teach her how to cope in life, how to be strong, and how to navigate the hard times, so I had to be the example of that. So having a mental breakdown was just not an option for me, even though I really really wanted to trust me. I mean, here I was 21 years old, bouncing around with my lil one, home to home couch to couch, super unstable, to live with co workers and friends until I got on my feet. Then being on my 'feet' a year later, equated to Corrine and I in a small one bedroom apartment with nothing in it for an entire year except a mattress on the floor and a television with no cable. Oh the hard times, I don't miss em, and we still have em!
I remember going to sleep at night listening to headphones, soothing songs, like Enya, yes Enya guys!!! Sad times I know! Like I can't even listen to her anymore without feeling bad for myself, why Enya, couldn't I have listened to something less somber! But we got through, but money was an issue. Embarrassing to say but humbling….I wouldn't eat dinner for days at a time and Corrine would have fast food for dinner every day for a week because it's all I could afford, thank goodness of that 99 cent menu! And thank goodness for student loans!
I mean 35k in debt later, but I was able to pay rent and survive because of those student loans. But we always had holidays, always. My mom and dad would make sure Corrine had presents and I was able to get a real Christmas tree each year, and we'd decorate it, and we'd get real pumpkins for Halloween and we'd carve them, and I'd take her trick or treating…. we always had our holidays. And each other. I remember her saying to me once, in the middle of us moving for the umpteenth time, "Mom, don't be sad, home is wherever you and I are".
I mean I can't even, it makes me tear up to write these words but this is our life and we're sharing them with you. This was just part of the financial struggles I faced as a teen parent, the emotional hardships, the lessons I learned, how I chose to raise her, will all be in another post, or I could literally write a book for you right now. And Corrine's post will be next, the way we're doing it is that we are taking the same topic but then writing separately on it. She won't read my post and I won't read hers until they are both live. This way we get to experience what you get to experience when you read our blog. So thank you for your comments and thanks Andru for this topic! She'll post her blog post in response to this topic tonight. Thanks for reading my words!
I did a "Draw my life" video...on my life, you can check that out here if you're into watching instead of reading. And just so you know, some posts on this blog will be answers to questions like this, some posts will be about cooking or baking, some about art or what we're reading at the moment, and some about fashion and reviews. We're doing it all but we thought we'd start with something a lil personal so you know that we know that you know, who we are ;)
hugs,
J
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