-Auntieof2

So if my kids can see me going for my dreams, and have a front-row seat to history (ahem…lol) then this will be second-nature for them by the time they get old enough to have careers of their own.

I know kids are only young for a short time. I know this. And I want to simply enjoy these years, these moments with them and inhale their little baby breath and watch their little dimples get deeper when they smile. I love this time. I have my days, where I’m exhausted beyond belief and I don’t know when my next piece of rest is going to come. But I push through and try to build my career while raising my kids. It’s just that simple.

Congrats on getting your master’s! What was it in?

He did not hold me back…some things were a little more challenging with him..but where there is a will there is a way. So with the support of my family and with some determination…I finished undergrad and grad school.

I don’t know if I ever told myself it is better this way…but I think I just accepted that this is my reality now …this is the path that I have chosen and now I am going to make the best of it. After undergrad, my friends travelled a lot and they stayed in the clubs. In the ATL, there was a club jumping Monday through Sunday. So I went on one or two trips with them during the year and I went to the club a couple of times a month. And that was Ok…because I was also having fun with my son.

I’m going to try not to make this post an essay, but I will say that even though I was married, and then pregnant soon after, I declared that I would finish school, and a few people were still negative even though I had the support of my husband. So there I trekked on to class, big belly and all, funny looks from professors and students too. Before I made it to the graduation finish line, I was pregnant again! LOL. But I was relentless…ruthless in getting my degree, and I did. I didn’t let myself rest. I had so much energy and belief in myself that I never felt I needed to rest anyway. Two babies and a degree…I’m very proud of that. I didn’t let dreaminess takeover, dropping everything while I became the little lady, or the little wife or whatever term it is. I wanted my education like nothing else, my career and my family!

But after graduation, I felt like with so much attention to school, I may have missed something cute that my babies did because my nose was stuck in the latest British literature assignment. So right after graduation, I immersed myself into mommyhood, putting the dream career on hold. By then I sort of knew NYC wouldn’t happen with two babies. I learned that just mommy wasn’t me. I was suppressing the go-gettin’ mommy that I truly was! I needed to excitement that baby food masher…thingy. Five years later, I’m bringing the Big Apple to me! Still on my grind and lovin’ every minute of it! And the best part? My kids will actually see and not just hear that they can do anything.

Sorry, it turned into an essay after all.

Remember this struggle of yours is a BLESSING to your kids as well. They’re growing up understanding the value of struggle, hard work, frugality, perseverance, and commitment through your living breathing example.

This is something many kids who are born to parents who have “already made it” often don’t get to see.

I still remember the struggles that my parents went through raising a young family while trying to make a place for themselves in this world and I have personally enormously from their examples of hard work and frugality.