by Candy Jules

Created on: December 07, 2009

My childhood dream was to be just like my mother. I wanted to get married, raise a family, and be there for my children. However, modern-day marriage is not the long-lasting, in-sickness-and-in-health, til-death-do-us-part union. We wound up in a bitter divorce, and I was thrust out into the world, on my own with two small children. My daughter was not quite three, and my baby was 18 months old. I remarried a second time, and he left when I was five months pregnant.

It was a life I had not planned on, and I had no actual training in anything that would comfortably support a family. I took a nurses aid training class, and for the next thirty six years I worked in nursing homes, hospitals, home health, and private duty jobs. I did get my children raised. We didn't have a lavish home, but we didn't live in a dump either. We had food on the table, clothes for school, and more than enough love to go around.

There was indeed a lot of stress, especially when one of the children got sick or hurt, and we had no insurance. Or when something was required at school, and I couldn't afford it. As impossible as it seemed at the time, we never got in so deep that we couldn't get out. I always said, that it was by the grace of God that I got my children raised at all.

No, I did not plan on having to work to raise my children, but that's the way it worked out and it all came out okay. By the time they were grown, they knew what it was like to have to work for everything you get. Both of my two older children were working part time jobs while they were in high school. My son was in sports, so he worked on week-ends. My youngest was a small child.

We made it work. I was working at a nursing home on a day shift. I went to work at 6:00 am and got off at 2:00 pm, so I was home by the time the children got home. I did have to work a few holidays, but the father of my first two children took my baby with them so he wouldn't have to be with a babysitter on the holidays. That really meant a lot to me. He didn't have to be separated from his brother and sister.

If mothers had to choose to work or have children, the human race would die out. Modern day mothers have to work, even if they are married. The cost of living is so high that it takes more than one income. Even then, the prices just keep going up. People are losing their homes. Children are being kept out of college for lack of tuition. But we keep on struggling because children are so worth it. I wouldn't trade what we had for all the tea in China.

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