How I Went From Feeling as Powerless as an Infant to Stronger Than The Incredible Hulk
Funny how life plays out because I never in a million years would have thought for a
Tiffany - My Story
My ideal life was to be up before sunrise, workout, get everyone ready to go by 6am so that I could go to work…get off by 3pm to pick the kids up from school, help with homework, cook dinner, give baths, and be ready for bed by 9pm to do it all over again the next day.
Not once did I think I would:
- Be wallowing in self pity, depressed because I needed to stay home to take care of all three of my children because one was said to be too sick to go to daycare.
- Have to decide to not finish the last 20 hours of college to earn my degree because I would lose financial aid when I stopped producing the grades I was required to produce.
- Have to sit at home and worry about where the money for food, fun, transportation, shelter, clothing, and other necessities would come from instead of kicking back and enjoying the fruits of my labor from motherhood.
- Have to depend on the government for shelter, food, and health care.
Instead of worrying about baking cookies, cleaning, playing with the kids and even teaching them their ABC’s and 123’s, I worried about my relationship, my health, my children, and where the money to pay for this or pay for that would come from.
Have you ever been slapped so hard with the reality stick that you thought you’d never get over the pain?
My name is Tiffany and for most of my life I lived as a simple small-town country girl -that is up until my third year of college in which my life got real complex.
Everything happened so fast – I became an aunt, then I got pregnant, left my twin sister, moved in with my baby daddy, stopped attending college full time, and accumulated more bills than I had the money to even consider paying for.
And as if that wasn’t a drastic enough change for one person, after giving birth to my first child, in just 2 short months I was pregnant again!
Surely life could still carry on with one baby, but with two?! I had no idea what to expect as a young broke mother.
Unexpectedly, my second child was born with a heart murmur (defect) that rocked my boat to hear of it plus caused us to have to stay 6 hours away from home in a hospital for over a month.
During that time nothing was for sure.
The doctors were’nt sure how many surgeries my daughter would need to survive, nor were they sure how this would affect her future. I wasn’t sure what to think or even how to feel about it all.
Uncertain of everything including, how long we would need to stay at the hospital, I made the decision – since the lease to my apartment was coming to an end – that I would terminate the lease to keep from paying to live somewhere I wasn’t living nor sure I was going to get to come back to.
My only concern at the time was my baby girl getting well. She was a real trooper – born tough and determined to make it just like her mother.
She underwent two surgeries – both in less than a month – and shockingly to all the doctors, in a months time, we were ready and able to go home.
But by then we had no home to go to!
We were 6 hours away from where I lived and the doctors suggested they see my daughter every 2 weeks for the next couple of months.
Since my father only lived 3 hours away from her doctors, I asked to stay with him and his new wife for a couple of months – until she healed and I found my own place to stay.
Now if you’ve ever had to live with someone else then you know how hellish it can be.
It didn’t help that I had no income coming in, two babies, and barley enough sleep to survive or think straight.
I did my best to stay optimistic, be strong, and press on through it all.
However, I couldn’t stop worrying about a job and a place to call home.
Being without work plus having been told by the doctors that I would be better off keeping my daughter at home, I decided to think outside the norm for a way to get the means for a place to stay since I couldn’t work.
My best “outside the norm” option at the time was to get assistance from the housing authority.
Fortunately for me, my twin sister and I had been robbed blind before attending college so thinking outside the norm became a necessity just to survive on a daily basis.
One idea we came up with while in college, was to sign up for the cities Housing Assistance Program waiting list which would give us a low income based place to rent.
It seemed like forever, but finally after 3 years of being on that waiting list – at a time in my life when I was desperate and needed it most – a house became available for me and my family.
My children’s father and I were three hours away from each other during all of this but we still hung in there together the best we could.
After three months of being at my dads, my children and I were finally able to move back to the college town we now called home.
I can remember it like it was yesterday, on December 1st our family finally got back together and settled into our new home.
Just when we thought we had finally weathered the storm and was about to start a new beginning for our family I found myself…
