Things Change When You Become A Mom-At 19

It was a hard choice, the choice I made to become a teenage mother at the age of 19. I did not go looking to do this, it just happened. It was not a wish that was granted by my fairy Godmother, for I would have asked for the body of a Victoria Secret model and the money of Donald Trump. No, this was a decision that was made by shear nerve and perseverance, to know that I was making the ultimate sacrifice for something that I truly believed in. I knew that deep in my heart that I was meant to be a mother, I just wasn’t prepared for it to have happened so early on in life. However, I took it in stride. I gave birth to a healthy, beautiful baby boy. I named him after a wonderful friend and a charismatic little charmer of a boy in my class at the school where I was a teacher aide at the time. It was not easy, not by any means. I struggled; I struggled to maintain a life of my own and the life of a mother. To some, it was if I had died. They thought because I could not go out, I had be given a death sentence. They had no idea the joy that came with being able to hold and soothe a small, helpless life that solely depended on you. There were others that viewed from a distance looking down through their lashes at what they thought was sin, a young girl out of wed-lock with a young baby with no father. The only sin was the thoughts they were having of my child and me. I held my head high through the hard times and through the good. It is a lonely place to be when you have had a child at such a young age, no one really understands unless you have been there. Unless you have given up your entire existence to give life to another, you cannot even fathom the loneliness that comes every night when you close your eyes. To have not experienced life as others have is a tremendous burden to bear. To which I must say I would not trade that burden for one moment if it meant I would not have my son, for he is my soul. No matter how hard my day with him as been, he is my life at the end of it. My children are the air I breathe each and every day. Learning to grow with my children as been a journey I will never forget as I hope they will remember how their mom gave her all to them as they grow to be men. I hope they can take that love to their families and learn from their moms’ mistakes and remember that it is not what you have or who you know, but how you love that matters.