I was a senior at my Catholic high school when I got pregnant with my oldest daughter. Teen pregnancy has its own set of difficulties, and I’m aware of what the people that didn’t know me said behind my back; the looks and whispers I got about my teenage pregnancy when I went out baby-faced with my big belly. I knew that they were thinking I couldn’t possibly be ready to be a young mother, and they were probably right.
Alexis Marie was born two months before my 19th birthday. Being a teen mom four months after graduating high school was as difficult as you’d think it would be. Eighteen months later, I was doing my best to keep it all together and was failing at most of it. I was overwhelmed by the responsibilities of being a young mom. I had failed multiple college courses and dropped out. I was depressed and even hospitalized after I developed an eating disorder. My parents and my sister probably thought I’d never get my act together and I’d live at home forever. They never gave up on me, or my eating disorder recovery, and they were always there for my daughter and me. God bless them all.
Right around my 21st birthday I decided I wasn’t going back to college and I got a job as a bank teller. I had that job for a month and thought, “No way am I doing this for the rest of my life.” I hated my job, and I wanted to go back to college. My parents had enough of paying for an education that I decided to skip out on. I wasn’t sure how to pay for college, so I applied for financial aid, took out a bunch of loans and went back to school. Something was different this time around. I actually cared about getting good grades and I got them. I wasn’t going to let my previous failures in college play a role in my second chance at an education that I realized I needed. I wanted to be able to take care of my daughter and myself on my own. I went from trying to pay for college with no money to graduating from Penn State Harrisburg a few years later on the Dean’s list.
In just a few days, Lex is graduating from college herself. It’s rare for a teen mom to graduate from college and just as rare for the child of a teen mom to graduate from college. I’m so very proud of her. I might cry more at graduation than I did the day I dropped her off at college.
The rest of my life has turned out pretty amazing, too. I have two other wonderful children and a hard-working, loving husband. I have the best family and friends that anyone could ask for. I live in a beautiful home and I get to travel often. I just launched the Forty Young blog in February after dreaming about it for years. I’m still instructing Cycle and Barre and I just got into the CBD oil business. I’m all about empowering other females to be the best version of themselves (regardless of their past or past mistakes).
The point of all this is that the past does not dictate your future. I went through an unplanned pregnancy; I was a teen mom and a college drop out. I could have just thrown my hands in the air and said I’ll never be more than that and accepted my “lot in life”. I knew there was more to me than and there is to you, too! Whatever past you’ve had it’s in the past. What you did and who you were do not define who you have to be now. Don’t let yourself or someone else hold that past against you or make you think you’re incapable of having a different future. You can’t change the past, but you can apologize for your mistakes, learn from them and move on. I went through a teen pregnancy, an eating disorder and figuring out ways to pay for college by myself, but that’s just part of my story. The future is yours to write. I’m still writing mine.
