Your past definitely doesn’t define your future. You can overcome any challenge if you want to make it. Women have been dealt a hard blow at times, but it’s not the cards, it’s how you play your hand.
My most difficult challenge was starting a new life 1500 miles away from everything I knew after having to leave my job of 13 years due to illness, facing foreclosure and separating from my husband. I left with a 10 year old, a dog and about $2000 and moved to a place I had visited once for 8 days about 3 years prior. I stayed with my older sister for two months until I was able to get a place which I paid for with two pieces of a job while still going to college online.
Now for the people who say that changing their environment is hard, how hard would it be to pretty much start from scratch? Sometimes the very thing that seems to be painful can gives us the best challenges we need to get to our destiny. We often complain about the things around us not realizing that it may take a leap of faith but we have what we need inside of us to complete it.
The legacy I would want to leave for my family and my community is that your past does not dictate your future. Growing up in a poor neighborhood on welfare with a drug addicted father and eventually landing in foster care, being a single mom, losing almost every material possession I owned, I had plenty of excuses I could use to fail. But I had my boys watching me. Failure was not an option. They couldn’t come to me and say they were too tired to do homework when they saw me working two jobs and then coming home to do mine. If I could get my degree after being out of school for 20 years and everything I had to deal with during my time at school, what could they say? Two words: No excuses.
If I could go back and right a wrong it would be generally not to judge people so harshly. Life is hard. We all make mistakes. I don’t think people (at least for the most part) intend to hurt you. The phrase, “Hurt people hurt people” is so true. Judging is easy; being understanding is more important.
The one thing I would like to see change with today’s women is a sense of empowerment. No matter what may or may not have happened to you, you still have choices. Take an online class (many are free), start a business. Everything doesn’t take money. But you’ve got to be willing to reach out and ask for help and then be willing to implement it. I love my Alma Mater’s slogan, “You can. You will”. I can say now with pride that I did.
I have a Facebook group designed for people who either currently are or are seeking to work or go to school online. I share tips on how to be successful doing so. The link is https://www.facebook.com/groups/1653183814948552/
So when you hit the very bottom of your life it doesn’t have to be the end of your life. You can even without resources push through and change. No one said it would be easy but nothing worth it is. Ladies, our legacies depend on our will to not quit.
