A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 8 (Sunday)

 A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 8 (Sunday)

"Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things." Robert Brault

Today I am grateful for my children, Megan, Alex and Tim, who have taught me so much. As a younger than "normal" mother, starting out at just 18 myself, in some ways I grew up along with them. I was barely 21 when Tim came along and I was so busy working and surviving that I had little time to enjoy the children as babies, toddlers and all those childhood development stages and firsts. 

Despite life speeding by us going at Mach 3 with our hair on fire, my children have taught me patience, to savor the memories, and to slow down. When Megan was a little girl, we had teddy bear tea parties for her birthday and her friends all came over dressed in their Sunday best, and brought their favorite Teddies. We wore princess crowns and made jewelry and played games like Chutes and Ladders. 

Later I was in charge of teaching crafts at my kids' Missionettes club (a Christian faith based scouts group). In the Daisies group (age 8-10 girls), I planned out the crafts, found the supplies and figured out how to teach 10 girls how to make something they would be proud of in 30-45 minutes once a week. These kids taught me to plan carefully, be more organized, and more importantly, to laugh at myself when I made mistakes.

My boys were active and loved to play soccer or baseball. I didn't know enough about either of these, but I took them to practice anyway and watched as Tim and Alex had fun and learned to play the game along with the other kids. Many times I was 'snack mom' and had to remember to bring the oranges slices and granola bars and it was really hard because I was not that organized and had challenges remembering when it was my turn. We didn't have cellphones to remind us of appointments, but my day planner did - along with my long, long to-do lists and sticky note reminders did their job. (No kid went without post-game snacks). My kids taught me to be more time-conscious and plan ahead.

Junior high and High school were filled with band concerts and plays, school open-houses, parent-teacher conferences, parades and football games watching the band perform. There were holidays filled with laughter, and sometimes stress and tears. These are the best memories. All families have them - it is a mixed bag of blessings, and wouldn't trade any of it. My kids taught me to savor these moments - that would later become my precious memories. 

My children taught me everything and in some ways they raised me more than I raised them.

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 7 (Saturday)

 A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 7 (Saturday)

"I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want." The Holy Bible (NIV), Philippians 4:11-12

All through the 2000s were some difficult, challenging and rewarding parenting years. Today I am thankful for learning that I really DID have it ALL - all that mattered anyway.

When too much is too much and enough is enough

All of this change and growth, and especially the fast career promotions, took a toll on me mentally, physically and emotionally, as well as being very hard on my family. I went through some of the roughest learning periods of my career, and one of the hardest times as a parent with children now in grade school and middle school. I had attempted to go back to school and earn my associates degree, but it was quickly becoming impossible with the number of hours I was putting in at work, and the home and school demands combined. 

Anxiety and depression

My kids and husband were suffering and my self-worth was declining - and home-life started to nose-dive. I felt like nothing I was doing was good enough and I was experiencing severe mental burnout, depression and exhaustion. I even got diagnosed with ADD, as my children had been diagnosed with it and I thought for sure that I, too had the symptoms. The doctor gave me Adderall to help me focus, and it clearly did that well, but also gave me extreme anxiety and panic attacks. They added antidepressants on top of that to take the edge off the anxiety. I was struggling to keep everything going -to keep the cart from sliding off the tracks - I was failing miserably. My kids needed me and I needed to refocus my priorities.

Reprioritizing

After a while, I decided to put school on hold and focus on my job and raising my kids. It would be several years until I fulfilled my dream of going back to college. In fact, in 2006 I lost this job due to the market shifting and downturn and I learned that company did not value me nearly as much as I thought it did, and it certainly didn't make up for the sacrifices I had made. I then made a conscious decision that I would never again let work dictate my life and take priority over my kids' and family's well-being. It was a valuable lesson to learn, and it came almost too late.

Things will never be the same

When my daughter Megan went to live with her dad in North Carolina for Junior/Senior year of high school, things really hit home for me that things had to change at home. I started seeing a counselor and made some significant changes in career priorities. A job would never again take higher priority than my family but things would never be the same as before. We had to evolve and needed time to heal. We even continued to go through a bumpy time at home for a few years after that. 

Victory and healing come with growth

Megan returned in her Senior year of school to finish at BLHS in 2007, and then started her new life with her boyfriend. Tim continued struggling with school and Alex was finishing high school by 2009 and on a path to join the Army upon graduation. It was quite a turbulent time for all of us in those years and family remains a constant in my life. Always my heart and soul -and sometimes my blood, sweat and tears. I have learned to be content in everything, despite many trials. I am even grateful FOR the trials, for they come with growth and God has the victory in the end.

(to be continued...)

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 6 (Friday)

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 6 (Friday)

"At times, our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us." Albert Schweitzer

Today I am grateful for mentors in my life who have guided and shaped my growth. 

The early to mid-2000s led to another major career shift. A few months later, in spring 2002, I took a bit of a step back and was hired for a logistics scheduling position with a national company with a shoestring budget, Door to Door Storage and Moving. What had begun as a step backwards ended up being another major growth period for me, and wore many hats there, learned a ton, and I was quickly promoted into management. I had an idea to use the rudimentary Excel sheets and Access databases the sales team was using to track leads and paper orders with, and I learned all about systems integration, databases, financial reporting, accounting reconciliation, and customer service. I helped the company expand these tools to be a more integrated end-to-end system of leads to orders, orders to shipping paperwork, dispatching, accounting forecasting and reporting, and logistics tracking. I took some more computer classes and worked with some database consultants and our IT team to help grow the company from just a $2 million a year moving operation to over $16 million a year business by the time I left 4 years later. A lot of my training came from self-directed tutorials and mentoring I found from my peers or managers, and some from church leaders and other friends.

More education - community college

After I was promoted to management I began taking on a lot more responsibility at work and working around the clock and weekends. I was in my early thirties and full of energy, early in my new management role, still working a lot of hours when I went back to community college to start working on a degree. My children were not so young anymore, but still pretty demanding and my work-life balance was getting a little out of hand. After about a year into it I dropped the program for the time being, until my kids were a little older. I still took on individual training classes to learn new skills as I needed them for my job. 

Balancing Act - Family Matters

We were clearly doing better financially than ever in our life. Despite becoming very successful in my new career as a Dispatch Manager and Systems Planner, I had difficulty balancing everything and had no time to enjoy success, or my family.  I struggled to maintain my own mental health too as I was stressed out and burned out from my demanding job! I leaned on my husband a LOT to carry the load I was not carrying at home and my children had more and more issues with school and socially. To make matters more challenging, their dad and his new family had moved across the country and were no longer part of their lives regularly and that also took a huge toll on them. 

Special Needs and Education

With two of the kids diagnosed with ADHD by then, I got involved in support groups and education for special needs children - which was a huge help with my stress as a parent. I read everything I could on the subject, and I started to go to church close to home as my children were going to youth group there, and I got involved in leadership again (after a long hiatus after we had moved to Bonney Lake). I became part of my church's community outreach planning groups as I wanted to give something back to my community and I helped coordinate volunteers and got to know a lot more positive, supportive people to surround myself.

 

Self-directed Learning

I read a lot of personal growth and leadership development books and learned a lot from my "automobile university" -books on tape or CD while I was commuting. I did not return to college until my children were grown and had moved out on their own, but have always been a proponent of self-directed learning. You find the resources you need. They are everywhere. I read books like "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", and so on. They taught me many skills that have helped me succeed in life and my career. 

It's Never Enough to be Good Enough

Mentors in my life, self-help book authors, business and church leaders taught me many lessons about life, parenting, being a confident woman, and also guided my career. All of those are good things when taken in the right context and balance, and when they replace one's self-esteem and sense of purpose, they become an obsession with never feeling 'good enough'.  I continued to obsess with self-help books, success, 'being better' and becoming a super-woman. At that time we were taught that women COULD have it all if we just worked hard enough and wanted it badly enough. I had way too much 'truth' and not enough 'grace' in my life (for those familiar with "Boundaries" by Doctors Henry Cloud and John Townsend.) I was headed straight for a major burn-out and a personal crash, and didn't know it. There was still a lot of shame and guilt over my own 'failings' as a mother and wife and I didn't believe that any 'Jesus' could change that for me. I was still believing the lies fed to me by my past and negative thoughts. Sadly, I felt lonely, insecure and invisible, and it took many years of trying and failing at success (or my ideal of success) before I learned differently.

(to be continued…)

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 5 (Thursday)

    A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 5 (Thursday)

""Gratitude turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow." Melody Beattie

Today I am grateful for having a vision of my future in God's purposes for my life and allowing Him to move me in directions I might not have chosen consciously.

My Career progression

Through the years each challenge I faced led me into growth and learning new skills I had no idea I could do. In the late 1990's I faced my first layoff from a job I loved at Boeing. I was a bit scared, but jumped out there ahead of the curve and took a voluntary layoff instead of waiting for the dreaded pink slip. It was a leap of faith - one that paid off in an unprecedented way. I had gone to work for a game software development company in Bellevue in their HR department, and I faced the awful 167/I-405 corridor commute again. After about nine months there, I was contacted by a former co-worker - an instructor from my Boeing training department days, who had gone to work for this little IT consulting firm in Kent, WA. They were looking for an IT Project Coordinator and he wanted to know if I was interested. 

This was my first chance to break into the more technical opportunities of the Information Technology industry and having had several years of administrative work and mad computer skills behind me, I was ready for a new challenge. Opportunities come knocking in unusual places, and one needs to have their eyes and ears open to see them - but also be ready to make that leap towards new possibilities. Gary had been working in his field - Technology and system repair services and things were looking up for us. We began to budget, and save, and planned and dreamed. 

The kids were getting older and no longer needed so much childcare after school. Gary was home early in the afternoons and we were able to save more money. These years of financial and home stability up til 2001 led us to be enabled to buy our first home, in Bonney Lake, WA. We were able to plan a move from the chaotic apartment life in downtown Kent to the idyllic suburban life in East Pierce County. We were building a new construction home through a developer and it took time to build, so we spent summer and fall preparing for our coming move. That sense of security would soon be shaken again, and this time I was more prepared for it.

The dot-gone era (internet boom and bust) was upon us and I had been laid off again due to the economic shift and recession, one month before we were due to close the sale on our new house. and move to our new neighborhood shortly after Christmas, 2001. I knew God would provide for us and He did. With lots of prayers and faith, and a little luck. We had gone from homeless to hopeful - to owning our own home, and a new era was upon us.

(to be continued...)

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 4 (Wednesday)

   A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 4 (Wednesday)

"Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it."  William Arthur Ward

Today I am grateful for freedoms to choose my reaction to my circumstances and not surrender to them. And for education - in all forms. 

A new marriage and family support system

I met and dated my husband Gary at the end of 1995 and we got married in 1996. He took on my three children from the previous marriage and I was no longer struggling to survive as a single mom anymore. He was in college himself, and finances were very tight for a few more years but things slowly started to improve for us. We started to become more financially stable and we got more organized and structured at home. Things were finally no longer a constant crisis mode for us. 

 

New Career moves and step-by-step quality of life improves

After several temp-assignments I worked on one at Boeing that lead to a full-time position and I had tremendous opportunities to learn new skills while I was there. Over nearly three years I learned new software skills, took on more responsibilities and even after a layoff from Boeing, these led to better jobs and bigger career moves into the Software development and IT industry.  For the first time in my life, I felt like I was going somewhere in a real career.  Things were looking up. I was getting more involved at church, taking on more leadership and teaching roles - and additional responsibilities at work too. Life was very full and hectic, and difficult sometimes. I reached out to others at church for support, and had mentors in my career that helped shape my personal growth, and I looked for support with the kids from my community groups.

 

My husband was working in his career by then as a computer technician, and we were starting to get more stable financially. Thanks to his excellent money management and planning, in 2001 we were ready to buy a home of our own. The kids were in junior high and grade school by then, and were no longer needing full-time childcare, which freed up a good sized chunk of funds to put towards a mortgage.  I struggled to maintain my own mental health too as I was stressed out and burned out from my demanding job! I got involved in support groups for special needs children - which was a huge help and became part of my church leadership groups as I wanted to give something back to my community.

 

More education - community college

I was in my early thirties when I went back to college to start working on a degree. My children were not so young anymore, but still pretty demanding and my work-life balance was getting a little out of hand. After about a year into it I dropped the program for the time being, until my kids were a little older. I still took on individual training classes to learn new skills as I needed them for my job. I was promoted to management and began taking on a lot more responsibility at work. A lot of my training came from self-directed tutorials and mentoring I found from my peers or managers, and some from church. I read a lot of personal growth and leadership development books and learned a lot from my "automobile university" -books on tape or CD while I was commuting. I did not return to college until my children were grown and had moved out on their own, but have always been a proponent of self-directed learning. You find the resources you need. They are everywhere. I read books like "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and "21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership", and so on. They taught me many skills that have helped me succeed in life and my career.

(to be continued)

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 3 (Tuesday) 'Why I Give' by Esther Frick for United Way of Pierce County

So I gave this little interview last month - with United Way of Pierce County. I have been serving on a fundraising committee with my former company in Tacoma for the last 3-4 years and had worked with them on the campaigns to raise funds. 
My gratitude for today for serving others. We have a responsibility as a human race to care for others less fortunate. It doesn't take much - the equivalent of a cup of coffee a month (a Starbucks premium drink, but still - a cup of coffee). If only 60% of the able-bodied population of Pierce County were able to give a $5.00 donation, or their time once a month- every month, it would generate over $40M in funds to support the homeless, hungry, poor, low-income seniors, mentally ill and veterans, who need the community services to survive.

I am grateful for all of the services that I received over the years myself from the United Way or YWCA, the Catholic Community Services, the HopeLink, or Multi-Service Centers, and many others. Give back and pay it forward when you can.

A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 2 (Monday)

  A Month of Thanksgiving - Day 2 (Monday)

So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him, strengthened in the faith as you were taught, and overflowing with thankfulness.The Holy Bible (NIV) - Collossians 2:6-8

Today I am grateful for obstacles and challenges. My life has not been an easy road and I always seemed to have to learn things the hard way or by taking the long road. But everything greatly difficult in my life has turned out to be a catalyst to something greater or a protection against something worse from happening to me.  Every struggle or challenge, every hardship, has a purpose in life and will make you stronger and build tenacity and character. Back to my story:

Things start unraveling again

In between 1993-95 I had some more setbacks those years and experienced a major loss in my life - my father, due to pancreatic cancer that came on very suddenly and he was gone just as quickly. At age 22 I became my 16-year old brother's guardian and he moved in with us, which meant I was a single mom of three small children - AND battling an angry teenager who had just lost his father. Later that year I also lost that city office position due to my compounding personal issues, mainly my problems with childcare, and my own growing up. 

We were sponsored that year by the YWCA, I believe, and were lucky to get a corporate sponsor. We received not only toys, but someone had gone to Costco and loaded up a big truck-full of food for us that would last us for many months. I had very little of my own money to give gifts to anyone that year and I was so grateful for all the generosity that I just sat down and cried my eyes out. I couldn't believe it. I was both humbled and my hope was restored in the goodness of other people.

Life as a single mom with three challenging children plus a teenager was so hard. I was 23 at the time, and my very strong-willed children, who would later be diagnosed with ADHD, and had incredible fits and tantrums - I was exhausted and I could not cope with everything on my own. My brother was struggling with alcohol abuse, and depression, and I very much needed a break and help for me as a parent, but was still struggling to grow up myself and felt ashamed to even ask. I had begun to think I was a bad parent and was very self-critical and anxious. I made many mistakes and I struggled with depression quietly, with few people to talk to about these issues. I grappled with my own faith and my self-esteem, and it seemed that society had conditioned me to find fault with myself so I internalized a lot and just tried harder to do better.

By 1994, my brother left our home to try and live on his own, and I found myself back in the welfare office asking for help – again. The kids and I moved in with some family members in Kent, while I struggled to get myself on my feet again and find another job. I did find another job rather quickly – too quickly as it turned out. The childcare assistance program had a six-month waiting list and would only help me if I had been through their welfare-to-work program for a minimum of 4 months and was able to find a childcare spot using their approved childcare providers. I didn’t have time to wait another 3 months – I was already ‘homeless’ and needed to build up money for deposits and moving expenses. Living on my family’s couch for another 6 months was not a viable option. I said no to them and I opted to work and save money for my own place. My cousin offered to help me with free childcare while waiting for the opening to come up for the childcare assistance wait list. My cousin LuAnn was (and still is) a lifeline of support - was like a surrogate mother to me and helped me learn parenting skills and helped me begin to be an adult, and make better life decisions.

 

Pride put aside, I was very much at-risk to fail and return to the welfare system at that point. The costs of supporting a family for a single mother are almost impossible. For example, a single parent of three young children, with a take-home pay of $1000 approaches DSHS for help with daycare because she cannot afford all of the cost. She is put on a six-month waiting list and has to fend for herself - or lose her job and get on welfare for three months to qualify for transitional daycare assistance. Of course, one will lose what housing she has established for herself (most rents for a family of four range ranged from $500 to $700 in the Seattle area at that time). 

Because the cost of a babysitter for those three kids exceeded $600 a month at the time, child care costs would take up most of that income. It really is a catch-22. Either way you go, you risk losing everything you have gained trying to stay afloat, or you do not try and you still face eviction, utility shut-off and the endless poverty cycle continues.

 

More obstacles – poorly running car and not able to make it to work

So, new job and poorly running car in hand, I began my new job, with my children in my cousin’s care. The new company I worked for was a Redmond manufacturing company as an office assistant, making a little over the minimum wage at $8.50 an hour. Since I was considered self-sufficient enough by the State’s standards, I was not on any assistance anymore, with the exception of subsidized childcare help, for which I eventually was able to get assistance.

I still needed help from the food banks weekly, and had to creatively stretch my weekly budget of $40 to feed three small children (less than $5 a day). We received help from food stamps for a while, but it wasn't enough to feed us, so I joined a gleaning club, and couponed every single thing that I could to save money on food and got creative on everything else. I managed to feed my family well as I baked and cooked a LOT of things from scratch and we rarely, if ever ate a meal out, and occasionally visited the food banks as often as possible to make it work. I think we did qualify for WIC, which gave us cereal, orange juice, milk, cheese and peanut butter. The kids are grown up now and don't remember ever being hungry - they don't remember all the ramen soup, and cheap chili mac dinners, but they remember family times and that we were together.

I wrote to a local newspaper at the holidays that year (1995), despite still being in the midst of all the turmoil, and they printed my letter in the paper.  I was in the middle of losing another job and still found hope and gratitude for all my life blessings and challenges. This was a constant theme in my adult life and somehow God saw us through the turbulence and helped us thrive. 

My car starting falling apart and I could not travel the 50-mile round-trip drive to work every day, reliably.  My car needed an expensive overhaul (engine rebuild) and was going to take a lot of time and money to fix, which I did not have. I struggled to get to work, because car had a blown head-gasket so I was going through a ton of oil, and I was having to change my spark plugs weekly (sometimes on the side of the road).  

Unfortunately, with all the struggles with reliability, I lost this job in Redmond after several months of missing too much work and not being able to open the office up for them on time. I know how to change my own spark plugs though! I still have that little gapper tool somewhere as a memento! 

After I started working again and I got my car fixed by a family friend (he generously let me make payments on my car repairs), I could no longer get any childcare assistance or food stamps anymore, even though I was only making a couple dollars over the minimum wage. Thanks to my family, I had help watching my kids before and after school. Life was tough. You just keep marching forward and somehow find the support you need to keep going. I never gave up hope that we would make it somehow through these times.

(to be continued)