Celebrating Womanhood, & what being a woman has meant to me…

When my friend Amanda let me know about this blog hop, at first I just thought it would be something I’d want to read, but I’ve come to realize that perhaps I might have something to contribute to the conversation as well… 

When I was young, I decided I was going to be a famous author. I used to write stories all the time, and I majored in journalism when I went to college. I lost my idealism for journalism though, when I realized that professional journalists are not objective at all, the way we were being taught that they were supposed to be.   I still occasionally wrote stories, but never really went any further than that with creative writing.

I worked for General Motors for several years, first at Buick, in Flint, MI, then a transfer to Pontiac Motors, in Pontiac, MI, until I became ill and began having black outs with no warning, that not one doctor over several years was ever able to diagnose. By the time it was dignosed as a serious thyroid problem, necessitating major surgery, the assembly plant I worked in had been closed during a time of severe downsizing, and I no longer had a job at General Motors.

In the meantime, I had gotten married, at age 32. So, now I was no longer having blackouts, was healthier, etc., and I knew that what I wanted most of all was to be a full time wife, homemaker, and mother. The problem was that we just could not conceive a child. We did realize eventually that the most important thing for us was that we become parents, not necessarily that we conceive, and I give birth, and so our adoption journey began… we quickly discovered that private, newborn infant adoption was not going to be for us. It’s quite costly, at least it was then, and it just didn’t feel right, either, to us. We found out we could adopt a waiting child in foster care, but I knew I couldn’t be a foster parent. I couldn’t handle having to give the kids back over and over while waiting for a child to be available for adoption. Later, though, we found out that we didn’t have to be foster parents in order to adopt, and our first son came to us when he was just under the age of two. He has special needs, fetal alcohol syndrome, mild mental retardation, and is on the autism spectrum. And he is a joy to our lives (most of the time!) 🙂 After his kindergarten year in public school, my life took another turn, and I became a homeschooling mom, something I never thought I would do, ever. I began with straight Abeka, a curriculum for homeschool in a box, with teacher manuals to tell me day by day what to do, which worked well for the first couple of years. After that, we drifted into more relaxed homeschooling, with me putting it together from many different sources, rather than a curriculum in a box. We still use things from many different sources, but we are very relaxed about it, halfway between relaxed homeschooling and unschooling, and my kids are learning so much more now than they did before! 

When my stepson finished kindergarten, he came to stay with us for the summer, and he’s still here at age 15! He loves the way he is able to be educated, learning according to his own passions, not according to what a specific curriculum says he must learn at a specific age. So do his brothers. His older brother, our first child, is now age 19, and still learning, so much more than he would have if he’d been left in a school. His younger brothers, our 11 year old twins who were adopted at age 8, have also learned so much more than they were learning in school while they were still in foster care. Homeschooling has turned out to be one of my best life choices.

My life, like everyone’s life, has been a series of journeys, and choices. I made the choice, with my husband, that I’d be a full time homemaker, then later added being a full time at home mom, then a full time homeschooling mom. I’ve had times when it was not an easy road by any means, for a number of reasons, but honestly, I wouldn’t be anything else. it’s the best feeling in the world to know that I am the person who taught my kids how to read, how to write, how to do so many things. 🙂 

And maybe, just maybe, one day I’ll try writing again, and maybe I WILL be a famous author! Or, maybe I’ll just write, no matter what comes of it, no matter if nobody ever reads it except for me…