This Is Me Maria

Being a young mom is an incredible challenge. There are 5 basic things every young mom needs in order to not only help raise her children, but develop herself into a successful adult. I had intended to publish all five at once but each section is long enough that together they are a bit too long for me. I’ve broken them down into 5 posts for your reading pleasure.

Support

I’m not sure I can fully explain how important it is to have support when you are staring motherhood in the face at a young age. So I’ll just tell you about the support I’ve received and what it has and does mean to me.

The first place I received support from was my new in-laws. I was very fortunate that they were and are so kind and caring. While I didn’t accept that support right away, I eventually came to rely on it. In many ways parenting has only gotten more difficult. By not burning that bridge even though I just wanted to be left alone, I have created a pipeline for support to flow down to me and to my children. As I face new challenges this support is invaluable.

Support doesn’t have to come in the form of family though and it some cases it may not. Another place that I received support from in the early months was from a woman who worked in my school district, in a program for young moms. While she couldn’t technically “help” me because I didn’t qualify for any aid, she still came around. She came to talk, to listen, to point me to resources. Those few minutes here and there meant so much to me because it was just a time where my friends weren’t around very much and I was still kind of lost. It gave me a little extra push to keep going.

Lastly the place that I go to the most and have gone to the longest is a group of other young moms that I originally met online in a message board group years ago. This group of ladies is a bit like a lifeline. Sure we have our ups and downs like any friends but many of us have met one or two other members. Many talk on the phone, IM, email, snail mail etc. Just the other day I received a wedding invitation from one of my dear friends that I’ve never met in person. In this small group we go through life’s trials and watch each other and our children grow and find comfort in the fact that we aren’t alone.

The point is to find support somewhere. It doesn’t have to be in person. It doesn’t have to be family because lets face it, that isn’t always going to happen. It just has to provide you with comfort, a “shoulder” to cry on, a listening ear, and an open mind.

Tags: grow, learning, mom, parenting, YouMoms, young

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 12:58 pm and is filed under Misc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.