Souls of My Young Sisters by Dawn Marie Daniels

Author:Dawn Marie Daniels
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington Books
Published: 2010-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

I AM BLESSED

By Jennifer Lewis

1995 was the year that changed the course of my life. I was a senior in high school. These were supposed to be the best years of my life. I should have been excited about college, graduation, and my upcoming prom. Instead I was a senior in high school, pregnant, and I’d never felt more alone. I managed to hide my pregnancy for nearly six months. I couldn’t find the strength to tell my family that I was pregnant. Saying I was in denial is an understatement. This sort of thing happened to other people, not me, not my family…yet here I was. I was young, uninformed, and thought I was in love. Looking back, I was more in love with the thought of being in love.

I managed to keep my pregnancy a secret as long as it was physically possible. I never had a chance to enjoy my pregnancy and celebrate the life I would soon bring into the world. Instead, I was making future plans with someone who did not intend for us to be a part of their future. I went through my entire pregnancy alone, without support or assistance from the person I thought was “the one.” This was my first error in judgment. Instead of making someone else “the one,” I should have focused on making myself the priority. The birth of my daughter was the hardest sixteen hours of my life. Nothing could have prepared me more for what I was getting ready to experience. I never felt pain in my life like the pain of childbirth. I had no clue what I was doing. I labored for sixteen hours without the assistance of medication, listening to the advice of my mother, sister, and nurse in the labor and delivery room. With each contraction and each push I became in tune with my body and with what I had to do in order to bring this life into the world. At that very moment, my life and purpose for living had changed forever. I became a mother.

The months leading up to my daughter’s birth were full of emotions. I began my freshman year at a local community college instead of attending one of the large universities I was accepted to. My relationship with my daughter’s father was nonexistent—it didn’t take long to realize there was never a relationship to begin with. There were many times over the course of my pregnancy when I didn’t know where he was. Even with all of this happening in my life, the biggest challenge I was facing was raising my daughter alone. As a young girl growing up, this wasn’t the vision I had, and it certainly was not the example my parents set.

My daughter became the focus of my life—everything I did, I did for her; all decisions made were made with her best interest in mind. I wanted to be the best parent I could be. I was determined not to become the stereotypical “single mom.

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