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How once woman went from being a SAHM of four to a published freelance science journalist |
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I'm revising this intro after more than 15 years to better reflect my intention When I started this blog in 2004, I was a stay at home mom to two small children, a college graduate with a degree in English and Astrophysics. By 2007, I had four small children, ages newborn, 2, 4, and 6. For several years, Writing.com was how I kept my sanity. This blog began, first as a way of staying connected. Later, when I worked on a novel, I used it to stoke the writing fires as I plotted out short stories and the next step of my novel. Ultimately, I moved my writing preparation to "Invalid Item"  In 2010, I became a single mom who had homeschooled her children for several years. I had a 2, 4, 6 and 8 year old and had never had a "real" full time job, since I was married while in college. Everyone told me that I would have to buckle down and take on a "real" job. Instead, I decided to attempt to live my dream: to make it as a writer. I knew that if I didn't try then, I would never really dive in. I counted my money and set a deadline. If I hadn't began making a decent (defined) amount of money after so many months, I would suck it up and get a J-O-B. After some thought, I decided to play to my strengths. I served an internship at Sky & Telescope magazine while in college and enjoyed writing about space and astronomy. With an astrophysics degree, I thought I would be able to sell myself more easily, and a small niche should be easier to penetrate. It's been about ten years since I was first paid for an article on Space.com. In that time, writing - journalism - has been my primary moneymaker. I've often thought about setting up a blog on my website - www.astrowriter.com - but just haven't gotten around to it. There are a few things I would like to share for those who are interested in scientific journalism in general. Now that I'm back on WDC, there's no reason not to combine the two and use the site blog for that sort of interaction. There are certainly plenty of folks on this site interested in the publication process. So while I'll probably meander around some, that's the intention of of this blog: to share some of my struggles as a published journalist and to help answer oft-asked questions. |
| Today's prompt, as befits Mother's Day, is to tell a story about my mom. Most of the stories about my childhood are not great to tell. My parents got divorced when I was four and my sister was three, and my mom was remarried soon enough that I actually used my step-father's last name when I enrolled in kindergarten. Then they split, and my mom struggled through several years with two, then three kids. My dad had trouble paying child support until my mom finally took him to court and had it automatically taken from his paycheck, and I'm pretty sure, for various reasons, my step-father never paid support for my brother. So my mom, who had been a high school dropout who finally got her GED & associates degree while single, struggled a lot financially. On top of that, she became a surveyor in the 80s, which was a male-dominated field. I don't know specifics about her troubles at work, but I do know that we would move pretty much every year, which suggests problems. Suffice it to say that we had financial problems for many years, that when my mom pulled out the bills and the legal pad, my sister and I would hide in our rooms because she would get both angry-upset and sad-upset and it was just better not to be around. By the time I graduated high school, things were a little better financially, and then of course she just had my brother, who was 11 years younger than me (9 less than my sister). Now that I'm a single mom myself, I can empathize a bit more with the stress she carried. I can't imagine coming as far as she has on my own. She had a difficult time with things, and had some temper issues, but now that she's older, she's mellowed a lot. I remember one day when I was in high school, she told us that she had had a serious revelation. She said that she would get mad at work, and then come home and take it out on us instead of complaining or getting upset at work. She said she wasn't going to do that anymore. I don't know if she changed how her work issues were handled or just took some deep breaths on the drive home, but that was a significant turning point in my life. I just wish it would have happened sooner. That's probably a better story than I meant to tell. The one I was going to tell was that, I strongly remember when I was five, my mom played with me and my sister outside. We played She-rah, and while I can't recall the specifics, what I can recall is that is the only time I really remember her playing with us. We never really played games or make believe or any of that, and now that I'm all grown up, I can better understand why she was so stressed and worn out. I made an effort to play with my kids. Now, maybe I'm wrong, and I'm sure when I was little she probably played with us kids to some degree. But I just can't recall a lot of instances. It's easy to criticize your parents, especially when they didn't do the greatest job. I mentioned in a previous post that I grew up in an abusive household, so it's not tough to read between the lines. I knew when I was young that the odds were strong that, having grown up abused, I would likely become an abusive parent, so by the time I was 16 I was resolved not to have kids. Things changed in my life and only a few short years later I was a mom at 22 (and then again at 24, 26, and 28 lol). I worked really hard not to repeat my mom's mistakes, at least the more obvious ones. My mom made me think hard about what kind of parent I wanted to be. I'm not "that" parent - I still have room for improvement - but I think I"m a better parent than I would have been if I just fell into it without thought and work. It was really hard to switch off my tendency for both physical and emotional abuse, but it did happen. It is a great joy to me that if I jokingly raise my hand, none of my kids flinch, and that none of my kids are scared of me. My dad likes to tell me that I should have used more discipline, but given that he only parented in short, rare batches, I really don't care about his opinion. Plus he isn't around kids. When my kids were all young, we received quite a few compliments from servers and from other diners about how well behaved our kids were - and this without distracting them with tech. Now that my kids are older, I think we did a dang good job, though there are things I wish I would have done better, especially as a single mom. Anyway, I'm wandering. Off to bed. I hope you had a happy Mom's day, and I hope you were able to learn something from your mother than could make your life better, whether your relationship with them was positive or negative. *Oh I do want to add that my mom has continued to work on her temper and change how she handles things. Perhaps most importantly, she has repeatedly acknowledged her guilt and failings and apologized for her past behavior. While both of my parents have proven lacking in many ways (oh wow they weren't perfect) only one has acknowledged their mistakes. That can go a long way towards forgiveness and affects our relationship significantly. |
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