Planning On Being a Stay At Home Parent? Make Sure You Consider THIS First!

Posted on by stilllearning2b
stay at home

Are you thinking of becoming a stay at home parent?

 

Brock and I recently finished watching the series Boardwalk Empire, which takes place in the Prohibition-era United States. After watching one heart-breaking scene with a woman and her kids, Brock turned to me.

“It’s so sad how women were trapped in bad marriages or devastated when their husbands left or died back then because of a lack of resources and opportunity.”

“Sadly,” I replied, “It still happens. I hear from women in that very position all the time.”

—–

Circumstances have changed dramatically since the early twentieth century. Staying at home to raise the kids is no longer an assumption, it is generally a carefully made decision. Couples weigh the pros (quality time with the child, no child care costs, more influence on development) against the cons (reduced family income, possibility of isolation or boredom for the parent who stays home, difficulty of re-entering the workforce down the road). It is still usually the female that elects to stay home if that decision is reached, yet increasingly, that role is given to or shared with the man.

The decision to stay home to raise children is an incredibly personal one, with many beliefs and goals entering into the process.

And I am not trying to sway you either way. That choice is entirely yours to make.

I just want you to think about all of the possibilities when you make your decision.

Because I often hear what happens when people don’t.

—–

“I need to get out of this marriage. His drinking is out of control and he’s starting to scare me. I don’t want to raise my kids in this environment. But I don’t have any money and I don’t work. What can I do?”

“My tsunami divorce happened when he sent me an email and then left. The courts ordered that he pay child support, but he’s only made a couple of payments in the last year. I stopped working 10 years ago to raise the kids and I can’t seem to get a job now. What do I do?”

“We always seemed to be okay financially. But then when she died, I learned that there was all kinds of debt I didn’t know about. Since she was the primary bread winner, we decided that I would stay at home when the kids were young. It’s been so long now, my former industry has changed. What should I do?”

I hate reading these questions. I wish I could help them into a time machine and take them back along with the knowledge that they needed to form a contingency plan along with their child care plan.

And I get why people often don’t. You don’t believe that it can happen to you.

—–

I was lucky. Even though I did a lot of things wrong in my marriage (secure in the belief that my husband really meant til death), I had my own career and my own income. My situation was also made significantly easier by the fact that we did not have children. I only had to worry about my own survival, not that of any offspring.

I didn’t follow up enough with the financial conversations that we had to ensure that his words matched the ledgers. I didn’t keep up with the myriad accounts, trusting that he had our best interests in mind. I didn’t have my own money, separate from his reach. I didn’t have an emergency plan for what I could do if the worst came to past. I allowed him access to my preexisting credit card. I didn’t know that he had canceled (or simply neglected to pay) the life insurance policy that let me sleep at night. And I trusted the courts would enforce their ruling that he was to pay me back.

I trusted him to take care of us. Of me. And I neglected to take care of myself.

And those mistakes cost me money.

If I had been a stay-at-home mom who made the same mistakes, the results could have been disastrous and so much larger than just a financial hit.

Because here’s the scary, sad and so-not-fair truth – It can happen to you.

You may find yourself wed (and dependent upon) an abuser. Scared to stay and yet unable to leave.

That same spouse that was so supportive of your staying home may decide that he or she no longer wants to return home.

The perfect parent may suddenly morph into somebody refuses to pay child support.

And through no fault of their own, your husband or wife may be struck down before their time.

And so as much as you hate to , consider those worst cases while you’re making life changes. Your life – and your kids’ lives – may depend upon it.

—–

If you are the partner who will be staying home, consider implementing the following as part of an emergency preparedness plan:

-Build an emergency fund that you have access to. If your spouse also has access, make sure that you periodically check to ensure it’s there. It really doesn’t have to be some great amount. Just enough so that you never feel trapped in that moment because of a lack of funds. This isn’t meant to be a primary savings account or some source of anxiety. Just a small insurance tucked away, hopefully never to be needed.

-Have at least one credit card in your name with a reasonable limit. One problem people often face after staying at home for a period of time is that their credit takes a hit. Use the card at least every few months and then pay it off to keep your credit score high.

-Before you decide to stay home, develop some education or job skills as well as some experience. It’s never easy to return to the working world after a break, but it’s a little easier if you’ve been there before and had something to offer.

-Consider work you can do part-time or from home. Even if the pay is not great, it is something and it keeps you from feeling powerless.

-Maintain connections with people who are in the working world.

-Build and nurture a safety net of friends and family.

-Stay sharp. Enroll in free online courses. Take on freelance gigs that relate to your former career. Keep up with the changes and developments in your industry.

-Have an outline of a “If the sh*t hits the fan plan.” Hopefully the outline grows faded and dusty. But if it’s ever needed, you’ll be so glad you put some thought into it when you could still think rationally.

-Have a pulse on the relationship and the family’s financial standing.

-If divorce is in the picture, don’t assume that alimony or child support will be awarded or promptly paid. Try to put yourself in a position where that money is nice, but not needed.

—–

There are times when you have to be dependent upon somebody else.

And that’s okay.

But never allow yourself to become dependent upon being dependent.

Because that’s a risk that may end up being too big to take.

This is one area where the motto I learned from the residents of a remote – and harsh – Alaskan town applies:

“Prepare for the worst. Expect the best. And live for today.”

Because even though it can happen to you, I hope it never does.

I just want you to be prepared just in case.

So that you are never in a position of asking somebody the unanswerable question, “What can I do now?”

Planning On Being a Stay-At-Home Parent? Make Sure You Consider THIS First!

Posted on by stilllearning2b
stay at home

Brock and I recently finished watching the series Boardwalk Empire, which takes place in the Prohibition-era United States. After watching one heart-breaking scene with a woman and her kids, Brock turned to me.

“It’s so sad how women were trapped in bad marriages or devastated when their husbands left or died back then because of a lack of resources and opportunity.”

“Sadly,” I replied, “It still happens. I hear from women in that very position all the time.”

—–

Circumstances have changed dramatically since the early twentieth century. Staying at home to raise the kids is no longer an assumption, it is generally a carefully made decision. Couples weigh the pros (quality time with the child, no child care costs, more influence on development) against the cons (reduced family income, possibility of isolation or boredom for the parent who stays home, difficulty of re-entering the workforce down the road). It is still usually the female that elects to stay home if that decision is reached, yet increasingly, that role is given to or shared with the man.

The decision to stay home to raise children is an incredibly personal one, with many beliefs and goals entering into the process.

And I am not trying to sway you either way. That choice is entirely yours to make.

I just want you to think about all of the possibilities when you make your decision.

Because I often hear what happens when people don’t.

—–

“I need to get out of this marriage. His drinking is out of control and he’s starting to scare me. I don’t want to raise my kids in this environment. But I don’t have any money and I don’t work. What can I do?”

“My tsunami divorce happened when he sent me an email and then left. The courts ordered that he pay child support, but he’s only made a couple of payments in the last year. I stopped working 10 years ago to raise the kids and I can’t seem to get a job now. What do I do?”

“We always seemed to be okay financially. But then when she died, I learned that there was all kinds of debt I didn’t know about. Since she was the primary bread winner, we decided that I would stay at home when the kids were young. It’s been so long now, my former industry has changed. What should I do?”

I hate reading these questions. I wish I could help them into a time machine and take them back along with the knowledge that they needed to form a contingency plan along with their child care plan.

And I get why people often don’t. You don’t believe that it can happen to you.

—–

I was lucky. Even though I did a lot of things wrong in my marriage (secure in the belief that my husband really meant til death), I had my own career and my own income. My situation was also made significantly easier by the fact that we did not have children. I only had to worry about my own survival, not that of any offspring.

I didn’t follow up enough with the financial conversations that we had to ensure that his words matched the ledgers. I didn’t keep up with the myriad accounts, trusting that he had our best interests in mind. I didn’t have my own money, separate from his reach. I didn’t have an emergency plan for what I could do if the worst came to past. I allowed him access to my preexisting credit card. I didn’t know that he had canceled (or simply neglected to pay) the life insurance policy that let me sleep at night. And I trusted the courts would enforce their ruling that he was to pay me back.

I trusted him to take care of us. Of me. And I neglected to take care of myself.

And those mistakes cost me money.

If I had been a stay-at-home mom who made the same mistakes, the results could have been disastrous and so much larger than just a financial hit.

Because here’s the scary, sad and so-not-fair truth – It can happen to you.

You may find yourself wed (and dependent upon) an abuser. Scared to stay and yet unable to leave.

That same spouse that was so supportive of your staying home may decide that he or she no longer wants to return home.

The perfect parent may suddenly morph into somebody refuses to pay child support.

And through no fault of their own, your husband or wife may be struck down before their time.

And so as much as you hate to , consider those worst cases while you’re making life changes. Your life – and your kids’ lives – may depend upon it.

—–

If you are the partner who will be staying home, consider implementing the following as part of an emergency preparedness plan:

-Build an emergency fund that you have access to. If your spouse also has access, make sure that you periodically check to ensure it’s there. It really doesn’t have to be some great amount. Just enough so that you never feel trapped in that moment because of a lack of funds. This isn’t meant to be a primary savings account or some source of anxiety. Just a small insurance tucked away, hopefully never to be needed.

-Have at least one credit card in your name with a reasonable limit. One problem people often face after staying at home for a period of time is that their credit takes a hit. Use the card at least every few months and then pay it off to keep your credit score high.

-Before you decide to stay home, develop some education or job skills as well as some experience. It’s never easy to return to the working world after a break, but it’s a little easier if you’ve been there before and had something to offer.

-Consider work you can do part-time or from home. Even if the pay is not great, it is something and it keeps you from feeling powerless.

-Maintain connections with people who are in the working world.

-Build and nurture a safety net of friends and family.

-Stay sharp. Enroll in free online courses. Take on freelance gigs that relate to your former career. Keep up with the changes and developments in your industry.

-Have an outline of a “If the sh*t hits the fan plan.” Hopefully the outline grows faded and dusty. But if it’s ever needed, you’ll be so glad you put some thought into it when you could still think rationally.

-Have a pulse on the relationship and the family’s financial standing.

-If divorce is in the picture, don’t assume that alimony or child support will be awarded or promptly paid. Try to put yourself in a position where that money is nice, but not needed.

—–

There are times when you have to be dependent upon somebody else.

And that’s okay.

But never allow yourself to become dependent upon being dependent.

Because that’s a risk that may end up being too big to take.

This is one area where the motto I learned from the residents of a remote – and harsh – Alaskan town applies:

“Prepare for the worst. Expect the best. And live for today.”

Because even though it can happen to you, I hope it never does.

I just want you to be prepared just in case.

So that you are never in a position of asking somebody the unanswerable question, “What can I do now?”

Phases of Moving On After Divorce

Posted on by stilllearning2b

One of the most common refrains I hear from people, even years after their divorce, is that they are not yet where they want to be. They offer up reasons – financial, emotional, situational – that they are unable to escape the rapacious quicksand of the past.

And yet when I dig deeper, I find that they are indeed doing many of the right things.

Just not necessarily in the right order.

Because when it comes to moving on after divorce (How Do You Know When You’ve Moved On After Divorce?), you have to learn to stand before you can attempt to run from your past and into your future.

It’s easy to try to skip steps and to believe you are ready to take on the world before it’s time. Goodness knows, I did plenty of that myself. We want so badly to be done with the healing already that we often try to rush things along.

Rewriting the End of a Relationship

And if you try to tackle a phase before you’re ready, you will be left feeling frustrated and hopeless and stuck.

—–

Before you can say with certainty that you’ve moved on, you have to actively engage with building your new life. So much of releasing the hold that divorce, especially unwanted divorce, can have on you is found in securing a sense of purpose and control over your life. And you have to be an active participant in this process.

Be a Hill Climber

Before you can actively build your new life, you have to take responsibility for your well-being and release any residual victim mindset. This step perhaps takes the most amount of courage. You have to be willing to be vulnerable, to see yourself as you are and to fully shoulder the responsibility for your own choices and actions. There is a difference between what happened to you (which you cannot control) and your response (which you can).

Thriving After Divorce: From Victim to Victor

Before you can take responsibility for your well-being, you have to process the marriage, its end and your actions and emotions. If we do not understand the past, we are doomed to repeat it. Life has a sneaky way of presenting us with lessons until we have fully learned them. It’s impossible to process fully while you’re in the midst of something. Now that you’ve gained some distance and perspective, you can begin to break it apart so that you can gain wisdom.

12 Reasons to Journal After Divorce

Before you process the past, you have to shift your focus from your history to your potential. If you spend too much energy focused on the past, you will become a prisoner of the past. You may not be ready to fully move forward, but now is the time to plant the seeds of hope and promise. These are dreams, inoculations from rumination and despair.

Life in Transition

Before you can have hope for the future, you have to fall out of love with your former partner. For some, this is easy as the love has been dying for years. For others, especially those blindsided by a sudden divorce, this is a more difficult and deliberate process.

How to Fall Out of Love

Before you can fall out of love, you have to attend to the practical day-to-day needs. You cannot tend to your emotional wounds until your physical needs have been addressed. This can be daunting, especially if you have been left with no apparent means of income or the burden of debt. Been there. It sucks.

18 Steps to Financial Independence After Divorce

And before you can attend to the practical, you have to accept that the marriage is over. This is where it begins. An acceptance that it’s over. Even if it’s not what you wanted.

Finding Happiness After An Unwanted Divorce

 

Will I Be Alone Forever?

Posted on by stilllearning2b
alone

“It’s too late for me.”

“I’m too damaged.”

“I won’t be able to love again. To trust again.”

“Nobody will want me with all this baggage.”

“I’m going to be alone forever.”

Those were all thoughts that cycled stubbornly through my reeling mind after I was abandoned by my first husband. I was afraid that I would never again experience that greatest feeling in the world of returning to the sanctuary of loving arms after a bad day. I grew convinced that nobody else would ever whisper, “Love you,” as he slid my glasses off of my sleeping face. My mind’s eye alternated between playing slideshows of the happy moments of my now-defunct marriage and scenes from an imagined future where I grew ever-older and ever-lonelier.

It seems almost laughable to me now as I look back at that early end-of-the-world mindset that turned out not to have any prophetic powers.

It was anything but laughable at the time.

Those fears, sensing a new and fragile void, rushed in and filled every crevice with doubt about hope and conviction about despair. And I was a captive listener.

Understanding and Addressing Loneliness After Divorce

—–

There are five lies that those fears are telling you. Falsehoods that feed on vulnerabilities and insecurities at a time when our defenses are down and we crave some certainty in our torn and tattered lives.

When you start to recognize those lies, it helps to silence the fear:

Fear Tells Us Now is Always

At the end of a marriage, all you feel is loss. An ever-aching wound after a tooth has been pulled from its anchor. And when you’re feeling loss, it’s practically impossible to imagine joy. And it’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that the way it is now – hurting, lonely, scared – is the way it will always be.

Yet the one certainty in life is change. Today, whether good or bad, always morphs into tomorrow, often bringing with it unexpected visitors. Right now, you feel alone. Right now, you feel unloved. Right now, you hurt. Tomorrow? Who knows?

I was so proud of one of my students the other day. She confided, “I don’t like my life right now.” There’s wisdom for all of us in her last two words. The life you have now will not be the life you have tomorrow.

And fear possesses no special powers. It holds no crystal ball. It doesn’t try to predict the future, it simply projects the worst.

Now is not always. And now will always change.

9 Reasons You’re Struggling to Find Love Again

Fear Tells Us It’s Too Late

I was weeks shy of 32 when I was unceremoniously dumped via text message. And I thought it was too late for me to find love again. It was an absurd thought for me to have – my parents remarried after that age, I had plenty of friends who had found love well beyond their early 30s and I knew many people who were actively dating in my age range.

But none of that mattered.

Because here’s the thing with age –

The oldest you’ve ever been is the age you are at. this. moment.

You’ve experienced every age below you. And everything yet to come is merely a guess. And that fear of being alone loves to convince you that it’s all going downhill from here.

And so we remember love at our younger selves and we imagine being alone with our older self.

I have many love mentors in my life that I have looked to in times when I have been in need of hope. One couple, now happily married in their seventies, met in their sixties.

The truth is that the only time it’s too late is when you believe it’s too late.

And not a moment sooner.

My Husband Walked Into a Bar…And This is What I Learned

Fear Tells Us We’ve Lost the One

In the beginning, I wanted to date men like my former husband because all I could imagine loving was my former husband. If I couldn’t have the one, at least I could try to find a reasonable facsimile.

As you can imagine, that didn’t work out too well.

Much like the only ages we know are the ones we’ve lived, the only loves we know are the ones we’ve had.

So it’s easy to believe that the one slipped through the cracks beyond hope of retrieve.

I eventually realized that I didn’t want an ex-shaped new love. I had changed. I no longer wanted the same person. I opened up to the possibility of something new. Unknown.

Very few of us will move through our lives with only a single romantic love. Yet no matter how many we’ve experienced, it’s always difficult to imagine one more.

It reminds me of something I heard a pregnant friend say while rubbing her belly- “I just can’t imagine loving this one as much as I do the others.” Her three children played nearby. Even though she had felt and surpassed these doubts twice before, fear was still planting seeds in her mind. And no surprise, fear was wrong. She loved baby number four just as much as the others.

You may have lost one. You haven’t lost the only one.

How a Belief in a Soul Mate Is Holding You Back

Fear Tells Us We Are Doomed to Repeat the Past

Just as I was starting to get my dating sea legs under me, I was ghosted. Again. This time by a man that was speaking of a possible future and trying to convince me to stay in Atlanta instead of continuing with my planned escape out of the region.

Here’s how I saw it – Once was a fluke. Twice was a pattern.

I was doomed to be dumped.

As with many lies fear tells, this one has some basis in reality. If I continued to attach anxiously, I would cause the past to stutter and repeat.

But if I changed, the pattern would change as well.

We are not merely toy boats upon the stream, subject to the whims of the currents and the waves. Although we cannot control the stream, we can improve our vessel and learn how to better steer around obstacles.

It’s important to study the past. Not so that we know what to expect, but so that we can make better decisions going forward.

You’re only doomed to repeat the past if you’re stuck in the past.

11 Traps That Hold You Back After Divorce

Fear Tells Us It Is Reality

Fear is well-practiced at slipping on the disguises of concern and pragmatism, when really it is distracting us from rational thought. It pretends that it is telling us the harsh truths we need to hear to make us better while holding us back with ties of fiction. Fear pretends to whisper the future when it is actually keeping us prisoner of the past.

—–

Fear makes for a poor life coach.

Time to fire your fear of being alone.

Learn to embrace this pause. This moment between. This period when you’re unmoored and unattached.

And be open to tomorrow. Be open to possibilities. Be open to love.

A Thank-You Note to Winter Storm Jonas

Posted on by stilllearning2b

Dear Jonas –

I was mad at you on Thursday. You see, your predecessor prompted school to release early on Wednesday without much prior warning. The resulting exhaustion from trying to convince excited kids to engage in math instruction and stress from reworking lesson plans had me a bit raw.

And then you showed up. And it was unclear if you were a serious threat or a mere annoyance for Atlanta. And I don’t like uncertainty.

My blood pressure was elevated Thursday night as I obsessively refreshed the website listing school closures. I planned and replanned lessons in my head for every forseeable situation – normal school, half-day with these periods, half-day with those periods and no school but online learning. All with the goal of trying to stay on schedule for the planned test day.

Eventually, I collapsed into a fitful sleep while still awaiting news. The anxious planning followed me into my sleep and caused me to awake just after three.

Apparently the powers-that-be had decided that you were threatening enough that the children should be kept inside. I immediately went to my computer and spent the next hour writing and posting my online lessons.

And once I was done, the anxiety was done as well.

The unknown was now known.

Friday passed without incident. I enjoyed a morning treadmill run before my office hours. I indulged in a weekday lunch with my husband at our favorite Indian buffet. I relished the individual attention I could give to students without interruption via various forms of electronic communication. And I was appreciative that I didn’t have to navigate the streets as the temperature continued to drop.

I awoke Saturday morning to a light coating of ice and snow on the world, the frosting on the cake. The roads were largely unaffected so I merely postponed my grocery run until full daylight.

And that’s when it happened.

The snow, stopped since before I woke up, began to fall in earnest. Whipped by the wind into great swaths of ever-changing forms. I was driving down the road surrounded by the most graceful and fluid dancers, who followed me all the way to the store.

Breath-taking beauty.

So Jonas, thank you. Thank you for that moment that reminded me to be in the moment. Thank you for the lesson about releasing my need to control (I’m afraid I’ll probably need more – I’m in the remedial group on that one!). Thank you for the reminder that my worries easily grow too big for their britches and that I can trust myself to perform even without an abundance of rehearsal.

And thank you for having a bark that’s worse than your bite in Georgia. I enjoyed the snow and I’m glad it’s now gone. As for what you’ve done further north, I doubt you’ll be getting thank-you letters from them. Except maybe from the kids who are getting out of math class:)