When will I be Happy?

When I was young, due to a number of family issues, my being happy seemed to make my mother unhappy. It was as if, by being beautiful (everyone young is beautiful!) it was a threat to her. She was miserable and depressed and felt like life had passed her by. I remember a friend of mine saying that I must have had a tough time growing up because of my mother's attitude not only toward life, but towards herself and me. She never lived her dream (singing) and didn't seem to want me to live mine.

Anything I did to make myself feel good or happy, she always found a way to make me feel guilty. So, I've mostly spent the first half of my life not being happy because somehow this threatened my mother. Yes, I'm grown, but obviously still have some major issues.

NOW, especially since my daughter's illness, I feel guilty if/when I'm happy about something if she's not happy. She's very lonely and isolated in many ways, so I feel that if I find someone fun to date, that it's not okay. I am stuck between the generations. My daughter does absolutely nothing to make me feel guilty, I know it's from the past, but I struggle with these feelings a lot of the time.

I really wonder when will it ever be my turn to be happy? I know it's up to me... My mother did the best she could with her life and being a parent and my daughter wants me to be happy. I truly am my own worst enemy. I must learn how to be my own best friend.

Single Mothers... Resilient, Radiant, Remarkable

In 1993, I founded and published a magazine for single mothers called "Against The Odds." The staff was all volunteers and all single mothers. We distributed about 10,000 copies every other month in Chicagoland for about 1 1/2 years. I wanted to do this because there was always so much negativity surrounding "broken" families, and how the children of single parents were somehow not as good as children from "whole" families.

I also became a minor "celebrity" and was considered an "expert" about single parenting during that time. Oprah Winfrey did a show on single mothers and I was a guest panelist. I got a call from one of Chicago's big newspapers to give my opinion about then Vice President Dan Quayle's use of "Murphy Brown" as an example of single mothers and how we were hurting the good American "values" of family. We also gave workshops and had several fun events. I re-typed the explanation for the Logo I used for the magazine (I lost the discs many years ago). I really DID have a life before I was a caregiver. Hard to remember, but I did!

“LOGO:

I was raised in the South Bronx, New York where the view outside my bedroom window was a brick wall and way, way in the distance, I could see the very top of a tree. I remember loving the top of that tree and thinking that by looking at it, I could forget the brick wall and the ugliness surrounding me.

There was a song that came out in the 60’s called, “There is a Rose in Spanish Harlem” by Ben E. King. I loved that song too. It reminded me of my brick wall and my tree. The song is the story of a rose that grows and blooms out of the sidewalk in one of the poorest, most violent and dismal ghettos in the country.

To me the song symbolizes how beauty, joy and victory can flourish even out of the most negative and adverse circumstances. That’s why I chose the logo of a rose growing out of a sidewalk for this magazine. “Against The Odds” is dedicated to the single mothers and their children who survive, flourish and succeed out of sometimes desperate circumstances. There IS victory among the thorns. The magazine is dedicated to you single moms, you are the Roses… It is your passion for life and your will to survive that this magazine recognizes and celebrates.”