"If someone had told me 25 years ago, as a divorced mom with a teenage son, that I was about to meet a wonderful man, marry him, and have two more children, I would not have believed it. I was 33, with a 15-year-old who lived across the country and traveled to California to spend spring breaks and summers with me."
"My son had a teenage mother who was in no way prepared to be a parent. My daughters got a settled, mature 30-something-year-old mom who overcompensated for every previous mistake, of which there were many. I was naive in thinking that there wouldn't one day be a natural resentment born from this dynamic. There's an irreconcilable debt that haunts me. It doesn't get easier with time, and no matter how good"
She had her first child at 18 and became a mother while divorced and unprepared. At 33 she remarried, marrying in November 2001, and later had two daughters. Her eldest son is turning 40 and now lives in Florida with his family; the youngest daughter is 20 and both daughters attend colleges in Alabama and Arizona. She lives in New Jersey and is grandmother to a bright, joyful five-year-old and a rambunctious two-year-old. She acknowledges that parenting styles differed—an inexperienced teenage mother for her son and a more settled, overcompensating 30-something mother for her daughters—which created lingering resentment. She struggles with wanting to fix conflicts but accepts limits to making everyone happy.
Read at Business Insider
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