Hello Friends! I hope everyone is doing well!
Today we are going to talk about how you think you may have failed but really haven't.
I am going to share some of my personal story and show how it can totally be turned around and show that in reality, I was not a failure at all.
If you have recently heard my husband's podcast, The Rugged Legacy Podcast, you might have heard me say that I dropped out of high school. Yes, I did drop out of high school when I was fifteen years old. I was in the second semester of my sophomore year. I remember telling my Mother about my decision and although I knew it was something she really didn't want for me, she knew what my reasoning was. When it came to telling my Father, he was the same way. The word immediately spread in my family like wildfire. I had Aunts and Uncles telling me that if I do drop out that I would not be good member of society. I had older siblings tell me the same thing and some even tried to bribe me not to quit saying that they would pay for my college tuition.
The reason why I quit school, was to help my family. I was not quitting because I was bored. I was not quitting because I was pregnant. I quit because I could not mentally function and physically function at school. You see I lived with my Grandparents and my Mom. My Grandparents were fairly older, and my Grandmother was not always in the good of health. My Grandfather worked two jobs for two cities as a building inspector. My Mother was not in good of health. My Mother suffered from an awful muscle disease Polymyositis. She was able to function semi-normally and had really good days but really bad days as well. If you've never heard of Polymyositis, it is one of the more inflammatory myopathies, a group of muscle diseases that involves inflammation of the muscles or associated tissues, such as the blood vessels that supply the muscles. It's a muscle disease that destroys muscle cells, and inflammation is a response to cell damage. My Mother suffered through this disease she had contracted from a botched blood transfusion which eventually caused her to have a massive and fatal heart attack eleven years later.
Yes, I have much older siblings that could have helped, but they were also starting their careers in the military and having their families. Could people have helped? Yes they could have, but I could not stand there as a teenager seeing what she was going through and not try to help her myself. I was watching the people who raised me suffer and I could not stand by and do nothing. I thought that deep down it would be the cowardly thing to do. Family is family and I could not imagine not being there, because you only live once and you stand by them through thick and thin.
People did judge me a lot. They used to think that if I did not have a high school diploma that I was an always would be a complete failure, that I did not learn anything and would never make anything of myself. The people that thought this were dead wrong. I think about those times when children were obligated to stay at home or could not go to school because they had to work as servants, laborers, or had take care of their families. These children did not grow up being "dumb". In fact, some of them grew up with a sense of knowledge that led them to build a massive legacy as compared to some that were able to stay in school and get an education.
I am not saying that quitting school is for everyone. Don't misunderstand me here. I completely understand that most high school dropouts, according through national data explains that most end up either in the prison system or homeless and on drugs.
When it comes to being a parent of nine children, you want the best for them and to understand what is going on with their education and how they perceive it. I am always talking to my children about how learning as much as they can is important to their future. I tell them that it doesn't matter what you are learning, learn it, you never know when you might need it and it will be filed in the back of your head someplace. Yes, sometimes they don't believe me, but I am pretty sure as they become adults or already have became adults, they eventually have that "Aha!" moment.
It's funny to me that as an adult having been through what I have, being told I was going to be a failure to my children and not a model citizen. I look at all of my children and all of the things that I have taught them. I am not a failure in life. I feel like all of my ideas and future perceptions of my children have been valued judging by the things that they have accomplished in their own lives. I myself did not give up on learning outside of a high school building. I kept on learning and still do, well into my late 30's.
If I did not place value in myself after I had quit school, I may have been a statistic as so many thought I would be. Did I have a child as a teen? Yes, I did and I would not change that for the world. When I became a parent, I knew that I was not going to not let my children in the future not ever stop learning something or bettering themselves. I think the part I have played in the lives of my children along with their Father has been invaluable. I think that even though I was a dropout that proven through my children that one single decision made out of love did not make me a failure.
We have two adult children, one who is in Undergrad school, works as an IT consultant for the DoD (Department of Defense), one child who is a college grad and is a mechanic by trade, two children that are graduating high school seven months apart from each other at the tops of their classes, and four other children who are in school have been on numerous honor rolls and been awarded other honors for their school.
If you don't give up after you hit a bit of adversity and keep on going, you never really fail. You just keep getting better, little by little. It's never to late to pick up where you left off, either.
Thank you to all of you who read my blog. I greatly appreciate it. I believe that when life and unfortunate, raw events happen in your lives, you can keep on going, even if it's a struggle.
Don't ever doubt yourself or think that you cannot accomplish the things you want. You can and you can have it show through your children and throughout your entire life. I know for a brief time after being told negative things about how I was going to become as an adult, I did feel like I was a failure. You are not a failure. You just hit a speed bump that distracted you from what you wanted to accomplish.
The self doubt you have from being told you're a failure doesn't make you who you are unless you allow it.
This anonymous quote that I came by can be applied to any part of your life.
Remember it.
"Failure is not a permanent experience you must rise above it and choose to be better than you were a moment ago. Changing and growing is what makes you win."
Xo- Mel