It’s perfectly fine to do things your own way
Getting pregnant at 19, graduating from college at 29, and building a career in publishing wasn’t the traditional path — but it taught me that life doesn’t have to follow a perfect sequence to turn out well.
To say I did everything backward isn’t an exaggeration of any kind. I graduated from high school with honors, excitedly started college, and then got pregnant.
Right away, I got married, and then sometime later, we got an apartment. Years and years later, when two of my three kids were teens, we got a house.
I sequenced my life backward but learned a few things along the way.
It’s perfectly fine to do things your own way … just keep going. If anyone doubts you, prove them wrong.
When I was 19 and newly pregnant with my first daughter, I was sitting in the backseat of a car with an older family member and her friend. They discussed another friend’s daughter and said that, “she got pregnant, so would never finish college.”
They both expounded on how girls who got pregnant threw their lives away. It seemed like such a targeted dig, I couldn’t fathom how it wasn’t intentional. And even if it wasn’t intentional, it was, at the very least, devoid of empathy.
I always go back to that story because it taught me two things. If someone says something rude in your presence and you think it’s about you, it very well might be … but it says nothing, not a single damn thing about you as a person … and ultimately everything about them.
Furthermore, what anyone thinks about you, whether they verbalize it or not, means nothing.
I never used to get the saying that what people say about you is none of your business, but now I do. Anything someone thinks is filtered through their own experiences, judgments, traumas, and influences.
It has nothing to do with you — so don’t take it in. Always know who you are and do not allow someone else to affect your self-esteem.
The other thing I learned that day, sitting alone, with my little bean in my belly, is that if you tell me I can’t do something, you can bet that soon enough, you’ll be watching me do it.
You don’t have to follow the script or the sequence.
I went back to school when my second daughter was two, and when I started, I only took two classes. It was all I could manage to pull off without hiring help, which was an impossibility, and not something I wanted either. The next semester, I took three classes and eventually went full-time.
I remember walking to class through the Brooklyn family courts, semester after semester, playing “Graduate” by Third Eye Blind in my headphones, fervently trying to envision the day when I finally would.
It seemed like an endless collection of classes and exams, sick kids, running home in time for school pick-up, studying half asleep after finishing bedtime stories, and quizzing myself in crowded subway cars.
I thought it would take me decades to finish.
9/11 happened in the middle of my studies, and my professors told us, English majors, to just go to grad school. They said there was absolutely no way we were going to get a job with such a nondescript degree in that economy.
But I was the girl who dreamed too much, was innately stubborn, and always saw myself working at a magazine in the city ever since I could remember.
Right when I was getting ready to graduate and embark on an exciting career in publishing, I got pregnant with my son. I actually finished my last paper while going into labor with my son.
Yes, it took me ninety and a half eons to graduate, and I was 29 years old, but I damn well did it.
You never know what the fork in the road will do to your path
This last birth experience was so out of this world that I did what I always do when something greatly affects me, whether good or bad — I wrote about it.
Still high on the hormonal flood of pregnancy, I sent the piece to a little NYC-based publication. The editor said she couldn’t use it at the moment, but she liked how I wrote and asked if I could write an article for the magazine.
A few months later, she had a spot open for an editor to come in and proofread an ad index for two days out of the month. That’s how I began my stint at the magazine, which would eventually lead me to steadily climb the ranks and become Managing Editor of eight magazines years later.
It’s also how I met H, who has become one of my best friends now for over 20 years and counting.
I have never been without a publishing job since, even after getting pregnant in college twice and earning an English degree in a post-9/11 broken economy.
You never know what the universe has planned. Whether it aligns with what society tells you to do or the path that superiors, friends, or even partners advise you to follow, stay open to all opportunities and don’t be afraid of how they will go.
Simply say yes and see where they take you. You always have the option to change your mind.
And if you find yourself having done something backward, good for you. It’s part of your journey and will lead you to where you ultimately need to be.
I never followed the typical script, but it all worked out, not despite it but because of it.
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