Who is Jill becoming?

Early Years

I was born the oldest, after my parents experienced the loss of two children before me.  My father always wanted a big family and my mother was born Roman Catholic and “didn’t believe in birth control”, so after me came six more. I have five sisters and one brother, who is smack dab in the middle. My mother was a homemaker until my adult years, my father worked construction. My siblings and I were a rowdy bunch, to say the least. With each other, mostly. My mother tried hard to be consistent in taking us to museums, battlefields, historical areas of any kind. My father worked so many hours that we saw him mainly at dinner and on weekends. We were raised in Pennsylvania surrounded by grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. My favorite times were the weekend BBQs with my dad’s side of the family. It was loud and they were full of hugs and attention. 

North to Alaska

I was middle school aged when I started to rebel. I hated being the oldest child. I hated being responsible for children that I didn’t give birth to because my mom always had her hands full. I resented my parents often. When I was 14, we moved to Alaska to follow my dad’s dreams of racing the Iditarod. I was excited to go. It seemed foreign and exciting and I was already looking for adventure. What I found was snow. A LOT of it. The schools in Alaska were two years behind my old schools, so the work they were doing was repetitive. I quickly became bored, boredom led to rebellion, rebellion led to smoking pot and running away at 16. I lived with friends and found a boyfriend a few years older. He was “cool”, you know…he had a car and we could go to Taco Bell in the middle of the night for fun if we wanted.  Teenager priorities, of course. It wasn’t long before I was pregnant and had a son at 17. Same boy, we then had a daughter when I was 19. We married and divorced in the same year since the boy was never a “man” and was emotionally, verbally, then physically abusive. I married my best friend from high school six years later. We spent no time dating and married after a few weeks. He was high-anxiety and self-medicated with alcohol, I later found out. He was amazing when sober, verbally unkind when drunk. We tried to make it work for over 10 years and then I found myself a single mother again. I was happy! I went to school to be a hairdresser. I got licensed as a foster parent and I took in children that weren’t my own. I started and sold a business. My children became amazing adults and they graduated school. 

Present Years

Today, I am about to turn 42. My children are happy and my daughter is about to get married. I am in a committed relationship of three years with someone who supports me. I have two great Danes, a Rottweiler, and two mutts. I am close with my parents who have been married for almost 50 years. My parents and five of my siblings live locally. I have one sister who lives in Florida with her husband and children. Two of my siblings became drug addicts, and I’ve watched them spiral downwards. The rest of us have family, dinners, holidays, and birthdays together.

After raising two children to adulthood, my nephew was born to drug addicted parents and went into foster care at birth after his biological mother abandoned him at the hospital. He came to me at three days old from the hospital and our adoption hearing is this week. He just turned two. My foster license is open still, we have five other kids ages, 14, 12, 11, 9, and 6. So needless to say, life is busy. I find it funny that as a child, I hated how hectic our life was, and how busy we were with so many children. I would always say that I was never having kids myself. It’s amusing to me to look at my life now filled with children and busyness and hectic-ness and instead of hating it, I feel fulfilled. 

Looking Forward

I have worked jobs in mental health, corrections, and social work. I have been home with the kids for the last two years and now find myself wanting more professionally. I decided to go back to school through UAF online to pursue a degree in social work. I’m not entirely sure what I would like to do with it yet, but I would love to be a trauma counselor of some sort, most likely to children. There seems to be a shortage of mental health professionals for children. Scratch that, for people in general in Alaska. I feel like my calling is to help in some way. 

Reflection

I used to look at adults in their 40s and think that they were old and that their life was halfway over. Funny how that perception changes when you are actually IN your 40s. I feel sometimes like my life is just beginning. I am eager to see the path I take professionally. I am passionate about learning and growing myself. I am enthusiastic to raise this little boy that I love so much and to see him grow, learn, and become his own person. I am overjoyed to see my adult children flourish in their lives with school, jobs, marriage, and someday babies. I hope to leave my mark, if not on this world then on my family. 

“Sometimes you are born into a family, and sometimes you need to go find it. Sometimes it finds you. No matter how it comes together, when it does, family is what you fight for, family is what you protect.” – Sandra Bullock

Macke, J. (2022, July 26). Sandra Bullock’s sweetest motherhood quotes over the years. Us weekly.https://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-moms/pictures/sandra-bullocks-sweetest-motherhood-quotes-over-the -years/