Saturday, December 2, 2017

What advice would you give to your younger self?

Hey!  I did get around to it!  I'm answering the questions I posted for Thanksgiving, you know, the ones none of us has attempted to answer yet.  Actually, I did tell a couple of friends my answer to this one, and now I'll share it with you.

"What advice would you give to your younger self?"  I told my two friends, "I'd tell myself not to get married."  Yeah, I didn't do very well in picking a husband.  "But what about your three children?" one of them asked.  Well, there you go.  Back in the 1950s and 1960s, one certainly did NOT talk about choosing to be a single mother and raising children on my own.  It was not done.  Oh, no, no, no.  Unless, of course, one was divorced.  Which I was.  So I raised them as a single mother, anyway, albeit with their father getting them on weekends and such.

Okay, I may have to keep pondering this question.  Otherwise, this advice would impact my three children, their spouses, their seven children (and spouses of the two grandchildren who got married), and my six great-grandchildren.  Here's a 2016 family photo with all 21 of them in it, along with five people from my children's father's side of the family.  (He died six years ago.)

I guess I'll have to re-think this advice.  (Is that like recalibrating?)

2 comments:

Helen's Book Blog said...

I cannot regret my marriage even though it only lasted 4 years. I learned a lot about myself and, as you point out, I have my daughter. My advice would be to relax. Growing up I worried too much about what people thought of me and as an adult I realize we can't control that and we should be who we are.

Bonnie Jacobs said...

Very nicely put, Helen! Thanks for sharing that advice.