When I attempted to write this story, I felt lost in the idea of how to start. I could play the normal game of blah, blah, blah. I'm a 36-year-old mother born and raised in Colorado, but honestly nobody wants to hear it. Instead, I am left with the vulnerability to tell the story of how my experiences have created the person I am today.
About 15 years ago, my life changed significantly. I was 21 years old and entered the world of parenthood. At the time, I couldn't fathom what it meant to be a mother. I was young and on the greatest rollercoaster of my life. I could no longer be selfish, I had another life that depended on me. My daughter deserves the world, and I was determined to give it to her.
I was in a young relationship that, I presumed, would last forever. When I was raised by Vietnamese parents, I learned there was nothing more important in life than family. So I committed myself to making my small family work. Her father and I were married a few years later, and eventually had two more daughters.
The marriage was my fall. At the time, I didn't realize how toxic the relationship would be or how it would affect my mental well-being. Eventually, I lost my complete self-confidence. I was a lost soul, and barely lived anymore. I was merely getting by, day-to-day.
We faced many financial difficulties, which inevitably led to many poor decisions. None of us had a real college education, and our work history lacked experience, which made it almost impossible to get a highly paid career. There was another factor that created hardship in the situation. If I had a career, the cost of childcare would ultimately outweigh the cost of anything I could ever afford. So I was obliged to be a stay-at-home mother. Don't get me wrong, it was a blessing to raise my children, but it didn't make life easier.
Fast forward a few years, and I was at an ultimate low. I was repeatedly cheated and lied to, and became a convicted criminal. I know that sounds terrible, and the word criminal raises many fears about the type of person I am. But all I can say is it was a massage business that went wrong. I was looped into something beyond me.
Either way, it is not the past that defines us, and I am no longer the person I was. After an excruciating two-year probation sentence and the biggest heartache of my life, I was set on the path to rediscover myself. I offered the girl's father another chance to make things right, and I stayed in the relationship to try to make it work. I had committed "Death do us apart," and I was fully committed to abide by it with the values instilled in me.
In the meantime, I reconnected with the feeling that I wanted to help people. As a child, I wanted to be helpful and influence the world so that I could help one life at a time. I set out on the journey of obtaining my life coaching certification. I wanted to use my experience in life to help people better themselves, so that they would never have to be in the position I was in and make poor decisions.
I opened a business where it failed miserably. I began to lose momentum when I allowed people's judgments to get the best out of me. As soon as people realized I was a criminal, rumors spread quickly and I lost confidence. So I stopped trying to be a life coach and returned to being a stay-at-home mother. I was not in a place where I accepted and allowed myself to break through my indiscretions.
Shortly after, he cheated on me again. I promised myself before that if he ever cheated on me again, I would leave, so I found the door out and got a divorce.
I was in the most stressful situation, without work and without means of caring for my children. I applied for every job I could for six months before I landed a job as a social media coordinator, earning $500 per month. Of course, this was not remotely sustainable, and if it hadn't been for my parents, I would have been homeless and lost my children. The girls father never paid child support, and I was entirely alone to care for them.
However, I am grateful for the opportunity to be a social media coordinator, because it has changed my life forever. My life was finally on the up and up. I got a new job as a social media manager for a dog training company, and a year later I became an account manager at a marketing agency.
I am fortunate to be where I am today, and have had many blessings that have landed on my lap. Now I am back to my dream of being a life coach, working on building a YouTube channel, and diving into my passion for writing (hence why I'm here).
I hope to use what I know to enlighten lives and expand the minds of those suffering hardships. To realize that there is always a light at the end of the tunnel and to never give up.
https://medium.com/about-me-stories/about-me-diana-braune-c18b8d296030