I Am Enough: Vanessa

I have been an IT in the navy for 12 years. Joined right out of high school with no desire to be a mother at all. But in 2011 I fell in love, got married and became pregnant. Unfortunately after his return from deployment and birth of my child we did not work out. I went through a struggle phase when we divorced and had a really hard time coping. This is the reason why I continued my career in the navy. This also involved me deploying for 8 months with the USS Theodore Roosevelt which meant I had to let my son live 4 hours away from me for more than a year. Hardest time of my life. Returning was harder. He didn’t know who I was, he was only 3 at this point. He missed his grandma and continued to ask when he would be going back. I didn’t feel like a mother anymore. This relationship honestly took a long time to rebuild. This was in 2018 and now in 2020 we’re closer than ever. My best friend, my little man. It made me appreciate things so much.

Like being able to walk him to school, which I didn’t get to do the year prior. Or throwing him a bday party, because I missed the ones before. Or living In a home with him because all the other times I had to visit him to be around his presence. I had to learn to disconnect, to not miss him and to not recognize how much I absolutely love my son. The first years of motherhood have been tough but oh so worth it. It pushed me to buy our first house in SD at 27. Pushed me to buy my dream car. Pushed me to get my son into one of the top schools in SD. My blessing, my best friend!