From the beginning...

Hey y'all - I figured I would do a little introductory post. For this blog, I'm going to call myself Mama A. I have one bio baby and one bonus baby, which means I have two beautiful, amazing, perfect kids :) Growing up, being a bonus mom was not something I had envisioned for myself. I wouldn't change it for the world, but if you had asked me 5 years ago if this is where I thought my life was going, much less, having a kid of my own, I would have laughed in your face.

So let's start at the beginning.... I married my "high school" sweetheart at the age of 21 after being together for 5 years, owning 2 companies, 3 dogs, and figured I had my life figured out and was good and happy. SURPRISE! Life doesn't ever work out the way you want it to. A week after getting married, my husband at the time, slept with his best friend... A month after getting married, my husband was spending more time up north than he was at home... 6 months after getting married, we had a major tragedy, and my father-in-law passed away. 12 months after we got married, my aunt passed away unexpectedly, and I spent our first anniversary at her funeral. Same day. Same Church. Same time.... a year later and for a completely different reason. At the beginning of the next year, we bought our first house and moved my grandmother and my mother-in-law in with us. By the next month, my husband had moved to RI and was living there 50% of the time. I'm not going to get into the deep details because honestly, it is still really traumatizing and triggering for me but with him moving away, I quickly realized how toxic our marriage was.. how the abuse (physically, mentally, verbally, and emotionally) was NOT okay but I felt stuck. We had gotten together when I was so young that I had nothing for myself. Without him, I had nowhere to go, nothing to do to survive in this world.. he had destroyed my relationships with all my family and friends. It took him completely moving to a different state, leaving me here to take care of his mother and grandmother, moving in with another woman, and one unforgettable trip up there that I knew I could not live like this anymore... that I had to get out and leave before the marriage completely ended me. The following year became one of the most life-altering and heartbreaking years of my life. But it was also the year I was finally able to set myself free.