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Born Early
My mother's due date with me was around the middle of April, so I was born premature. My lungs were underdeveloped and I would later be diagnosed with asthma. -
First Waved
First time I waved bye bye -
Rough Sleep Schedule
I was 2.5 years old before I ever slept through the night. The first time it happened my mother panicked thinking I was dead. -
First Time Lost
age 4 We were in New Minas at the County Fair Mall. Dad took me into the Zellers there to look at bicycle accessories, which were located just past the toy isle. I went for the toys while Dad wasn't paying attention and ended up approaching a cashier and asking her to help me find my Dad. -
Not An Only Child Anymore...
I remember my Dad waking me in the middle of the night to take me to my Grandmother's house. Suddenly I was not the only child anymore. Three days after my mom and brother got home I asked if we could take him back and get a pony. I reasoned a pony would let us all sleep, it wouldn't cry all the time and as a bonus I would be able to ride it. Much to my dismay, they never traded Evan in for a pony. -
School Life Begins
Kids can be cruel, and growing up in a tiny school in the tiny community of Falmouth was no different. I was bullied terribly in elementary school, my mother had once said she couldn't remember a single day I didn't come home crying. I wasn't bullied after we moved at all, but to this day I like to go visit the valley but I have never wanted to move back there and live. I have no idea if my bullies still live there or not, haven't seen any of them since my last day of school there. -
Favorite Toy
By the time I was 5 my favorite toy was playdoh and all of the accessories. I had the flower basket making set, and used to wake up around 5am to play with that, and watch Astro Boy before school. -
Living with Anxiety..
I can't honestly remember a time when I didn't have anxiety. I didn't know what it was when I was small, I learned about it when I was around 11. When I was this young, it presented in a lot of stomach aches, sudden fevers and finding reasons to go to my Grandmother's house. -
Growing Up...Learning to Swim and Ride a Bike
I can remember being about two years behind my peers when it came to both swimming and riding a bike. It wasn't until I was in class learning about development that I realized I wasn't behind at all. Because my peers could do those things about two years before I could, my family and I always assumed I was delayed for some reason in those things. -
Parents Divorced
My parents got along great, until they didn't. I can remember a few arguments that escalated into Mom throwing a metal candle holder at Dad's head. A lot of arguing. Mom cried a lot. As a child I was furious with her and blamed her for Dad moving out, knowing she had asked him to leave. As an adult, she suddenly found herself a single mom of two and with almost no options to provide for us. She went to night school and got her GED, she got her license and started looking for work. -
Musically Inclined
After having a few piano lessons when I was 5, eventually my mother turned it into a regular thing. I was taking piano lessons in Windsor at least once a week. I was learning to read sheet music, and playing full songs. Interesting to note at this point in my life, I have learned to read music three times now and still cannot remember how. The true definition of if you don't use it you lose it. I have played piano, alto saxophone and guitar (left-handed, self taught). -
We Moved
My mother had just introduced me and my brother to her new boyfriend a couple of months prior (they dated for a little bit before we met him), and just before school was due to begin again she announced we were moving. This made me more angry with her. She knew when school ended we would be moving and hadn't told me so I could say goodbye to my friends. She also moved us 45 mins from everything I had ever known my whole life. We moved from Hantsport to Western Shore, talk about a culture shock. -
Flight 111 Swiss Air Tragedy
This ties into my Dad's illness. When the call went out at first, every Search and Rescue team in the province got the call. My Dad was a member of the Hants-West GSAR team, he was on one of the boats looking for survivors and then collecting remains when they realized there were none. When the plane hit the water that night, even living in Western Shore we heard it. We just didn't know what it was until the next day, I remember my bedroom window rattling from it. -
Dad's Illness
Six weeks to the day after the Swiss Air Tragedy, my father had his first break down and was hospitalized against his will. For the next number of years my father was in and out of the psych ward more than he was anything else. He didn't stabilize until I was pregnant with my son in 2007. -
Disordered Eating Began...
Growing up I was always told that I was over weight. In school I was bullied for it, so I learned to stop eating at school. This would lead to me over eating when I got home because I was starving and I wasn't a breakfast eater either. I would often over eat in the evenings, weekends and any time I got while my mother worked 3 or more jobs. Naturally due to the food choices I was making and the time period during which I consumed all my calories for the day lead to a bing eating disorder. -
First Relationship
I met Joe when I was 12 in grade 7. He dated all of my friends first (those silly relationships where he at most kissed them). We started dating in grade 10, and beat the odds as far as a first relationship goes. We were highschool sweethearts and stayed together for nearly 7 years. -
Rebeling
My mother always operated under the assumption that I was the "bad" kid. I to this day like to pick on her about it, mostly because I never got caught and she had no idea what I was up to. I started drinking occasionally at the age of 15, and by the age of 16 I was starting to experiment with drugs. I stuck to pot and mushrooms until I moved to Halifax on my own. That's when I began experimenting with harder drugs like Ecstasy. I got clean from drugs in 2006, about year before I convieved Seth. -
Graduated High School
First in my family to obtain my high school diploma. The furthest education in my family to that date was mom and my aunt had their GED's. -
College Graduation
Maritime Business College paralegal diploma -
Becoming a Parent
I had my son Seth. When I concieved him, I wasn't on a great path and I wasn't making good choices. I had recently left his father after realizing he was battling an alcohol addiction that he never got treatment for. Finding out at nearly 3 months that I was going to have a child was something that saved my life. I stopped drinking 4 nights week and started making better choices in every aspect of my life. Becoming a mom saved my life in a lot of ways. -
Parent of 2
After wanting my tubes tied when I had Seth, and being told by the nurses that I might meet someone and change my mind and want more children...I ended up proving them right, and I indeed had met someone and changed my mind about more kids. Miss Lily Mae was born and life hasn't been the same since, it's been a wild ride with her. -
Consumer Debt Proposal
I did not always make good choices when it came to managing my credit. I let my first student loan ruin my credit and spent a long time building it back up. Unfortunately I found myself trapped in an abusive relationship, and I allowed my abuser to put things in my name. My credit that I had worked so hard on was ruined again, so I did a consumer debt proposal and paid it off early. My credit now is as good as it was when I had fixed it before, I just have to wait for my proposal to come off it. -
Biggest Regret
I found myself in a horribly abusive relationship with a textbook narcisist with an IV opiate addict for nearly two years. During that time my daughter spent a lot of time with her father which was my way of keeping her out of it. Unfortunately, my son was with me through the entire thing. We both suffered at the hands of my abuser. It took him physically and sexually assaulting me to make me get myself out, and I am grateful that I did when I did. -
Becoming a Student Again...
Second time is the charm? I graduated in 2005 with a paralegal diploma from Maritime Business College, but it was more than a decade after before I worked in the field. After years of struggling on minimum wage jobs, I decided to take the risk and come back to school. This time I went into it with eyes wide open, I saw jobs that fall in line with my own principals and beliefs and a need for people to fill them. I am the first in my family to graduate at all, let alone more than once. -
Middle Adulthood Coming Right Up...
I have less than one year to 40. I'm not sure how I feel about this one, I haven't minded any birthday this far. I don't think it'll bother me from a standpoint of getting older or aging, I think what's bugging me more than anything is the things I haven't done yet that I thought I would be doing before now. I always wanted to be married, with my own funny farm. I have my kids, I have some pets but want more that I can't have as a renter. The economy is making housing extra challenging.