Just because you see who I am now does not mean my walk through life was easy.
Sometimes people look at your life from the outside and see the finished product. They see the house, the business, the family, the grandbabies, the confidence, the laughter, and all the things you eventually figured out. They don't see the little girl who was scared, the young woman who made some really bad decisions, the single mom who struggled to make ends meet, or all the times life knocked me down and I had to figure out how to get back up.
My story started with anxiety when I was five years old. I ate Rolaids like they were candy because apparently worrying was something my little five-year-old brain took very seriously. I was eventually diagnosed with A.D.D., and school was hard. Jobs were hard. Staying focused was hard. Even today, I still struggle with it. My brain has never exactly been known for taking the scenic route. It likes to take twelve roads at once.
By the time I was eight, my anxiety had moved into some pretty irrational places. I worried about things most kids probably never thought twice about. I couldn't understand how my eyes stayed in my head. I worried that my fingernails might grow completely off my fingers. I was terrified of the bathtub drain because my sister had convinced me that I would go down it and never see my parents again.
I also never picked my nose because I had been told the boogers would eat my finger off. Looking back, I'm not sure what was more terrifying—the things I was afraid of or the things my sister made up to scare me. And then there were the two men in my closet. I was convinced they were just waiting for me to be alone so they could kidnap me, take me back into the closet, and make sure I never got out again. The struggle is real for kids.
At fifteen, life got serious in a completely different way. I had a firework accident and lost the sight in my right eye for three days. One-fourth of an inch. That's how close I came to losing that eye permanently. One tiny measurement can change your entire life.
At sixteen, I was in a terrible wreck with my mom. We were hit by a drunk driver who slammed into us hard enough to spin us around. Then, instead of stopping, she tried to flee the accident and hit us several more times. I suffered whiplash, and I have dealt with the consequences of that wreck for decades.
By twenty, I had apparently decided I hadn't had enough excitement yet. I married a drug dealer. Unknowingly, of course. I also left a law student for this guy. Face palm.
At twenty-one, I figured out exactly what I had married and kicked him out when I was five months pregnant. We divorced, and he eventually went to prison, where he spent years off and on.
At twenty-two, I had my first baby. He was born at the Indian Hospital, and the next day his dad came to see him. With his girlfriend. Seriously. That pretty much told me what kind of father he was going to be. He never had anything to do with my son and never paid child support.
So there I was—a young single mother trying to figure out how to raise a baby. I moved into a low-rent duplex where I paid $30 a month for rent. I worked in a town 32 miles away and drove there in a car that probably wasn't good enough to be in a junkyard. There were plenty of times I had to call somebody for a ride. There were also plenty of times I had to walk a mile to the laundromat because I had to get my clothes before they closed.
It wasn't glamorous. But strangely enough, some of those years are still some of my fondest memories. I had great friends. I was young. We laughed. We figured things out. We made do with what we had. Sometimes you don't realize you're living through good memories until years later, when you look back and realize that the hard years were filled with some of the people you loved most.
Then, at twenty-three, I got married again. This time to an abusive alcoholic who was also a cheater.At twenty-four, we had a baby. By twenty-five, I had divorced him and moved six hours away from my parents just to get away from him. I had two children, ages one and three, and I was determined to build a life where he couldn't keep finding me.
Unfortunately, he followed me. Thankfully, my brother had a different approach to the situation. He showed up at the man's house with a gun and the D.A. and somehow convinced him that moving back to Lawton was probably a really good idea. And, amazingly enough, he did. Sometimes family intervention comes in different forms.
From twenty-five to twenty-nine, I was a single mom doing whatever I could to keep us going. I worked as a secretary in a CPA office and managed apartments. Sometimes that meant painting an entire two-bedroom apartment by myself, cleaning kitchens, shampooing rugs, and doing whatever else needed to be done. It was too much with two little kids, so I went to work at a daycare center. That didn't last either.
One day, they left my three-year-old daughter in a room by herself with her nose in the corner while they went to a park across the street. They completely forgot about her. That was it. I was done. Several families moved their children to my home, and in 1992, I started watching children in my house. And something changed.
For the first time, I had found something I was good at. Something I loved. Something that allowed me to be a mom and make a living at the same time. I got off food stamps, childcare assistance, and Medicare. I made enough money to pay my bills. I bought a new car. I was able to be a hands-on, stay-at-home mom while also taking care of other people's children. I didn't just have a job. I had found my thing.
In 1994, one of my daycare dads worked with a guy he thought I should meet. So I went on a blind date. I married him. And we had a baby. Apparently, that's how I did blind dates. One of my other daycare dads later said, “Raven, if I knew you were looking for a husband, I would have asked you out on a date!” We've laughed about that for years, and we're still friends today.
We raised all the kids in a great old gingerbread-style two-story house with a full front porch. The house even had a separate daycare room. And it was a blast. For seven years, I watched kids in my home. I was the provider, the cook, the accountant, the teacher, the cleaner, and whatever else needed to be done. Every Friday after work, I hosted happy hour with my daycare families. Yes. Happy hour. Because I had kept many of those kids for years, and somewhere along the way, the parents stopped being just daycare parents and became friends.
I had two root canals, had three wisdom teeth pulled, had a baby, and somehow only missed seventeen days of work in 7 years. Yes...Seventeen! Apparently, I didn't understand the concept of taking a day off.
In 1999, I bought out a church daycare owned by Oklahoma State Representative Gus Blackwell and his wife. I moved it into a house I bought on Main Street in Guymon. We remodeled the entire place and opened the daycare three months later. I owned that daycare for eleven years.
Somewhere in there, around 2007, I fought with Empty Nest Syndrome. My solution? I painted every room in my house a dark color. One room was even black. Apparently, when your kids start growing up, you either learn to embrace the empty nest or paint your house like a vampire lives there.
In 2010, I sold that daycare in seven days through Facebook. Seven days! I made a large profit and moved to Yukon because I wanted to raise my youngest son in a more diverse school system. I was supposed to be retired. That lasted about three months. Then I went to work at God's Little Blessings. It was a great center, and I loved the people there. But working there made me miss my own daycare. I missed being hands-on. I missed being in charge. I missed the chaos. Apparently, I missed everything I had supposedly retired from.
Still wanting that hands-on experience with my youngest child, I went to work for the Yukon school system for two years. Then my builder approached me about building another center and I jumped on it against my husband's advice. And in 2013, I opened my center.
Looking back, I think that decision pretty much sums up my personality. Tell me I should probably slow down, and I'll probably build a daycare. But this time, something was different. I wasn't just building a business. I was building a place where I could work with my family. A place where I could watch my grandchildren grow up .
And now, after everything—the anxiety, the strange childhood fears, the accident, the wreck, the bad marriages, the divorce, the poverty, the single motherhood, the government assistance, the long drives, the terrible cars, the apartment painting, the daycare rooms, the businesses, the remodeling, the sleepless nights, and all the decisions I probably should have thought through a little longer—I get to look around and realize something.
I made it. Not perfectly. Not easily. And definitely not in a straight line.
I made mistakes. Some of them were spectacular. I married the wrong people. I trusted the wrong people. I made decisions that, looking back, make me want to grab my younger self by the shoulders and say, “WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?” But I also kept going. Every time life changed the rules, I figured out how to play the new game. Every time I got knocked down, I eventually got back up.
And now I get to work with my family and see my grandbabies every day. That little girl who was afraid of the bathtub drain could never have imagined this life. The young woman living in a $30-a-month duplex, walking to the laundromat, trying to raise two little kids, couldn't have imagined it either. Neither could the single mom who was using food stamps and childcare assistance just to keep everyone fed and cared for. She was just trying to make it through the day.
And somehow, one day at a time, she built a life.
I still have dreams. Hopefully, within the next ten years, I really will retire. Maybe this time I'll actually stick with it. I'd like to spend time at home, enjoy the things I've worked so hard for, make things, be with my family, spoil my grandbabies, and maybe—just maybe—learn how to sit down without feeling guilty about it. But when people see me now, I hope they understand something. This woman didn't just wake up one day and become strong. She had to become strong. She had to learn it. She had to live it. She had to survive it.
So, just because you see who I am now doesn't mean my walk through life was easy. It just means you weren't there for all the parts I had to walk through to get here.