Free Priceless Inspirations by Antonia Carter

Reginae were to get pregnant as young as I did, I don’t know what I would do. I try to have the best relationship with her in the world, and I hope she’d tell me if she was ready to have sex. I hope I’d be like my cousin Mary and take her to the doctor for birth control. Of course, it wouldn’t be what I would choose for her.
    I wouldn’t want her to have a baby until she was old enough and mature enough to take care of it. I wouldn’t want her to grow up as quickly as I had to.
    When I think about it, it looks like I’ve grown up and I’ve turned into my Uncle Nat and my Auntie Kris who put a lot of rules on me coming up! I’ve come full circle, from a rebelling teen to a strict parent. I’m lucky because my daughter respects me. She knows when I’m playing with her and when I’m not. She’s my daughter and my princess. I’ve got my family, I’ve got my best friend, and I’ve got someone to love me.
    Some people say that if you don’t have someone to teach you how to be a woman, or a mother, you don’t know how to do it. I don’t buy it. That’s just an excuse. It’s how people let themselves off the hook for what they chose not to do. I didn’t know how to be a mother, but I was determined to be a good one and I think I am. That’s the point of my priceless gem about motherhood:
    Toya’s Priceless Gem: You can break the cycle. You. It doesn’t matter what your mother did, what your father did, or what everyone else you know is doing. If you choose to do it differently, it will be different, and there’s nothing more to it than that .

HEARTBREAK AND HEALING
     
    Dream broke my heart, but I have been able to move through that and build a good relationship with him. Dealing with that heartbreak taught me a lot about myself and let me move on to find a new love.
    My father broke my heart, but I have been able to move on through that as well, and accept him for who he is. We’ve been able to talk through our feelings and find a newer and stronger relationship with each other that allows him to be a part of my life and his granddaughter’s.
    My mother broke my heart, but I have been able to move on through that, too. As I’ve learned more about the pain of her life, I’ve come to understand what I didn’t when I was younger--that I don’t have the right to judge her. Though she’s still struggling to fight her demons, and I’m still struggling with my feelings, we both want to be in each other’s lives. That’s part of what it means to be family.
    Maybe, like me, you wish your relationships were different than they are. I know I’ve spent a lot of years wishing for things to be different with Dream and with my parents. Of course, wishing never changed anything. In fact, wishing makes it worse, because the time you spend wishing keeps you from accepting the situation and moving on.
    This, like so many other things, is something I had to learn the hard way.
    The Break Up
     
    When Dream and I broke up the first time, Reginae was only two months old. I’d heard by then about all the girls he was with while I was pregnant and sick. Learning about what Dream had been doing crushed me. His feelings had changed. He would come around and barely have anything to say to me. There was a new girl who was getting his attention, so he didn’t feel the need to talk to me much anymore. I was old news.
    It was like he stuck a knife in my heart.
    “That’s it,” I told myself. We broke up and it was over.
    However, it wasn’t over. I was still so in love with him, and we had a child together. I still needed to talk to him about her, and every time I did, all my feelings for him would come rushing back.
    We got back together.
    This time, I needed a place to stay yet again, so I moved in with his mom. I thought that since I was living in his mom’s house, it would be easier to stay close, but wasn’t. We broke up again when he started dating this other girl named Ann, and flaunting their relationship