Taking the Scenic Route

Update on PPD Neighbor I wrote about earlier

She is doing much better.  She is seeing somebody and is getting family support.  She doesn’t seem nearly as overwhelmed.  She still has times where she is frustrated, but so do I. lol.

On a really good note, she has decided to finish her high school diploma.  I found out that you can’t get your high school diploma through the public school system, even in the adult education outlets, unless you have completed your sophomore year in high school.  She has to go through an online place to do it because she dropped out during her sophomore year, not completing it.  She has started doing the program already.  She showed me her homework to see if it looked alright, and I made the passing comment that ‘oh, this looks like an applied psychology class” (the class name was odd and I was curious what the subject matter was).  She got really excited.  She said she always thought psychology was really hard, and more of a ‘geeky’ subject that only the smart kids took.  She had been doing well on the online quizzes and was really excited to find out it was a ‘real’ subject.  (note to self:  never underestimate the power of your words on other people.  I just had no idea how intimidated she must feel, at the core of her being, to be attempting this.)

She was told by the person there that, although it is a 3 year program, if she spends 3 or 4 hours on it a day, she can probably graduate in 6 months or so.  I think she has been working on it for more like 5 or 6 hours a day…when ever her dh is home, for the most part, so she is right on track for making it sooner.  She also wants to go to college.  In some ways we are the perfect people to encourage her.  When she gets down about how long it is going to take, she has two people here who can point out that she will only be 26 or so when she graduates college.  That might seem like a long time or like she will be ‘old’ to her at 21 years old, but it is really young in the grand scheme of things.  Plus, it wasn’t until we were 26 and 27 that we returned to college, and Zach just graduated a year ago. 

Her husband is being supportive, but he is more of a “let’s get the high school degree before we even think about the college degree”.  I understand that, but I also understand her needing to look ahead and talk about what college classes are like, how the college system works, how she can fit it into her life with being a mom, and what she wants to get a degree in.  She needs to solidify that it is a valid dream for her to have and that she is capable of doing it.  She is a very ‘verbal’ person and processes her thoughts by talking about it over and over again, so she sort of needs more than one person to talk to or she is going to wear them out.  lol.

I have a feeling that I might be doing some tutoring in the next year or so.  I know I can help her with her high school and some college stuff, and Zach has volunteered to help her with the math that is over my head when she gets there.  (His minor was in math and one more semester would have allowed him a double major in math and computer science, but it wasn’t worth it). 

I am really proud of her.  She is fighting a lot of internal obstacles to even attempt this, much less keep at it.  She is fighting every person that told her she ’wasn’t good enough’ and all the statistics of women who marry early and have kids young.  She is doing it with a strength I don’t think she knew she had until she made herself try.  She is an inspiration to me.