Rising Above Statistics: How to Overcome Obstacles & Achieve Success (Part 1)

DON’T GIVE UP. POINT BLANK, PERIOD!

Episode 4

Show Notes

Today, I am sharing with you all an excerpt from my book, “Rising Above Statistics: How To Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Success Against All Odds”. This is one of the many moments in my book where I get real about my life as a teen mom. 

The moment my son saved me, changed my life forever. I hope by sharing my story, it encourages, inspires, and gives you hope to make it through another day.

What we learn in this episode:

  1. Life gets hard but you cannot give up
  2. The defining moment that changed my life forever and paved the way for the person I am today.
  3. Even in your lowest moments, God is always with you 
  4. No matter what plans you have for you life, God has the final say.

If you don’t have my best-selling book, get it now! Inside the book you will find a 10 step plan to help you achieve success. Using stories, tips, and guided exercises, I help you create your own success plan.

Follow, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. 

 

Episode 4 Transcript

LaWann Moses 0:01
Hey, hey, hey, it’s LaWann, the victorious mama and I’m back with you again. Today I just wanted to stop by and just drop this little word of encouragement into you. And as simple as this, don’t give up. Point Blank period, do not give up. Quitting is not an option. In life, we’re gonna face trials we’re going to face hardships. But I want you to know to not give up. Don’t give up because quitting is not an option.

We don’t have a choice to quit. As mother’s sometimes you want to throw in the towel. We just want to do away with everything. Some days are harder than others. But quitting is not an option. We have a whole family dependent on us to make it. We may want to feel like we want to give up we just want to quit, give it all away. But as I Quitting is not an option so you cannot give up.

Today I want to share with you just an excerpt from my book. Some of you may know some of you may not know but I’m an author. I’m author of the book it’s called, Rising Above Statistics: How To Overcome Obstacles & Achieve Success Against All Odds. This book is a guide for really any woman but specifically my mom’s my young moms that are out here, trying to make it frustrated, confused, not understanding how life turned out this way. And just need a plan need a way to survive. So you may not know but I was a teen mom. I was a young mom. So I had been where you are before struggling out here trying to make it didn’t know how I got in this position. Well, I knew how I got in this position. But that was not part of my life plan.

So I just want to share with you this excerpt from my book, just that defining moment in my life where I felt like going all the way. I just didn’t feel like I could live or make it another day. I was just like, I was drowning. I was depressed. I was sad. And I just felt like my life was over. But even though I felt like my life was over, I’m just thankful that I serve a God that knew that my life wasn’t over. A guy that always steps in on time, and makes away out of No way. So in my mind, I may have thought It was over. I felt like I was at the end. But God said not yet. So as I go in and start to read this excerpt from my book rising above 10 simple steps to achieving success, I just want you to just hear the words that I say. And just know that even when it feels like the end, it is truly not your end. For you have a purpose for you have a guest and when I graduated high school, I was almost four months pregnant. I worked my first job after graduation up until a month before I delivered my son. I started Community College The following year, taking a few classes will plan some role in a university that next fall. I work part time at a department store because in order to receive public assistance with daycare, I needed to have a job. So soon I developed a routine. Go to school, go to work, take care of my son. Get up the next day and do it all over again.

I follow the same routine for months. And then these months in turn into years. I follow through with my plan and enrolled in a university and worked on campus as well as at that department store. During that year, hell broke loose in my personal life and in my relationship with my son’s father. Add to that the stress of my new reality and my lifestyle. This is a completely new world to me. There was a lot happening in a short period of time that I was not prepared to handle. Let’s just say I was not adequately prepared for my new normal. A few years later, my son and I moved into low income housing. My parents home was open to us. However, I felt that as a mother, I needed to be an adult and live on my own. Yes, that was my pride. I believed I was making the best decisions I could for my son and me by moving and becoming independent. It operator all on autopilot and stuck to my routine.

Go to work, go to school, take care of my son and do it all over. On the outside, everything appeared to be fine. On the inside, I was a wreck.

I attended college worked, and by the looks of it, I was beating the odds. I wore a smile on my face, and was pleasant to those around me. I was good at keeping up appearances. I always appeared happy and content. However, behind closed doors, things were different. In my home, I was sad, unhappy and miserable. And slowly I slipped into a deep depression. When I was not at school, church or work, I slept. I set my toddler son in front of the TV, made sure he had food, snacks and drinks and the TV became his Home babysitter. He became resourceful in his young age as I became more emotionally detached and withdrawn. I slept the days and nights away. He was such a sweetheart, a great child, he did not bother or disturb me. He played with his toys, watch his favorite shows while mommy rested. I was so deep in my depression that I struggled to give him the basic emotional needs required by a child during such critical, crucial developmental years. I was that mean to my son, but I was distant. I was emotionally unavailable to him, and honestly everyone around me. My coping mechanism was sleep. I dealt with my situation by sleeping. I hated many things about my life at that time, where I live, the lack of money, dealing with social workers public assistance, the issues with my son’s father and everything else. I hate it my situation. I hated life and again found myself asking God, why me?

As my depression worsen, I stopped regularly attending school. I quit my department store job. I found excuses to be asset from my campus job. I took my son to daycare, then came home and slept until it was time to pick him up. This was my new pattern, my new routine. Since I did not go to class, except on test days, my grades suffered terribly. Here I was this former scholarly honor roll student on the verge of failing out of college. I cannot bear attending classes with all those happy carefree students who had the opportunity to enjoy college and dorm life. I was a student like them, but with much greater responsibilities. Why did I have to be so stupid? Why did I let this happen? Why me? 

Thoughts like this plagued my mind as I sat in my dark apartment, day after day, I had electricity, but the only time I use lights was when my son was home. I was happiness in the dark. Darkness became my happy place. Sleep was my refuge and escape. I did not have to deal with anything going on around me. While I was Sleep. Sleep was my escape. Some people choose drugs, drinking, even sex to escape their reality, but I chose to sleep. As long as I was sleeping, I learned to deal with all the hell I felt day in and day out. I felt weak, hopeless, lacked motivation and did not care what happened around me. Although I cried Tears during this time. I did not cry around my son, or other people.

I did not want him to see his mommy upset. I wanted others to believe I was good and that I had everything under control. I became good at maintaining this reflection of perfection. Pretending all was well. When I fell apart on the inside, this was a hard and difficult time. This was all new to me. Up until then, my life happened simple. My parents were successful. I lived a comfortable life and never wanted or needed for anything. They gave me more than enough over the years so being without took a toll on me. I had great parents, but I felt like a failure. A teenage mother on public assistance depending on the system and another statistic of society. How did I get here? How did I make some irresponsible choices? I did not understand any of it. This was not in my plans. I never envisioned door my childhood. I was hurt, confused, and lonely. I felt misunderstood. I felt no one got it.

I was looked down upon. I was judged. When I pulled out my food stamps my WIC coupons, Medicaid cards, constantly judged and treated poorly by the system and those in society. My relationship with my son’s father ended,

I fell out of college, I lost my campus job. And I felt my life was over that one day that I remember very clearly. I lay in my dark apartment alone on my couch. thoughts of suicide crept into my mind Thought about my horrible life. And so I had no reason to live. Things were just too hard. And I was not a fighter, and never been in a fight in my life. I had never fought for anything before. things always came easy. But this, this was hard. This was different. I did not know how to do hard. I had been in my situation for a few years, and nothing was improving. Everything seemed to get worse. It got harder and harder each day. And I did not know how to cope. Sleep no longer help because even in my dreams, my problems haunted me. I was so low, so depressed and so sad. I felt I was better off dead. People will be better off without me. My parents and I have to look at their failure of a daughter and constantly wonder where they went wrong. My son could live with them and have a great life as they had given me Instead of being stuck in this way of life, I gave him his father to move on with his life and not have to worry about us. Everyone will be much better off without me. those thoughts and others constantly flooded my mind.

However, on this life changing day, I dropped my son off at daycare. And I kissed him goodbye. I returned to my home and sat on my couch. Like shut off. No TV, blinds closed, just me alone in the dark. thoughts of suicide continue to plague my mind. I had many methods I could use. This was it. This was my plan. I cannot live another moment like this. As I contemplate it on a method to end my life drifted to sleep. While I slept, my gun son appeared in my dreams. I remember he touched my arm and he said, Mommy, don’t go, I need you. Just like that. I jumped up out of my sleep, looked around for my son, but saw was still alone in my dark apartment. However, I remember those words. He said to me in that dream, I still hear those words. And remember the realness of that touch. I remember that touch because it forever changed my life. My son needed me, no matter how bad things got, no matter how bad I thought things were. My son needed me. Nothing on this earth was worth taking my life. I had a son, and he needed me. This defining moment changed my life forever. That dream. I now know that it was God, using my son, who was only a toddler at that time and could not verbalize his needs to me. God use my son to speak to me. I woke up from that dream with a new perspective. Immediately after that dream, I knew quitting was not an option. I had to live for my son. If I cannot find enough motivation for myself, that I had to do it for him.

I had a son to live for this little boy, no matter the circumstances, no matter how much or little, I had to give him, he loved me and he needed me.

My mindset shifted instantly. New thoughts while in my mind, suddenly things did not seem so bad. Nothing was worth ending my life. My son became my reason to live. My reasons a fight and my reason to succeed, he became my motivation.

Transcribed by https://otter.a

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For more detail as and to get your autographed copy of my book, Rising Above Statistics: How To Overcome Obstacles and Achieve Success Against All Odds, head over to my website. FREE SHIPPING (Continental US Only). Also, available at Amazon 

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