2020: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

2020 has really been an interesting year. For the past 9 years I have worked a corporate job from home. That shift was not as shocking for me as it was for others. However, having my children home ALL day while working said job was a big shift. In general I am a homebody, I don’t have any friends that live near me so I spend most of my time with my children or my husband. The lack of human interaction even took a toll on me though. I didn’t realize how much going to sporting events, driving to practices were apart of who I am. All that was stripped away and I was left wondering who is Ebony, beyond the mom. 2020 was revealing to say the least.

Let’s get into it.

The Ugly!

I’m going to start with the Ugly and work my way down, because who really wants to end on a rough note. Definitely not me. For the most part I have been healthy this year, but I have had some health issues. Does that make sense? What I mean is that when I had my annual check up the gynecologist felt like my fibroids may be getting bigger. I had to have my stomach scanned, I forget the technical term but basically they took a lot of pictures of the inside of my stomach. They found 2 fibroids, but she also noticed that the lining around my uterus seemed to be thicker than expected. I had to have an Endometrial Biopsy to ensure it was not cancer. Luckily it was not but since then I have been taking these pills that pretty much act like birth control, but should help thin out my uterus lining. If you know me you know I do NOT take pills of any sort. If I’m sick I pretty much rest and let it run it’s course. These pills have had me not knowing or understanding my body, I’m so over them and I am making an appointment at the top of year to check on my progress and let these pills go. It has not been a good experience at all

Continuing with the ugly…my children experienced a break in an important relationship that should be stable for a lifetime. It was and is still just extremely hard to deal with. Worse it felt like it was my fault, like if only back when I was 20 I made better decisions. I know that isn’t true though, but we just deal with it the best we can. I feel like I have never prayed so hard, but this situation has torn us all up. All I can do is pray that the impact isn’t too bad on them and the hurt lessens and one day the relationship is able to be repaired in the best way it can. Ultimately my children are resilient, but I know it is impacting my youngest son the most and it hurts that I can’t change it. THE UGLY period.

The Bad!

Virtual school has been terrible. I think that if I didn’t have a full time demanding ass job that this experience would be different. Working from home I have had some real clear boundaries on being focused on work and not mixing the home life. Ensuring that I am all mom after 4pm and at the latest 5pm in busy seasons. Well 2020 said to hell with that plan. My children have been doing virtual school since March. It has been an up and down battle, mostly down I ain’t even gone hold yall. We have struggled. 2/4 of the kids have solid grades the other 2 are barely hanging on. What is most interesting is the 2 that are doing well are my social butterflies, even though they miss being around people. My less social children are not here for the shenanigans. I have 3 alarms on my phone, so that I can make sure these children are up. Do you know that they were STILL going back to sleep. Chile I am like the warden at the prison and the Xbox 1 has been in my office so long, it’s mine at this point. I should feel bad that I am punishing those that are doing well, but they have a PlayStation and Xbox 360 to use. Those with the grades not up to par aren’t able to plan any games and even though I am literally on top of them, it has been a struggle to make them care. #thebad

More of the bad. One morning I woke up and my left eye was literally stuck together and my throat was on fire. My eye was beyond pink it was red. I cleaned my eye and got my contact out of there. I continued working but it was clear this was going to be a struggle. I took the next day off to just rest because I needed it. Unfortunately, rather than heal it got worse and worse. I ended up in urgent care where I was diagnosed with worse form of pink eye that is caused by bacteria getting under the contact. What was weird is that they were new contacts, I had only been wearing them for 4 days. They prescribed me with antibiotic eye drops and recommended an emergency eye appointment if it was not better by Monday, this was on a Friday. Needless to say I was right at the eye Dr. that following Monday, because my eye was angry red. She ended up prescribing horse pills (antibiotics) that tasted terrible and were so hard to swallow. In general I do not take medicine. Yep I’m one of those. 2020 laughed at me hard, I was taking vitamins, meds for my uterus, and antibiotics. It was a lot. After multiple eye doctor appointments, the pink eye spreading to my right eye, and not being able to cook for 10 days my eyes finally healed. I finally was able to wear my contacts and I just had a follow up visit on the 30th and all is well. This sounds really ugly and it was, but I count it as bad because it’s over. Thank goodness.

Sports were cancelled in WA state for 2020. My middle son had ankle surgery due to a football injury and he was still healing. For track he got one test run in for the 400 and did pretty well for his first run. When they first said they were postponing track season I thought well maybe God is just giving him more time to heal. I didn’t think it would end up being cancelled, but we know how 2020 went. My 2 older boys were a Junior and Sophomore and missed out on a whole year to improve. This bled into both basketball and football season. My 2 oldest boys have been working out with the football team via zoom, but life as they know it has been extremely different this year. Football season has been postponed for my oldest sons senior year and I am really hoping he gets to play the sport that he loves for his last year of high school. My daughter cheers and kept me at the peewee football games, after my boys went to high school. She really enjoys the interaction with the cheer squad and has been disappointed this fall. Their health is definitely first and foremost, I’m just sharing that it has been a bad experience for us.

Finally THE GOOD!

I have 2 working children! My 2 oldest boys who are now 17 and 18, had a lot of time on their hands and they decided to get jobs. They work at Qdoba and Burger King. Let’s go job experience. Since they are usually playing back to back sports, I didn’t know if they would get to have a regular job experience. In a way this was a small blessing for them to be able to gain some financial literacy using their own money. For awhile my middle son had more packages arriving than me lol. They both are definitely focused on being ready for the next phase of their lives. I even got REAL Christmas gifts this year. Ones that I didn’t have to give money to buy and that for me was a huge WIN. I got a T-shirt and a camouflage jacket from black owned business Kingdom Culture. Also a purse from my young kings. This would have never happened if the pandemic didn’t give them a chance to work.

With sports being cancelled, I found that I had more time to myself than ever and I really needed to figure out who I was beyond being a mom. My kids ages range from 12-18 and they just really don’t need me like they used to in their everyday life when being a taxi or number one fan isn’t on the to do list. I was a little sad, but I was like girl who are you? What can you do for yourself. For YEARS I had been talking about starting a blog. I even tried once, I had a little blogspot that I was completely inconsistent with and it deterred me for awhile because it failed. I began researching blogging because this time I wanted it to be successful. My research led me to Mattie James an influencer that blogs, has a podcast, and YouTube. She does all of the things and I knew if that if I could implement just some of the tips she was sharing I could at least start my blog. She had a consistency challenge for IG in May and I participated, but looking back at those pictures I had no idea what I was doing. That is the beauty of it though, you have to start somewhere and I’m grateful for the leap. My biggest accomplishment of 2020 is this blog. I am officially a blogger and people are reading it! My article on 5 Black Owned Businesses to Buy Gift From under $50 was most popular with over 500 views. I know that may not sound a lot, but is a lot to me and I am grateful! From August to December my blog had 1642 page views and that is with me literally being all over the place. Now that I am learning and plan to become a little more structured, I hope to be able to better serve my readers in 2021.

I am most grateful that my family is healthy. My mother who has several previous health conditions managed to stay COVID free and for that I am so grateful. With the boys working in “Essential jobs,” I was worried that they may be exposed at some point but to date everyone has been healthy. Hubs also has been working on site has remained healthy as well. With a family of 6 and several working outside of the house I am so grateful we were able to remain healthy.

Thanks for taking out the time to read my wrap up of 2020. It was a lot on my chest and I just needed to get it out. I pray your 2021 is blessed and you are able to pivot when things do not work out as planned. Be blessed!