#smipc

"My name is Sarah, and I'm a single mom." "Hi Sarrrrah." The first step to recovery is admitting I'm a single mom and proud of it! There are so many new and interesting experiences to this part of my life, which I couldn't imagine not documenting -- thus the "Let's Wine About it" blog was created, because life as a single mom is tough, and wine is a MUST! A little background into my trip down the aisle to divorce and single motherhood -- I married when I was only twenty years old, against the advice of my parents. Sorry Mom and Dad! I guess parents DO know best. My ex-husband was serving in the Marine Corps, so life among the military was fast-paced. You got married, you had kids, and you inevitably got divorced in the course of only a few years. The first two milestones, marriage and a child, happened within the first two years of meeting each other. I managed to hang on to the latter part for a few more years. All in all, we spent four years of our marriage in the military, managed through two deployments and countless moves, and ultimately ended up in my ex-husband's home state of Texas. The first year out of the military was promising for my ex. He had embarked on a new career path in commercial diving, and was making a good living, so much so that I was able to quit my job and care for my now, two small children. We bought our first house together and welcomed our second child a year and a half after we moved to Texas. However, as wonderful as my marriage may have sounded, it was rocky from the start. Trust issues were the core of our problems, as we both entered the relationship with a lack of trust for each other based on previous relationships. Unfortunately, we carried that through the duration of our marriage. By the time we had moved to Texas, my resentment towards my then, husband, had grown to a point where I was questioning why I continued to stay in my marriage. Arguments became an everyday occurrence. As our marriage slowly began to crumble, my ex suffered a major setback at work after getting injured on a worksite. Due to his injury, he was out of work for weeks, and was only making a portion of the money he would have normally made on contracted jobs. Money, as in every relationship, caused even more tension between us. My ex husband's history of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) became painfully obvious when he began to abuse his pain medications and alcohol after his work-related injury. He became a completely different person, and I didn't know how to handle it. During this battle, he made the unfortunate choice of cheating on me. Afterwards, he would often become unreliable and violent, to the point where the violence required police to intervene. Ultimately, divorce was inevitable due to the recent circumstances. I packed as many personal belongings as I could into the trunk of my four door sedan, loaded my kids into the car and made the trip to my parent's house in Illinois. I never looked back after that. And it was at that very moment that single motherhood began. I entered my parent's house with three suitcases, two children, and nothing else. It was time to take on a new chapter of my life, whether I was ready or not.