Success Literature -- Read Your Way To a Better Life!

Steven and I are often accused of just having "the luck of the Irish". While I certainly agree that there is a certain "element" of luck, I firmly believe that much of what is called "luck" is opening your eyes to the opportunities around you and being prepared to take advantage of them. In fact, I can clearly recall several times in my life when I saw certain opportunities that I knew I was not prepared to take advantage of. I've learned to be somewhat philosophical, learn the lesson of what it was I was lacking, so that I could be ready for the next opportunity down the road.

Everyone has "reasons" (aka "excuses") as to why they can't succeed in life. It is so easy to look at those who succeed and assume that they had everything easy. I have had people say to me, "Well, you're a nurse" as if that explained everything about how we are able to afford for Steven to be a stay-at-home-dad for our seven children. Well, I wasn't born with RN credentials. They don't come as a birthright. They aren't a part of my DNA.

The reality is that I made it through the process of becoming a nurse over the course of years of struggle. As a battered wife and mother I held my children and myself together while living through hell on earth. I got my CNA and worked 40-60 hours every week while taking pre-requisite courses for nursing online. I entered an accelerated nursing school program, continued to work 36-60 hours per week, and still managed to have the third highest GPA in my class. (I was behind a woman with no job, and a woman who had no job and no children. They both worked very hard at nursing school, as well, but I considered my GPA excellent given my additional challenges.)

And Steven? 18 years ago he was homeless, addicted to methamphetamines, given no chance in anyone's mind of accomplishing ANYTHING in life. He got himself clean and off the streets without the help of a rehab program or very much in the way of outside support. He made the decision on his own to change his life and started from, quite literally, the bottom of life. Before we met if anyone had told him that he was going to marry anyone or have children at all he would have laughed at them. He certainly never saw himself as a husband, father of seven, part-time EMT and stay-at-home-dad.

So, we have gotten ourselves to what we consider the beginning of a wonderful new life, having moved our family to a tiny town in rural northern Idaho. All of the skills and inspirations that each of us used individually and now as a family will continue to serve us as we take life from this base of happiness to a level of security and serenity that each of us hardly dared dream when one was sleeping on the side of the road and the other was sleeping in fear.