I was married to the love of my life, just shy of 13 years. He was my “boyfriend” in 5th grade. I wrote “Joni Roberts” in my notebooks and cheered for him when he played basketball at recess. We went to the prom as friends in 1997, our senior year in high school. We started dating seriously in the summer of 1998. He asked me to be his wife in February of 1999 and we said “I do” on October 2. We had a son in October of 2000, and a daughter 22 months later in August of 2002. We went through more than most could go through in a lifetime but never gave up on each other. In June of 2012, we were in a horrible car accident that claimed his life. In an instant, I was a grieving 33 year-old single mother of two grieving children who are now teenagers (16&18.) I now walk through life without the one that was to be with me forever. Today, I am doing everything I can to be strong, to raise our two children, to take this grief and use it to fuel the purpose for the rest of my days here on earth. ONE DAY AT A TIME. I love and miss my best friend every day and that won’t change until we are together again. I am choosing to try and live my life in a way that would honor him and make him proud.
Years ago, I grappled with situational depression following a really tough period in my marriage. That was the first time I ever had to deal with it first hand.
Whatever pain and scars you are trying to hide, may not ever fully heal. But, when you face them, when you show them, when you overcome them; there will be a story, a testimony of what you have made it through.
For the last six and a half years, I have had one main purpose — making sure my kids were okay. I made sure they had…