No happiness without misfortune lending a hand.
In my case, this saying went like this: No strength without powerlessness…
🔹When I found out I was pregnant, I was 26 years old. I was working as an English teacher at a school and living with my parents.
I was in a relationship, and we were even planning to move in together in the fall.
I knew right away that I would have the baby, regardless of the young man’s position.
I told him immediately (he still hasn’t forgiven me for that — I didn’t let him be the hero in his own eyes).
🔹About a month later, I finally gathered the courage to tell my mom that she was going to be a grandmother. And then my mom prepared my dad and my teenage brother for the news.
None of them asked if the young man planned to marry me — everything was clear.
🔹The next challenge — school.
A large female staff. Plus, I was a homeroom teacher, with a whole brood of “chicks” and their parents.
A fellow teacher neighbor advised me to put a ring on my finger, like I got married in the summer and was now planning maternity leave.
Oh, no way?!
I wanted this baby so much that I couldn’t care less about old ladies’ gossip.
And you know what? Not a SINGLE sideways glance or whisper… Even though a colleague of mine in a similar situation had her name dragged through the mud every single day.
🔹I understood that since I was having the baby on my own, I needed money!!!
📍I convinced the vice principal to give me 1.5 times the workload. A normal schedule didn’t work out, and I worked at school in two shifts, with huge gaps between lessons.
📍I placed an ad in the local newspaper offering to help university students with their term papers. I worked on those term papers during my breaks between lessons.
📍I volunteered to be a secretary at the election commission based at the school — the elections were happening in November.
In the end, I ended up in the hospital from overwork!
Well, “ended up” — the local doctor suggested it, and I happily agreed 🙃
I spent a whole week catching up on sleep in the ward and typing up more term papers for students 🙃
🔹When my almost-mother-in-law found out I was pregnant, she immediately declared: Don’t even think about it! I don’t need a child in my house!
And in some inexplicable way, she arranged with my father that after the baby was born, they would rent an apartment for us, splitting the costs fifty-fifty.
For six months, and then we’d be on our own… An interesting solution, don’t you think? ))
🔹Around my eighth month, the child’s father suggested: Maybe we should get married?
I looked at my belly. I looked at him and asked: Why?
I needed the support of that stamp when I found out I was pregnant.
But not now, when I had already pushed myself to tell my parents, the female staff at school, and successfully gotten through all my challenges — I didn’t need it. No.
🔹I went to the maternity hospital about 10 days before my due date; it was closing for maintenance — you could still get in during February, but not in March.
And since there was still plenty of time ahead, I — not knowing how to negotiate with doctors and not even knowing how to talk to them about paid support — decided I would talk when the appointed time came.
I didn’t make it in time. But I ended up with the head of the department, someone you could only get into through connections… or as the on-call doctor. Lucky me! 😂
⚠️And one more significant event from the fall of 2001…
One day, a tall, well-groomed woman appeared in my school classroom and offered me a job as a tutor for her older daughter, Nastya.
That woman’s name was Svetlana Vladimirovna Dobrovolskaya❗️
And that was the beginning of a completely new path, which I will describe in future stories.
Svetlana Vladimirovna supported me when I refused to marry the child’s father. She supported me when I decided not to include him on my daughter’s birth certificate.
My reasoning — who knows: today he’s here, and tomorrow you’d have to search for him across the whole country…
Thanks to these people (the child’s father and his family), I not only awakened my strength, the strength of a spiritual warrior, but I also went through a lesson in self-love. Should I tell you about it?
P.S. Read the other stories, if you missed them, at the link >>