“One day, we were both at a party. He came up to me and said, ‘Do you want to dance?’ He looked so handsome. So I said, ‘Yes.’ That’s how we met.

“I was 18 or 19 years old. I saw him before in the town. I knew he was a very nice person and from a good family. I knew he worked very hard. The next day, we went for a walk. We talked a lot. The next three days, we were girlfriend and boyfriend. When I talked with him, I knew that I loved him.

“We’re from Guadalajara, Mexico. He was working here before we got married. And I was going to university in Mexico, so I was a little busy. We stayed in touch. He would call me. He would write letters. But it was hard, being away from him.”

“Every three months, I would go back to Mexico to see her. It was not too easy because I didn’t have legal papers then. It was scary. But I found a way each time, and then I came back here to work again.”

“He loved me so much. He said he wanted to marry me. So we got married in Mexico, and we came here to live. We are legal U.S. citizens. We did it together four years ago. It took a very long time to get our papers. But it was worth it.

“I’ve worked in daycare for 20 years. He works in the plants. We have two daughters. One is a nurse. The other is in engineering. We’re so happy for them and so proud of what they’ve accomplished. That’s why we’re here. It’s a better life for them and for us.”

— Fanny and Eulalio Zepeda

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• Nurse daughter caring for COVID patients

The post Love takes them from Mexico to U.S. appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“If I stop to think about everything that’s happened — being in a difficult marriage, getting a divorce, raising three young girls on my own — it’s a lot. But I think I’ve come a long way, as far as learning more about myself, and growing as a person and a mother. I think I’ve become a more confident person. That’s a huge thing for me.

“I was always pretty introverted and shy. But I feel like I’ve come way out of my shell, especially since the divorce four years ago. I’m much more independent and confident now. I’ve kind of had to be.

“Don’t get me wrong. I still have moments where I struggle with that a little bit, just because of the challenges of daily life. The house may not be perfectly clean all the time and I may lose patience with my girls every now and then. But overall, I guess I’m pretty proud of myself for what I’ve been able to accomplish.

“Although I have no family living close by, I haven’t done this all on my own. There have been so many people through church and other friends who have provided support. I wouldn’t be in the place I am now without them.

“I feel like there’s so much that I’ve learned and still have to learn. And I’m still facing some big challenges. But I have what I call this radical faith that’s helping lead me through it all. In the end, I’m going to have this huge story to tell. I think it will help somebody else who might be going through a rough time in their life. If I can be that person who can help others, then that will really be something I can be proud of.”

— Erynn Anderson

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• Single mom continues to feed music passion

The post ‘I’m going to have this huge story to tell’ appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I was trying to balance being a new mom and a wife, but to also keep doing music in a way that was flexible. That’s what led me to getting involved with Kindermusik for babies, toddlers and preschoolers, and also starting private lessons for all ages.

“Then, four years ago, I went through a divorce, and I became a single parent. By that time, I had three young daughters. As challenging as that was and continues to be, it’s really when my music business began to grow.

“I’ve always loved music, from singing as a child to playing saxophone in school. I went to college to become a music teacher. And I did teach elementary school music for a few years. But with several moves and just the way my life has turned out, the flexibility I have now really works best for me and my girls.

“I can honestly say that my job is fun. I love to see how music impacts the little kids in my Kindermusik classes, how their faces just light up when they’re having a great time. It’s also cool in my private lessons when the older kids, or even adults, are getting it and everything just clicks for them. It’s like, oh my gosh, you learned this song. You read that music and you played it. It’s so rewarding when that happens. I really enjoy being a part of that.”

— Erynn Anderson

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• ‘I’m going to have this huge story to tell’

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“Two years ago, I took my daughters to the Daddy and Me Dance. I rented this big Mercedes limousine. I went all out for my girls, and they had a blast. I couldn’t do it last year because I was in a hospital bed. I was sad about it because I knew how much they loved going. But they understood. So this year I told my mom, ‘I’m going to do my best to get on my feet and take them to that dance.’ I was very determined. I would get on my exercise bike and pedal 15 to 25 miles at a time. I mean, I put in some hard work to get back on my feet. 

“The weekend before the dance, I asked my sister to take me outside. I wanted to see how much I could walk. Using my walker, I was able to go from the apartment all the way to the dumpster and back. Then they took me to Roseland Park, and I walked half of the full lap there. I did not give up. I was working very hard to stand, so I could surprise my daughters. 

“On the day of the dance I told them, ‘Y’all help me stand up,’ and I walked into that dance hall. They were surprised. I did not want to sit. I had the walker in front of me and moved around with them. Then our song came on, ‘Dancing With Cinderella.’ It’s a very pretty song that I picked for my oldest daughter’s quinceañera. She loved it. So when that song came on, I told her, ‘Come here. Let’s dance.’ She was like, ‘But Dad, you can’t stand.’ I said, ‘Let’s dance.’ I put the walker to the side, grabbed ahold of her, and we were dancing. She started crying and was like, ‘I can’t believe it, Dad. You’re actually dancing.’ It was very emotional. We danced, and then another song came on, and I danced with my younger daughters. It was hard, and I was scared that I would fall and make a scene. But it all worked out. We had a great time. 

“I worked very hard for that moment. With everything that me and my family have gone through for more than a year, it meant the world to me and to them.”

— Jaime Aceves

Jaime continues recovering from Guillain-Barré syndrome, a rare neurological disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks part of the peripheral nervous system. After regaining the use of his legs and arms, he is gradually building up strength and mobility.

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• ‘I felt like I was having to say goodbye’

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“When my ex-husband and I were deployed the first time to Afghanistan, my kids were separated. My oldest daughter stayed with my family and the twins were with his family. So they don’t have that normal sister bond. They didn’t really get a chance to know each other. There’s no real foundation there.

“That’s something I’m trying to develop. It’s challenging, since they live apart. The twins are with their father and his fiancé. They’re good people, and they have a stable home. My oldest wants to stay with me. But I’m still working on our relationship.

“When she was younger, I couldn’t even go to the store without her freaking out about me leaving. And I understand that. I had deployed twice. And even though she was only a few years old, she remembered. So with her, I think it’s more abandonment type issues that I’m working on. You know, just being there for her and loving her.

“What I tell my daughters is, ‘Your mother is strong.’ Dealing with the effects of war, time away from my children and a broken marriage taught me to be so strong. Honestly, I feel like nothing can break me. I tell them that they have that kind of strength coursing through their veins, too. So don’t back down from anything or anybody. Stand firm in your beliefs, and you’re going to succeed and get far in life.”

— Erica Salazar

After serving as an intelligence analyst in the Army, Erica earned a bachelor’s degree in national security studies. At the moment, she is teaching English as a second language online to children in China.

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“When you go into the military, you have this illusion that you can have it all. You can have a family. You can serve your country. You can have an amazing, fulfilling career. You know it will come with sacrifices. But you don’t know exactly what that will entail. For me, the life lesson was just how big the sacrifice truly was. I don’t regret my time in the military at all. I benefited greatly from it. But it does put strains on relationships. And bonds are broken as well, between a mother and child, or a father and his children. That’s something I’m still rebuilding, even after being out since 2013. I’m still repairing my relationship with my daughters.”

— Erica Salazar

Erica served as an intelligence analyst in the Army. She was deployed twice to Afghanistan, once as a soldier and later as a civilian contractor. While a student at New Jersey City University, she wrote the following Veterans Day piece for the student newspaper detailing her experiences as a wife and mother in the military. 

While the support and recognition of female veterans is gradually increasing, it is our dual role as a mother that is often overlooked. Although humbled by free meals and appreciation, Veterans Day is a time when I truly feel the impact of the eight years that I balanced active duty military life with motherhood.

I first became a mother on May 3, 2007, while stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas. Alone, at just 20 years old, I gave birth to my first child, whose father was deployed as part of the Baghdad Surge. Struggling through marital issues due to our long-term separation, as well as suffering from postpartum depression, those 12 months of raising my daughter alone laid the foundation for my resilience as a soldier and a mother. Three years later, this resiliency was tested as I faced my first deployment to Afghanistan.

In 2010, the 2D Stryker Cavalry Regiment out of Germany was ordered to deploy to Southern Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom. Four months after giving birth to fraternal twins, Bella and Kloie, I found myself faced with the reality of war. As an intelligence analyst, I understood that my role was vital to the mission, and so I enacted my family care plan in order to deploy. While not ideal, I was forced to separate my children between families in Texas and Louisiana so that both their father and I could fulfill our deployment duties.

As part of the operations cell in Afghanistan, I was responsible for relaying real-time intelligence data and directing unmanned aerial vehicles over enemy targets and locations. In a day’s work, I went from creating intelligence briefs to assisting bombing missions against improvised explosive devices (which were attempts at destroying our convoys). What was once a grieving mother longing to hold her three babies, evolved into a hardened soldier. 

I found myself becoming distant from my own children. The long hours and emotions from a day in Afghanistan were hard to relinquish, so I thought it best to keep communication with my children to a minimum. Unfortunately, no one trains a female soldier on how to balance motherhood and active duty life. Most of all, no one warns you on how to cope with motherhood after a deployment.

The day I came home from Afghanistan, I had to bribe my 1-year-old twins with Oreos so that they would stop crying at the sight of this stranger in camouflage. I was their mother and yet, they had no idea who I was and how to feel about me. This took a toll on me emotionally as I tried to repair our broken bond. 

The deployment not only affected my relationship with my children, but it also took a toll on an already fragile marriage due to both of us developing post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2013, after years of mental and physical abuse, I divorced my ex-husband and exited the military. Lacking financial help, I made the difficult decision to leave my children once again and deploy for a second time to Afghanistan as a civilian contractor. A committed veteran and mother, I chose to simultaneously support my children and defend my country to the best of my ability.

The hard choices I made and the sacrifices my family has endured are experiences shared by many of my female battle buddies. On Veterans Day, we not only reflect upon our combat experience but also the war we fought in our own homes: the times our children didn’t remember us, the broken relationships, and the abuse resulting from war. 

As the backbone of the family, a female veteran carries the weight of war and motherhood. Yet, she will never regret her years of service to her country, for they made her resilient in the face of any obstacle pitted against her.

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• ‘Honestly, I feel like nothing can break me’

• A voice for women who endure abuse in the military

The post Mom rebuilding relationships after military career appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I’ve got good kids for real, man. They are so good and so polite. They believe in abiding by the rules and laws. They have a high level of respect for everybody, even more so for people older than them. I sometimes wonder if they’re my kids. Stroke of luck, I guess. It sure wasn’t genetic.

“I was a rebel. Growing up, I didn’t obey the rules. I wanted to do what I wanted to do. There were a lot of things I shouldn’t have been doing back then, and the law caught up with me. I’ve mellowed out. But still, all that time I was wasting, I could have been seeking a higher education. I could have been making something more out of myself.

“What’s in my past, what’s on that piece of paper, some people judge you by that. But at the end of the day, I try not to let my past keep me down. I try not to let it discourage me or demotivate me. That’s something I can do for me.”

Do your kids know about your past?
“Oh, yeah. My two boys were raised by their mom, and I’ve been raising my girls with a different lady. My youngest daughter is going into the 10th grade and the other one graduated in 2018. I didn’t expose them to my previous lifestyle. But we live close to the hood. So when we go through there and one of my daughters asks why those people are all standing around looking like that, I tell them the truth. They’re all out there strung out on drugs. They’re sitting on that corner like vultures, waiting on anybody who’s lame to the game that they think they can get over on, scheme, con or just flat out rob.

“Some fathers might not be that honest with their kids. But that’s like bringing a baby cub into your house, nursing and feeding it, taking care of it, and then releasing it into the wild. That cub is not going to survive because he’s not aware of what the real world is all about. Those vultures out there are going to devour him.

“So while I don’t expose my kids to it, when they see it, I identify it and break it down for them. I do what a father is supposed to do. I tell them the truth. Because if I don’t, who will? And I watch my kids closely. I know it’s sinking in because of their positive actions and their behavior. The proof is in the pudding.”

— Marsay Harper

The post Lessons learned helps him raise his children appeared first on The Baytown Project.

“I have two daughters, and I raised them pretty much on my own. Being a single mom has been tough at times. Because of work and everything, you’re not always able to be there with them as much as you’d like.

“I was a scaffold builder helper for 16 years in the chemical plants. It was hard work, long hours, but it paid decent. It allowed me to take care of the bills and put food on the table.

“And I’ve always tried to set a good example for my children and talk to them about what not to do. You know, don’t do some of the things that I did along the way.

“Overall, I think I’ve done a pretty good job. They’re 21 and 26 now, and I have two grandchildren. I’m very proud of my girls. They’ve become strong, young women.”

— Xochitl Rodriguez

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“Our daughters are different. Our oldest one is very outgoing and determined. The younger one, not as much. We have to push her on some things. She’s slightly autistic, very minor. So we’re just trying to get her out of her shell.

“We didn’t learn about it until she was in high school. Actually, my husband and I were watching a documentary on these two boys when we kind of realized that sounds like her. Her biggest challenge is that she doesn’t know how to read people to communicate. We’re trying to encourage her. I run our junior church, so I’ve put her where she has to interact with the children. On Wednesday nights she helps me out by designing games for them to play. She’s doing well with that. And here at college, they’re trying to get her involved a little more with certain things. She’s also in Baytown Concert Band, which is nice, but she doesn’t really interact unless she knows someone.

“She wants to become a librarian. During the summer she helped out with the Dayton library, and she’s going to do that again next summer. She’s very good at what she does. She has OCD, so everything has to go a certain way. But when you give her a task, she does it fully. It may take her a little more time than others, but I think she’ll eventually be able to get a job. I think she’ll be a good librarian.”

— Tina Friesland

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“When I was young, I would see newspaper ads for places like Walmart, Target and Kmart. And I would tell my mom, ‘I want to model for that. How can I do that?’ She was so busy working that she never had time to look into it. But it always stayed in the back of my mind.

“Fast forward to me being married for over 10 years to a not-very-good guy. When we were going through the divorce, I remember the words that he said to me. I was told that I was never going to be anybody, that I was fat, that I was ugly, and that no other man was ever going to want me with four children.

“So that set the foundation for me wanting to prove him wrong. I told him, ‘I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but God is going to put me on a platform where I’m going to be able to look down on you like you looked down on me for all these years.’”

After working up her courage to attend acting school in Los Angeles, she began building her portfolio with appearances in print ads, TV commercials and short films.

“One of the most special things I’ve done is appear in a series of commercials for Disney. It was a magical experience. It’s something I was proud and excited to do for my girls. I want them to be strong. I want them to see that you can achieve whatever you want if you set your mind to it.

“Mommy was told that she couldn’t do this, she couldn’t do that. But that’s wrong. Mommy was able to leave an abusive relationship. Mommy was able to go do things that she was told she would never be able to do. So you can do that, too. I can already see that my girls are go-getters also. They don’t take no for an answer.”

— Angelica Mercado

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