Hey Friends and welcome to my blog, Designing your Dream life through Motherhood!
I’m Gina Nichols and I am a mother of 4 kids, 2 stepkids, and 3 that I love like my own. I also have two grandsons, one from my daughter and one from my stepdaughter! I have a big beautiful blended family that, to be honest, hasn’t always blended very well.
It all started in 1987. I moved to Colorado Springs, CO after graduating from the University of Colorado in Boulder. I met my first husband shortly after I arrived in the Springs. He was in the army and honestly, really was not ready to get married. I felt such pressure to be married because it seemed like it was expected. We got married in a big beautiful ceremony and the marriage lasted all of six months. Failure number one in the books. I was so ashamed that I was divorced already. I want to state the obvious here, I do not believe anyone goes into a marriage thinking it will end in divorce. I certainly didn’t, but it happened. This is when my “guilt check box” was created.
So now we are on to marriage number two. I met husband number two in 1991 at a bar. That was the dating app of the 1990’s. We both fell hard and fast and were engaged in about three months and after many trials and tribulations, got married in 1993. We got pregnant with our daughter, Tori, in 1994 and bought a spec home on five acres outside of town. Life was great and then it wasn’t. Again, I never went into this with the intention of getting divorced the first time and now it’s happening again. This one damn near killed me. The guilt and shame was overwhelming. This is not about bashing anyone. This is merely my account of what happened to me. Everyone has their own side to the story and we will get into more details as time goes on. Suffice it to say, he left when she was about 5 months old. Failure number two. Divorce guilt box checked again and now new check box created, “mom guilt”. How will this affect my daughter? How bad have I messed her up?
After this, I really was done, or so I thought. Then some good friends of mine wanted to set me up with someone that my friend worked with. He had just moved to Colorado from Texas. It turned out his dad went to my church and we both wanted a family, or so I thought. I felt like there was some safety and security in our relationship. So in true Gina fashion, I jumped in quickly. We were married in 1996, about nine months after meeting. Our daughter, Nikki was born in 1997, then in 1999, we were surprised when I got pregnant with twins! We were not planning on having any more children. We were not as alike as we once thought. He was staying home with the kids, I was working and things were difficult. So, you guessed it, three reared its ugly head. Another check in the boxes of divorce and mom guilt.
Now, most people at this time would throw in the towel. I mean truly, I used to joke, third times a charm or three strikes, you’re out. I was out. But wait…there’s more.
I decided to give it one more try. I met Gary and you will be pleased to know, we just celebrated 18 years married and 22 together. It has not been easy, but we are still working at it.
If you are still here, great! If you have been in my shoes, know you are not alone. It’s tough out there and the statistics are not in our favor. In my research, 41% of all first marriages end in divorce, while 60% of second marriages and 73% of third marriages. Those are some staggaring statistics.
Needless to say, this has left me feeling a lot of guilt and shame. So many boxes checked. It has taken me a long time to navigate through these feelings and honestly, new ones pop up often. So we are going to talk about it. The good, the bad and the really ugly of divorce and mom guilt.
Throughout this journey I have been able to cope with not only the support of my amazing friends and family, but also through discovering passions of mine that give me a different sense of purpose in addition to being a mom. A lot of moms can probably agree we put our overall health on the back burner, and I did as well. It wasn’t until I learned about gut health specifically that I learned how to take care of myself better. I have also recently tapped into my love for interior design and organizing and am loving this new journey as I begin with my own home!
So why am I here writing his blog? I want a safe, positive community for people who have gone through a divorce (or divorces) and are raising kids through all of it. There are so many challenges we go through and overcome. There is so much guilt and shame associated with divorce and “mom guilt” and especially if you have gone through it more than once. I cannot tell you the number of times I have inadvertently been the punch line of someone’s joke when they did not know my story. It’s hard and painful at times but there is also a light at the end of the tunnel. I also want to share my love for living a healthy lifestyle and decorating, as having those outlooks have shaped me in ways I didn’t imagine possible. I’m going to share with you along the way my experiences and what I’ve learned and hope to learn from you all too.
Welcome to the community! Let’s design our dream lives through motherhood.