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Writer's pictureLisa Hwang

Memoir #2: Becoming a mother at 24 (1995)

Updated: Nov 24, 2023


Single mom at 29 (2000)


I became a mother at 24 years old. It wasn’t planned. I was on birth control pills, but I was not consistent with taking them. I did not want to have kids because I helped raise my sister who was 14 years younger than me. When I found out I was pregnant in April 1995, I was 10 weeks along. I only had 2 weeks to make a decision. I had only been dating the father for 7 months.

I decided that I was financially responsible enough to bring this child into the world. With the Asian culture traditions, my grandmother and mother wanted to me to get married before having the baby. I had a shot gun wedding at city hall in Blue Bell, PA in August of 1995. Jalen was born on December 17,1995 in Haddonfield, NJ.


The first 3 months was so hard. I did not sleep a lot. His dad (I have a hard time calling him my husband or ex-husband), worked in landscaping and winter snow plowing so he was not around a lot. I was stuck for 3 days by myself with no electricity in the big snow storm of early 1996 in the Philadelphia, PA area. It was the hardest 3 days with a newborn.

I went back to work part time when he was 8 weeks old. I was a cost accountant at Weyerhaeuser company in the corrugated box manufacturing division. I went back early so I could extend my maturity leave and delaying when I would go back full time. I was a full time working mom at 24. His dad was extremely financially irresponsible He would lie to me about his finances. I was the breadwinner only making $30k a year.


When he was 1 years old, I went back to school at Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA to work on my MBA in finance. I worked full time, went to school 2 nights a week and was raising a toddler. In January 1997, I took a new job as a financial analyst with IBM in King of Prussia, PA. They paid 100% of my MBA if I received an A or B. I wanted to go back to my alma mater because my pre-requisites were done and it would be a shorter time to complete my MBA. I graduated with a MBA in Finance in December 1998.


I started working remotely in the year 2000. IBM pushed their employees to work from home to save money on real estate. In 1998, we had purchased a home in Woolwich Twp, NJ about 30 minutes outside of Philadelphia in the countryside. Once I started working remotely, I went into a very deep depression. I would be in sweats all day, napping constantly, not eating much and just provided the fundamentals needs for my son Jalen. I weighted 98 lbs at the time. I decided to go on anti-depressants to see if it would help me. I started taking Zoloft.

I did not imagine my life as a young mother and married. I was miserable and so depressed. I asked for a divorce in 2000. Under the New Jersey law, for a no fault divorce, you must live separately for 18 months before the divorce can be granted. So I moved into my sister’s studio apartment in Philadelphia, PA in the Olde City area. I was 29 at that time and Jalen was 5.

It was really hard to be a single mom. All my friends were still going out and living the life while I had to stay at home and care for my son. My older sister would occasionally babysit because she lived in the same building with her boyfriend.

Our physical and joint custody was 50/50 but we really could not get on a schedule. I would drive down to NJ during the week and work my job remotely while Jalen went to school in that district. I usually had him on the weekends because his father was a caddy at a golf course. I was living in the city as a single mom at 30. At that point, most of my friends were having babies or still in the partying phase. I had to try to start to meet new friends and start dating again.


Single mom life was hard (2000-2014). There were so many times I felt resentment towards him. He was preventing me from enjoying my life in the 20s and 30s. I would be angry, then become depressed. I blamed him many times for what my life was like at that point in time. My depression involved lying in bed/sleeping all day while he played video games. I would feed him pizza or chicken nuggets. We had a pug, Yoda, that kept him company. I was still on Zoloft but still feeling so depressed and resentful to him of what my life was like.

His dad would always be difficult. Sometimes he would take him, sometimes he would cancel and sometimes, he would just not show up nor answer his phone. My son would be angry and so hurt when he did that. I had to take the brunt of it all and try to console him. But I was pissed off too because I would have to cancel my plans.

No matter what, caring for Jalen in some capacity, had to be my number 1 priority. Balancing being a single mom was hard. I worked full time, tried to have a social life, took art classes, took yoga classes and started dating again in 2002 when I was 31. My first relationship was with Jaime O. We went to the same high school but he was a few years younger. We dated for 2 years and Jalen got really attached to him. He would play video games with him all the time. When I broke up with him, Jalen was very upset. He was only 6 years old. I realized that I had to be careful of who I brought around him because I did not want him to get attached to anyone like he did with Jamie.


Navigating dating as a single mom was hard. His dad was always difficult about staying on a schedule. He wouldn’t stay on a schedule so it was always hard for me to make plans. In 2005, Jalen and I moved to Brooklyn, New York. One of the reasons was because his dad was living in north New Jersey with his girlfriend at that time so I thought living in NY would allow Jalen to see his dad more often. I also wanted to experience what it was like to live in NYC.

I left NYC in April 2008 and went to live on Truro, Cape Cod, Massachusetts with my then boyfriend, Dana D. For the last 1.5 years of living in Brooklyn, I commuted Jalen to PA every Friday and again on Sunday. His dad had moved back to PA and we decided to put him in the school system in PA because he was falling behind being in the Brooklyn, NY school system. Then, Jalen spent the summer with me in Truro, MA where he fell in love with playing golf at the age of 12.


After the summer on the cape, he told me that he wanted to pursue playing competitive golf so he could play college golf. We spent the next 6 years navigating the junior golf organization. He competed every weekend, he practiced almost daily at the country club, we did road trips to compete along the east coast and we flew out west for golf tournaments and a golf camp at Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA. He wanted to play D1 collegiate golf out west. The focus was on getting him recruited to play D1 golf out west.

Life was all about golf. What sealed the deal for him was qualifying for the USGA Junior Amateur event at Martin Camp in Lake Tahoe, CA. This is the biggest event of junior golf. Almost every college attends the event. He was recruited just from qualifying for that event. But, we still needed more scholarships and money for him to go to school there. Total cost for tuition, room and board was about $65,000. He received a $10,000 academic scholarship from the university and a small caddy scholarship for $2,000. We still had to come up with the rest.


Once he turned 16 1/2, he was able to drive himself around. He would occasionally caddy to make some money but I had to figure out all the financials. At the age of 41, I picked up a weekend job working as a server for a catering company in the wedding business. I worked every Friday and Saturday night weddings and the occasional Sunday wedding. Wedding seasons was spring - fall. I did that job for 3 years while working my full time remote job with IBM. I basically had no social or dating life.


My son headed to college in 2014. I moved out west in June 2016. For 2 years, I lived off airbnb and followed my son around the west coast to watch his college golf tournaments. In offseason, I lived on the Oregon coast summer of 2017, Wonder Valley/Joshua Tree, CA in early 2018, summer of 2018 in Mammoth Lakes, CA. He graduated in 2018, so I decided that I needed to establish a home base. I was getting tired of driving around, unpacking/packing and moving locations every month, weeks or week.


I came back to Joshua Tree, CA in September 2018. I had a few dates while I was there and one was very promising…we will call him H. But, I had plans to go to SE Asia in October for an unknown amount of time. I started my Asia trip but kept thinking about H while I was there. In December, I decided to make Joshua Tree, CA my home base. My decision was based on homes were affordable, close to Palm Springs International airport, close to LA, close to San Diego, easy flight to San Francisco to visit my family/son and the hopes of seeing where things would go dating H.


I have been an empty nester for the past 7 years. I have dedicated 20 years raising my son and hoping that he would become a good, humble and beautiful person. I was hoping not to pass down the family trauma I had to him. While he was growing up, I would go through periods of resentment and depression. After all that, I am proud of what he has accomplished to date. Now, what’s next for me.

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