By: Barbara E. Dolan

          Bethany was a young lady with two children, a boy and a girl, the loves of her life. But for the first time in her life, she found herself needing to raise her children on her own now, since she divorced the only man she had ever had sex with, her first love out of high school.

At 19 she found herself pregnant. Having looked for a way to have the first trimester baby inside her adopted, she traveled to San Francisco to see if she could get an adoption rather than tell her father. It was the days of the Viet Nam war, and over 600 people were moving to San Francisco, hippies, who like smoking pot, have sex and listen to music. It was the time before fully available contraceptives, especially to a young Catholic girl. The first draft lottery occurred December 1.

Not finding a job in San Francisco, because she could not provide local reference like the other 600 young people who came to San Francisco, and because she couldn’t find an adoption agency to help her, Bethany decided to fly back home.

Her mother and her father picked her up at the airport, and then they sat down in her parents’ bedroom and had a hard talk. Her father had begged her not to marry Robert. He said he was not from a good family and he would not want them to be part of his family. Her mother, because she had two young children at home, told Bethany to go ahead and marry the Robert. At 19, Bethany was closer to her mother and her father, so she talked to Robert who had just turned 21, and his response was, “We might as well get married.”

After the very sad “might as well” wedding and dinner that her father had paid for, Bethany and her maid of honor Jennifer, were told to sit in the back seat of the car, while Robert and his best man, Jerry, sat in the front seat. They drove over an hour to Robert’s home. While Robert and Jerry got out of the car and went into the house, Bethany and Jennifer sat in the back seat for over an hour. They hugged one another and laughed until they started getting hungry. But neither wanted to get out of the car.  By that time, Robert and Jerry got back in the car, Bethany knew she had made a horrible mistake.

After nine long years of abuse, both physical and emotional, Bethany decided to leave Robert even though he begged her not to. She stayed one month longer until she and the kids found a place to move. She also had to wait for her mother and her brothers to be free to help her move.

Not knowing what would happen next, she permitted her two children go with her on a search for a place for them to stay. They eventually picked the place that was most expensive for her to rent, but on the other hand, it faced a lake, which appealed to her children. Their future home was a small two-story two-bedroom apartment in a lake community in the town where they had been living for three years. They were able to go to the same schools and to see their father every week, as had been agreed. As part of the divorce settlement, she agreed not to take the children too far from their father. She herself would not have thought several states away would be far enough.

          Now at 32, she was wondering she would be able to keep things moving forward, keep her children happy, and keep herself from too much anxiety. Bethany had always been a bright girl and generally a happy person. Having been exceeding successful in high school, on the school counsel for two years and secretary for the counsel a third year. Bethany had been in plays, and was a cheerleader. She participated in forensic contests and state science fairs. She was a member of the National Honor Society for her last three years during which she was also the editor of the yearbook, and a reporter for the school newspaper.

Along the way, either because she pushed herself too much, Bethany periodically experienced rather severe attacks of anxiety. Not having been diagnosed with any anxiety disorder, she just tried to get through it with prayers and happy thoughts, and generally it worked. Now that she was on her own, an adult with adult responsibilities, she told her doctor about her panic attacks and received medication which she took very rarely, and only half of what was prescribed. Bethany figured that on her own, she would be calmer, as long as her children remained healthy and she was able to consistently work.