There are a lot of reasons people decide that divorce is the best decision for their family. There are a few statistics that people are not unaware of. When you hear about these statistics it may give you the little push you need to try harder in your marriage and not take the easy way out, divorce. First, the divorce rate is actually much lower than 50%. That number is thrown around a lot, but that means that in a given year half the people who got married would have had to get divorced too. There are reasons we feel like the divorce rate is huge right now, but it may not be quite as bad as we initially thought. Next, it has been proven that couples who could hold on for 5 years after the initial time they were thinking about divorce, 70% of them rate their marriage was better than before. Also, 70% of couples admitted 2 years after their divorce that they should have saved their marriage. A huge thing to be aware of is that separation will probably kill and ailing marriage, separation is not a cure. People often times claim to stay married for their children. When they stay married but continue hating each other they are continuing to do harm to their child. Divorce and remaining married while hating each other are not the only options! Thankfully with hard work, time, and effort you can improve your marriage that way you are not living with someone you hate! And finally, one of the most annoying things to me is when a couple, married for years, claims their reason for divorce is incompatibility… don’t you think that when your dating is the time to find out if you are incompatible rather than 5, 10, 15 years down the road? I call this an excuse for someone not willing to work on their marriage.

            Now let’s talk about blended families. Some other words for this may be remarried, reconstituted, or stepfamilies. There are a variety of ways a family can be considered a blended family, but basically it is anything outside of a nuclear family, or a family that has 2 biological parents with their biological children. There are a lot of challenges that come with blended families. A nuclear family has pretty clear lines. The parents date, get married, have kids, and raise the kids together. Since both parents are there for the entire life of the child, they are able to learn and grow together as a couple and as a family. In a blended family there are more than 2 parents. There are the biological parents, then whoever they remarry. There may even be 4 parents. This can get difficult for the parents who are not the biological parents to create that same bond with the child, especially the older the kids are. This will impact the newly married parents as well as a child who is bouncing from home to home weekly, every other weekend, or never gets to see one of their parents. There will definitely be challenges that come along with blending a family.

            Divorce is a touchy topic that is becoming all too familiar to us all. It seems to be the trend right now and everyone is doing it. I think if we take a step back and realize we will have our hard days, weeks, month, years, or even decades, but in the end if we decide to stay together it will be for the benefit of everyone. I also know that blended families are very common. There are ways for blended families to work. I think it’s important to recognize the difficulties that come with divorce and blending families, but that there is also hope in situations where this needs to happen.

What is the purpose behind parenting? Popkins said, “to protect and prepare children to survive and thrive in the world in which they will live.” So, what does this really even mean? When I think of the word protect in the context of parenting, I think from the world, Satan, false teachings, and bad habits. The word prepare to me means to prepare for life, to make their own choices, and for them to be parents one day. Survive is to get by and stay alive, while thrive is excelling and having joy. The world in which they will live includes today, the near future, and even their adulthood.

Now that we’ve talked about why we parent, let’s talk a little about how. Obviously, all of these things are easier said than done, but I truly believe that if you make the conscious effort to work on a few things over a period of time the home will be a happier place where children will respect their parents and feel like they are respected and heard. Giving children positive feedback. If you have such high expectations of your child, always pointing out the negatives and rarely praise them for the good things they do, they will not feel like they are meeting your expectations and will likely rebel in order to receive some sort of confirmation that they are seen.

The need for contact and belonging is the most important need that we have. If there is a lack of contact, there can often be a failure to thrive especially seen in babies. A lot of the time children act out to get attention. When they are isolated, not getting their contact need met, they end up becoming aggressive, defensive, and harmful. If you ask someone in prison the worst punishment, they would tell you isolation. Not being able to connect with others can literally feel worse than any other punishment they could receive. When a child is put in this position and not offered a way to get out, they will resort to their worst behavior because they are not aware of the emotions, they are feeling… the need to be with others.

The best way that we can teach is by example. Kids love to work, do their chores with them. Teach them things that are fun and also teach them things that will be beneficial to them their entire life. Be involved in the things they are interested in, have compassion, be kind, be patient, honest, loving, and respectful. When you treat your child how you would like to be treated, they will naturally begin to be like you and respond to situations as you would. We do not need to be helicopter parents and not allow them to do anything though. The best way we have all learned a life lesson is because of the natural consequences that came with our actions, not because mom and dad forbid us to hang out with a certain person. “The more we control, the less influence for good”.

Let’s all remember to be a little kinder, have more patience, and be the parents we would like our grandchildren to have one day, because we are raising their parents now. I know that all children are different, and this may seem like too much of a task to take on especially if you have a lot of kids at home. If we ask the Lord for strength and guidance in the way we teach and raise our children, we will see righteous children grow up to be husbands and wives with families of their own.

Do you the impact that fathers have on the way children end up behaving? There are significant benefits to having a father in the home and present in the raising of children. When a father is absent, both boys and girls are impacted. By the time girls are 13, with no father, they tend to be more sexually promiscuous and have low self-esteem. Boys tend to also have low self-esteem and get involved in drugs or crimes. Did you know that almost every single school shooter did not grow up with a father? These are all things that children should not be getting involved in, especially at such a young age.

Over 39% of children are born into fatherless homes. This is worrying because as more children are being born into fatherless homes, more daughters are going to be having sex young, therefore continuing the pattern. Young boys are going to be caught up in drugs and there will be a cycle of this going on. It is important to be aware of the numbers and the facts that play a role in this. Being unaware that over 39% of children are born without a father will lead many to believe that there is not an issue, yet there is. Children need that father figure in their lives. Fathers are the ones that come home from work and the child knows now they can wrestle and play rougher than they can with mom. This is where they are able to learn a lot of skills a mother does not have.

Now I want to transition a little bit to finances. In homes where the parents are together, it is often thought that they both need to work to get by. This is something that may seem logical, but if you really lay all of the numbers out you can easily see that having a one income household is oftentimes better than dual income homes when there are children involved. There was an accountant who did a little experiment. He asked a couple who both work to help him. The father of this family earns about $42,000 a year and the wife earns $21,000. What the accountant did next was ask for expenses they had now that the mother was working. She had to buy another car to get to work. She had to pay for gas to get to work. She had to buy a new wardrobe to wear to work. The family was eating out almost daily because she didn’t have time to make meals, and they were paying for afterschool care for all 3 of their children. WOW, quite a bit of money being spent in order for her to have a job. The accountant did some math and came up with the amount of money they were making now that both mom and dad were working. The number he came up with was $40,000. This is less money that the father was making when he was the only one working. As you can see, adding her job to their family actually was costing them money rather than bringing in more money. There are situations when a single mother needs to work and that is understandable, but I highly recommend looking at all of your income and expenses to really decide if having mom and dad both working is really worth it. The kids will be better off having their mother in the home as rather than spending their days with a babysitter.

I hope you feel how important it is to be in a family where a father is present, and that dual income households are not necessarily the most financially friendly thing to do! Think about it and make the best decision for you and your family!

The problem with communication is that the way we convey our thoughts and feelings must be accepted. Thoughts and feelings lead us to encode a message, we must then find a medium to convey the message, and the other person must decode in order to understand our thoughts and feelings. They must then encode that they understand, find the right medium to tell you, then it is your responsibility to now decode. It is a lot of back and forth but that is what makes us grow closer to people and really get to know them, when we are able to communicate with them effectively.

Another part of communication that can sometimes be looked past is that there are different kinds of communication. Words only actually make up about 14% of our communication. The tone we use is 35%, we really believe someone’s tone over the words they are saying. And finally, nonverbal. Nonverbal communication makes up 51% of our communication and it totally makes sense. When you are talking to someone the look on your face gives away if you are agreeing with them or not. The way you nod, smile, or even stand gives away a lot of how you are feeling.

We often hear people talk about how sarcastic their families are. They may be meaning that their family jokes a lot, laughs a lot, or gets along really well. The problem we face with sarcasm is that there is always a truth and a lie connected to what was said. It is easier to bring up the flaws in another person when you are in a large group and you start to joke about things and make comments. Those sarcastic comments can dig deep into your partner, they may hold onto those tiny bits of truth and maybe even the lies that were thrown in there. Marriages have literally been destroyed over the sarcastic comments made daily that really eat away at a person.

I wanted to quickly go over a communication technique that has changed my view on some things and I look forward to applying to my own marriage and family. This is something that I truly believe would save so many marriages if at least one of the spouses knew how to apply it, it can also be applied to other relationships. This is called the Disarming Technique This is when you put down your weapons and they will eventually follow by putting down theirs. An example of this would be during an argument your spouse is yelling at you and pointing out all of your flaws. You may feel hurt and that you wish to retaliate by yelling back and pointing out their flaws. As you can probably tell, this would only lead to back and forth fighting without getting to a conclusion. During the disarming technique you find a kernel of truth. A kernel of truth is something very small from what they are saying that is true. If while they were yelling at you that you work too late, you respond by saying, “You’re right, I do work late into the night and I’m sorry it has been that way for the past couple weeks”. When you tell them they are right, you pretty much distinguished the fire. Rather than yelling back at them you are willing to admit that they are right. You are able to stop the attack by NOT defending yourself. It sounds tricky, but it also sounds like something that could seriously save your marriage or relationship from the blame game.

Communication is very often listed as a reason for failed marriages and relationships, but if we took the time to understand where the communication is lacking and the techniques we can apply, we will be far ahead and will be able to endure many hard things together.

There are many things that can happen at any time that would lead to a family crisis. Let’s talk about stress. We always talk about stress in a negative light, but in reality, it is what gives pressure. We have to have stress on our bodies in order for our bones to stay strong and sturdy. Those who go to space. They lose strength and their bodies are usually harmed forever due to there not being enough STRESS on their bodies. We need it. What about stressor events? These are pressure causing events. This could be any number of things but something bad could happen in your family, maybe a child died. This would be a stressor event. This can be handled in different ways, crisis can lead to a long road of unhappiness and families torn apart, or it can lead to great growth.  

We hear about fight or flight responses and know that that is our natural response to stressful situations. We don’t often talk about the thing that actually usually happens in these situations and that’s freeze. When a child dies, there is no response to fight, there is no response to flight, but there is a response of shock and that is when we freeze. This can be okay in some situations. It takes time to grieve. But what happens after that initial grieving period is over is crucial. The families that are able to keep their family structures intact tend to bounce back after a crisis.

There are families that bounce back, bounce back kind of, don’t bounce back at all, and those that bounce back better than before. I think It’s safe to say that we all want to take an event that has caused crisis in our lives and bounce back better than before. This will only happen when the effort is there. Parents could begin the blame game. Either blaming themselves or the other for this tragic event. This can ruin marriages. It is true that many people get divorced within 2 years of a child dying. This is because the family structure is changed. If family structure is to remain intact, they would be able to see the situation as it really was and to bounce back better than ever.  

A really great tool to use in crisis situations is called the Daily Mood Log. This can be found online and truly digs deeper. You are to circle the feelings you have, how much you believe it’s true, and the thoughts you are having. Once you have filled out that section you look for the cognitive distortions that are happening in your brain. You are able to write down on paper what your brain is really going through. It is cool to watch as someone recognizes that many of the cognitive distortions apply when they are going through something so tragic. Once you realize that there is more to it than just negative emotions and feelings, people are able to see things as they really are. The last part of the Daily Mood Log is to write down positive thoughts. This can be tricky at first but when you can change the way you are thinking to something positive it lifts so much of the burden and you are finally free to heal and grow from this crisis.

There are a wide variety of family crisis that happen, and child death is at the top of the charts which is why I used it as an example. Something in your life may be way smaller but be having a huge impact on your life. I recommend trying the Daily Mood Log and see how it can literally change your thoughts in a week.

When you think of the word fidelity, I’m sure there are immediate thoughts that come into your head. For me, I immediately think of being true to someone with exactness. When I google the word, I got the definition “faithfulness to a person, cause, or belief, demonstrated by continuing loyalty and support”. Isn’t that what we are all longing for? That is what you sign up for when you decide to get married. Complete fidelity to your partner and from your partner. It gets a little bit trickier than that. Infidelity on the other hand is defined as “the action or state of being unfaithful to a spouse or other sexual partner”.

            There are many ways someone can fall to infidelity. There is emotional, physical, and visual infidelity that we are going to talk about. Emotional infidelity is one that happens SO OFTEN without being noticed as clearly. This is the one where someone has a best friend of either gender and goes to them for everything. We most often assume that this has to happen between best friends of opposite genders. When a girl has a guy best friend and tells him even more than she is telling her husband you would assume there would be a connection building, and this will not end well. But what is not as often talked about is when that woman has a woman best friend and tells her all of her emotions and feelings rather than her husband. There is an emotional bond created there too and you’d be surprised at the amount of women who end up having sexual relations with their best friend even if it is another woman because they just feel so close.

            Physical infidelity is probably the one most people immediately think of when they hear that there has been an affair. This is when a partner goes to another person to fulfil their sexual and other intimate needs. This usually starts with the emotional affair and leads to physical. Nobody wants to hear that their spouse has been intimate with another person. Most people even admit that if their spouse were to have an affair, they would not be able to stay with them. It is interesting to see the number of couples that are actually able to make it through and have a stronger marriage in the end. We will talk about repentance and forgiveness in a minute.

            The third type of infidelity I wanted to talk about today is visual. This is often times where pornography plays a role. Men and women both have problems with viewing pornography, but we hear about it mostly in men. Men are wired differently than women and have sexual desires that they work at daily to control. Sometimes they are unable to control these feelings due to Satan telling them lies. They can create habits and even addictions in order to release the sexual tension building inside of them. Going to the internet, books, movies, or even music can be their release. This can be so hard for them to overcome, but when they realize the harm it is doing to their life and marriage, they will hopefully come clean to get help. It is true that if a man tells of his addiction and is willing to get help, the marriage will end up working out and he will get through it.

            Finally, I wanted to touch on forgiveness and repentance. This is a hard topic to talk about and even imagine in your own life, but you cannot be naïve and think it will never happen to you. That is exactly when Satan will work the hardest and throw a curve ball. Being able to have that open communication with your spouse may be able to lessen the chances of it happening. However, if you find yourself in the midst of these trials, hope is not lost. We have a Savior Jesus Christ who has suffered for all of our sins. We will all fall short and need to repent. If these things have occurred, I plead with you to go to your Heavenly Father, spouse, and bishop to right the wrong. As the spouse of these actions it can be hard to look for the good and even imagining there is something positive to gain from this experience. It is there. There is hope and peace that can come if you too will use The Atonement of Jesus Christ to help you come to a point of forgiving. It will be okay. It will all work out. Don’t give up.

            Going from being a single person to being married to someone else can literally change your life overnight. No matter how long you dated, courted, and were engaged before marriage. There is no way you can prepare for this type of change. It is interesting when you get married and all of a sudden you do not make any decisions on you own. Dinner? Someone else has an opinion that might not be the same as your own. Plans for holidays? There is now another family you need to fit into your plans. Thankfully, there are some ways to make this transition smoother, and if we make sure these are a priority, we will hopefully sail into our first few years of marriage without a huge problem.

            First thing, engagement. Engagements are a big deal and should not be undermined. If you remember from my blog last week we talked about the steps of dating. Starting with dating, stepping into courtship, stepping into engagement, then finally stepping into marriage. If we are sliding from one of these things to the next the lines are blurred where the commitment is. When there is a big deal about the engagement the commitment level is increased. Also, when you run into marriage problems the women tend to look back at how the relationship started. If there are good, happy things to look back on, the marriages tend to work out in the long run. When she looks back and doesn’t even remember anything special happening, maybe just a conversation where they decided they’d get married, they tend to hold that against their spouse and have a harder time coping with marital problems. Traditionally, the man is the one who proposes. He gets down on one knee and asks her to marry him. The getting down on one knee is symbolic of being fully committed and sacrifice. It really is beautiful and should not be brushed aside.

            There can be a problem with this still. The current generation is more caught up in the SHOW than the actual commitment. They want to make sure the entire engagement is perfect, and definitely documented either by photo and/or video. Not only for the engagement, but also the wedding day celebration. Thousands of dollars are spent on weddings, for the glam and the show of it. The meaning behind the sacred event that happened earlier in the day can be overshadowed by the party and celebration later. Maybe if we kept the wedding celebration more intimate with closer family and friends it would not be taking away from the actual wedding itself.

            Finally, babies. Babies have proven to decrease the marital satisfaction in couples quite quickly after the babies are born. The trend usually goes; highly satisfied, baby, decrease in satisfaction, baby, more decrease in satisfaction, baby, decrease in satisfaction, levels out, kids move out, increase in satisfaction. I’m not saying this happens in every marriage, but it takes some real effort and knowledge to avoid this. The wife is usually stressed out because her workload at home has increased and works 24/7 to keep this child alive. The husbands stress levels go up as he finds a way to provide for this new baby, works all day, helps at night, and together they are putting every last little bit of energy they might have into this baby. They are not focusing on one another anymore. There is often a disconnect because the communication about important things decreases and they don’t even know if they are on the same page anymore.

            I know that if we work with our spouse and with God through it all, it will be okay. There will be hard things, unimaginable trials, and babies that will change your world. Keep going, don’t throw in the towel, and marriage will prove to be the best thing ever!

“Dating” can be a confusing word. This is because it can mean either going on dates with different people, or it can mean you are exclusively with one person. Dating has a huge impact on marriages and how successful they are. When people start out, they go on a date or two, decide they like each other enough to date, then all of a sudden, they are together 24/7 and never actually go on dates. Elder Dallin H. Oaks said that a date should be “planned, paid for, and paired off”. When the conscious effort if made to continue go on dates with your significant other, there is a lot to learn. You are able to see how they make decisions, what they enjoy doing, how they interact in different situations, and how they treat others. You will have many shared experiences with is part of the formula to get to know someone. This formula includes togetherness, which is those shared experiences. Talk, which is mutual self-disclosure and thoughts/feelings. And finally, time, it takes at least 3 months to START to get to know someone. When you add up togetherness, talk, and time, you are on the path to a more successful dating life and marriage.

Now let’s talk about length of dating. When people date for over 2 years the successful marriage rate decreases significantly. This can also be seen in cohabitation. Habits are formed when you are together, but do not have a formal commitment. In cohabitation oftentimes the couple is still living their separate life but try to bring it together. They have separate bank accounts, each go to work each day, and since there is no formal commitment the chances of cheating go up, which also raises the chances of affairs happening once they get married. When couples do not cohabitate before marriage, there is a formal commitment and a secure knot is tied. They are now one and can go forward with a strong desire to get to know the person more since they are now married and have made a huge step in the relationship.

Studies have found that people who marry in their 20s have more successful marriages than later in life. This makes sense because in your 20s your brain is still developing. If you marry while your brain continues to develop your brain will be more responsive to changes your spouse may desire or decisions, you have to make together can be more easily decided because you are not completely set in your own ways yet. There are steps to a relationship that must be followed, and it turns out better in the long run if they are clearly defined. They are; dating, courtship, engagement, and marriage. Many people slide from one step to another, but this will cause problems. If you are dating but decide you really like them and want to court them without telling them, they will be majorly surprised when all of a sudden you are talking about marriage

In our culture it is not often that arranged marriages take place, which makes us think it is a crazy idea and that it will never work. The truth is, people who are raised in a culture where arranged marriages are a thing, are not opposed to it. They are the ones who go to their parents when they decide it’s time and ask for an arranged marriage. What we don’t think about is that it is not random at all like we think it is. They usually know each other already and their families know each other. They are ready to commit. Which is really what marriage is about. The butterflies will fade, the attractiveness won’t be as overwhelming, and you have to decide marriage is worth it. In an arranged marriage they decide they want to be married and they are often very happy and satisfied in their marriage. In reality, even in our culture our 5 closest friends can usually predict the outcome of our marriages, so having their parents choose their partner isn’t so crazy after all.

Gender is a more polite way of saying sex, as in male and female. Children are born with distinct characteristics and biological factors that determine what gender they are. There are special circumstances when a child is born with both, but this is rare. I am going to talk about the distinctions between male and female and why it is important.

As soon as a baby is born there are things that show us there are differences, that male and female are in fact, not necessarily equal… don’t get mad at me yet. A male baby, only a few days old, will startle easily when someone blows on their stomach. A female baby at that same point will be cooing and starting to make eye contact. You can easily see that already the female is working towards communicating, while the male is already showing signs of needing to react in an abrupt way to either show aggression or to protect.

As the baby grows and is now a toddler the children are set behind a glass wall where they can still see their mother but not get to her. The male toddlers immediately run towards the glass wall and try to knock it down, once again some aggression is shown here. The female toddler just sat there and cried. This shows that the girl is more sensitive and uses her emotions to express her feelings rather than aggression. Of course, there are circumstances where this is not true, but the studies showed this happen the majority of the time.

Now the children are a little bit older and elementary school aged. Boys tend to play hard, wrestle, play with trucks, and use any object they can get ahold of as a play gun. The girls played with dolls, dress up and communicate with their friends.

Parents are being told over and over again they should stop raising their children to be a certain gender… to stop making their boys play with trucks and their girls play with dolls. The fact of the matter is that they WANT to play with these toys! There are parents who tried to not raise their kids to play with certain toys, but it ended up happening because the child wanted to.

We can try to make things so gender neutral, but that does not change the studies and the facts. There was a toy store that used to be separated by gender. Boy toys on one side of the store and girl toys on the other side of the store. They decided that all children should be able to play with all toys. They ended up mixing all of their toys throughout the store and ended up going out of business in ONE YEAR!

I do have to say this, if a boy wants to play with a doll he should not be shamed. He sees his sister playing with the dolls and sees his dad taking care of the baby. They are just trying to fit in, or heck, they just want to play with a doll. If they are shamed for playing with certain toys, they will end up trying to rebel. Girls CAN play with trucks and rocks. Boys CAN play with dolls and barbies. There is not a rule. Kids deserve the chance to play with their toys.

As we become adults all of this comes to make sense. Females tend to stay home to nurture their children, as they grew up nurturing their dolls. Males grow up to Protect their home and families. There are literally differences in our brains that allow this world to turn and go on as it does, WITH OUR DIFFERENCES! Females are able to work in the home. Taking care of children, dishes, laundry, running errands, and the list goes on. There is more white matter in female brains which is what connects the information. Meaning they can multitask easier. Men have more grey matter which is processing. This is why they are so good at focusing all of their time and energy on one thing at a time. This is why they are so good at going to work, focus on work, come home to the family, focus on the family.

Males and Females are so different, and it is so beautiful!! We are made this way in order to compliment one another.

I hope we can embrace our gender, treat others with respect, and truly love everyone no matter how they choose to live their life or raise their children!

Culture is “customs, arts, social institutions, achievements, a set of shared attitudes, values, practices, and/or goals.” When we talk about family culture, we may think that since it’s ingrained into us, and we have been raised a certain way, we cannot change our own family culture. But I am here to say THAT IS A MYTH! You can change family culture. It will take time and effort, but it can be done! In some cultures, the grandmother is the one who makes the decisions for her children and their families. There are cultures that once the daughter is married; they are now part of the husband’s family and pretty much doesn’t even exist to her family anymore. These may be extreme cases for your family in our country. Maybe you are part of a family that doesn’t hug, doesn’t address large issues, or even say you love one another. These are probably more of the things that we can relate to. Thankfully, we have the power to change that if we feel it will be of benefit for our family!

Socioeconomic status is “an economic and sociological combined total measure of a person’s work experience and of an individuals or family’s economic and social position in relation to others, based on household income, earners education, and occupation.” There are many things that we automatically think of when we think of someone’s socioeconomic status. We think of material possessions, clothes, formal education, house size and location, speech and mannerisms, and money. You can probably think of someone in each of the different socioeconomic classes and you can think of what they might wear, where they live, what they drive, the jobs that have, and so on.

When bringing family culture and socioeconomic class together we can realize there are possibilities for change in family culture that our family may have set forth before us. For example, There is a woman who is poor, has no education, no car, the trailer is unclean, her clothing consists of her work uniform from Burger King (where she walks to work 10 miles every day), she has 2 sons that have no supervision due to having no father. Her children recognize their class and strive to live a higher class wearing nicer clothing and dreaming of becoming lawyers. Sadly, they are unable to graduate from high school, have children young, get into drugs, and live at home with their mom and no jobs. If the sons had seen these trends and recognized the culture in their own family needed to change, they may have been able to break the cycle and move up to a higher socioeconomic class.

In class we talked about 3 things that guarantee a person to get out of poverty and stay out of poverty. These are things that, if taught and understand would allow someone to change their family culture and move them up a socioeconomic class. These include; don’t procreate until married, finish high school, and get a job- any job. These are things that do not seem too hard, but they are. We live in a time when over 40% of children are born to parents who are not married, usually meaning they will end up in broken homes which have proven significant negative impacts on children. Finishing high school sounds easy, until you are the one who is expected to work and bring home money to your family, you have children while still in high school, or get caught up in drugs that end up being more important than schoolwork. And getting ANY job. When combined with the other two suggestions, a job will allow you to have a foundation to begin your journey. As long as you are earning more than you spend, you will be alright.

I hope that we are not too quick to judge, but quick to love. We are understanding of everyone’s situations, and that we will educate those around us to allow everyone to enjoy a fulfilling life! Here’s to changing family cultures that need changing!!