Summer is dwindling down. It’s August 2012 and I am just about to start my last year of junior high. I’m trying to soak up and enjoy my last few weeks of summer and freedom when something happens that changes my life forever.

It’s a warm sunny Thursday afternoon and I just finished up swimming with some friends at the community pool in my hometown of Belmond, Iowa. I jump on my bike and start peddling home. I pull up in my drive way and fling my bike onto its side next to a big oak tree that grows in my front yard. Glistening with sweat and hunger I run inside to see what my mom has made for lunch. Once I walk through the front door I stop dead in my tracks. My entire house has been flipped upside down, there are boxes everywhere, things getting packed away, and my mother sitting in the middle of the dining room floor sobbing as she packs my grandma’s china into boxes. Confused I just stand and stare at my mom until she realizes she is no longer alone in the house.

“Hailey! I didn’t hear you come in”, as she wipes tears from her face, “come up here honey we need to talk.”

I feel my heart drop and seep down deep into my gut. Something is wrong but I can’t put my finger on what it is. I go and sit next to my mom on the floor of our dining room.

“What’s wrong? Why is everything getting boxed up?” I mumbled.

“Hailey, I am not happy anymore”, my mom manages to get a few words out between her sobs, “I can’t be the mom and person I want to be to you and your brother and sisters while still being with your dad, do you understand?”

I want to feel sorrow for her, I want to be sympathetic, but my brain is having a hard time processing what the packing and moving means and I retreat to my room instead.

Once I manage to make it to my bedroom I break down. My parents are getting a divorce. My family is broken. For the next few hours I lay on my bed sobbing thinking about how much my life was about to change. I was so excited to start school and volleyball in a couple of weeks but now all I can think about is how my family is falling apart and how I have to be the strong one for my younger siblings through it all.

In that realization, I stood up wiped the tears from my eyes, and started packing my room up box by box, memory by memory. Then I went upstairs and gave my mom the biggest hug. It felt like we held on to each other for hours. I can’t even imagine or wrap my head around how hard this is going to be for her. She is losing her partner, she is taking her children away from their father, but she needed to do it to find happiness in her life again. After the anger and the sadness subsided I realized just how brave my mom was as a woman for wanting to find happiness.

The next few months were a blur, school started and sports were in full swing, but I had my mind on a million other things. There were lawyers, and long phone calls, there were custody battles, and arguing.

Although I am all smiles on the outside, my insides feel like they are on fire. I am hurting, and emotional, yet have no way to express it. To cope with my buried emotions I distracted myself with sports. Any way to avoid either of my parents I found a way. I didn’t understand. This was supposed to be a new and exciting year, this year was supposed to be about me, but life got in the way instead. I didn’t understand how the divorce was helping, it seemed that my parents were arguing more now than when they were together. I don’t see an end to this nightmare anywhere near the horizon.

I remember as a kid having my friends with divorced parents complain about going between homes, and at the time I didn’t get it. I was always the person saying “but what about two christmases? two rooms? two allowances? that sounds awesome”, but after it happened to me I finally understood the hurt in their voices growing up when talking about how their parents were divorced. Their families weren’t complete anymore, and now mine was not either.

Fast forward one year. I am now entering my freshman year of high school, and something amazing happens that makes all the hurt and pain from the last year worth it. Both my parents met someone new, my dad was living his life as a new bachelor, and between taking care of us kids and work, he was trying to find his own ‘new’ version of happiness. My mom on the other hand met someone that changed everything for my family. His name is TJ Turner.

My mom had mentioned to me and my brother that she started seeing someone, and that he was going to come over for dinner that evening. At dinner we met, we laughed and played games, and for a moment I was completely happy. I saw how happy my mom was and suddenly everything that has happened up to that point was worth it. In the months to come, their relationship escalated and we decided to move in with him in December.

The moving process began once again, so box by box I packed up my life memory by memory. We loaded the car up and drove seven miles out into the country to our new home. Pulling in the driveway I saw a huge oak tree just like the one at my old house, and that is when I knew that I was finally home again.