The little engine that could

Step-daughter texted me the other day and said “let’s go get a coffee”.  Imagine my surprise!  We’ve spent bits of time here and there recently and she helped me bring home a new rescue dog, stayed a couple of nights while she was working shift work on that temporary job she had, that type of thing.

Shortly after she started her temporary job, she applied for, interviewed and got a full-time permanent position with a call centre.  It’s pretty much shift work but again, for someone her age, that’s not really a big deal.  She has already started and is still in training and loves it.  The people are really nice, she knows a lot more of them than she thought she did and she knows she needs to do this to reach some goals that have always been there, just somewhat out of reach.

She looked good for step-daughter.  She was clear-eyed, coherent and relatively calm.  She has anxiety issues and some serious OCD issues but for her, she did well.  There was no evidence of heavy drug or alcohol use that was pretty evident in the past.  I’m surprised but really pleased.  She had pretty much been on the edge of falling down that big black hole but for some reason she has decided she doesn’t want it anymore and she wants to succeed.

I’m not a big advocate of kids moving out on their own as soon as they hit 18 but for step-daughter, I’m in full support.  That girl needs out of her mom’s place – badly.  It’s not a healthy place under any circumstances and now that she has started to take the steps to fix her life and get better, she needs to be somewhere that she can actually do that.

We sat down and worked out a budget based on what she is making.  Figured out how much monthly expenses would be and how much she actually needs to move and get services hooked up.  We guessed at figuring out a food budget and step-daughter will go shopping with me some day soon and we will go through and figure out what her average weekly shopping bill would be.  We debated one bedroom versus two (and getting a roommate to share costs) and tried to cover as many different pieces as we could.

I’m very hopeful.  For the first time in living memory, step-daughter is taking the steps that will allow her to reach her goals.  Before she wanted different things for her future but wasn’t necessarily prepared to work for them.  Now she is.  She’s scared and nervous and anxious but she’s still making herself do it.  This is the first time she’s ever had to rely on herself in this way and she is committed to not letting her parents swoop in and rescue her.  I hope she can stick with it because she has a lot of potential.  Here’s keeping your fingers crossed!