FAQ: How Does Your Family Feel About Your Life?
ByMy parents, brother, grandparents, etc. have always been nothing but supportive of Joe and me. We are very blessed in having two families who support us and love us, as well as a great church family and friendship network.
My family has always welcomed Joe warmly and is as supportive of his career as I could hope for. I know it has not been easy for them though for a variety of reasons:
1. They expected me to finish the schooling path I began. My undergraduate degree was in Communication Sciences and Disorders. This is the first part of the education process on the way to becoming a speech-language pathologist or audiologist. In this line of work though, you must have a graduate degree in able to work in that career. So when I met Joe my junior year, I was starting the process of looking at graduate schools and preparing for my GRE’s. I knew enough about professional athletics though to know that he would most likely not have a job in the same place for 2 years in order for me to finish my graduate degree. Joe and I both felt that building a strong foundation for our marriage was more important than me obtaining my graduate degree, so that I would travel with him. I will go into this issue more when I answer the question about why I travel and don’t stay home and work/go to school. But for me to give up my schooling without having actually finished (I did graduate and get my BS) was hard for my parents.
2. There is not a whole lot of consistency to our schedule. My family has learned to understand that we don’t always know when we are going to be around. Thankfully my parents have learned (like me) to go with the flow and learn to adapt. They have always been open to us dropping in to visit with little prior notification, staying for longer than we anticipated or not being able to make special family events.
3. Having your grandkids across an ocean is not easy. For both of our families, when we had children it got even harder. I am sure I will not fully understand until I am a grandparent myself, but I know ti is hard to miss much of your grandchildren’s childhood because they live overseas the majority of the year. Thankfully technology is now such that our kids do not come back seeing our families as strangers. With my parents, we Skype for about 15 minutes every weekday morning. My parents have made the effort to be up at 4:30am every morning so that after they exercise and shower, they can talk with us for a short time before heading off to work. I think this has made a huge difference in their relationships with the kids. My parents are just a normal part of their everyday life in an nontraditional kind of way.
Overall, my parents (and all of my family) has been extremely supportive, loving and encouraging through our entire marriage and my experience of being a professional athlete’s wife.
