held back by family

Bridget cannot remember anything really awful happening to her when she was a child, but the fact that she was the sixth of eight children suggests that she probably had an uphill battle gaining attention and ego rewards – even for something as momentous as learning how to walk – and a sense of being nobody special in the family probably caused her to have big dreams about being somebody one day; dreams that her family warned her were out of her reach.

“I wanted to be a lawyer so that I could command respect from people, I suppose,” confides Bridget. “I was pushed around as a kid – my older brothers and sisters robbed me of toys and made me cry a lot – and marriage and motherhood were unfulfilling.”

“Everyone was holding me back from what I really wanted to do,” says Bridget, “so I waited until my youngest child was on her feet and then I went for it and gained a place at law school.”

“Had I not been married to an unsupportive husband and burdened with four kids, it’s possible that I could have continued with the law course and achieved the gold medal and ego rewards that I had been yearning for all of my life,” sighs Bridget, “but as it turned out, my parents and my husband were right – I was aiming far too high for my station in life.”

“While I was doing the law course I remember thinking that the last time I was this happy was when I was a child playing in a sandpit with building blocks,” says Bridget. “Only this time around the law school was my sandpit and my building blocks were my law books."

"I won’t hold my own children back, I will encourage them to follow their dream no matter how impossible it seems,” says Bridget, “and who knows, maybe I may try again with my own dreams when I am older.”

Read more about Bridget:

stations in life

what will the neighbors think?

dreams vs. husband