Journey of a Determined Mother and Teacher

“I always wanted to be a mom and a teacher,” she said, glancing back at her toddler from the driver’s seat of her car, a Laser Red Ford Expedition. Thirty-six-year-old mom of four, Julie O’Neal, invariably knew what she wanted to do with her life. Growing up in a Florida suburb with a single mom of three meant that money was always tight, plus, her mom was in school and had to work full time to support the family. They used to go out to eat at Hot and Now, a restaurant chain advertising dirt cheap, and probably not high quality, meals, and still not be able to afford a drink for everyone, so one was bought and shared. It was justifiably not the “American Dream” nevertheless, definitely the American Reality.

As a young adult in the late 1990s

O’Neal then went back to school to follow her teaching dream, all while taking care of her two young daughters, my younger sister and myself. Money was tight, but she did everything to make sure they had everything they needed. Often reflecting on the hardships in her own childhood, we always had snacks and did not rely on the horrifying free lunches from public schools as our meals. She even took up being a sales person at a car repair shop before getting remarried, all to provide for us. Her husband is a tall and fit engineer named Bronze, with a son from his previous marriage, and together they have a happy, and hilarious, three-year-old named Silver. I am proud to say that my mom is only one semester away from getting her teaching certification and doing what she actually wants to do, teach children. Her current idea of the American Dream is “just to be happy and not worrying about what you have or don’t have…Having what you need,” she explained. Then jokingly singing the Rolling Stones “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you just might find, you get what you need,” which is basically the motto in the O’Neal household. The American Dream is a question ever floating around the mind of almost everyone, and ever-changing. When asked if she would do her whole life over again and have it be the same, knowing what she knows now about happiness, she said she would, because her family is her life and “if I changed anything I might not be here with you kids and Bronze,” she told me with a brief smile. She is inexorably living her true American Dream, and doing it without