Hi, Shay and Fran–tell us about yourselves!
Fran: I’m twenty-seven and Shay is twenty-nine. We had our first kid when I was turning seventeen and she was eighteen. We were pretty much children when we met. But as soon as we had our first child, we moved from Virginia to Tennessee, and everything changed.
Shay: Having kids forced us to become adults while still trying to figure ourselves out as human beings.
Fran: We never had parents who taught us anything.
Shay: My mother ran away when I was three. My dad’s an alcoholic and my grandmother adopted me. Mothering was something brand new to me. I had never seen or had a genuine love with a mother besides my grandmother. Just being a mum was difficult—learning to love a human who’s yours while finding and loving yourself. I was born in Chicago and Fran was from Central America. In our pre-teen years, we both moved from our hometowns. I suffered from depression at a young age after that—being ripped from my city while starting to figure out what happened to my mother. I felt so unloved and alone, until I met Fran, who had gone through a similar childhood.
What happened after you fell pregnant?
Fran: We stuck together. And honestly, if we hadn’t moved out of Virginia, I probably would have been dragged back into all the partying.
Shay: We kind of grew out of the people who surrounded us—they were suppressing us from growing. What helped us to develop was having children.
