By Sheana Ochoa On the morning Adam Lanza discharged countless bullets on two rooms full of children and staff in Connecticut I was sound asleep next to my four-year-old son in Los Angeles. His grandpa was visiting and using his room so he slept with Mommy and Daddy. On the morning of the […]
By: Sheana Ochoa Here I am with my dad before we walked down the aisle. Pictures can be so deceiving. That morning I had to take an ambien in order to nap; if I hadn’t napped, I would’ve felt very weak around 4pm when this picture was taken because I have an energy-depleting disease. Just […]
By: Sheana Ochoa After getting married I knew my status as a blogger for The Next Family would have to change from “single mother by choice” to “urban dweller”, which, I told my editor, didn’t sound as sexy. I wondered how an urban dweller is representative of a modern family, the audience to which The […]
By: Sheana Ochoa Yesterday afternoon, I received a call from my brother saying that my dad had a heart attack. This happened two months ago as well, and it ended up not being an attack, but a blockage, for which stints had to be applied in his arteries. Although the first thing I wanted to […]
By: Sheana Ochoa In my family of five siblings you can imagine all the trouble and worry we put our mother through. She has always provided for us, bailed us out, and held us together. Without her forcing us kids to be there at Thanksgiving and Christmas, I don’t know if I’d see my […]
By: Sheana Ochoa I’m in love with my two-year-old son. I know I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. Because believe me, he is a gas. Even though the first words out of his mouth when he wakes, when I get him from daycare, and all through the evening are “I wanna,” I’m in […]
By: Sheana Ochoa In college I took a class called “Historical Jesus”, investigating the life of the real man who had older siblings and eventually married. Whether accurate or not, it made me question what I had learned as a little girl that Jesus was immaculately conceived by a virgin and he himself was celibate. […]
By: Sheana Ochoa I’m glad Noah is a boy. This is a sexist remark and I admit it. If we lived in a gynocratic society, I’d wish he were a girl. As a mother, I just want him to have the smoothest path through this unwieldy road of life. This morning my fiancé and […]
By: Sheana Ochoa I’m writing under duress because my son is crying as my fiancé puts antibiotic drops in his ears. Once they’re done, he will come to mommy and I will have to stop writing because he is going to want me to rock him or play hide and seek or get him […]
By: Sheana Ochoa . If you’ve followed my blog, you know that in recent days I went from being a single mother by choice to an engaged mother and life partner. We (suddenly it’s become “we” instead of “me”) gave ourselves a month and a half to find an apartment, which turned into six eager, […]
