A Mother’s Story
By Rian, and Of course Teresa Salinas.
My mom’s name is Teresa. She grew up in Johnson County, and met her high school sweetheart David, when she was a sophomore in high school. They both attended Shawnee Mission Northwest high school although he was getting ready to transfer to St. Thomas Aquinas. They started dating, and fell in love. They started talking about what life was going to look like after they graduated high school, and actually made a ten year plan.
Like lots of teenagers they decided to take their relationship to the next level and had sex. Again like lots of teenagers they thought they were invisible, and didn’t use protection. Within a month of losing their virginity they found out they were pregnant. My mom was really sick, and having a lot of stomach issues. They told her she had ulcers, but they were also concerned she had Crohn’s disease, so my grandma took her to several doctors appointments to rule it out. At one doctor’s appointment they did an ultrasound. When the doctor met with my mom and grandma afterwards he told her I have good news and I have bad news. He said the good news is you don’t have Crohn’s disease, but the bad news is you’re 8–9 weeks pregnant, but you have multiple options.
Both my mom and my grandma were in shock and crying, but my grandma looked at the doctor and said we don’t have any options and they walked out. In the parking lot, my grandma hugged my mom and told her everything was going to be okay, and they were going to get it through it.
My mom was 16, and very scared, but she knew from that point on someone else depended on her and they were more important then anything else. My mom was an average student, but immediately turned things around and became an honor roll student. My mom and David her “baby daddy” as she called him didn’t have things easy as you can imagine they were judged fiercely, and no one thought they would make it together and worse they thought any child raised by teenage parents would fail too. Well if you knew my mom you would learn that those comments and attitude just fueled her to push harder. Davey was born on April 23, 1995, 2 days before their junior prom, and 4 days before she turned 17.
My mom finished her junior year of high school while working part-time, and caring for Davey. She lived with my grandparents, and ultimately graduated high school as an honor student in 1996. Both my mom and David enrolled in Johnson County Community College as full-time students. Although my mom stayed in school her main goal was to have her family together. She flipped her coursework to be part-time and started working full-time. When my mom was 19, and Davey was 3, my mom, David, and Davey got their first apartment together. They continued to work and go to school, and slowly work towards their dream of a college degree.
On June 10, 2000, at the age of 22, they were married, and 5 year old Davey was their ring bearer. They continued to fight for their dreams, while proving everyone wrong and built their first home in June 2001.
In May 2004, they both graduated with their Bachelor degrees together, and they welcomed a beautiful curly headed baby girl (me obviously) on July 26, 2005. In case you haven’t already figured out…spoiler alert David is also my dad. My parents just celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary. My mom is a Senior Manager and owns the strategy for Affirmative Action & Equal Opportunity at Cerner Corporation and my dad is a Recruiting Executive.
In case you wondered what happened to Davey. He’s now 25 years old. He graduated high school in 2014 with a 4.44 GPA, and went to KU and earned a Bachelors Degree in Information Syste
ms Technology and a Bachelors Degree in Business Analytics in 2018. He’s successfully adulting on his own, and working at Kiewit Engineering in Lenexa.
As you can tell by the statistics my parents story is very rare. They fought long and hard to be together and prove everyone wrong.