Rebecca Meyer
This 28-year-old woman’s stepsister, Lindsay, also 28, got pregnant when she was 17, and now she has an 11-year-old daughter named Shiv.
Lindsay’s pregnancy was a difficult period of her life, as well as for her entire family as a whole. Throughout this time, Lindsay’s parents nearly filed for divorce due to the situation, and Lindsay dealt with a lot of tension with her ex. Everyone’s lives were altered forever.
Later on, she ended up moving a couple of hours away from her family, and now she would have to take a flight for a couple of hours if she wanted to visit Lindsay and their parents.
“I am not really big on kids, and Lindsay and I barely talk, so I didn’t have much of a relationship with Shiv as she grew up. I’d just show up to birthday dinners and bring gifts, and I contributed to an education fund my stepfather set up for her, but I never really knew her. Earlier this year, Shiv was doing a family tree project at school, and I guess she got interested in my mother’s family and started Googling everybody,” she said.
Her stepfather told her that Shiv was asking for information about her, and Shiv ended up tracking her down on social media. Through Shiv’s investigation, she learned that she loves horses, which was something she had in common with Shiv.
After this, her stepfather told her that Shiv was wondering if she could reach out to her. She agreed, and a while later, Shiv sent her a message on social media. From then on, she and Shiv have been communicating frequently. She thinks that for a child, she seems pretty great.
“When she came to visit me with the parents over the summer, we went riding almost every day, and even though it was her first time doing it, she was a natural, and she really loved it. Since then, she’s been constantly talking about it and saying how much she misses it. My parents got her a block of ten riding group lessons,” she explained.
While Shiv was thrilled with this gift and has been having a blast, her parents aren’t able to continue paying for more lessons after the riding lessons they purchased run out. Shiv loves horses and riding immensely, but Lindsay, who currently is essentially a single mother, also doesn’t have the money to fund more riding lessons.
So, she got in touch with Lindsay, offering to fund Shiv’s private riding lessons. She even offered to pay for all the equipment and anything else related to riding that Shiv would need, including competitions. Since she had enough disposable income and she felt grateful to her parents and her stepfather for being there for her through her hobbies growing up, she wanted to do the same for Shiv.
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