Married at Fourteen and Now an Award-winning Author

Sometimes you do things that aren’t the best choice. That is what happened to me. My odyssey through obstacles began when I was twelve, when I decided I wanted to get married to get away from my emotionally abusive mother. When I fell in love and married at fourteen, I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world, a sort of modern fairy tale princess embarking on a lifetime of romantic bliss. As it turned out, my marriage was far more imprisoning than living with my parents had been. Only after dropping out of school after eighth grade and giving birth to my first child at fifteen, did I realize what a rut I was in. I couldn’t even get the lowest of jobs without lying about my education. My choices had not set me on course for a rewarding life.

Being a junior high dropout was a huge obstacle to overcome and having a child made it even harder. But I never gave up. Even after I finished high school and college and was accepted into a graduate program in zoology, my troubles weren’t over. There are many ways a marriage or romantic relationship can go awry, and I experienced several of them before finally getting it right in 2002, when I married my current husband—forty years after my search for true love began!

Lest it sound like all my own obstacles were external, I will say right now that they were not. As a teenager, I overindulged in alcohol and was anorexic and clueless about the way the world works on top of it. Also, I was naïve about romantic love and unable to assess a relationship’s potential well into adulthood.

I hope my story will give other women the courage to get away from abusive spouses, pursue their educational and career goals, and overcome their own shortcomings. I lost myself when I got married at fourteen, but I found myself again. I think others can find their lost selves, too, and that this is the most important search we can ever undertake, not only for ourselves, but also for our children.

I now am a published author have found fulfillment in romance, marriage, motherhood, and high accomplishments in both the arts and sciences.I hold an M.A. in English and M.F.A. in creative writing from San Francisco State University, an M.A. in zoology and a Ph.D. in science and mathematics education from the University of California at Berkeley.

My recently released memoir Married at Fourteen: A True Story (Heyday Books 2012) is something I hope will help troubled teens, young mothers and anyone told they couldn’t do something or thought of giving up. I hope my story can help others believe in themselves and find personal fulfillment against all odds.

Find me at: http://www.lucillelangday.com