Sheila Justin of Amherst is a single mom for four. She has three children at home and a 28-year-old son who is out on his own and going to have a baby in June. She says she does pretty much all of it on her own and doesn’t ask for a lot of help. She finds it a little bit empowering and she is used to doing that and gets compliments from people.
Her friends call her Wonder Woman. Sheila has two businesses. With three kids at school she needed flexibility. She has been an RN for 26 years. Her first son, she felt she missed out on a lot of time. When you work as a nurse it is weekends, holidays, and she says she felt like she missed out on a lot. Sixteen years ago, when baby Alex came along, she decided to do things differently. She went back to school for financial planning. She received all her certifications. She owns her own company and continues to work as a financial advisor, but she says it always felt like something was missing. She says she has that passion for nursing, and she thought what could I do? She got certified to give Botox, fillers and IV therapy which put her back in the medical field but with a flexible schedule.
On February 1st she realized her right eye had a blur in it. She called her doctor and he had her go to the emergency room, and they found a tumor behind her right eye. With Sheila facing risk of a stroke and possibly going blind, doctors at Roswell moved fast to teat the tumor. Sheila says it was very scary. She says she didn’t know how to handle it. She was thinking more about the children than herself.
Sheila says she feels that there are a lot of single women out there that don’t want to ask for help but she thinks that our families and friends that truly care about us see the struggle and are willing to help and it isn’t a sign of weakness to ask for help and you realize how much more you can accomplish if you just reach out to somebody.
What does Mother’s Day mean to her this year? She says she is overwhelmed with this great love she has for her children. She says she can’t say anymore because she is going to cry. This year is more special, more than it ever was because for a moment she just wasn’t sure. The good news is that the tumor was benign and Western New York’s Wonder Woman has it under control.
