For all the men and women who didn’t plan to raise their children alone, but are doing it anyway.
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I give all parents props for being brave— you have to be. The moment a baby is on your horizon, you wear your heart outside your chest with no armor. Parenting is scary daily because loving anyone that much makes us vulnerable to being ravaged by loss. It also gives us extraordinary hope and joy and changes our perspective on the world. And, it gives us opinions on things like how much sugar should go in a juice box and how fast a child should run with one of those infuriating miniature shopping carts.
There are lots of single parents around the world spending our first nights away from kids who spent their tiny lives falling asleep in our laps, or cuddled into that space in the crook of our arm each night.
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Some parents choose to become single parents. I didn’t. Not at first. I suppose I did choose it later, after the divorce, when I had opportunities to partner up again, but turned them away. I never saw it that way at the time. Regardless, it took me some time to settle in to my initially unwanted title of single mom. At first, I hoped it would be short lived. Because I felt lots of things, but two things overwhelmingly: lonely and pitied. So I decided instead, or at least in addition to these, to be brave. I figured I would need it.
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And I did need it. My daughters were six and three years old when my ex and I split. I had only ever spent two nights away from them. There are lots of single parents around the world spending our first nights away from kids who spent their tiny lives falling asleep in our laps, or cuddled into that space in the crook of our arm each night. Some of us feel just fine, knowing that our child will be in good, safe hands through the time away from us, however long that might be. But plenty of us don’t know. And plenty of us don’t feel fine at all. And we could make ourselves truly sick with anxiety and worry, if we allowed that. So we have to be brave, or have faith, or give it to God, or punch something, or cry ourselves to sleep for a while.
The likelihood, for those of us divorced single parents, is that our kids are going to be parented by someone else. Someone whose selection we have no control over. We don’t get to pick him or her. How crazy is that? Remember when you were so in love with your ex (hopefully) that you (maybe) wanted to have a baby with them? That you thought there was no one else on this earth (if you were lucky) that you wanted to have a baby with? Well how ironic that now, that once chosen person, gets to choose someone else to have YOUR baby with, sort of. To raise your baby with. YOUR BABY! I don’t care if that baby is one month or 11 years old. It hurts. The hurt of your ex being with someone new is a nothing, a blip, in comparison to the pain of your child being in the hands of someone new. Someone you don’t know and you don’t trust. And that someone new could be an anybody. I won’t list the potential nightmares. But you know.
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Once upon a time, I took my precious six and three-year-old daughters shopping at Trader Joes. My six-year-old was excited to talk about her weekend with her dad. “And then,” she said taking her little breath in her long story, “we went to the park with daddy and mommy!”
It actually never occurred to me that my ex would have my kids call his girlfriend “mommy.”
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I was lifting a watermelon to put into the cart and my heart dropped. It actually never occurred to me that my ex would have my kids call his girlfriend “mommy.” I knew that even as an adult he felt guilty addressing his step-father as “dad” in front of his father. Because he didn’t want to hurt his father.
I held the watermelon tightly to my chest. “What do you mean, sweetie?” I said, “I didn’t go to the park with you.” “No,” my daughter said, “with my other mommy. My new mommy.” I took her and my three-year-old, and the unpaid for watermelon straight to the car where I could sob into the steering wheel. My three-year-old furrowed her brow and kept reaching for me. “Mommy is okay,” I said, “Mommy is going to be okay.” It would be pretty cool if, when you push a baby out of your vagina, you would be the only one she ever got to call mommy. Just sayin’.
Single parenting also requires bravery at holidays, especially that first holiday after your split. Easter happened to fall days after my divorce was final. I had my girls with me, in their matching floral dresses, all curly-haired and darling in front of the table spread with a ham that someone had been picking sugared flakes off of. My mother and stepdad and grandparents and brother and his girlfriend had all gathered, all wondering why so much of the sugar from the ham was already around my daughters’ mouths.
We aren’t a family who prays. We usually just collectively sigh and dig in. So as the newly naked Honey Baked Ham was carved and passed out by my step-dad, my older daughter said, “Guess what! Mommy has a baby in her tummy!” My family, those good, decent people, were kind enough to not look at me. Since my divorce was only a couple of days old, the pronouncement did sting. I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later — I had put a lot of unjustified faith in the curse I had placed on my ex’s penis. My daughter was confused at the silence that settled as she quietly munched her ham. In better, less shocking, circumstances, we could’ve been more supportive. Of course we did care — hugely. My kids were going to have siblings. Siblings I didn’t plan for them! That didn’t come from me! It seems so obvious, but I didn’t plan this when I planned my kids. I planned that their siblings would be planned by me. Plans, plans, plans. For single parents, plans have to go out the window. Trust may go with plans, for a while. Life dishes stuff and you just have to take it. And breathe, be brave, have faith, give it to God, punch something, and cry until you go to sleep.
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So many single moms and dads make me look like a Lilliputian in the bravery department. They face far worse than I have — financial hardship, illness, being isolated from a support system. I bow down to them. If you are raising kids alone and surviving and thriving in spite of how hard it can be, I bow down to you and kiss every toe on your feet (after placing some saran on them).
That’s it. I just wanted to say I see you there. I see you in the drug store with your snot encrusted feverish four year old lying like an old coat in your arms while you search the back of the cough syrup for suspicious ingredients. I know it’s because you don’t have a partner to send to the store, and you wouldn’t leave your kid home alone.
Single parents have to have their shit together just to get out the door on any given Tuesday.
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I see you at the park, online dating on your phone while sitting in the sandbox, half paying attention to the mud soup your kid is adding leaves to. I see you at work — I see the shadow pass on your face when school calls because you don’t have a back-up person to pick up your child. And, just so you know, I think you’re brave and I don’t feel sorry for you. I know it sucks to be pitied and you certainly don’t deserve it. Single parents have to have their shit together just to get out the door on any given Tuesday.
How cool would it be if we had single parent villages where you could go for a while to heal from the emotional hurt while people who had been through it made you casserole and babysat your kids and you all ate together around a huge long table. And you could stay as long as you needed, until you launched yourself into a new relationship or didn’t, until you struck out alone or maybe not if you never wanted that. Maybe I will make a place like that someday. It could be like coming home again, but without judgment and failure following you like two hungry dogs. I’m not sure what I would call it. But I know I’d feel better about launching my kids into adult life, about the risk of marriage and the risk of divorce and the risk of going it alone, if places like that existed.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock