Single Mamas, This One Is For You
September 21, 2020
Single mamas, I write this to you today.
I also write it to those who don’t feel so sure about their future, wonder if there will ever be another way.
I was once you.
I sat in a relationship in fear and grief, knowing what a change would mean for us all.
I walked away 3 years later, with a belief that this was it, just us.
How beautifully enough that was.
In many ways I want to end the story there.
Too often we hear of the rescue of a single mother and not her own rise.
We see her partnered and feel “phew, she made it”.
Trust me: I made it. Every single day of single motherhood, I was making it.
Yet I carried this belief that BECAUSE I was a mother, I should prepare myself for life unpartnered.
For the most part, I was ok with this.
But I still felt aches from the corners of myself that craved more. The bits of me that wanted to believe it was possible. The romanticized version of a life after divorce.
I met this man in the mess.
And I mean MESS.
I was working two jobs, living at my parents. Our relationship built on stolen moments with a woman unsure if she even could trust anything, let alone herself.
I remember when we did activities together and I watched him realize how utterly unpredictable, stressful, embarrassing life in public with kids can be.
I witnessed him absorb what a meltdown looks like.
I also remember in the chaos of a bedtime as I was whipping up the stairs, he said something calmly that changed me forever…
“I love them too, you know”
This whole time, I had assumed this man was coping with the messes because he wanted to be with me. Perhaps that’s how it started and it turned into more, but it DID turn into relationships with each of us.
This wasn’t a rescue mission.
This was an opportunity.
The facets of who HE was had the opportunity to shine between us all.
I stopped feeling sorry when the kids weren’t at their best, they deserved to be loved whole too.
I stopped feeling guilty for the new parental role Shane filled, because what an opportunity to love.
And finally, I shed the feeling of being a burden, and chose to see us for the bonus pack we always were 💕