Rocketed
In 1978 a space ship, known as my husband’s departure from our marriage, rocketed me onto a mysterious planet, and I found myself in a place I knew nothing about. I had landed in alien world--inhabited by women raising children alone. The men who had fathered the children of these single mothers seemed to be creatures living in a different world. Their visits into this world that I was now living in were occasional, often temporary and sometimes nonexistant.
In l983 the spaceship landed again, taking me further into the outer limits of mothering alone. Late in August that year my daughters’ father died of a massive heart attack. He was 39. The terrain now became even more foreign, feeling arid, bleak, vast and empty. Despite the fact that I had a family who cared, a close male friend who loved my girls, and an ex in- law family who were committed to their grandchildren, I felt completely alone. The experience felt like living in a vacuum with no air, like the atmosphere had dried up and I had little hope of survival. I was enveloped only boy fear and confusion.
I had more questions than answers. What would happen to me and my girls? Would we keep our home? How would I support us? What kind of life would we have now? It was hard enough to adapt to being a divorced single mother, but I had been one of the lucky ones. Even though it wasn’t much, my ex husband had always sent the money he was supposed to. And it helped. He had been generous enough to pay some of the major yearly expenses too, like orthodontia and summer camp.
Now I was also a “widow.” Could I take on all that was to come? I was a new social worker, working part time at a local community center as Senior Adult Director. My salary was small. I was scared, sad, angry, and more often than not, in the beginning, immobilized and bewildered. Who would help me? How would I survive?
I had no clue.
Yet, with all the confusion and fear, somehow I managed to find new ways to cope and go on. Many of those ways have now become the fundamental principles of my life view and coping strategies. Having had to adapt to life on this new planet became a challenge that eventually inspired me to mobilize resources that I did not know I had in me.
Coming to grips with being a single mother motivated me, sometimes forced me, to grow in ways I might never have had I stayed in the more familiar world of married or partnered couples raising kids together. Of course like any single mother, I had choices to make. I could have given up, though I have no idea what that would have been like. My choice was determination to make a good life for my children, and for me.
Now, having seen the girls into successful adulthood, I would say that overall I have done okay. I have lived through the most difficult years of mothering alone. During that time there were some chillingly scary moments, like when I had to finance my older daughter’s entrance to college, and simultaneously hand over an enormous amount of cash to my ex’s widow for the half of our house that she’d inherited when he died.
Somehow I managed do all that and to get myself through other crises and transitions as well. With the support of a few loyal friends, and my mother, who helped to care for the children, I made it through Social Work School. I did not get much sleep in those years, often studying late into the night, or during the day in grocery lines and anywhere else I could grab two minutes. I found a way to build a career as a clinical social worker, and survived the end of a relationship with the man who had been a good friend to my girls and me after their father died. In l994 I took the risk to marry again, and took the big step with someone who had become a dear and trusted friend. I have seen my beautiful daughters mature into successful women whom I not only love, but also deeply respect. Now those “girls” are married women, mothering the grandchildren who are the lights and loves of their grandmother’s life.
Even with all this struggle and success, and a second marriage, I maintain a residence in the world of single motherhood; and I am often still surprised by feelings and reactions that I don’t expect. My second husband loves my children and adores our grandchildren, yet there are times when I still experience the sense that they are mine alone. Sometimes I can predict when these emotions will arise, and sometimes I cannot. Understanding the source of these emotional issues has always been very important to me.
What I have learned is that some issues depend on the past and current relationship with the ex, whether he lives close by, far away, or doesn’t live at all. Our issues will also vary based also on how we define ourselves, how we conduct our close relationships with important others, what our families of origin taught us, what our present supports are, and what developmental stages our children—and we-- are passing through.
With all of these variations and configurations of our lives and situations, one variable remains constant--STRESS! Being a single mother, in any combination of space, time and experience, is a big damn job!! It requires strength. It requires inner resources. It requires willingness, hopefulness, acceptance and the courage to know you are strong when you feel vulnerable. It requires that we transcend pettiness, disappointments, and our own grief and anger in order to offer our best selves to our children. When we are whole and authentic selves, we have our best shot at developing healthy children.
We must surmount many difficulties and reach deep into the strength of a solid core to see to it that our children grow well, and defy whatever myths or scientific studies that tell us that ‘broken homes’ produce broken children.
As I have lived my life on this once unknown planet and learned its ways, I have come to realize how many of us are here, doing this job of heroic proportions--managing work, children, and trying to have some sort of a personal life. Even when father lives down the block, the job is often still the mother’s. All of us, with children living in our homes or not, are single moms. All of us alone or with new partners of either gender, are single moms. We all share the unique experience of having immense and singular responsibilities, whether for a weekend, for a half year, or for a lifetime.
What I have come to realize is this. We all need kindred sisters who know what it is like to carry this incredible responsibility--being there for the kids whatever they are going through--without ‘losing it! We sisters know what it is like to pray every day to stay healthy physically, mentally, and emotionally --to keep going when we feel we are the bottom of a strange mountain too steep to climb.
You will find many of my experiences and those of other sisters in the book I am writing, “Soul Mothers’ Wisdom, Seven Insights For the Single Mother.” In this book is my goal to offer you the experience, hope, strength and courage that come from knowing that others are surviving the struggle too. It is my hope that you will feel less alone, less on an alien landscape, and more supported and more understood. I intend my book to be a companion that you can consult during your single mother journey. It is my intention that this book be not only about transcending the difficulties of the job, but actually about single motherhood as a path to spiritual and emotional growth.
It has been my experience that in facing and dealing effectively with single motherhood a woman can grow in ways she never would have imagined. If that spaceship hadn’t landed and swept me away, I might never have been inspired to remake myself. The make over isn’t one of glamour, but rather one of greater inner peace, self-esteem, and confidence in my Self.
Forever will I wish that my ex were still on planet Earth. But other than that, there is nothing I would change. I have come to accept with gratitude that the alien planet I learned how to inhabit and came to know for over 20 years has been my destiny—the road to and the substance of my personal evolution.