Tag: single parenting

Posted on

Surviving Single Parenthood

My kids are all grown now, 30, 28, and 22 year olds.  I’m very proud that they are all finding success and love in their life, pursuing their careers and their dreams, and no one went to jail or had issues with addiction.  I consider myself lucky.

I was a single mom for 12 years and those were really hard years.  When I say Surviving Single Parenthood, it’s not only the survival of the parent but also the survival of the child.  Unfortunately, the statistics out there don’t favor a lot of success on either end.

According to Census.gov in 2016, a majority of children still lived with two parents in the household (69%) with the next largest segment living with a single mom at 23%.  This number more than tripled from 1960 when that percentage was 8%.

Children of single parent households frequently grow up with a disadvantage of not having the same financial means of children from two parent households.  They are also more likely to experience poverty, lower high school graduation rates, and higher levels of unemployment than their two parent peers.

I have no idea how we survived each other looking back.  It was just so damn hard.  But I’m so thankful that we did.  I love them so much.

I think what made all the difference was my perseverance around getting an education.  I went to school for a year to become a Licensed Vocational Nurse. After working for a while in that role, I went to school to get my Bachelor’s degree in nursing.  I had help with Pell grants, student loans, WIC, food stamps, and the occasional and rare child support check.  But even with all of those resources, it was hard.  Many times, I dug change out of the couch, or found a dollar bill in a jacket, hawked some item just so I could pay a bill or buy bread and peanut butter.  I worked while I went to school for my bachelor’s degree and I would cart my kids around in our mini-van while I made home health visits before and after school.  I would leave the kids in the van with the windows open to color, play games, argue, or whatever.  I just didn’t have any other choice.

One semester, I didn’t get my student loan in time and there was no way I was going to be able to make the rent for the next two months.  I broke down and called my mom and said to her that I needed to send my two children to her (my youngest wasn’t born yet).  I told her that was my only choice as I would have to go stay in a dorm, couch surf, or live in a dumpster to finish that semester.  It wouldn’t be forever just to finish the semester.

My mom wanted me to move back to Texas at that time but that would’ve meant me giving up school and taking a chance of losing many of my credits.  I just couldn’t bear to do that.  I had worked so hard already to get there.  I didn’t want to be without my kids for two months either but I felt it was a sacrifice I would have to make to get through.

But I want you to hear what I was willing to do.  I was willing to live in the alley with my children at my mom’s house until I could finish that semester.  I really think this is the reason that we survived….I had a pathological determination to finish what I had started.

My mom was able to reach out to my dad (they were divorced) and convince him to assist her in helping me out with $500.  That’s all I needed to make it to the next semester and my next student loan disbursement.  I’m eternally grateful to my parents for that bail out.  I would’ve done whatever it had taken to get through that semester though.

As a result, I finished college 2 years later and became a registered nurse.  I was the first person in my family on both sides to obtain a college degree.

That education changed my life, improved my trajectory, and enabled me and my children to overcome the many obstacles and downsides of being raised in a single parent household because I was also raised in a single parent home.  It was still hard raising those kids.  Later I remarried, had my last child and several years later found myself alone again but with three.  If I hadn’t finished that degree, I’m not sure I would’ve survived that second go around at single parenthood.

Never underestimate the power of tenacity.  You know the great Winston Churchill once said, “when you’re going through hell, just keep going” and “never, ever, ever give up.”  He was a smart man.

 

 

 

Posted on

It’s Not Blood!

Raising kids is hard in the best of situations.  When you are a single parent, working hard to put a roof over your head and to put dinner on the table, raising kids can be a grind.  I went through this on my own and now my oldest daughter is going through it as well.  I did it with three kids for twelve years.  At the time it felt like the longest years of my life but I did survive….and luckily so did they.

This past week, I was reminded of how it hard it was.  My daughter FaceTimed me on Mother’s Day and I could tell she had been crying.  Her two youngest daughters are quite precocious and had gotten into a bottle of red nail polish.  When I say they got into it, I mean they got it all over them.  It was blood red nail polish and when she first sent me a picture of the mess, it looked like a scene from a serial killer movie.

She was so frustrated, so upset, and while I had to laugh a little inside because you know we all wish the “mother’s curse” on our kids, I had to remember how dang hard it was raising them by myself.

I let her talk then I reminded her of this story:

I was a LVN (Licensed Vocational Nurse) working for $7.49 an hour in 1991 when she and her little brother were about 4 and 2 respectively.  I had a part time live in nanny that I could only afford because we lived on the border of Texas and it cost me $50 per week.  That was a stretch at times even.  One morning I came home after working a 16 hour shift.  The nanny went home when I got there and I fed the kids cereal and put them in front of the television with one of their favorite movies.  I just wanted about 2 hours sleep.

So I laid down with the door of my bedroom almost shut in our 2 bedroom apartment.  I quickly fell asleep from pure exhaustion.  A bit later, I hear hysterical laughing from these two children and it woke me from my deep slumber.  I went into the living room to see what the commotion was about and they had emptied an entire gigantic Sam’s box of Cheerios on the floor and had danced on it until there was a fine layer of Cheerio dust about 1 inch thick all the way across the floor.  Seriously.

I’ve told my daughter this story several times and it is always a funny story now.  However, in that moment, I felt so defeated by these little lovely monsters.  I was exhausted almost to the point of being ill.  I was not well off.  That box of cereal probably cost me around $7 at the time (because of the size) and remember that represented one hour of work.  I could not afford to replace it at that time and now a whole two weeks worth of breakfast was on the floor.

Now the haters out there may say I was irresponsible to leave them in front of the television…all I can say to that is you are right but take a walk in my shoes….I didn’t have a lot of choices then.

I reminded my daughter to just take pictures of these events and breathe.  One day this will be a funny story for her as well.  Some of life’s toughest moments evolve to be comedic fodder later down the line.  My advice to all single parents….hang in there, enjoy as best as you can, take pictures of everything (good and bad), and breathe.  After all, it’s not blood!