Thanks for this image, winecountrymom.blogs.santarosamom.com
Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.
-Eat, Pray, Love
I’m here to write about being a single mom living in Richmond. It sounds simple enough, but single motherhood has its own assortment of issues outside of “normal” motherhood topics over which I could wax philosophical about if you’d lend your ear for 10 hours. And how do you pick just one thing to talk about for your first blog post?
And what’s normal? What’s…not normal? Scratch that – let’s ask, what’s not traditional and how do we feel about it?
My family involves me, my ex husband, and our 3-year old son. We share custody one week at a time. We’re a co-parenting unit trying, some days not very successfully, to put all of our emotional baggage aside and do what’s best for our little one. This means two houses, two bedrooms, two sets of clothes, and two sets of toys. This means we spend some holidays together, and some apart. This means that for 26 weeks out of the year, I am without my son. This is my new normal.
I hesitate to use the “single mom” label. Because what does that mean? I feel like it implies that my ex is a deadbeat dad who isn’t involved in his son’s life, and, luckily, in our situation the exact opposite is true. My ex and I have become co-parents. We have discussions over parenting styles, consistency, and personal preferences (can he not wear skinny jeans, please). We talk about what our son is doing at preschool and compare notes over his ever-changing food habits (seriously, the kid just stopped liking macaroni and cheese). Much of our parenting is done over the phone or through text message. We have ground rules and I can honestly say that we respect them.
Thanks for this image, cheynesuker.com
This may be my new normal, but I have to accept that it’s not everyone else’s. My friends aren’t quite sure what to do with me or even if I want to talk about it (P.S. Ladies, I do – CALL ME). They aren’t sure of the weeks I have my son and the weeks I don’t, and so often I’m left out of plans. My family whispers my ex’s name when they bring it up, almost like it’s a taboo word. And maybe I’m just hyper-sensitive, but whenever I’m out with my son eyes always dart to my naked left hand ring finger.
For a while I tried to explain to people that I wasn’t just a single mom but that I was a “co-parenting mom.” That drew a lot of puzzled faces and long explanations so I tried new labels like the tongue-in-cheek “mom of one, wife to none,” “fully capable mom without a husband,” and “matriarch.” All of these labels returned the same quizzical looks so I sat down one night and decided that I needed to make peace with what I was feeling. I needed to understand why I was grappling with coming to grips with what was true: I am a single mom.
It’s all thanks to fear. I’m scared that I won’t be accepted by my friends and family – even my coworkers and community. I’m scared that I’m a failure at being a mom and a failure at love. I worry over 100 thousand scenarios each day, most of them so far from being fathomable it’s silly that I even waste time worrying about them. So instead of owning who I am, I tried to come up with new labels to mask my fear. In the end, I realized that I’m just not being honest.
So this is my pledge to you as I write about being a single mom in Richmond: I will tell the truth. It’s not like I was ever not going to tell the truth to you; I was just going to tell an abridged version of the truth, you know, the one I was comfortable with. At least until we all got to know each other. The truth of the matter is, the truth scares me.
But I don’t think that anyone reading this wants my abridged version, and frankly I’d like to come to terms with being a single mom myself, even if it’s in a very public way. My rose-colored glasses are likely not the same shade of pink as yours, so what’s the point?
This is me. I am a single mom. And I would love it if you read along with me as I discover myself again.
