Mom is the greatest title I’ve ever held.
It’s the most important one I have, and it will always be my priority.
It’s also why I’ve been a little absent from Substack lately.
If my kids need me, I’ll figure out a way to be there.
It is easier now than ever before, because I have more autonomy.
I’m living life on my own terms, and it feels pretty great.
It wasn’t always this way.
And at times, it was really challenging.
Especially when my kids were younger.
I never envisioned myself as a single mom.
But not everything goes according to plan.
Sometimes things are chosen for us, not by us.
In fact, all I ever wanted was to be a stay-at-home mom.
To me, it’s the most important job there is.
Instead, I spent nearly three decades in corporate leadership, and raised my girls on my own.
When my kids were little, I traveled frequently for work.
I would take the first flight out and the last flight home so I could minimize my time away.
That meant getting up at 3 a.m. and getting home at 10 p.m.
Before every trip, I packed everything up for my kids to stay with their grandparents.
I dropped them off before and picked them up after.
I left an itinerary of their events for the day.
My girls helped make their own lunches and learned responsibility in their earliest elementary years.
On one trip, I arrived at the client by 8 a.m., which was normal for an enterprise relationship I managed.
The people I was meeting with decided to work from home that day and did not feel the need to tell me.
I had flown in and arrived at their office for our scheduled in-person meeting, only to find out that I didn’t need to travel at all that day.
All of that, for a meeting that never happened.
Another time, I was 500 miles away when my dad called. My mom was in the hospital, and he couldn’t pick the girls up from school.
I relied on a friend my girls had never met.
They were skeptical, because she was a stranger to them.
She offered them snacks, and my oldest instructed my youngest not to take them.
It was comical and immensely stressful at the same time.
I had to excuse myself from the meeting, buy my own plane ticket home in a snowstorm, and pick them up around 10 p.m.
These are the things single moms are faced with while they act like everything is okay.
In all their school years, I missed only one function.
It was my youngest’s kindergarten music program. I had a required work trip for our annual sales conference.
My oldest, just two years older, videoed it for me so I could feel like I was a part of it.
I’m still mad about missing it.
Through all of it, my girls thriving was what mattered the most to me.
You have the responsibility of a human life.
You are guiding another person to live with integrity.
To do the right thing and make a difference.
To show up as the very best version of themselves.
It’s not for the faint of heart.
They don’t raise themselves.
There’s no material compensation.
And much of the time, there is little reassurance or appreciation.
The reward is when they start to mirror the values you reinforced.
You witness them making the exact right choice all on their own.
Restating something you told them a million times.
Tell the truth. Do the right thing, even when no one is watching. Treat others the way you want to be treated.
Now I hear my daughters say it back to me.
At parent-teacher conferences, my oldest daughter’s English teacher read me a paper she wrote about me.
About all I’ve done for my kids, the sacrifices I’ve made, and how she’s probably never told me how much she appreciates it.
That’s the glory in it all.
In my eyes, moms are superheroes.
I don’t feel single moms get the recognition they deserve.
So for all the single moms, you deserve your roses and then some.
This is not an easy path.
It can be extremely lonely and isolating at times.
You rarely receive invitations because most functions are for couples.
There are the inevitable judgments and assumptions.
You learn to navigate it.
You count your blessings.
And you remember that there is always someone who has a greater challenge.
I’ve known several of these women over the years.
Some ahead of me and some behind me in the journey.
But for whatever reason, we seem to find one another.
It’s like a single mom sisterhood.
And in the most lovely way, we support each other.
We get it. We understand more than anyone ever will.
We’ve had to make sacrifices that we may not have anticipated.
We rarely got a day off or time to do what we wanted.
If we got sick, we still had to show up to do all the things others depended on.
Once, I twisted my ankle so severely, I was basically immobile for both my daughter’s birthday and my own. We are two days apart.
We couldn’t do anything because I was busy elevating my leg, but I still had to make meals and do basic mom duties.
I was so disappointed, and I felt even more terrible for disappointing my daughter.
And then there’s the heavy lifting. Yardwork is my least favorite.
Just this week, I injured my ribs trying to wash and dry my rug and put it away for the winter.
As a single mom, you sometimes lose touch with your femininity while managing all the household responsibilities, including those that are more traditionally male.
But I would not change a thing.
If you are a single mom, or were raised by one, I see you.
You carry every single memory with you.
That’s the silver lining.
I’d love to hear: who was in your corner?