Skip to main content

FAMILY MATTERS: On Moving and Single Moms




Moving.

A word I've despised since I was a little girl.

Well, this one was quite easy. We were upsizing (not downsizing).

I wondered, was it easier because we had moved a few times already?

(Another thing I despise.)

I will say this…

It wasn’t what I had planned.

In 1994, I met my best friend and future husband. I had dreams of consistency and an unbroken family (something I’d never had). I was happy, hopeful and in love.

11 years later, I requested a divorce from my children’s father (my husband of almost ten years) and it was difficult.  I still loved him, but it wasn’t working out…and well, he wasn’t working on it.

I was a stay at home mother with three children then (they were all under the age of 8; the youngest 10 months old). I had NO CLUE what was going to come of it, I just knew I needed out (and I needed my kids to be with me).

I had a mortgage, a truck payment and credit cards. He made 85k+  per year and was climbing. I still wanted out. I decided to assume his debt, bought him out of our house…then I walked.

I became a part-time (anything, anywhere) hostess at a restaurant on the weekends, an insurance agency secretary first shift weekdays, a third key at a hotel weeknights and a divorce columnist on my off time. I edited on the side but was too chicken to make the leap into starting my own business. So, I began putting myself through classes, both online and in school, to gain additional education. I reluctantly accepted health insurance and alimony at my attorney’s urging (I am independent and stubborn and I felt like a little kid in his office with him telling me what I was going to do.) I am grateful I listened.

Following that was a one year battle for divorce and custody (I won).
Followed by a six month battle to leave the state of CT with my kids to start over in a state I loved more than my home state and which offered us more (Yep, you guessed it, OHIO! :).

Call me crazy (most of my friends did)…

I WON.

Then followed many years of financial, child support and career turbulence (plus another marriage and divorce). Don’t ask it’s a long story, but don’t cry for me - because I’m over it….and we’re better for it.

And, here we are…Home Sweet Home. A tight family and in our own home almost 10 years later. (It took me this long to even want anything to do with a house, after being a single mom mowing and weedwacking while raising toddlers.) It’s time. They’re now 17, 13 and 10.

I’ve always been a fighter, not a quitter. I’ve always had faith (well, not always, it’s wained here and there sometimes, but not once in the last three years, thank goodness).

A single mother has a long road ahead of her.
One might look at my road and say, “OH H-E-DOUBLEHOCKESTICKS-NO! I WON’T DO THAT!”.

I said that once too. But I came back around to the same road (conclusion) and realized this was the path I was meant to take.

I don’t support divorce.

I also don’t support a miserable existence, an unhappy marriage and stressed out kids.
(If you think they don’t notice you’re kidding yourself.)

If you were, for some serious reason, contemplating divorce, I recommend these three steps:
  1. Talk to your spouse (not your friends, coworkers or your mother!)
  2. Make an appointment TODAY for counseling (alone or with your spouse-- I went both with my spouses and alone for many months prior to both divorces to make sure it wasn’t me). And honestly, that’s when it was MOST apparent that it wasn’t.
  3. Don’t take the adage ‘I’ll wait till the kids are older’, because it is FAR MORE WORSE when they’re bigger (trust me).
If you are (or planning to become) a single mother, you are not as alone as you might think.
I’ll never have the room or time to tell you all the people who’ve helped me in the last eleven years (physically, emotionally or monetarily). When I let them that is (I’m working on that).

Sometimes the door we must walk through is more daunting than we’d like…
But even while all the world might be crumbling around us we still must walk through it.

Have Faith.




Popular posts from this blog

Green Punch Buggy....!!!!

Green Punch Buggy...No Punch Back! As I was writing this blog post, my son came to me showing off his Lego creation. And don't you know I got hit at least five times since on my computer screen was displaying at least five different punch buggies, of five different colors thanks to Google Images. (Bad timing I'm thinking...) How can we possibly have world peace with these silly cars in the world!? ;) Don't the owners of these cute-but-obnoxious-cars understand that driving these things around town promotes violence!? ;) Anyhow.... The original purpose of this blog was to ask parents everywhere this question: Do you find yourself saying 'PUNCH BUGGY *BLANK-COLOR*! '  to yourself, even when the kids are not in the car??? I do! Isn't it funny how those games we used to play as a child are still around? I bet our parents say the same thing.... HAPPY FRIIIIIIDAAAAYYYY! P.S. I got hit at least ten more times, since as my son stood beside

Back to School Anxiety: Bullying

Download “School Boy Being Stressed” by David Castillo Dominici via freedigitalphotos.net I recently wrote about how to help your child if they’re struggling with going back to school because they were bullied. My biggest most important tip was to listen, because I honestly could not write a ‘How-to-make-them-not-afraid’ column. Frankly I thought that was absurd. Fear is sometimes real. Anxiety is sometimes truly there, and for a good reason. Our job as parents isn’t to try to make it go away, it’s to try to find out the true source of those worrisome feelings. If you’d like to read more, click here. And if you’re child is struggling to find excitement about the new school year, don’t deny it, just accept it and move forward gently. Here’s some more on bullying: Family Matters Links: A Touching Story/Song Bullying: A thing of the past A Peace Poem By My Teenage Daughter A Deeper Insight into My Thoughts on People Who Bring Harm to Others Other Links: Stop Bul

Good Customer Service At Home

Over the years, my careers have mainly been customer service based. I started in a family business and then moved on up through the rungs from waitress, to hostess, to sales associate, manager and eventually the GM of a hotel. In all my years, my training taught me that you should always do your best to take your customer all the way to what they need, make them happy, and never leave them until they are done with you. I pride myself on my customer service abilities. Though the other day, I think I failed at customer service in my own home! I was getting ready to cut my daughter's hair and because of how long it had gotten (she's been growing it out for a year!) I felt this time it would be best  if instead of me spritzing it with water, she could wash and condition it real quick. She was fully clothed so I just suggested she run into the bathroom and wash her hair in the tub. She’s fourteen. I suppose I just assumed that she knew how to kneel over the tub and do it.