I’ve been thinking again on what it means to be a single mother. We certainly are driven to more creative and flexible solutions when it comes to fulfilling the needs and challenges of parenting, career, and love, even though the very circumstances that drive these out of the box solutions force us into a very rigid structure. Spontaneity must suddenly be planned.

We don’t have the luxury of a two income family structure. Our dreams get cut in half, but our responsibilities are still for more than half a family. I know plenty of single moms who sleep on the couch in the living room of a one bedroom apartment, giving up the bedroom for their children’s greater comfort. We don’t have the money to grab a babysitter and go to a movie Wednesday night, but we’ll call on the help of a friend so we can get out of the house for half an hour and find our sanity.

Our wages are eaten up by rent–usually half our monthly wages, or more–and health insurance and groceries put a big dent in what’s left. We put ourselves last, usually until our bodies and souls rebel. Some days, it seems there’s just not enough of us to go around. We’re always in the wrong place.

And yet… what sweeter thing than a milkshake at the local diner with the little man? And movie night, just your favorite single moms and their crazy kids all piled into the living room, with real popcorn (you remember what real popcorn tastes like, don’t you?) dropping between the cushions on the second-hand couch and everyone still laughing at the outtakes to Bug’s Life?

We are the queens of free festivals, pot luck, and spare change. We look for opportunities to make life more lovely, with the simplest of resources. We are architects of family, building a cradle of love so wide and diverse, our children cherished by a potpourri of aunties and uncles chosen for their warmth and worth, and our babies are brave explorers of the world who know much goodness in it.

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