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At the end of this article I am going to share an event for mothers that I run called “Matrescence — birth your story”, its a 4 hour workshop designed to help you write your experience of birth. You’ll leave with a heartfelt recount, a bed time story and some poetry. Its designed to be both practical and healing (my fave).
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If you look at my official record, it will say I was a single mother from the time Leo was 6 months old to he was nearly 3.
I look back at that time and feel a mix of: “how the fuck did I do that” and “of course I did that.”
Being a single mother is no joke, and I feel like I was teetering on the edge a lot of the time.
The edge of sanity.
The edge of joy.
The edge of meltdown.
The edge of god.
The edge of overstimulation.
The edge of overwhelm.
The edge of me.
Its hard to know what is “true” in any situation, memories are only 50% accurate at the best of times and we tend to warp our experience as we heal it.
But when I think about that time, my heart breaks at how lonely I felt.
I was the first in my friend group to have a baby and always the last to truly admit how I felt or ask for help. Not because I was this hyper independent go-getting capricorn who thought she could do it on her own.
Because I thought I had to.
Nuclear family constructs, media and the general imprint of society had me feeling like this was the consequence of getting pregnant to a stranger out of wedlock — this feeling of loneliness was my punishment for doing the wrong thing. I had to wear it. I had to endure it.
If I look back, honestly, I felt this long before I was actually a single mother.
Which led me to using a term “solo mother” when I was dating someone but that person wasn’t around, available or more a semi-available baby sitter rather than active parent
Like most of you, I’ve experienced a dynamic where one person worked, and the other person looked after the baby.
Which is wild.