Single Mom Raising Kids

If you read my recent post about cheating , you know that I have good reason to hate my ex. Hate or worse. Maybe even so bad that I could poke little pins into a voodoo doll covered in facial hair. But I don't feel that way. It's amazing to me sometimes that I am able to keep such a cool calm around him even when we're talking about hard things like money, the kids, and the past. I have to have more than just a "let sleeping dogs lie" mentality. It's not enough for me to cut him slack for being the father of my children. If anything, that would give me even more fuel for the fire because he should be expected to hold up his end of the bargain. But folks, there are no bargains here. There is no way for me to expect or feel remorse for balls dropped. I just have to stay out of his back yard. I like to use the analogy that being his ex and dealing with him is like having a neighbor with a tree that hangs over your yard and always drops so many leaves. There...

Blerg, deep breath. I spent a long time wishing away the signs of cheating. I didn't want to seem jealous, or to overthink his friendships with females. Even when I found lewd pictures on his phone, I let him talk me down from thinking the worst. It's hard to say when the cheating started or continued because of this. I wrote it all down years ago in a journal, and I wouldn't even be able to ready it myself and believe it at this point. The lies and the truth weaved together so seamlessly that I jaded myself into believing it was a comforting blanket, when in fact I was being woven into a cocoon to strangle myself from the life line of the truth. The place to start here is to accept that I did know about the cheating. Deep down, before any of the hairbands, or texts, or underwear showed up, I had to know it was coming. Or did I? I remember the day midway through my experience in a 12 step program helping me overcome my addiction to my marriage, that I decided it was t...

This is me pregnant*. I am not pregnant right now. I'll admit I'm pretty meek these days, so it should come as no surprise that there is a question that bothers me. I've heard it three times in my life when it had no business being asked. Several ladies, mind you, have asked me if I was pregnant when there was no chance I was. Sometimes the question comes shortly after a birth and for that, it's understandable, but still harsh. Now the only thing I can attribute to their question is a food baby, or more precisely a med baby. Being on medication puts me in a weird position when people ask if I'm pregnant. First of all my feelings are all off. I know that in the past when this has come up I've felt shocked or horrified. Now I just feel blah and blerg. And then I feel hungry and the self deprecating cycle continues. I don't even know if exercise works to counteract the weight gain because sometimes I feel too tired to wake up after working out and that...

Question: How do you get a rental when you have terrible credit? Answer: Like many single moms who have experienced a financial bane, I found myself in a situation that dropped my credit more than 200 points. When I left my marriage, I was pregnant and had two toddlers. I had been a stay at home mom for almost five years, so I didn’t have a job or steady income. On top of that, all the home renovation expenses for the house we bought as a foreclosure fixer upper went onto credit cards in my name. I didn’t just leave with nothing, I left more than $40,000 in the hole. Because of all this, there was no way I could jump into my own rental and I was fortunate to be able to live with family during a rebuilding phase. I’m going to share the steps I took to rebuild my credit and the exact letter I sent to my new landlord that helped me get into a great home for my family. 1. Let the cards go into collections Oh my God, this is the worst advice ever. Isn’t it? Well, not exactly and I’l...

In two short months, almost everything in my life has changed. First of all, I’m now a Marylander. If you told me this 16 years ago, I never would have seen it coming. Slowly, my trajectory aligned South, and I got bit by the bug of possibility on 5/5. I was already planning to move closer to my (former) job, and one day I just thought - what if I looked for work in Maryland? After an amazing sequence of events and synchronicities, I found myself on the doorsteps to our home last week and it is amazing to be here.  Since I’m posting this on a single mom blog, I’ll start with the elephant in the room. What happened to my kids’ Dad? I mean, it’s not very often that a parent can relocate in a shared custody situation. TBH, I don’t know and couldn’t even venture to guess. All I’ve seen is a stream of actions that led to me having my girls more and more of the time. Not that I didn’t relish the gift of spending time with them, I just realized that raising three girls and havin...

Arguably the hardest day of the year for any single mom is Father's Day. It is a day to celebrate a person who may have broken our heart, let us down, or fallen into a role as mortal enemy. To say it affects us is an understatement. The impacts can radiate from a multitude of directions. The issues aren't merely related to how our exes have treated us or continue to promote conflict and strife within our lives, but in many cases our hearts break for our children who continue to be impacted and come under a magnifying glass every June.  My kids are lucky. They have some amazing Father figures in their lives and they do have a relationship with their own Father. No one is perfect- far from it- so we've come to accept what they can and can't have as far as interactions go with the men in their lives. They know that they always have a safe place to come home if he misses a visitation, but that doesn't mean that my heart doesn't break for them in the midst o...

It is no secret that getting divorced, or splitting after a serious relationship can bring up a myriad of emotions. Whether the split was mutual or not, it always includes setbacks that can run the gamut from physical to emotional to financial. Digging out of the hole is a struggle, and the necessities of caring for children throughout the course of recuperating magnify each challenge. But, it definitely IS possible! Here's the back story about how I discovered an essential trick for taking note of life in the present, addressing goals, and making progress towards achieving them. When I was young (think 9-12 years old) my family had a stereo system that was the size of a large Amazon box. It played music and we generally played CDs because no one connected the rabbit ears so the radio stations were too fuzzy. I would lie underneath the pool table and stare at the CD player for hours while it played because it displayed equalizer bars. I watched in awe as they danced and refle...