The Truth of Single Parenting

Every once in a while I have a day where I feel like I’m so completely alone that it’s almost unbearable. Days when I look at my life and I think “I can’t keep doing this the way that I’m doing it”. On any given day I wake up at 4:30am; I take an hour and half to have my coffee, make lunches, get showered and dressed and get uniforms ready for the day. Most days I also do a load of laundry in that time; there never seems to be enough uniforms to make sure everyone is clean. I wake the boys, get them dressed and drop them off at my parents’ house and arrive at the office at 7:30am. I work (most days without so much as taking a 15 minute break to eat a sandwich) and leave the office around 5:00pm. I go straight to my parents’ house to pick up the little boys and normally am walking back through the doors at home at 6:00pm. Gives me two hours to prepare a healthy meal, feed the kids, do homework, clean the kitchen, have showers, read stories and get everyone into bed. If everything falls into place just right everyone is fast asleep by 8:30pm. Leaving me with additional time to do whatever chores it is that I need to do (with whatever energy it is that I have left) and often times get back on my iPhone and reply to the emails that have come in since I left the office at 5:00pm.

I’m not sure that I’m complaining – but I am burned out. I love so many elements of my life; you all know that those boys are my universe, and I have a job that I actually like (I know we can’t all say that). But today is one of those days where I wish there was more support. I’m tired of feeling like I go tirelessly from one thing to the next without any breaks. And although my parents watch the boys before and after school I’m so hyper sensitive of their needs that I would never imagine to call and say “I’m going to take a breather and will pick them up an hour later”. When I don’t have the boys because they are with their father I’m still focused on the fact that I have to deliver lunches and uniforms to my parents in the morning because otherwise they aren’t prepared for their day and I refuse to let the boys suffer because of something completely out of their control.

Today I feel like I’ve hit a wall. I feel like in my personal life that unless I do something that there isn’t anyone else who is going to do it for me and there is always too much to be done. And I’m tired, the kind of tired where you could just sit in a room and cry for no reason other than exhaustion and frustration. My hats off to every single mother who ever did this; the toughest job in the whole world.

When I go home tonight I’m going to sit down with my boys and try to get as many extra hugs as I possibly can, they are the reward for the hard work. They aren’t perfect and they sure do complicate my world, but they are worth every single minute of exhaustion that comes with those hugs.

Believing in Happy Ever After

I think one of the most troublesome things about getting older is that reality becomes much clearer. It’s almost impossible to be hopeful about difficult situations when you get a few years under your belt and know the reality of things. Even harder when you reach an age where you start to lose friends and you face some of life’s obstacles and challenges.

I can recall as a child how many things I heard and believed that were completely magical and I never thought to challenge them. One of my favourites being the story my father used to tell us about a lake in our home town that to the eye always appears to be completely split in two; one side being blue and one side being green. My father would tell us that the reason for this was that there was a king and a young shepherd girl who loved one another but because of their status could never be together. She had blue eyes, his were green and they each cried enough tears for one another to create a lake. But the colours, just like them, would never blend together. Now that I’m a grown up and I know that the real reason is because of shadows and the perspective from where you see the lake. I still love to tell the story to my children who believe it and believe in the magical message. Being a parent gives us an opportunity to believe in magic, even if only through our children’s perspective.

We recently had to have our beloved family dog, Jaymi, put to sleep. It was a difficult transition for my eldest who had received the dog as a gift on his 5th birthday. But my youngest didn’t take it too hard; he took it less like the loss of his pet but more like Jaymi was just going on to the next chapter in his life. He came home from school and announced that a “very smart” boy in his class had told him that when a pet dies all the strongest ants in the ant kingdom came and got their body and take the pet to the queen ant that magically brings the pet back to life. So although it was hard to come up with a tale to spin on this, I told him that his little friend was right and that the ants took the pet to heaven where the queen ant there brought him back and he got to become the pet of a special boy or girl who was waiting in heaven for a new pet of their own.

I miss believing in magic and being hopeful that all situations work themselves out so that they are all perfectly resolved. A lot happens in our lives, good and bad. But I’m making it a goal for myself to start to believe more often in the possibility of a happy ending than in feeling hopeless when situations feel difficult. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to build a pretty good life for myself and for the boys and I honestly believe that if the message I put out into the universe is that I believe in the possibility of magic and happily ever after’s that I’ll have my very own happily ever after. You get what you put out and I’m putting out the belief that I’m on path and I have the confidence to succeed in all that I envision coming true for me and the boys.

Growing Up and Figuring it Out

This past week my oldest son turned 15 years old. I still look at him and have trouble believing that the man standing before me is the little boy that stole my heart the minute he came into this world with his beautiful long hands and giant, intelligent eyes. I think that one of the first things I ever said about him was that he was going to play piano; turns out I wasn’t too far off, he plays the guitar.

I know that 15 is not an easy age, I remember it being a time for me where I had a whole lot of questions and answers were pretty limited. Grownups weren’t always so good at answering the questions, and now I can understand, the questions are hard and the answers are not always clear to us even after we’ve put some time and research into the role of living our lives. So he doesn’t always make the best decisions, and he doesn’t always have the greatest attitude, but that being said I am still blown away by how incredible he is.

He is talented; this boy was born to be on a stage, and even when he’s off the stage he still taking centre stage. He makes me laugh, even when I know it’s inappropriate and I should not laugh, because his delivery is impeccable. And he is kind; I can’t imagine him ever being unkind to any person. Lastly he is a determined negotiator who can negotiate consensus among his peers because he is liked and respected (except when it comes to his brothers – unfortunately that particular dynamic brings out the dictator in him). Last semester he nearly drove his religion teacher to tears, but the teacher told me that Daniel’s opinions and questions had brought about the most valuable discussions in his class.

So as a mother and son we’re going through a little bit of a rough patch. He wants me to let go and I’m not quite ready. One day when he’s a father he may understand, but I’m not sure that he’ll ever understand the depth of love that I feel for him as my first born son. I know I need to let him go a little, so I’m going to give it my best effort. He has to go off and figure some things out on his own, and when he needs my guidance he knows I’m always here.

Earlier this week when my best friend and I were catching up over email (because that’s what you do today when you’re a working mother with three sons), she gave me the best insight ever when she wrote “We all have trouble finding happiness and 'our path' (to borrow a phrase my best friend likes to use). This is a particularly hard part of the journey for him. He seems to want to keep at it though - so it is good news”. Thank you my sweet, beautiful friend. You would be surprised how often you help me to find my own path, I am eternally grateful.

So, I love him enough to let go as much as I can and let him go off and find his own path, and if I have to let him stumble from time to time, or I have to consent to let him do something I'm not crazy about, it's part of his path. I can't wait to see how it all works out, he's already amamzing and I'm confident he'll only get better.

Happy Days are Here Again!

I really have to get a little better at doing this more often; so much can change in the span of six months. I’ve been very happily (and busily) acclimatizing myself to my new job, which I absolutely love. And today it dawned on me that in my career I didn’t follow one of my most basic principals in life, when you aren’t comfortable in a part in your life it’s because that particular part of your life is no longer serving you. I worked for a great company, I knew that it was a great company, but I really didn’t want to be there. I would go home on Friday grateful that the week was over, but by Saturday morning I would be fretting about the weekend being over and having to head back to a job that left me miserable and unfulfilled. I worked with great people, but the role was not right for me. And I think in the end that I had outgrown the organization all together and it was time for me to shake things up. Everything was making me miserable; I was just a giant ball of stress in every single part of my life and I really wasn’t enjoying anything anymore.

So I started a new job towards the end of the March, not that it was easy to find the right job; it took a lot of effort and time. And now it isn’t just that I’m happier Monday to Friday during business hours, I’m happier all the time. I feel so much less anxiety about the boys and the noise and the mechanics of raising them. And I know that as a mother when I start to feel that way that they feel it too and everything seems to settle. So if you flip back to those earlier blogs where I write about not feeling comfortable in your space, I hope some of you took my advice because obviously I did not take my own advice.

Life is short, and most of us need to earn an income, but we don’t need to spend time working somewhere that doesn’t fulfil us and make us feel like what we contribute is of significance. I would never again put myself in a place where I felt that way because now I know that it impacts my entire life.

So today, I’m encouraging anyone who is feeling that discomfort to sort out what part of your life is causing it and to fix it. I sleep better, I eat better and I’m so much better balanced when I can put in my day and feel good about it. Onwards and upwards, lesson learned. Now I can truly enjoy the weekends without giving a second thought to the fact that the weekend will be over in two days; and that is a good thing.

Starting a New Year Looking Back Instead of Forward

For the last several years as a new year starts I’ve gotten into a pattern of thinking that this will be the year where everything will settle and that everything will start to feel more natural for me. I struggle with some of the aspects of getting divorced and raising the boys on my own. I will never get used to the idea of “sharing” my children; I don’t enjoy time without them. I cringe at the thought of spending birthdays and holidays away from them. Having a life that is separate from my life with my children doesn’t feel natural to me. Living in a house on my own with the boys and having all that responsibility resting solely on my shoulders is still daunting. So although it has been three years, there are still so many ways that my life still doesn’t feel like it has settled into what I would want for it to become.

However to start this year, I don’t want to look forward, I don’t want to think about what could be and I don’t want to think about what I wish will be. I want to start this year by looking back and recognizing all that I managed to accomplish over the past three years on my own.

I learned to drive and I fearlessly went out and bought my very first car on my own. I took to the streetcar the dealership and was fully prepared; I had done all my research and I knew exactly how much I wanted to pay for a car and exactly what car I wanted…and that’s exactly what I negotiated (along with free rust-proofing, free matts and scotch guarding for the interior). I think I did okay. Old Ana would not have stepped foot into a dealership without a husband or a father to help negotiate the deal. I also learned to top up windshield fluid and operate the lights (do you realize they don’t teach you that when you get your license?). I’m sure that sooner or later I’ll have to learn to change a tire, but my friends at CAA may make it so I never have to go that far.

The first Christmas that the boys and I were on our own I cried as I tried (unsuccessfully) to attach the Christmas tree to the roof of my car in the rain with the straps that I had no idea how to operate. I cried because I didn’t want to celebrate Christmas without my family intact and out of frustration that I didn’t know how to do something that seemed so simple. Some kind man took pity on me and my car full of kids and helped me get it sorted out. This year, the boys and I drove to Lowe’s, picked out our tree (the biggest one we could find) and some lovely young man loaded the tree on top of my car and I tied it myself to the roof. That was the scariest drive in the world for me; I wasn’t sure if my knotting skills were going to keep that tree on top or we were going to cause a major accident; but we got home. And all on my own I took that 7foot tree off the roof and got it in the house and into the tree holder. All on my own!

I installed an air conditioning unit. In the middle of the worst heat wave that I think I’ve ever lived through, I finally caved and bought a standalone air conditioner to cool down our bedrooms. I think that I sweat the equivalent of 10 pounds of sweat that day, and I used more profanity than I think I have ever used in my life. But I put together the air conditioner…only to discover that you can’t just use a regular extension cord for it. So I loaded everyone into the car, drove to Canadian Tire to buy the appropriate extension cord. We drove home and plugged in the unit…and I kid you not….at that very second the heat wave broke and the whole city cooled down. But I now own a $400 air conditioner and I know how to install it. These are little steps, but they are steps that show how far I’ve come in the three years that the boys and I have been on our own (and those of you who know me well likely cannot even fathom the idea of me installing an air conditioning unit).

I don’t want to look forward this year and try to make decisions about the things that I want to have happen. I just want to live in the present moment, to continue to learn and to continue to grow. I have such a long way to go, but I’ve already come so far. I’m looking forward to this year, looking forward to just being in the moment and letting things unfold as they need to; but I’m hopeful that there are good things ahead. Happy New Year everyone.