You can read more about the background in this post and this one. Since those posts, Kristin has undergone brain surgery #10 and is currently in a lot of pain recovering on her couch.

In the meantime, the Kona Inspired committee for Ironman made a change to the rules and deadlines for the contest. Voting for Round 1, which was supposed to end May 7th, has been extended to May 31st.

As Kristin joked, “The voting public needs to have Ironman endurance for this contest.”

Here is the information we received with updated timelines:

Good Afternoon Kona Inspired Contestant!

We are excited to share that the deadline for Kona Inspired submissions is being extended to May 31^st! This will allow some of the people who submitted their video today a few extra days to rack up votes and for people who submitted early to keep the ball rolling. Additionally, we should expect to see more engagement with our community by having the voting rounds live during a more active time in our triathlon calendar.

Here is an overview of the updated timeline:

Voting Round	Voting begins	Voting ends	Winners Announced
Submission Period	2/27/2013	5/31/2013	N/A
Finalist Voting Round 1	6/5/2013	6/15/2013	6/16/2013 (12pm eastern)
Finalist Voting Round 2	6/17/2013	6/27/2013	6/28/2013   (12pm eastern)
Finalist Voting Round 3	6/29/2013	7/8/2013	7/9/2013 (12pm eastern)
Wild Card	6/5/2013	7/8/2013	7/10/2013 (12pm eastern)

So a few reminders:

• In Initial judging by the Ironman committee after May 31st, public vote up to that point accounts for 50% of their criteria to get to finals
• Finalists are put into 1 of 3 groups and the final voting period will be dependent on what group she’s in in June/July. Winners are picked entirely by votes. 
• People are allowed to vote once a day and can do that for as many days as they want.
• The top 2 videos in each group get spots and there will be one wild card chosen so there will be a total of 7 winners.

I’m going to ask you guys to hang tough with Kristin. Her 10 year cancerversary is next month and we could give her an amazing gift. Racing is what helps her get through the days, months, and years of cancer. This race is her dream. 

Please give her a chance to compete in her dream race. She’s completed 9 Ironman races and 17 marathons since she’s been diagnosed with cancer. She has worked hard and earned her way to this race.

Here is her video, and here is the direct link: http://bit.ly/SendKristinToKona

• Please vote every day now through May 31st. It takes 5 seconds.
• Please share this video, this blog, or write about it on your own platforms.
• Please share one of the three promo images on your social media platforms, over email and by whatever avenues we can get the word out!

Let’s give Kristin a goal as she recovers from surgery, and a gift for her 10th cancerversary. 

Here are 3 promo images. Please feel free to right-click, save, and share.

* I have larger files if you need them – Email me at chimomwriter [at] itbuildscharacter [dot] com.

* Writing, tweeting, and sharing? Let me know – Post a note on my Facebook wall to encourage others, let me know on Twitter, or drop me an email. I will share, retweet, etc., to help build momentum!

Thank you. When we have loved ones enduring a disease like this, we so often feel like our hands our tied. Today, we can do something.

#SendKristinToKona – http://bit.ly/SendKristinToKona

~ChiMomWriter

I’ve been trying to write something all week about last Sunday’s Listen To Your Mother experience. All of my words were apparently left out on that stage because being able to properly articulate what LTYM has meant fails me.

I have spent a lot of time scrolling through all of the pictures. Some make me laugh – Silly antics as we nervously giggled, rehearsed, lip glossed, tried not to sweat too much.

Sabrina, of course, caught a picture of me eating a PB&J sandwich in a corner. (I’m not all that different than my kids, in many ways.)

Some images make my eyes well up, thinking of the group of us sitting offstage during the show, quiet in the dark, each brave face out there reading, and taking our bow together when we were through.

All of them fill me with gratitude.

When I started blogging several years ago, I had no idea what that journey would bring – the opportunities, the people, and how willing I’d become to put everything out there online.

Sunday’s show encapsulated all of it.

It came from the vision of one person, Ann Imig of Ann Rants, who decided to give us a place to talk about motherhood and all the ways that it defines the world around us. Something simple and beautiful came out of the blogging space and is now in 24 cities around the country. Why? Because it is our stories that connect us.

The fact that I was part of Sunday’s show still blows me away. For me, in a year that has brought so much change and pain and grief, this was a challenge for myself: To be brave enough to put myself out there. I can write all day behind the security of my computer screen – but to stand in front of a crowd and read a piece that represents the foundation of who I am was a petrifying concept.

I stood on that stage. I read. I loved it.

It was a magical experience. How often do we get the opportunity to be really be heard and seen? And to truly connect? I read my words, I laughed and cried through my castmates’. I smiled and squeezed hands and shoulders of those around me before they went out and savored the elation and high fives and dances as each person finished. And then afterwards, I got to talk with people felt connected back – to our words and experiences. I hugged both friends and strangers.

I was glad to be driving home alone after the show. I needed some quiet to let it all wash over me. Almost a week later, it still is.

Our readings will be on the Listen To Your Mother YouTube channel later this summer, along with those from the other 23 cities. I’ve also posted the piece I read. Check them out along with previous casts’ stories. I guarantee you will find something that resonates with you.

We all have stories worth sharing. I look forward to being back in the audience for next year’s show and taking in the simple beauty of connecting.

Note: Ann Imig and Listen To Your Mother will be featured on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight (Friday, May 10th) at 5:30 CST. The camera crews were around the entire time on show day, so check it out!

Update: The segment was not shown on NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams tonight, but it is available on NBC’s website. 

Photo credits to Sabrina Persico, who is beyond patient!

A year ago this week, my world looked much different. During this week last year, I filed for divorce.

Last Mother’s Day, just days later, the four of us spent the day together at the Arboretum. I will never forget my ex half-joking on the car ride over, “Aren’t we supposed to be hating each other right how?”

There are layers to grief. I’ve moved through some of them, and although my days are sunnier and my rhythm more steady, there are still harsh moments that catch me. There are moments when I know the shape of the world that I share with my kids is now very, very different, and sometimes a little too quiet. Although my need to fill all of the empty minutes has subsided, there are some that still have a bite.

So I am afraid of Mother’s Day and all of the Hallmark cheer leading up to it. This year, for a lot of reasons — including last weekend’s Listen to Your Mother, the changes in my world, and just general unease — I miss Mom. And I’m afraid of that extra quiet in our house when I wake up on Sunday.

I will have my two sweet peas with me, which I will love. Abby has already told me I will need to go to another part of the house so she can make a card for me. I will hang it on the fridge and cover them both in kisses. If it’s nice outside, maybe we’ll finally try out our kites. But when the day is over and they’re tucked into bed, I will be relieved that the holiday is over.

To my children this Mother’s Day, know this: Although our road is sometimes unclear, you have my whole heart. Thank you for being the best part of me, every single day.

~ChiMomWriter

It also got me thinking about what the landscape of single parenting really looks like, and what it means to those of us at different stages of the journey.

Accordingly, I am hosting a group of guest posts from other writers who have at some point been single parents to get their perspectives. Some will be a direct response to Zane’s piece. Others will simply share a piece of their lives.

Thank you to Deanna of The Lil Devil Mama for sharing her story today:

Photo credit: iStock

March 16th of the year 2006 my entire life changed. I was three months preggers and suddenly a single Mom. I did not have a party. I did not stand upon a hill and scream at the top of my lungs that this was the best thing to ever happen to me. I was terrified. I was beside myself with fear and loathing. At the time I became a single Mama there was no silver lining, there was simply clouds on top of clouds on top of clouds.

So, whenever I read articles about being a single parent, I have to admit that I cringe a little bit. Deep breath before I read the opening words. Grip of anxiety until I get through the first paragraph to see what the context is of the article. And the one that was recently shared with me by ChiMomWriter was one that get that knot in my stomach growing and looming for sometime. Kerri Zane wrote this piece about how awesome it was to be a single parent, find it here - basically she said that being a single parent was amazing for reasons like you get to be “A slimmer, trimmer you — aka the Divorce Diet.”, because married women are apparently chubbier versions of their single counterparts and therefore less happy?

Her points conflict with the reality that is life just in general; even without the single parent thing life is not a cake walk. Being a single parent was not a quick fix solution to the issues I had with my Ex, now lovingly called the Bio, or the parenting struggles that I would face as a co-parent with a man who simply refuses to grow up. As I moved from being coupled to being single, I don’t remember my weight even fazing me as the thoughts of my life drastically changing wooshed through my brain. I think mostly it was panic, fear and anger. I mourned my life as I knew it.

Happiness is relative. Happiness as a single parent is relative to your co-parenting situation and trust me they are never static; unless you’re one of the lucky dozen. Over the last six years, I have learned that being a single parent and being happy is fully up to me. I own that happiness and the Bio does not. And yet with all this happiness I feel for myself, I do not have any of these freedoms to parent unilaterally as Zane does and I certainly do no get to be Monkey’s only adult figure at all. Do her children not see their father? Her article gives the impression that there’s no contact with her children’s and therefore she’s the last word in parenting.

Oh if only that were the case over here. Seriously. I spend a minimum one to two days cleaning up the mess leftover from weekend visits with the Bio. We’ve got it down to a science now. A serious science. But it is my no means easy in anyway. The Bio is the thorn in my side. But without him I would not have this amazing little person in my life, who taught me change and acceptance.

Choosing to leave my situation was not a day of celebration – I cried for three days over my poor judgement and bringing a child into it. In no way do I live filled with regret, I love my life today and everything I have built for my new sprouting family. And yet, I think of the journey and wonder how Zane was able to get it done so easy? I’ve got four years of therapy under my belt, didn’t date for the first three years of singledom, had no job when I left my ex and little money and had to fall back on my folks for support and a place to live. Total picnic…NOT!

Being a single Mama taught me self-love in a lot of ways. (insert snickers here) I learned that if I couldn’t be honest with the woman in the mirror whose face I was responsible for washing and smearing with makeup every single day, then I was failing at life and failing my Monkey. Today I fail at spending enough time writing for myself, drinking enough water and purchasing myself clothes – all while juggling bowling class, impending hockey lessons and cooking a dinner that doesn’t suck nightly.

The balancing act of being a single Mama is like walking a tightrope and I have the prettiest bedazzled pink umbrella in town. And damn it I earned it.

About The Lil Devil Mama: Mama to the Monkey. Part-time Hippy. Blogger extraordinaire. Social Media Princess (Crown Included). Raising a Batman-aholic with Wolverine-ism tendencies this badass Mama from the ‘burbs has taken the bull by the horns and made life her bitch. Founding Stark Social, a social media consultancy and finding love all at the same time, Mama is moving on up and taking her crown with her. Find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Other posts in this series:

• Original: Single parenting: I did not get divorced for the party
• Shannan of Tween Us: Single parenting is not about a sports season
  
• Jessica of BernThis: What does being a single parent mean to me?
  
• Nicole of Red Lotus Mama: Should we celebrate national single parents’ day?
• Kathy of Quilting! Sewing! Creating!: Time and light on the other side
• Nicole of Sisters from Another Mister: Suddenly single without the glam
• Anna of Girl with a Hammer:  The strength to step away from addiction

Photo credit: Sabrina Persico

At some point soon, I will write about yesterday’s Listen To Your Mother Chicago experience. It was incredible and I’m still processing all of it.

Video of all of the readings will be available on YouTube later this summer. In the meantime, I am sharing the piece that I read here. This piece was one of the first that I wrote, originally published as a guest post for Jill Smokler of Scary Mommy. Although my writing has evolved since then, I chose this piece because it’s the one that feels most like home. Simply put, it’s “me.”

More to come after thought and sleep and settling back in to the reality of work and home post-show. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the piece.

I’m My Mother’s Daughter

I lost my mom to cancer when I was eight years old. Not the quick and romantic illness from the movies –

Not that kind.

I lost my mom to the kind of cancer that was two long years of hospitalizations and surgeries, wheelchairs, hospital beds, and oxygen tanks moving into our home, riding along for chemo sessions with a barf bucket in the front seat, and getting shuttled back and forth to relatives’ homes while everyone tried to make it seem like these were exciting adventures.

Accordingly, I’ve always been a ghost of sorts – I look just like her. My father and I have always struggled with our relationship, and those close to him told me, “It’s just because you look like her. He lost her once – He’s too scared to be close and lose her again.”

That wasn’t great news for a young daughter.

My grandmother chose to indulge herself in her later years, calling me by my mother’s name instead of my own. Later at Grandma’s funeral, people came up to me saying they’d thought that Janeen had come into the room because I had her mannerisms and even her walk.

Growing up was strange – While divorce was on the rise and becoming more common for kids in the classroom, no one really knew what to do with someone whose parent died. Throughout school, I was continually told that I needed to get to know John, who apparently also had lost his mother.

We were marked. The Only Ones.

But they couldn’t facilitate the dialogue, and no connection was ever made. Being my mother’s daughter left me completely without a road map.

Because communication was sparse in my home growing up, focusing on Mom was, at varying times, a way to feel protected.

When other kids had an imaginary friend on the playground, I had my mom. Weird, I know. I was a weird kid. I was the one who drew a detailed picture of the lower intestine and colon on elementary school reports. I wanted to be a microbiologist when other kids were still thinking about being firemen.

As an adult out in the work world, I finally found a home for this focus through philanthropy. I spent years working for the American Cancer Society along with several more as a volunteer. I planned events that raised a lot of money and brought thousands of people together to fight cancer. I got to know patients, their families, and people left behind – People like me.

I loved it. It was a lot of work and time – In fact, it was often all consuming.

I looked around one day and realized that the central focus of my life was still revolving around someone who isn’t here, and that by doing so I was keeping myself a ghost. Although I loved the work, I needed something that didn’t surround me by Cancer every minute of the day.

I changed jobs and immediately got pregnant. I read about “Motherless Mothers” and learned that I would likely block out my daughter’s eighth year, the same year I’d lost mom. That’s right, go ahead and mark the calendar now – I’m just checking out at that point for a year.

The concept of my own daughter becoming transparent, as I once was to my father, petrifies me.

At this point, it’s now 29 years later, I’m the mother of two kids four and under, and a stay at home mom. My universe has completely changed, and now looks eerily like my mother’s. She never really had career aspirations – She wanted to be a homemaker. I always planned to work but circumstances made it more practical for me to be at home. I do hundreds of loads of laundry, clean the fingerprints off of the fridge (which for some reason are my husband’s, not my kids’)
and I want to post a sign on my back that says: “I used to not smell like baby vomit and Cheerios.”

The struggle for me these days is that lack of phone call. I have amazing friends and a wonderful network of mothers.
But, at 37, long after this outlet was available to me, I still have so many “I want my Mommy” days.

I want to call and ask her if I can give the kids to the gypsies.

I want to ask her why she wanted to stay at home.

I want to ask her how the heck she made it through chemo sessions and side effects while juggling two little kids… when I can’t even get dinner on the table while healthy.

I want to hear her laugh as she recognizes the payback I’m getting for being the snotty little toddler I’m sure I was.

I want her to tell me who is going to style Abby’s hair or teach her how to apply makeup because I never learned.

I want her to tell me what happens next.

In the meantime, as someone who feels like I have no evidence of history, I document my kids’ every moment. I blog it, I book it. I try to find adventures for us and savor the time. I try to remain sane. And whenever someone tells me how Abby is “just like her Mom,” I think again about how thin that line between our past and creating our own selves is.

My mom didn’t have an opportunity to help create that canvas for nearly as long as she’d planned, and although I’m winging it, I hope I can help my own daughter find that balance.

It also got me thinking about what the landscape of single parenting really looks like, and what it means to those of us at different stages of the journey.

Accordingly, I am hosting a group of guest posts from other writers who have at some point been single parents to get their perspectives. Some will be a direct response to Zane’s piece. Others will simply share a piece of their lives.

If you’d like to include your viewpoint in a guest post, you can email me here.

Today, Anna of A Girl with a Hammer shares her viewpoint on single parenting:

Photo credit: iStock

Wow. I didn’t know being a single parent was supposed to be so glamorous. I must’a missed the memo.

In contemplating my divorce, I never considered it an opportunity to relive my 20’s. Instead, it was an effort to keep my family – my daughter – safe. As her father’s drug habit spun out of control, I honestly worried that one day I would come home to find the house burned down with them inside. I asked myself often: am I ready for this, am I able to play all the roles and take all the responsibility. I didn’t see it as the light at the end of the tunnel – but rather the need to jump out of the way of an oncoming train.

My daughter is a strong young girl. Not because I chose to get divorced, not because she sees me make all the decisions, not because I pay all the bills.

My daughter is a strong young girl because she understands that our family was in danger and I had to make a choice to protect us. She recognizes her father had a problem, but loved him “because he’s her dad.” She never hears me talk badly about her father. I only answer questions on a need-to-know basis. At 12, she doesn’t need to know the gruesome details of his problem. She has since lost him. She needs to know her dad loved her, and that we are moving forward, healthy and blessed.

I am appalled to hear someone say that being divorced means being able to go out and live it up sexually. The last thing I want is for my daughter to think I’ve turned into a slut. I don’t date much, I am selective given our situation and I want to make the right impression on her — I think about the big picture. Kids are like sponges: they take in everything they see and release that later. That kind of behavior would surface in her actions – I see it happen every day.

Bottom line: everything we say, do… molds our kids’ personality. I want my daughter to have solid self-esteem, a healthy opinion of men, relationships, and family. None of that will happen if I behave like the character outlined in the Huffington Post article. Being a single mom is the toughest job in the world: being an only parent means I take all the shifts and get no breaks. But I love it just the way it is.

About Anna, A Girl with a Hammer: On any given day I am mother/father, sister/brother, best friend/worst enemy: I am a single — and only — parent. My first priority in life is to raise a well-adjusted daughter and give her the best that I can. 

At the same time, I also work hard at maintaining my own identity, doing the things that I love and sometimes that means tearing stuff down and getting dirty. Growing up daddy’s girl, I’ve taken on some remodeling projects at home by myself. It’s been beyond gratifying, it’s my own form of therapy.

I hope, by sharing my stories, you find some solace or have a little laugh: know there are other people going through these crazy experiences…and surviving! You can find me on Facebook and on Twitter.

Other posts in this series:

• Original: Single parenting: I did not get divorced for the party
• Shannan of Tween Us: Single parenting is not about a sports season
  
• Jessica of BernThis: What does being a single parent mean to me?
  
• Nicole of Red Lotus Mama: Should we celebrate national single parents’ day?
• Kathy of Quilting! Sewing! Creating!: Time and light on the other side
• Nicole of Sisters from Another Mister: Suddenly Single without the Glam

When we had our second rehearsal recently, the pieces clicked. With all of us more familiar with each other’s pieces and with more practice under our belts, we flowed. I had the opportunity to focus and absorb the details from each reader.

Photo credit: Sabrina Persico

Photo credit: Sabrina Persico

I stepped back afterwards and thought, Damn. I really loved that reading. And that one. And that one.

What was powerful to me wasn’t an individual piece – It was how they all combined and blended, varied as the topics were, into a tapestry that simply resonated.

Photo credit: Sabrina Persico

Photo credit: Sabrina Persico

I thought about the readings that night. Days later, segments and gestures and confidences were still with me.

I am proud to be a part of this show. I am impressed by those in the show – their bravery, humor, and resilience. Whether silly or serious, these ladies have such beautiful smiles and souls.

Photo credit: Sabrina Persico

Come join us this Sunday, May 5th for Listen to Your Mother Chicago. The show is at the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago at 2pm. Tickets are on sale online.

If you’ve been meaning to get tickets but haven’t yet had a chance, do it today! From now until 11:59 p.m., 25% of proceeds will go to the Greater Chicago Food Depository.

It also got me thinking about what the landscape of single parenting really looks like, and what it means to those of us at different stages of the journey.

Accordingly, I am hosting a group of guest posts from other writers who have at some point been single parents to get their perspectives. Some will be a direct response to Zane’s piece. Others will simply share a piece of their lives.

If you’d like to include your viewpoint in a guest post, you can email me here.

Today, Nicole of Sisters from Another Mister shares her new chapter:

Remember a show a few years back with the always gorgeous Brooke Shields called Suddenly Susan? She wrote a column about being Suddenly Single, she lived in NYC, wore fabulous clothes and it all looked super glam. Well, down here in Boca Raton, in the middle of suburbia, I too find myself Suddenly Single and let me tell you – I am still searching for the glam.

My dear friend Tracy, suddenly single herself, wrote a very heartfelt post recently airing her feelings on what being a single parent means to her and her two young children. Tracy wrote it as a rebuttal to a post that touted itself as tongue in cheek, but was written by a Mom of two girls who walked this road twelve years ago.

I am sure it is easier to look back with rose tinted glasses while traveling Europe with your now grown children, but when you are stuck in the trenches, treading water and feeling as though your entire world has imploded … it is hard to find the humor in it. Perhaps down the road, a long, long way down the road … I will be able to make light of this time in my life and read the post and see it as a fun piece of fluff … but for now, it does not smack much of reality for me.

Heart sore, overwhelmed, and still somewhat shaken to the core are more what comes to mind by recent life events. There are two girls, still my little girls, although now 11 and 15, and they are thrust in the middle of a reality they do not want to face: The end of their happy ever after of a family they never imagined falling apart.

Since they are still not able to come to grips with this new road we travel, how could I consider single parenthood as a gift to any of us? Each and every day, I have to look at what they are observing. I have to consider what lessons they are being taught by my actions, by the actions of the Dad who seemingly just walked out of the door one day with no warning signs … what they will take with them to the relationships they will build in the future?

Realistically I have been a single parent for a very long time. With a husband traveling the world, most decisions were already mine to make. I used to joke that I had credit cards, two cars and a single lifestyle – yet was not allowed to date. It seemed funny at the time. Now No Mans Land is home, not together but not apart. Two homes in two cities, two children caught between, two lives yet to be split down the middle. A dotted line on papers yet to be drawn up … the dreaded word that will end it all, not yet spoken.

Yet one person’s choice … one person has determined the future of four lives. But extend that reach to grandparents, siblings, nieces … all caught up in an unfathomable fallout. Far reaching when friends shake their heads. As much at a loss as I.

Of course, I can choose to be glib … Yes, I now have a whole closet to myself. I also unpacked every piece of Winter clothing, did a little shopping and filled that walk in to hide the glaring empty spaces. Hangers that used to hold shirts that would remind me of parties, or dinners, special occasions … even the wedding tux. You know, from that day where he promised to have and to hold, forever and ever … when he wrote words that said without you is to survive, but with you is to live …

There isn’t anyone naysaying the movie choices, and God willing, I will probably not watch another shoot em up boy/war movie in this lifetime. The familiar sight of making nachos or pizza for family movie night, the gathering of our family at the end of a week … sharing time together. Kids freshly bathed, in their pj’s, all of us side by side. Only a memory.

A king sized bed now for one, time to stretch out, no one moving, pulling the covers, hogging the sheets … yet I choose to sleep diagonally rather than pull the covers back and commandeer the whole bed. This way, the many throw pillows are not made fun of anymore and can mostly remain where they are. Making the bed does not involve walking to the other side to tuck in sheets where no one has slept, when you don’t turn it down.

I can sleep naked without any expectations of putting out. I can live in my pj’s for two days straight. If I don’t feel like blowdrying my hair then a baseball cap is my best friend. If I don’t want to cook then we pick up thai, or pizza, or have frozen yoghurt for dinner. It is all day by day … we just make it up as we go along.

Each day is new for us.
We are making our way through a great unknown … side by side.
This is not the life I would have chosen for them.
But to have them in my life, such a gift, I would do it all over again.
The three of us are here in this house, our home, this life.
We are doing the very best that we can.
We are family.

Making memories of a childhood.

I am blessed to be the one that is sharing it with them.

And as always,

 Nicole Morgan

The background: I recently wrote a post responding to a piece Kerri Zane published at Huffington Post. Zane’s piece, entitled “5 Reasons It’s Better to Be a Single Parent,” left me angry and baffled.

It also got me thinking about what the landscape of single parenting really looks like, and what it means to those of us at different stages of the journey.

Accordingly, I am hosting a group of guest posts from other writers who have at some point been single parents to get their perspectives. Some will be a direct response to Zane’s piece. Others will simply share a piece of their lives.

If you’d like to include your viewpoint in a guest post, you can email me here.

Today, Kathy of Quilting! Sewing! Creating! joins us:

Photo credit: iStock

When I got divorced in 1996 the legal process took about 5 weeks from filing to final but the 20 year marriage had fallen apart years and years before. Even though the love was long gone, and I really wanted and needed to be divorced, I still cried on that final day.

For me getting divorced felt like a failure. I had failed at choosing a partner, at choosing a father for my children and at keeping that marriage alive. When our infant son died in 1984 fellow bereaved moms and I started a chapter of The Compassionate Friends in our town plus a monthly newsletter. In one of those newsletters I had added the quote, “Value that marriage, you have lost enough.” I had used that phrase as a mantra. When I stated my marriages vows in 1975, I took them to heart; I meant it that I would stick by this marriage through all adversity. And to add to that commitment, when we adopted a baby girl from Korea in 1989, I was pretty sure her birth mother wanted her to be in a two parent household. All of those thoughts led to my tears even though the man I was divorcing had long drank himself into another person and he had actually asked for the divorce did lessen the guilt for me.

Being divorced felt odd; I was a “single mother” second only to Evil Stepmother for lack of status. That year I started writing a gratitude journal because, well, Oprah told us all we should, plus it felt like what I needed. Nearly every night I would write that I was so grateful to be divorced, and I was. But I wasn’t at all glad for the reasons that Kerri Zane mentions in her troubling article “5 Reasons It’s Better To Be A Single Parent”. Instead, I was glad to have peace in my home for me and my children. I didn’t worry about carving out “me” time each day, I tried to be the best parent I could be. I tried to do what would make me proud long into then distant future and Kerri’s goals of weight loss and varied sex weren’t what I wanted to look back on.

It has been 17 years since I got divorced and 13 since I remarried. My girls have grown into wonderful women, both college graduates with careers. They love my husband and call him Dad. One lives near me and is a Mom herself, the other is a continent away and both made me so happy and proud.

When their father died and the state of California awarded them the money he had inherited from his parents the very first thing they did was pay off my mortgage. They told me that I deserved to benefit from this money also after all we had been through together and everything I had done for them. That was the most emotional and wonderful moment of my life and validated how hard I worked at being their parent, single or not.

Divorce does happen and you do lose weight, but I gained it all back along with the respect and love of the two most important people in the world. I urge other single parents to focus on that rather than a frivolous list of shallow pluses. It’s tough to parent but take it from me, one day you will get to sleep through the night again and sleep peacefully, knowing you chose the harder path but did the right thing.

Good luck to all of you, including the misguided Ms. Zane.

Kathy Mathews has a quilting blog on the ChicagoNow network.  She has been sewing for 47 years and quilting for almost 30, and loves writing about it and relating it to life. She was an French and Spanish teacher for 35 years. Now retired, she spends her time periodically teaching college classes and looking after her 4-month-old granddaughter. She says she is in a wonderful stage of life and a large part of her contentment is looking back on how she worked, provided for her girls and made choices that made her proud rather than the ones that were more fun in the moment. Take the time to find her on Facebook and Twitter.

Other posts in this series:

• Original: Single parenting: I did not get divorced for the party
• Shannan of Tween Us: Single parenting is not about a sports season
  
• Jessica of BernThis: What does being a single parent mean to me?
  
• Nicole of Red Lotus Mama: Should we celebrate national single parents’ day?

It sucked. As much as I tried to draw hope from watching people come together to support each other in the days that followed, I still felt very small, defeated and alone.

The weekend brought some respite from the rain. I stepped away from the news. I logged off of my computer. My kids and I wore ourselves out all of Saturday, running from swim lessons, buying wishful-thinking-spring-sandals, eating out, and enjoying our time together. Sunday brought the second rehearsal of Listen to Your Mother, where I sat within our group of 17. All of us were more settled into our readings and the result was magic. More laughter, more tears and a fully engulfing experience that left me both exhausted and elated.

So when Monday rolled around, I found my tension eased. I enjoyed the giggles erupting in the backseat of the car as we drove to school. We made up songs and sang in silly voices. It doesn’t change any of the turmoil in our country or in the lives directly around me.

All the same, I felt good.

Life will continue to have difficulties, always. But when I pay attention, I know that I have those resources to refuel, step back and prepare to dive back in. Small giggles, sticky kisses, and the strong voices of friends.

Sometimes a good puddle jump goes a long way