Every Single Mother.

I was raised by a single mother.

Though my parents weren’t divorced until I was twelve, my mom was always the one who took care of us. From the moment we were born she worried and worked nonstop for our well-being.

My dad taught us important things, including how to read music, how to dream out loud, and to let our hearts wander. He was and is a part of our lives, but he didn’t raise us.

My mom did that, and she did it alone.

//

When my own marriage began to fall apart, my kids were one and four years old.

Nothing catastrophic had happened to our relationship, but I was unhappy and lonesome in our marriage. The birth of two children only seemed to sharpen the depression. Over time this took its toll.

I remember weighing the choices I’d made, and the ones I still had to make.

Was I breaking his heart?

Was I putting my own happiness above others, and by doing so, forging a more difficult and painful path for our children?

I felt trapped, and I kept hearing my mother’s voice in my head.

Don’t be like me, Nia.

Don’t end up alone.

//

More than any other lesson about romantic love, my single mother taught me to be discerning about my relationships with men.

If I made the wrong choice about who I loved or lived with, I could end up with the responsibility of caring for children by myself.

I could end up a single mother.

//

Much as we love to heap our awe and gratitude on hardworking single moms every Mother’s Day, few people actually want to be one.

Even among those of us raised by strong single women, or in other non-conforming families, single mothers are often depicted as the unfortunate casualty of failed relationships.

They bear a burden for childrearing that they shouldn’t have to bear alone, and they do so at the expense of their own self-care.

Usually this is how we tell the story.

Usually, single motherhood is seen a hardship and not a first choice. It’s a deficit, and yet women persist.

//

Aren’t all mothers single?

Aren’t we all one of a kind?

I don’t know a single mother who is just like any other.

I don’t know a single mother who never feels alone on her path.

//

Mine has always been deeply committed to her children, and this part is not unusual.

I never questioned her love for me, nor her steady care, and I know what a gift this has been.

At the same time, I’m not sure she loved and valued herself beyond her role as our mother, and this matters.

I still don’t know if my mother understands her intrinsic worth, or if I do?

I’ve never asked her who she really is deep down, or who she wants to be, and she’s never volunteered an answer.

I do know we’re all more complicated than the labels others give us.

//

Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if instead of a warning not to end up alone, at all costs, my mother could have guided me toward a different vision of myself as a woman, a lover, and a caregiver.

A vision where, even if I’m alone I am still a full and capable person. I still have whatever it takes to be content.

A single mother is not a less-than whole mother, nor is she more than one.

A single woman is not a less-than whole woman.

//

Few people ask single mothers, or any mothers at all, the kinds of questions that we ask ourselves when we have the time and space for it.

What’s important about you, beyond the fact that you’re a mother?

What do you love about yourself and your life, apart from the joy and meaning you derive from the difficult work of taking care of others?

What is your dream, for yourself, or for the world?

What do you hope to do or become, even now?

//

My mom was a single mother who struggled financially, and with the overwhelming share of caregiving work she had to do to raise four children.

This is also not unusual.

We often hear that women earn less than men for the exact same jobs, but the other reality about women and our economy is that most of the work we perform, for our children or men or for others, is not even valued or accounted for at all.

It is zeroed out, erased, and ignored, except on the one day each year when we make sentimental declarations about how much we love our mothers.

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That doesn’t mean our labor isn’t important, in fact, our labor is critical.

Our caregiving labor is just assumed to be free, and freely given — something we do because we love our children and our families.

Though this is often true, it is precisely the exploitation of our love and our labor that shores up a whole economic system built on poverty wages.

When you remove one wage earner from the equation, and decouple the process of creating life and caring for it, the whole thing can collapse quickly.

When it does, most often it is women — poor and working-class single women — who are left piecing a personal economy and life together for themselves and their kids.

//

We were poor, and from time to time, we had no car and nowhere to live.

While we were not as bad off as some people we knew, we still bounced around a lot, staying with family or living in precarious housing.

My brother got into trouble stealing liquor from the bar where our mother worked, and selling it to kids at school. My mom almost lost that job because of him, but this didn’t stop her from worrying about what would happen if she told the police.

I got into trouble drinking and running around with boys, inviting them over when I was stuck home watching my younger siblings.

I learned early on that the relationship between our sexuality and the systems that make and break our personal economies is fraught with history and contradiction, an invisible accounting of its own.

I know my mother was lonely and overburdened, and that she worried about us constantly.

I know she wanted a very different life for herself, and for her children.

I didn’t realize back then what kinds of sacrifices she was making in hopes that I might find a better path. I didn’t know how impossible it was for her to show me the way, since this was a path she had never known.

//

For almost a decade after she and my dad divorced, my mother lived with a man who was angry and abusive. He never hit her, but when he drank he demeaned and threatened her with words, and sometimes with weapons.

He drank often.

In spite of his real faults, she still loved him. He was familiar to her, like the farm he owned, where he said we could all live.

And at the very least, she would make sure her children had a roof over their heads.

//

Don’t be like me.

Don’t end up alone.

//

I remember the look in my mother’s eyes when she dropped me off for the first time at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, where I would spend the last two years of high school studying art and living in a dorm with other kids my age.

I wanted to write and make things.

I always imagined this would difficult, but difficult was nothing new.

When she left me there, her eyes were red because she’d been crying the whole way to the Cities.

I was leaving her alone.

As a mother, this was a different kind of alone than she’d experienced before, but of course I couldn’t see that. I couldn’t see her.

In my ear I heard words she never said out loud, but said every day in ways that transcend exacting language.

Run.

Get out of here while you can.

//

I am still running.

I am still getting out of there.

Now, it’s with two children who call me mom and believe most of the things I tell them about how the world works.

I’m still learning this for myself, so I try to be careful with the stories I weave.

//

I tell them about my dad, who they call Papa.

I don’t tell them how he was gone all the time, but I do tell them how much he has always loved music, and that he can play any instrument.

Last week, he sent us a guitar.

My son picked it up, and declared himself a music-maker.

I have music in my bones!

My daughter sang along, and kept singing as we walked through the park and to the grocery store.

I didn’t try to quiet her.

//

I tell them about my mom, who they call Nana.

I don’t start with all the hardship and heartache Nana endured, or my own, though I know this will probably come up later.

I do tell them how Nana loves sitting outside, especially in the morning, listening to the birds.

Now, when they go out to sit in our tiny backyard, I see them turn their ears to the trees.

We’re listening for Nana!

//

Nana would do anything to keep her children and grandchildren safe.

That’s what moms do, right?

I tell them yes, this is what moms try to do… And dads and grandmas and aunties and friends too.

But I also tell them the truth:

Some mothers can’t keep their children safe, even though they want to more than anything. They can’t keep their children safe, because the world we live in still isn’t a safe or fair place for them.

Why are you always reading and working and typing, mom?

I’m working to change the stories, so that one day, the stories might change the people. And the people might change the places where the people live.

//

Even Nana couldn’t keep me safe all the time.

Even Nana couldn’t do everything she wanted to, couldn’t fix our world.

I tell them their own mom doesn’t know what to do, doesn’t have all the answers — but she will always try to find the questions that can lead us in the right direction.

//

What makes a single mother?

We can ask until we’re satisfied with what we hear.

//

Mom, we are made from Papa’s music, Nana’s birdsongs, moon shards, new bones, and the dirt from the bottom of your boots.

I still wonder.

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Maybe I wanted to be a mother more than I wanted to be a wife?

Maybe mother felt like the right river, a path that was simultaneously clear and uncertain?

Maybe wife felt like prison, because in so many cases, it is?

//

What if the two roles weren’t so closely coupled?

What if it was fine to be one and not the other?

Or to be none, and still be valued for the care you give — valued in spite of the care you can’t or don’t want to give now?

What if we get to reimagine what makes us whole?

What if we imagine that we already are?

//

The last three years have been an incredible time of transformation for me.

I’ve given myself the gift of alone to rethink and reimagine what mothering and motherhood looks like for me and my family, and what it means to be in relationship with others in our unequal and oppressive world.

You laugh at all the wrong things, mom! That was supposed to be a recipe, not a joke.

How does being a mother fit into the long list of other identities and aspirations I still keep?

What is the role of love in my still-forming story?

//

You were always annoyed by men.

Sometimes my mom’s advice isn’t soft, or welcomed.

As long as you’ve been dating, you’ve found better reasons to be alone… And honey, you will be if you keep looking down that road.

Am I wrong to value my time with myself?

You’re not wrong, but you can’t do it all, and you’re are not getting any younger.

//

Single mother.

It seems strange to use those words to describe myself.

Stranger still to be expected to qualify just how single of a mother I am, based on how much time my children are in my solo care.

I split time with my children 50/50 with their dad, who remains a close friend and creative collaborator, even though we divorced three years ago.

I’ve had more than one person I’ve dated since then tell me they do not believe this kind of relationship after a divorce is possible.

It’s not possible to love and care for someone, even if you don’t want to live together?

//

When the kids are with me, they’re with me. That’s a matter of time.

When they’re not, they’re still with me. That’s what care means.

I also have the freedom to give my care and time to myself and others too, and the freedom not to.

//

I don’t love labels, but if pressed, I will call myself a single mother.

I will just insist on redefining it.

After all, it’s really the assumptions that bother me, and these will find us no matter what we’re called.

//

I should be partnered, but I’m not, and this is unfortunate for me.

I want to be partnered, because the struggle is too much to bear alone.

I should be valued based on the care I give to my children and romantic partners, and not by the other gifts I share with them and the wider world.

I’m alone, and therefore lonely.

I have a finite amount of care to give, but it can be replenished by another person.

That person is supposed to be someone with whom I also have romantic interest.

I should have just one romantic partner, otherwise, how can what I say be trusted?

— Assumptions.

//

Aren’t all of our mothers single?

One of a kind?

//

Who was your single mother?

Was she kind? Crazy? Mean? Missing?

Did she tell you when she was scared?

Does she tell you where she hurts?

//

Who and what makes her heart beat faster?

What brings her pleasure?

Did she like sex? Is she still sexy?

Is it hard to imagine her before you?

Did she love women?

Does she love herself?

Is she lonely?

A loner?

Alone?

//

I woke up on Mother’s Day to a video call from my mom.

We talk every day now, mostly about politics and public health, but sometimes about my relationships.

My mom doesn’t like that I date multiple people at once.

She also doesn’t like that I live alone.

//

It’s okay to let someone else take care of you, you know.

It’s okay to be with someone nice.

//

Yesterday, we talked about Mothers’ Day — its collective root in movements against war and poverty, and toward a more caring and equal and free society.

Why do we celebrate mothers, but refuse to value mothering in all its shapes and forms?

We wonder together.

If people really cared about mothers — not just their own mom, but if they really valued mothers and mothering — they’d stop erasing women’s experiences and exploiting their bodies.

They’d stop killing our children.

They’d stop killing us.

//

Becoming a mother changed me in ways I still do not know how to explain to anyone except other mothers.

Pushing my son from my body into his father’s hands was simultaneously the most transforming experience of my life, and the most terrifying.

I felt strong, and also powerless.

I felt free, and immediately captive.

I felt hopeful about the persistence of life, and newly afraid of my own death.

//

In the days and years that followed, instinct and intuition became more raw.

I started questioning the stories I’d learned growing up, and the ones I kept learning from the world around me.

It became harder and harder to make the pieces fit.

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The stories I’d learned about being a woman, and especially about being a mother, were mostly about how to survive in a world that depends on our exploitation.

They were not about how to change that world, starting here and now.

In these stories, I learned what roles I could and should not claim, but not how to write new ones.

And that was what I wanted to do.

//

What else is there, beyond survival?

What if instead of survival, we want to live?

//

Single.

Singular.

Complete.

//

My kids are both learning to honor and care for life.

How to be a mother?

Right now, that means learning how to raise chickens in the midst of a global pandemic.

The smallest chick still fits inside my son’s hand.

Each day he makes sure they have everything they need, which is not very much, thank goodness, but still much more than most chickens get at a factory farm.

Our chickens need food, fresh water, a clean and dry coop, and room to roam in search of bugs. Humans are a little bit harder to satisfy, but we are learning how to do that too.

Each day we peer into the nesting boxes, hoping the chickens have laid eggs.

Sometimes there are one or two eggs. We say thank you, and bring the eggs into our kitchen.

Some mornings there are none, but we still say thank you.

The chickens are teaching us about gratitude.

//

Since we started mothering the chickens (and they started mothering us, in their own way) my daughter has stopped eating anything she can identify as a once-living creature.

When I ask her why, she tells me in her plain four-year-old language.

Mom, I was made to care for animals, not destroy them.

Exceptions are made every few hours, because even though she was made to care for animals, my daughter is still hungry.

We say thank you.

//

I tell my mother that I’ve broken someone’s heart again.

I tell her how he put it in my hands, where it fit perfectly, and I said I could and would hold it.

But I don’t think I have enough room.

I see my mother shaking her head.

You don’t? Or you just don’t want to make room?

//

We were going to make a home together, a whole family from two assumed halves.

A single mother.

A single father.

It seemed to add up, but something was missing, and I didn’t have the time to ask what it was before the world turned upside down and shook us all loose.

//

Everything is different now.

Home is different.

The kids are different.

Survival is different.

I’m different.

//

I don’t just want survival.

I still want to live.

//

There are countless country songs about mothers, and many more songs in every musical tradition about broken hearts.

Most of the mother songs I’ve heard are sung by men praising the first woman that gave them everything they needed, and demanded no reciprocity or recognition.

The heartbreak songs come later, when these same men meet another woman, the first one that tells them who she really is.

To hell with what you need from me, I’m going this way.

//

In our families and our cultural stories, we practice the relationships that keep the whole system churning.

Are you a single mother?

Every application for emergency assistance now wants to know the answer.

They assume if I’m a single mother, that must mean there is an empty space beside me.

It doesn’t mean that I am singular.

It doesn’t mean I am anyone at all.

//

Yesterday, I scrolled through streams of pictures of mothers, each captioned with declarations of gratitude for all that these beloveds have done for us, and all that they’ve sacrificed or endured.

It’s important to recognize just how much life we give or get through our mothering relationships, and this love is real and should be celebrated.

But I still found myself cringing at each post that didn’t say anything about who these women really are.

//

I want to know their contradictions and complexities.

I want to hear about all the poor choices they’ve made, and the bad advice they’ve followed.

The wild ideas and the lengths they’ve gone to taste their own freedom. The falls they’ve taken, and the ones they’d take again if given the chance.

I’m longing to hear a more complete story about single mothers, about any mothers, about mother-love — one that leaves more room for us to be whoever we are, without the fear that it will make us less than whole.

//

I’m longing for declaration of gratitude that isn’t dependent on the economic roles we fill, or even the care we provide freely to others, but instead is just an acknowledgement and appreciation of all that we are.

What we know.

What we don’t.

Where we’ve failed.

Who we’re still becoming.

//

My mom sent me a text at the end of the day, Mother’s Day or Mothers’ Day, depending on which stories you’re telling.

She told me she was sorry for what she said before.

I’m always with you, whatever you choose to do. I was just happy when I thought you wouldn’t be by yourself.

I was never by myself.

I love you just the same.