Mom Life

In this generation things change and as I grow up things become more real and clearer. All of the things that seem to be understood like a song quickly became more than just a popular hit by Katy Perry but a song about her and boys doing gross things. Ugh, boys. Something that has become more clear in my generation is that love isn’t always the love you see right in front of you. My parents have gotten divorced once… back together… and then divorced again. The second time around I was old enough to understand the underlying “love” between my parents. 

These things in life change all the time but this change was drastic on my mom and I wonder what it feels like to be a single mom with three kids and a teenage pregnancy, all while being homeless. My mom being busy as can be I found a time I could run errands with her to talk about this experience from her point of view.

My mother has been through a lot in her life and is still battling to this day. Growing up she had been told her father was a terrible person and that’s why she didn’t see him often. Turns out all these things were lies, and when that conclusion was made she wanted to have a relationship with him. When 8th grade rolled around the plan was a summer full of her dad. He died in a car accident two weeks before the 8th grade summer. “I know your dad is an a–hole but I promise you’ll regret not having a relationship with him.” I’ve heard this many times in my life but only from the voice of my mother. Understanding this was always difficult. Like why would I want to have a relationship with this person who is one of the rudest people known in my life? Yet she may hate my father. There is something about the two of them together that mixes too well–it is toxicity.  Leaving my father was one of the hardest things she’s done, and I could imagine considering she was with him for 18 years of her life. That’s a long time. 

Years of being in a difficult marriage must have been hard. Although I’m only 17 I have had one relationship that is pretty serious and even thinking about going through what she had to is hard to comprehend. How she had taken it was surprising. With no evidence of this happening, it was difficult for her to leave him.

Being a mom is a battle in itself but being a single mom is a different story. I am curious how she grew so much from nothing, a house in a year with no money and no help from a father figure. “Family and friends are all you need.” I took this as it’s a long story but your family helped us. That’s something about my parents they agree, that family is always key. Being around a woman who stuck her ground and fought for my niece, siblings and me gives you a pretty firm foundation to look upon when needing help. She goes on to talk about who had helped her… and there is a list. Taking all her savings out on top of her stocks it was hard to get by, “You kids are the only reason I’m alive.” I mean it when I tell you this was the most difficult thing I’ve heard in my life so far. Without this talk, I would’ve never known. My mother is a very mysterious person but yet very open. She seems to share everything with everyone else besides me.  It’s not much she wanted to say about this topic, she concluded our conversation with, “Learning how to parent alone has not only grown my relationship with you guys but my relationship with myself.” This is all I needed to hear from the strongest woman I know.

“Mom is here” by laura.bell is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.