My friend emailed me late one night this week, an update email about his kids, his work, and what was stewing in his head. He’s a fairly newly divorced dad, with a 7 year old son and a 3 year old daughter. His ex-wife and the kids live about six hours away by car.

It’s a situation he was amenable to at first: she was offered a great career opportunity in her old home town; her family was there and he could have the kids on weekends and for stretches of time over the holidays.

“But I miss the kids so much,” he wrote,”I want her to move back here, or at least halfway. And I want to ask for joint custody.” I could almost feel the pause in his missive: a friendship between a single Mom and a single Dad is rife with opportunity for misunderstanding merely on the general perspective of the sexes.

“What would you do,”he wrote,”If your ex asked for joint custody of your son?”

I drew in a breath and wrote back right away.

Read the rest of this entry

My good friend Mel was in town a weekend ago for the Madonna concert. As she arrived on my doorstep with her luggage, shaking off droplets of rain, I suddenly became aware of the unintentional pine needles decorating my tile, the littered array of mini dump trucks on the fireplace mantle. And yes, there was also a half-eaten cheese bun sitting on the couch and a plethora of dishes in the sink.

“Uh, the house is a tad messy,”I said apologetically, taking her coat.

“Tally,”she laughed, referencing my ridiculous height-inspired nickname from years ago,”It’s me. I don’t give a hoot.”

Good things my friends aren’t picky, because housekeeping is number one on the list of Things I Let Slide.

Read the rest of this entry

While seated solo at the bar at a busy restaurant at LAX last week, picking at a cold quesadilla and organizing folders on my laptop, I met a young business man.

“Where are you headed?” he asked when I lifted my laptop bag to make room for him next to me, the only empty stool in the room.

“Going home,”I said, stretching my arms and feeling my shoulder prick with the aftermath of terrifying GPS-led navigation on LA’s infamous freeways,”Just here for the day for meetings.”

Read the rest of this entry

There are many very challenging components of being a single Mom: handling the weekday drudge chores solo, navigating the slippery slope of temper tantrums without additional adult intervention, curling up to cold sheets at the end of a long day with an unsatisfactory pillow for company instead of a warm body. There’s the inability to release the pent-up frustrations of parenting through adult conversation, and a tendency to eat half-chewed sandwich discards as Sunday dinner.

But for me, and for many of the single Moms I know, the most challenging stress factor is money: how to survive on just one salary.

Read the rest of this entry

When I was contemplating the ramifications of separation from the Father of my son, I sought wisdom from my two best girlfriends. One of them, Shelly*, is a child of a nasty divorce. Her Mother left her Father when she was not quite three, and moved her and her older sister across the country to be closer to her own immediate family. She rarely saw her Father growing up.

“Do you resent your Mom?” I asked, stomach sinking,”For moving away from your Dad, I mean.”

Read the rest of this entry

My status as a Single Mother has never made me feel particularly unsafe. I’m a tall, healthy, and relatively young woman with quick reflexes and good intuition. My very strong, muscle-bound, and willing-to-rumble younger brother lives in a basement suite with a large dog below me. Even though I write professionally on the Internet under my own name, I’ve never felt particularly threatened by strangers who might read me, men (or women) I cannot see.

This week, though, for various reasons - I’ve been dealing with feelings of dread about this public forum where I spill so much. Perhaps, even if there is no one who wishes to physically hurt me or my son, there must be at least a few strangers who would like to hurt me emotionally. No one can be liked by everyone, and I know there’s no way that all the hundreds of strangers who read me everyday think I’m cool.

Read the rest of this entry

At this time of year, every year since I was 22, I write out my goals. I choose mid October because it’s a calm before the holidays, and feels less forced than easily doffed New Years Resolutions.

Unlike everything else I write, I do this old-school: on paper, with a pen, in a ruled notebook where I can’t press delete.  I pick the top 3 things I want to accomplish the following year,  and set a defined timeline on which I envision them transpiring. When I look back on all those goals over the last decade, I’m amazed at how many of them came to fruition.

Two years ago, I wrote that I wanted to get paid for writing.  It sounded laughable, absurd, I didn’t know how to take the first step… and three months later I landed my first paid blogging gig over at ParentDish.  Ten years ago, I was working for a small professional baseball team, making less than $ 20,000.00 a year as a beleagured receptionist. I wrote that I wanted to obtain a position in sales and marketing making at least twice that.  The following year, I landed a job as a technical education specialist at a blue-chip computer company.  I was floored.  There was something to this.  Every single year, I write three goals.  Every single year, at least two of those three goals happen. It doesn’t seem to matter how pie-in-the-sky the goal: if I write down a timeline and a detailed plan, it works.  I’m not sure whether it’s a combination of positive thinking and sub-conscious effort, but I’ll take it.  I’m not going to stop now.

Read the rest of this entry

The economy is at the tip of the minds of nearly everyone these days: hesitancy is crisp in the autumn air, blog posts abound with tips of scrimping and saving and being frugal. I find myself avoiding headlines in the New York Times for fear that my blood will run completely cold and I’ll just involuntarily, defeatedly, slump out of my chair into the fetal position under my desk.

I’m responsible for the well-being of another human, a small human with a very big heart and a sweet-natured innocence in his giant blue eyes. Some days, the burden is so overwhelming it hurts my skin. Other days, most days, I can find a way to deal. I’m cutting back on daily vanilla lattes, we’re hitting the library more than the bookstore, I’m socking money away in a high interest savings account whenever humanly possible. But I’m also spending energy on understanding what’s been critical in my so-far career as a single Mother: what’s been worth every penny.

Read the rest of this entry

Daycare for my 3-year-old son has been the single most difficult challenge since I started navigating the murky waters of Single Motherhood more than a year ago.

I spent nearly 12 months rendering almost an entire paycheck on a Nanny. I wanted Nolan to have dedicated, attentive care, because I couldn’t give it to him. I wanted him to go to the zoo, the aquarium with her, to perhaps be so distracted with fun things that he wouldn’t notice quite as much that Daddy didn’t live with us anymore, that Mommy spent hours with a furrowed brow at her desk, juggling bills and attempting to paste together mangled ends.

Read the rest of this entry

This past weekend, I lined up a play date for Nolan with an adorably chubby-cheeked three-year-old from his daycare. I was actually really looking forward to it: I knew Marco’s Mom was an advertising sales executive too, and I thought we’d have lots in common. In my neighborhood, full-time working Moms are rare, and it was sweet relief to chat about the impossibility of steady work/life balance with a woman who understood.

Read the rest of this entry