I am very pleased to be a part of the Families.com blogging team. I am excited about working with Fran and the other bloggers and hope that my posts here in the Single Parent Blog will add value to this treasure trove of information.
I have been a single parent for eight years and have two wonderful boys ages 11 and 8. The children’s father and I separated when my youngest was only six months old and we have been divorced for 3 1/2 years.
As with most people it was not my goal to venture into this parenting thing solo, but this is my current reality. My goals as a parent have not changed since the breakup of our marriage; however the way that I achieve the goals and manage our daily lives is absolutely different than what I originally pictured.
Throughout this great adventure I have learned to become more self-reliant, honed my handywoman skills, multi-task like you would not believe, increased my negotiation skills, love like I never thought possible, and failed at so many different levels. Through all the good and the bad I decided to refuse to live my life thinking that being a single parent is second best. I think that if I convey an image of feeling that I am only 1/2 a person without a husband that I will not feel capable of living life to its fullest, and it could negatively affect my children’s perception of who they are. I sincerely desire for my boys to be able to obtain the tools that they need to become successful adults, and I, along with the help of others, have made that one of my primary goals as a parent.
So what does all of this mean for you? Well, I want to share my experience in the hope that it will encourage you and other single parent families. Please let me know if you are struggling in a particular area and perhaps I may have “been there-done that” already and can offer information on what worked for us, or offer resources that could help get you through whatever the challenge for that day might be. So please let me know what you need or what topics are of interest to you and together we can enjoy this journey.
Future topics that I will be writing about include:
* Finances
* Cross Gender Parenting
* Communication with your ex-spouse
* Single Parent/Divorce Resources
Questions and suggestions are always welcome! Thanks for the opportunity to share our lives with you.