You hear a lot of very well meaning but also mildly offensive platitudes when your marriage ends. People tell you how sorry they are, as though your ex has just died and not moved around the corner. They ask you how the children are, just in case you need reminding that they are quite important. And, if the decision to be a single mother was your own, they tell you you’re brave. Which, when people said it to me, always sounded like what they really meant was: good luck with that, you fool.
But whether they meant it or not, people told me I was braveand strong for having the courage to go it alone. And yet at the time, brave was the exact opposite of what I felt. Exhausted, wrung out, pathetic, stupid and weak; I felt all of those things, sure. But I was definitely all out of bravery. I had failed at being married and was flying the white flag in defeat.
Eight years on, and these days I’ll take your brave. And although as we all know by now, the strong woman trope is kind of flawed, because we only ever seem to say it about women who are carrying disproportionately heavy loads, I’ll nevertheless take your strong as well. Partly because as a single mother my load does feel disproportionately heavy at times. I’ve had to develop the physical and emotional strength of an actual bison, to lead my family, support us financially, keep my children on a steady path and still find time to be awake. But then, show me a working mother who isn’t carrying a heavy load, who hasn’t had to develop the strength of an ox, or a bison, or any other kind of powerful, bovine-type mammal. Single mother or married mother, if you also work and are alive right now, then to some extent it’s a case of pick your strong. As the actress Pamela Adlon once said: ‘Every mom is a single mom.’
But I’ve also found another kind of a strength in being a single mum. It’s not the hard-won, true-grit kind that comes from all the heavy lifting, it’s a kind of bonus strength, a free gift with your purchase, that puts a spring in your step and a smile on your face because you weren’t expecting such a pleasant surprise. Because what no-one tells you is that the single mother experience can be so massively empowering and unexpectedly joyful.
Yes, the odds are stacked against us. Single mothers are not designed to thrive in a patriarchy. We are broken parts knocking around in an otherwise smooth-running engine, making a troubling noise that no-one can quite put their finger on. Yes, being a single mother is cripplingly expensive, not only do you only have one income, but the world seems to actively tax you for being unmarried. And yes, it can be lonely and thankless, when there is no other adult in the house to back you up and support you.
And yet, it can also be so much lighter and more simple, to live free of one’s wifely duties. Even in the best, most egalitarian relationship, rare is the woman who doesn’t end up doing more of the housework. As a single mother you’re only responsible for your own pigsty - there’s a great freedom in that. Your finances might be depleted but they are also streamlined, a problem all your own, that isn’t tied up with someone else, with love and sex and the law. You’re in charge of your own financial destiny, minimal as it may be. Despite what the media would have you believe, there is plenty of evidence to show that children raised by single parents do just as well, if not better, than those raised in dual-parent households. And if you are co-parenting, you even get regular time off, to do whatever you like with; to work, to create, to sleep.
But for all the empowerment, no mum is a single island, and I’ve found myself forging new and different friendships as a single mum, ones that have carried me in those inevitable moments of self-doubt and isolation. In a world where the couple narrative is still king, we single mums need each other. We must rely on and look out or each other. The little things: when I was drowning in work one lovely friend turned up at my house unannounced and took my dog for a walk. Another sent me all the products from her Liberty advent calendar that she wasn’t going to use, wrapped up in one of her kids’ nappies.
Perhaps predictably I’ve found myself drawn to other single mums and independent women, people who I like just because I like them, and not because our kids are in the same class, or our husbands might get on with each other. There is something almost naughty about them, these dazzling and raucous women who fill my house with cackles and dance in the kitchen, who get into scrapes and make me howl with laughter.
While being a single mum is undoubtedly very tough, there are so many unspoken upsides; the weights off your shoulders and the friendships that lift you up, that make single motherhood way more fun that everyone else seems to think it should be. People don’t talk about this when you tell them you’re separating, they tell you they’re sorry and that you’re brave. But what they should really say is, ‘Congratulations! Life begins now.’
Happy Single Mother: Real Advice on how to stay sane and why things are better than you think by Sarah Thompson is published by Thread and out on 3rd March
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