There Are Single Parents, and Then There Are Lone Ones.

It's 2:00am and the thoughts just keep swirling & swirling... water, utilities, mortgage, sport fees. Literally impossible to manage everything solo. But that's exactly the expectation for a single parent.

There are single parents, and then there are lone ones. I fall into the latter category.

It was never in my dream book, or even in my childhood journals, to manage life with kids completely on my own. I wanted partnership, friendship, a love that drops it all to just simply dance in the kitchen.

We don't have a perfect life, nor do we have everything that we want. But what we do have is happiness, safety, and we do dance. It just happens to be on the local trails.

I wish that more people understood that we get this one chance in life. Just one. As parents, we hold extreme responsibility in shaping the experiences for generations to come. It has been well documented that childhood trauma often carries forward into damaged adults.

We live and we learn. But we all hold the power to make small changes.

They don't have everything they want. But they have everything they need.

The bills will be sorted. The stress diminishes every year that passes by.

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To all the single parents out there, keep going. Every struggle, every tear, every 2am swirl of worry, it is worth it when you can witness your children turning into the sweetest teenagers.

I'm forever grateful.