Progress

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Someone hurt me.  Inadvertently.  Irreparably.  Profoundly. 
It is someone who I used to love unconditionally.  It is someone I adored.  I see them for who they truly are now.  They no longer matter.  Why do they no longer matter, you ask?  That person no longer matters because I have made the kind of progress that is most meaningful to me at this stage of my life. 

"What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." - Hecato of Rhodes

And my heart is finally free.

Choosing Single Motherhood via IVF

On Fridays from 12 noon to 1pm, Heartbeat Radio for Women hosts the Mom Hour, where moms with popular blogs and/or websites are invited to be Guest Hosts and talk about subjects that are near and dear to their hearts. I will be the Guest Host today, Friday, June 24th, so come join me! I will be talking about Choosing Single Motherhood via IVF, and the notion that is at times perceived as radical that single motherhood isn't necessarily a circumstance that is thrusted upon women through an unkind fate. Single Motherhood can also be a choice, a joyful, exciting, and enriching one!

All of you know how very important it is for me to not only be a coach for single moms, but to advocate for us to be viewed in a more positive and accurate light. Today we'll be talking to Calliope from Creating Motherhood, and Nancy from  Single Mothers by Choice, who chose to become single mothers through artificial insemnation and/or IVF.
If you'd like to call in with any questions or to share your own experience as a woman who chose single parenting through artificial insemination or IVF, please call: (352) 728-1410. Join us!

Wordless Wednesday

What Is Family?

My Family

I just read a post by the blogger, Dooce, wishing her daughter a Happy Birthday.  The end of the post made my stomach tie up in knots, though, and entirely due to my own conditioning.  She writes at the end of her post about looking at her family and wanting to preserve the moment.  "I want to squeeze the air and nuzzle it under my chin, because this is my family. I have a family.", she wrote, and I suddenly felt myself reacting to that in a way that was a bit painful: I reacted to it as a defensive single mom.  Her family.  A real one; one with a mom AND a dad -- not half of one, like mine.  That's what I read when I read those words, which had nothing to do with what was actually written.  Crazy, yes?

Yes.

When you're a single mom, sometimes you have already bought so much stock in the traditional perspective of "family" that you react to things that aren't even there.  I do have a family.  Theo and I are a family.  A family of two.  I know this, he knows this, the world knows this.  Past conditioning, however, is insidious, and just when you think you've started to slay your demons they come back to bite you in the arse.  The family I grew up to make may have only been a family of two, but I'm starting to realize how much of that actually matters is less about "reality" and more about perception; conditioning.  Stripping off those layers of conditioning is hard work, but essential to becoming a freer person and parent.

What are the ways in which you react to things that aren't really there because of your conditioning?  Perhaps, if you look at the way your past conditioning is causing you to feel negatively about certain things, you can begin to free yourself.  With all of the many ways in which single mothers must be responsible for so much, we deserve as much freedom as we can get.

Single Moms Sundays, Featuring Jenni Conner

*Single Moms Sundays is a series of guest posts by single moms that will serve to demonstrate the varied experiences and circumstances that shape and color a community filled with diversity.

Self-Esteem and Dating
By Jenni Conner

At the end of this month it will be two years. It will be two years since I came home from work and found all of his things, including the new flat screen TV, gone. It was the day that I felt sadness, panic, and relief. It was also the day that I started to redefine myself.

In this article I’m going to say the same thing I have said over-and-over again, to I don’t know how many people. When I met ‘the ex’ I was 19-years-old and he was 30. I thought I had found true love, and his mother felt I was his saving grace. When we met he was working two dead end jobs, had no car, and couldn’t even afford to pay his rent. But I was 19! I was in love! Who cared about what this guy did or didn’t have! I had no standards.

I look back at my 19-year-old self and I wish I had been smarter. I wish I had seen my ex, looked at him and saw the word “trouble” stamped across his stupid forehead. I wish someone would have grabbed me, shook me, and told me what an idiot I was being. But none of that happened, and I had no standards. Fast forward six years, two children, and one marriage later and there I was standing in my half empty rental house.

When I entered into the dating world I had told myself that I was going to do things differently. I wasn’t going to date to find a relationship. I was going to date, to date. I was going to date, to help me figure out who I was. I was going to date to help me figure out who I was looking for. I wasn’t going to date post-separation looking for the next love of my life. And guess what? Through the dating I have done I developed standards.

I found the men I dated through the infamous Match.com. For six months I was asked out on dates, and very few of them got a second. But the men I went on dates with were indeed, MEN. They all had their own places, some were single dads, they had their own car, and had jobs that paid at least $50k a year. I dated military men, IT geniuses, an ASPCA spokesman, men that traveled the world for their work, men who invested in real-estate, and the list goes on. In short, they could take care of themselves. These men helped me realize that I was worth more than a pizza delivery guy who could barely make rent. None of them were relationship material (for me), but they served their purpose. I got dinner and fun conversations, a night on the town, and a boost in self-esteem.

I think one of the hardest things to do when you become a single parent, is gain back your self-esteem. It is especially difficult to feel comfortable with the idea of dating again. I never would have guessed that the two would go in hand-in-hand, but I’m thankful they did. Two years after being single I have one foot over the line of “ready for a relationship” and the second is just refusing to follow. Every instance I feel that “maybe I’m ready,” I feel a tug on my shoulder telling me that I’m not. For once in my life I’m completely okay with that. There is no rush, and I know that I can take my time. If I’m not ready, I’m not ready, and there’s no reason to force myself to be. When I am ready that stubborn second foot will follow.

Jenni Conner is a single mom to two little girls. They have been a happy family of three girls since June 2009. Their mommy only journey has been quite an adventure. They drove across country to move from the East Coast to the Central Coast of California. They've had ups, they've had downs, and they keep ‘round and ‘round.  Aside from being a single parent Jenni is also a full-time Communications student. She’s looking to branch out into the media world, and make her imprint on people's lives in some sort of way through her words. As an individual Jenni loves to share her story and point of view. Her life has taken her down many different roads, all of which have made her a very open minded momma. She’s adopted, a child of divorce, twice married, and only in her late 20’s. Experience is her middle name, and she’s gotten through it all with her children, horses, dogs, and Xanax.  You can find her at Single Mom: Who Am I?!.

Practicing The Law Of Detachment

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I've posted about The Law of Detachment before, but after the last few days I've had, it bears repeating:

The Law of Detachment
In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty . . . in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the universe.

I will put the Law of Detachment into effect by making a commitment to take the following steps:

1.Today I will commit myself to detachment. I will allow myself and those around me the freedom to be as they are. I will not rigidly impose my idea of how things should be. I will not force solutions on problems, thereby creating new problems. I will participate in everything with detached involvement.

2. Today I will factor in uncertainty as an essential ingredient of my experience. In my willingness to accept uncertainty, solutions will spontaneously emerge out of the problem, out of the confusion, order and chaos. The more uncertain things seem to be, the more secure I will feel, because uncertainty is my path to freedom. Through the wisdom of uncertainty, I will find my security.

3. I will step into the field of all possibilities and anticipate the excitement that can occur when I remain open to an infinity of choices. When I step into the field of all possibilities, I will experience all the fun, adventure, magic and mystery of life.

- Deepak Chopra's Daily Class

Wordless Wednesday

Claiming Pleasure As Your Right

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As women in general, and as mothers in particular, we often tend to be very self-sacrificing.  There is nothing at all wrong with this.  Selfish people have turned this world into quite a mess, and if more people were self-sacrificing we wouldn't have to deal with many of the horrors we deal with today.  What we do wrong, though, is to deny our right to real pleasure.  We may allow ourselves pleasure in small ways: the ice cream we eat after the kids are in bed, the guilty pleasures we watch on TV, or the novels we read for fun.  Pleasure on a large scale, however, is something that I find women deny themselves regularly.  And most mothers, and especially most single mothers, find it difficult to allow grand-scale pleasure in their lives because of the guilt it can cause.  This, my sisters, needs to change. 

Now is the time to make your life feel good.  Is there a trip you always wanted to take?  A piece of jewelry you always wanted to buy?  A dress, shoes, heck -- a car?  If it is within your financial means to do so then please, do it!  Dream bigger!  Stop waiting for someday.  Look at the life you have, place it side-by-side to the life you dream of, and keep focusing on the Dream Life!  When you open yourself to living large you do away with the restrictions that you have allowed to be placed on you.  Health, finances, location, race, gender -- these are all ways in which others have sought to define us, restrict us, rob us of the fullness of life.  No!  No more!  You get to define the parameters of your life.  Even better, remove the parameters altogether and see how your life expands to allow for more full-blown joy and pleasure in your life.  No one is responsible for your happiness but you, so get into the game of dreaming and living big.  Make a list of the things that seem impossible to you: pleasures you would have, places you would travel to, experiences you would love to have.  List only the things that seem unreasonable, impractical, and unlikely.  From there all you have to do is start day-dreaming about them.  Imagine what it would be like to sit on a dinner cruise in Paris on the Seine.  Imagine the wind in your hair, the Champagne on your tongue, and the Eiffel Tower in your sights.  Feel those dreams.  Sooner than you might think those lines in the sand that were drawn for you will disappear and the impossible can be.  And guess what?  You deserve that.  You deserve to live fully, with great pleasure in your life. 

You can do this!

Wordless Wednesday