Monday, January 5, 2009

becoming our own support network

This month on the ChoiceMoms.org website we are taking a special look at how we build our tribe as single parents, and why it is important.

Knowing hundreds of Choice Moms, and even some of the rare married parents, I know that the single most important factor in succeeding as a parent is having a strong support network.

Some of the women in the Thinking stage are afraid of taking this path on their own. Others, especially in the Becoming stage, home with newborns, think they are supposed to do this alone, and are more typically reluctant to ask for help.

Those of us in the Being stage tend to have the wisdom to know that we all need a wide support network -- even our married friends require more than one partner to succeed.

In 2009, it is a Choice Moms goal to build greater bridges in the community so that we in the Being stage can be there for those in the Thinking, Trying, Waiting and Becoming stages.

We are often our own best advocates. I hear it every day on the Choice Mom discussion board, when we congratulate each other on baby steps or offer insight into a woman's fears. (It always dismays me greatly when we squabble about petty things, but that is inevitable in every family.) And I see the euphoria that so many women get at the face-to-face Choice Mom networking events.

In this month's Waiting blog, there is a heart-rending story of a Choice Mom-in-the-making who had to quietly go back to work after finding out about her miscarriage, attempting to act stoic around colleagues who never knew she had conceived. She turned to the Choice Mom discussion board to share her sorrow.

At Choice Mom events, and in podcasts, we have captured some of the intense grief and anger that women in the Thinking stage can feel. Online we hear women in the Being stage admit that which they are afraid to say out loud to friends and family: single parenting is exhausting, isolating and often depressing. Single women who have been there and reached the other side as Moms can offer tremendous support, as we read in the January 2009 Thinking and Becoming blogs.

Choice Moms everywhere need to be there for the women who lose the support of family and friends they had thought they could count on. Such as the woman I know whose mother said news of her pregnancy was "the worst thing I've ever heard." The Thinker who was disinvited from a family holiday because of her plans. The small-town teacher shunned by work colleagues.

We need to help these women find new support in us.

For the sleep-deprived new mom exhausted with trying to figure out the diaper genie and the baby carrier and how to interpret her baby's cries, we need to share our own survival stories.

And within our own circle -- dealing with the stress of kids who forget to change their underwear everyday, and have to be reminded to brush hair and teeth before the bush comes, and squabble with siblings -- we need to remind each other of the importance of friendships outside of mothering. Snapping occurs much less frequently when playdates aren't the only item on our socializing agenda.

A challenge of Choice Motherhood is that we're often older than other parents who have kids the age of our children. We commonly lose a taste for dating and don't easily engage in intimate relationships.

We do naturally meet new people through shared playground, church and school activities. But we also need to consciously make the effort to build our networks, and the ChoiceMoms.org website gives advice about how to do that if we've lost the way.

We should never be everything to our children, and our children should never be everything to us.

How have you found support?