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Working Single
How These Moms Cope with Minimal Help
By Megan L. Fowler
"There is so much that I would like to be able to do, and more often than not I have to forget whatever idea I had because there simply isn't time for anything more than what we all do now," says Heather Winne, a communications coordinator at Indiana University Bloomington. "It can be incredibly frustrating at times." It's tiring, not only physically but also emotionally. "I carry the weight of my world and theirs on my shoulders," she says. "I don't have someone to share that weight with. It is sort of like being the statue of a woman you often see on the front of really old ships." It's like living without a net.
"My daughter will always come first," says Wilen Brown. "So I get her dinner ready, play with her and read some books, give her a bath, and by the time she's in my arms and I'm rocking her to sleep, I'm usually pretty 'unwound.'" But what Wilen Brown says is the most difficult part of it all is that her daughter's father isn't "with us to share all the love we could have as a family unit and to witness all the heartwarming and silly, fun, goofy, touching, amazing, wonderful things our daughter does each day."
"Working and raising kids simultaneously is a huge challenge," says Carol Langley of St. Louis. As the mother of two boys, one 11 and the other 14, all of the parenting responsibilities fal onto her shoulders. But she believes this has made her a much stronger person. "I'm sure we all feel like we could be doing a better job as mothers," she says. "I know that the stresses of my life impact my children on some days, but they've learned some independence and know that I am not just on this planet to clear their dishes away and do their laundry. I have always been there for them, no matter what and I go to sleep at night knowing I've been a good mom that day."
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