THANK YOU SHERYL SANDBERG

The thing is, of late I have been struggling to get my thoughts in any sort of blog shaped order. It’s not that I have less time, or indeed less inclination – it’s that I don’t really know what to say without feeling like I’m being too honest and needy. So I leave it until I’m feeling a bit stronger and even then, it seems, somehow that it’s all quite hard right now and for me it’s about who is reading this and how they will respond – which makes it FAR worse for me to write openly about practically anything – and of course that is what I do best on the blog. Spill the beans. All of them. All over the floor. I haven’t felt brave enough to do that for ages now and I’m not sure whether I will again, but nevertheless, this feeling of lack of something – I don’t really know what it is, is really pissing me off. Lots of us seem to be unduly worrying about things right now – family, hormones, career, or even basic jobs, the future, relationships, Brexit, Europe, the world, refugees – especially the children that we are doing fuck all to help in a hurry, London life, pollution, climate change, stress, NEW stress that we haven’t dealt with before,  emanating from our children and their friends, mental health issues….and the tragic loss of a young life on a motorbike in India a few days ago – a friend of my son’s from uni which has really saddened me because I just can’t help imagining how his poor parents and siblings and girlfriend are feeling right now.

SO, on that depressing note, I would just like to thank Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg for choosing to mark UK Mother’s Day with an honest post in praise and support of single mothers. The “Lean In” author has bravely admitted that she didn’t understand the pressures on single parents before she became one. I’ve read a lot of opinion pieces about her views – some think she came across as patronising, because she has money and is more than able to support herself and that therefore she still doesn’t get how hard it can be. I disagree. I think what she said was brave and relevant and has highlighted a key issue for society that isn’t going away any time soon.  Very often it’s not about the money – it’s the emotional issues that are so hard to deal with. It must be particularly hard in America for the single parents who have no additional form of income and have to work. America is one of the very few places left in the world who don’t offer maternity leave or benefits – imagine that? Having a baby and having to go straight back to work in order to feed your family. Trying to struggle with doing a job whilst also managing an ever increasingly chaotic home life.

Single parenting is not easy at the best of times and whilst being divorced is different, because in most cases the father (or mother in some cases) continues to play some sort of role in the children’s life it is still a massive change. Whoever the children live with – and of course we all know that this is typically with the mother, then it’s a daily battle with trying to maintain a solid grounding and anchor for the children whilst attempting to develop your own career/life as well as having to deal with all the additional shit on your own. Buying the food, feeding them, discussing their emotional needs, school work, washing, keeping an eye on who they are hanging out with, buying their clothes, taking them on holiday, helping them develop their moral compass, dealing with parties, broken lightbulbs, boilers, cleaning and tidying up. Often, when you are up against it, it’s the smallest things that can tip you over the proverbial edge.  Of course it’s just as difficult for men who suddenly find themselves raising their children alone – but maybe (and I’m going to be really sexist here) the issue of changing the boiler and the lightbulb isn’t quite so stressful.  Just to be clear – I can change a fucking lightbulb….it’s not a problem.  I JUST DON’T WANT TO.

Most of the time, it’s fine. My children and I do more than cope. We have fun together and work well as a unit (most of the time). But sometimes, I miss having another grown-up sounding board, someone to make me a cup of tea, or to put a new bulb in (I know…I can put a new light bulb in, but that’s not the point). My son and/or daughter are the ones who are going to have to step up to fill this gap, but in some ways that’s not really fair. It’s not their fault I’m single. But there we are, you have to find a new world order in which to manage and you have to adapt and one great thing is that your children become a lot closer to you as a result.

We all have issues to deal with and it’s much more difficult to imagine how somebody will cope until you are actually living in your own difficult situation. Then you just have to get on with it. Short of abandoning my lot, which I would never do, there is little choice but to simply carry on. Being a parent is incredibly hard work when there are two of you who are a supportive unit, let alone when it’s just you that deals with the every day shit. So I would like to publicly thank Sheryl for acknowledging that she made a mistake by underestimating how hard it can be. “Before, I did not quite get it. I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at home.”

Sheryl’s husband very sadly died unexpectedly and therefore she was understandably devastated. That makes it all the more difficult to cope with, as she’s having to deal with her grief and her childs’ grief as well as her new world order. In many ways, I have found that over time you adapt and enjoy the different relationship you end up having with your children. I’m sorry to say that it doesn’t get easier, because of course with children, there are always new problems to deal with (well there are with mine and they tend to be commensurate in bigness with the size of the children) but it can still be a positive experience (although not at the moment because it’s BLOODY EXAM TIME AND WE’RE ALL STRESSED – actually that’s not true, the exam taker is not at all stressed, which seems to make it worse for us as we try and instil a little bit of helpful stress into him, but it just keeps bouncing back and getting absorbed BY ME… AND MY DAUGHTER’S GOT TO HAVE AN OPERATION THAT WE HAVE TO THROW INTO THE MIX – can you imagine what the stress is going to be like in my house for the next month? I am going to put a sign on my front door suggesting that visitors stay FAR, FAR away) most of the time.

I am very lucky to have an employer that is considerate of my situation. I can work part-time so that I can be at home enough to keep everything and everyone from just about falling apart. Many, many lone parents don’t have that choice and there really needs to be a complete rethink as to how to support the over a million single parent households, both male and female in the UK who work in order to help them not only be able to spend time with their children, who are already feeling a loss, but to be able to keep everything else that goes with running a house by yourself, in order.

So a reminder to stop and breathe, perhaps…as my mother always says “you can’t fart against thunder”:-