Single Parenthood

Today, as I reflect on their marriage, I find myself thinking about commitment. Not simply romantic commitment, but commitment to family, to showing up, to staying the course when life becomes difficult.

Sitting there beside him, as the music swelled and flowed, I could feel all of it rising. Every version of me that carried him through…

Our desire to escape pain is instinctual. We want to run from fear, hide from uncertainty, avoid…

This coming-of-age instinct - this primal ache to step out on one’s own - is something we don’t honour nearly enough in our youth anymore. We shield them, smother their edges, pad their risks, soften the world around them. We forget that the wild calls to them for a reason. For years, I was the one warding off dangers, seen and unseen. I was the buffer between them and the world. I was the shield. But a mother's shield is not meant to be held forever...

To let go is to embrace all that comes from loving deeply. And in that surrender - in that movement through evolution - there is strength, there is hope, and there is the unending rhythm of life itself, always calling us to keep moving forward.

Life wasn’t meant to be this way. Parenting wasn’t meant to be done alone. Families were never meant to fracture this much.

Over the past decades, we’ve villainized men - devalued their role in the family, labeled them broken or unnecessary, even dangerous. And in doing so, we’ve pushed them further out of the homes where they are needed most. But fathers are not optional. They are essential - just as mothers are. Children need both roots and wings, and it takes the balance of mother and father, masculine and feminine, to give them that.