Motherhood is the exquisite inconvenience to be another person’s everything - Unknown
How hard is it to be another's person everything when many immediate needs and concerns pull you in many different directions?
The answer is: "Very hard!"
While we have all been changed by the pandemic, single mothers have been one of the most acutely impacted demographic. We can certainly see this at Sonshine!
Cynthia (not her real name), an ex-residential client with two young children, attended university while residing at Sonshine and graduated from her program in the past year. Her academic achievements were crowned by a well-deserved full time job. She positively organized her life and children's needs around work and school schedules, but only few months into her new job, she started facing the many challenges of single parenting, especially during a pandemic. Staying home every time one of her children had COVID-like symptoms became a regular occurrence. While her employer understood the situation, she was told that the frequency of her time off was not sustainable to her role. When her children needed more of her, her employer needed more of her too. The push-pull was impacting them all. Ultimately, she resigned from her job, giving up a steady, healthy income for the sake of fulfilling the job description of "Mom".
Cynthia is just one of the many single mothers who had to make a hard decision. It is true that single mothers experience the inconvenience to be another person's everything but it is often to a degree that may cloud the "exquisite" quality of it.
Happy Mother's Day to you, Cynthia.
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