Feelings of inadequacy are so common when you are a single parent. When I first got divorced I tried to hard to do everything, be the perfect employee, the perfect mother, keep a beautiful house, and be a combination of Betty Crocker and Martha Stewart.
I failed miserably. Some days were just so hard. If I was at work I was thinking about Hailey, how was she adjusting to the divorce? Was she going to be ok? Did I do the right thing? When I was home I worried that I wasn’t giving my job 100%, I needed that job to support us. When I was baking or crafting with Hailey I worried about the laundry that wasn’t getting done. When I did the laundry I worried because Hailey was in from of the television.
I felt like I just couldn’t get it right. I thought there must be something wrong with me, other women made it look so effortless. Why couldn’t I be a better single parent?
I beat myself up for a long time until finally I had to let go of perfection. It was never going to happen anyway so why stress about it?
I learned to be more in the moment. If I was at work there really wasn’t anything I could do about how Hailey was adjusting so I had to let that go, when I was at work. There was plenty of time to worry when I was home. After that I stopped stressing about work when I was at home, I tried to focus on Hailey.
Eventually I learned that I have to do what’s right for me, not everyone else. The house isn’t always clean, Hailey sometimes watched too much television and crafting is like a vacation for me. I learned to do the things that make us happy and the rest, well, it got done when it needed to, not on some arbitrary schedule.
There were lots of times I was drying jeans in the morning before school because we did something fun the night before. Hailey’s jeans may have still been a little damp when she put them on in the morning but they dried just fine and we still had fun.