Anyone will tell you that raising children alone is hard. Raising children is hard no matter how many parents live in the home. These kids did not come with an instruction manual so we are all just winging it and hoping for the best. Every day is a new challenge and sometimes I don’t feel up to it but you just have to keep moving forward.
I don’t know about you, but at my age I can’t imagine starting over with little ones, especially by myself, but it happens every day. More and more grandparents are raising their grandchildren due to their own children’s inability to handle the stress of parenting for a myriad of reasons. Of course that means that there are many grandparents who are now single parenting either for the first time or all over again.
A lady I used to work with is 70, we recently met for lunch. This woman is so amazing, she truly is a special person, and unfortunately we don’t see each other as often as we’d like. This time it had been about five years since we had a chance to get together. As we ate we were catching up on each other’s lives, she asked about Hailey and how I was doing. When I asked what she has been doing I was in shock, I expected that maybe, she had finally had a chance to do something for herself. When we worked together she had talked about building a cabin when she retired and living a peaceful life in the mountains.
Is that what she has been doing? I know she diligently saved for her dream, she was single and taking care of her mother when we worked together. No, my friend has not had a chance to relax, although her mother passed away and she has not been caring for her, for the past five years this 70 year old lady has been raising two of her great grandchildren. They are 5 and 6 years old, ten months apart in age and she has had them since infancy. Wow.
I can’t imagine how hard it would be to parent two infants alone, but to do it at 70? Holy cow! As I said she is a truly amazing lady and those little ones are very lucky to have her. I started thinking about all the times I complain because I’m tired- I’m almost thirty years younger than she is and my daughter is a teenager, what am I complaining about? Then I thought about money stress, this lady is 70 and still works to pay day care and buy school clothes and to provide those kids with health insurance.
Being tired and being broke are two of the big issues when single parenting but I think I will stop complaining. After all, in the grand scheme of things I have nothing to complain about.