Journey of a Single Mom

I was running late for a meeting when I got a call from my babysitter saying that my 10 year old ran away from home and left a note for me. I made a detour and rushed back home. My heart pounded so fast. I was feeling a host of emotions... guilt, anger, frustration, fear, and exasperation. "Why is he making things difficult for me? Can't he understand that I've had enough of his dad? Can't he see that his dad is at fault here"? These thoughts, and more, crossed my mind.

Finally I was home... and thank God my son was back too. I wanted to scold him so bad but I controlled myself. I hugged him, told him not to do it again, and warned him of the dangers of running away from home, most especially for his age.

My heart ached so bad. I knew he was trying to get my attention. I wanted to be there for him but I had to work so hard so I could continue providing for him and his one year old brother. Then it dawned on me that I was alone. I had to do it on my own... as a dad and a mom at the same time.

This is just one of the many painful incidents that happened to me and my children as a result of my separation from their dad. And this was just the beginning of my journey as a single mom to two boys... a journey that entailed a lot of balancing acts: a balance between feeling independent and having the sole responsibility of raising two kids; a balance between telling the truth to my children about their dad and concealing what may make them lose respect for their father; a balance between accepting my hurts and putting up a brave front; a balance between spending time with the children and managing my business; and a balance between being a father and a mother.

All those years I heard two voices inside of me: the mother who kept telling me, "You are not a teenager anymore. You have two boys you are responsible for"; and the young Lisa who kept saying, "You have been deprived of your youth. You deserve to enjoy life". It was a constant battle between the teenager in me that was forced to grow up early, and the mother in me who was doing her best to be responsible for her two boys. The more the adult Lisa in me tried to control the young Lisa in me, the more rebellious the young one got. But in her rebellion there was always that plaguing guilt. Vivid pictures of my boys played in my mind over and over again while I was sleeping with a man or partying with my friends. It almost drove me crazy. I wanted to run away but I could not. I felt trapped!

And then there was the corporate me, looking all strong and "put together". I projected an image of an independent woman who didn't need a man in her life. I was self-sufficient and successful. Married men wanted to be with me because I represented the type of woman who didn't care about commitment in relationships. I was also the envy of a lot of married women who wanted the freedom that I had.

With all these things going on in my life at that time, I still felt empty and lost. Though I didn't want to be with any man, I knew that my children needed some father figure... something I will never be able to provide them with. I also knew that they needed a more emotionally stable mom who spends quantity and quality time with them and not just bring them to nice places or buy them anything they want. I knew what was needed to be done but didn't know how to do it. I wanted to change but I kept failing. In fact, I met a man who treated me so good, and I got into a relationship with him. He was legally married to his wife but estranged from her, so I thought it was ok. I tried building a family with him and my boys. It was a made-believe world because we were not married. It actually made me more frustrated and insecure.

God was watching me all those times. And when His time came, He finally swept me off my feet. After four years of being a single parent, I got reborn. It was a personal encounter with Jesus that was waiting to happen. I was ripe for it.

I woke up the next day (after getting reborn the previous day) feeling so fresh and full of hope. I was ready to start a new life as a single mom. That was just the beginning. Day after day I was drawn closer and closer to the Lover of my soul. He started healing and restoring me. I lost the desire for everything outside of Jesus. I quit smoking, partying, drinking, and sleeping around. It's not even because "I had to". I just lost interest for it.

My boys saw the big change in mom. I led them to Jesus as well and both of them received Jesus sincerely in their hearts. I began bringing them to church with me and even having Bible studies and devotions with them at home. They also began to realize that their real dad is God the Father who will never leave them nor forsake them.

I will never forget one Scripture that God spoke so clearly to me one day...

For your Maker is your Husband--the Lord of hosts is His name--and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; the God of the whole earth He is called. For the Lord has called you like a woman forsaken, grieved in spirit, and heartsore--even a wife [wooed and won] in youth, when she is [later] refused and scorned, says your God. For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion and mercy I will gather you [to Me] again. In a little burst of wrath I hid My face from you for a moment, but with age-enduring love and kindness I will have compassion and mercy on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer.
(Isaiah 54:5-8)

God became my husband and the father of my children. I was so content with Him and didn't even want to be married to anyone else. When He was finally so sure that no one can ever take His place in my heart, He sent me the man He has set aside for me. He knew I was ready for an earthly husband.

I have been married to my 2nd husband for almost four years now and our marriage is a testimony of how God heals and restores.

Lisa is a Professional Writer/Consultant with over 10 years of experience in Professional Writing Public speaking, and Human Resources in Organizational Development. She manages a Professional Writing business which includes Résumé Writing, Business Letter Writing, Essays, Business Plans, Website Content, Editing Jobs, Press Kits, and other writing requirements.

Other than her business, Lisa is also an evangelist/preacher/minister. She has 10 years of ministry experience including pastoring a women's prison; conduct of Bible-based seminars and Bible studies in corporate offices; preaching engagements in churches, police camps, schools, and other organizations; outreach programs for poor families and children; and pastoring a church. Together with her husband, they drive around towns, cities, and eventually states, with their JESUS van, to bring the church outside where the people are. They head a ministry called God'z Gang whose main focus is to reach those who are not reached by traditional means and methods used by churches.

In 2010, Lisa self-published a book entitled UNVEIL ME. It is a self-help, Bible-based book that talks about the woman's needs and wants, how these were distorted along the way, how these distortions have wounded her, and how she can experience true healing through Jesus Christ. It is a book that talks about her own hurts and the process of healing she went through and still going through. It also talks about stories of other women that every other woman can relate to.

Lisa holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and some "masteral" units in Psychological Services.

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Living Life Going Up The Down Escalator

In order to write this article I've spent a great deal of time thinking about work+life fit, and looking for examples of severe work-life balance dysfunction among business women with family obligations who feel like they're barely treading water.

It's not like there aren't a gazillion examples out there for me to choose from, but I don't know their stories as well as I know my own. After a ridiculous amount of time discounting my own experiences, I realized that it's my ability to understand what other women are going through - that "I've walked-in-your-stilettos" camaraderie - that makes me credible.

It doesn't have to be about me, but if what I've gone through can help someone else recognize where they're off track, then why would I downplay its importance?

So, here's a little story - a perfect example of work-life "balance" run amok (and if you could see me right now, you'd see that I'm putting little finger quotes around the word "balance").

Once Upon A Time, In a Galaxy Not So Far Away...

About 6 years ago I was working in a brand new, high-level position that basically required me to create my job description as I went along.

I loved what I was doing, but it meant 70+ hour work weeks, lots of traveling and very little local or national support from my organization.

I was newly remarried after a 20-year marriage and several years as an, eh hem, "single" woman. We're talking "adjustment" challenges. You know, those important

"Must you leave the toilet seat up?"

"Is it necessary for you to use the exercise bike as a coat rack?"

"No, your ginormous dogs can't sleep in bed with us!"

"Why do you always put the empty carton of milk back in the fridge" kind of adjustments.

My 21-year old son was in the military, and word was that his unit was being deployed to Afghanistan in a few weeks (thankfully, in military time "a few weeks" stretched into "never").

Because my current husband had never had children and both mine were grown, we decided to become emergency foster parents, and the first child placed with us was a 10-year old girl with a host of psychological and behavioral problems, a gut-wrenching history, and a one-way, no return ticket from the social service agency.

Prior to my remarrying, my elderly mom had been living with me fairly independently for several years, but after a recent hip fracture at the age of 88, her health had really begun to decline, and she required 24 hour a day care at home.

While my husband was extremely supportive and a roll-up-your-sleeves and pitch in kind of guy, I had no immediate family nearby to help shoulder some of my mom's care.

Any one of these things by itself required a great deal of time, effort and adjustment. Pile all these individual ingredients on top of each other, mix them all together, and it was a recipe for disaster.

I Am Woman, Hear Me Roar!

Like many of you, I felt responsible to "balance" all these things, and of course, to handle them all perfectly.

Well, the perfection part might not be your particular issue, but I'm guessing you can relate to what I'm saying.

Add the feminist manifesto I'd learned as a product of the early 70s playing in my ears (think Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" song where she's bringing home the bacon and frying it up in a pan) and it's no wonder my body began to rebel.

The Crash

Now it isn't that I didn't take care of myself the least little bit - I did. But it was erratic and on-the-fly, and this quasi-taking-care-of-myself-posturing still didn't stop me from pushing my needs lower on the "to do" list so that I could attend to more important fires blazing around me.

And after months and months (in actuality, it was a couple of years) of trying to balance the scale between career and home life, I crashed.

I developed a serious, progressive and incurable illness that forced me to do what I'd refused - or hadn't been able to do before - come up with a workable work+life fit integration plan that was flexible, strategic, and relevant tothe realities of my life.

Rising From the Ashes

I delegated or let go of what I could, and asked for more support at work and at home where I needed it most.

It meant moving my mom to a nursing home where she could get the intensive care she needed, and saying no to adoption - something we really hadn't wanted to do in the first place when we became foster parents.

It meant dealing with the bone-crushing sense of guilt and shame I felt that I was letting people down because I couldn't do it all.

It meant resigning from a job I loved, but could no longer give 100% to, and, on a truly positive note, it meant opening my own business so I could still be productive and of service - but in a way that allowed me more flexibility and control, and better able to manage my health.

Teeny, Tiny Steps Will Still Get You There

Now understand - it's not necessary that you make sweeping changes all at once. In my case, I'd waited too long, and the sense of urgency when it all came crashing down forced me to stop vacillating.

But small, incremental changes can make a HUGE difference in how you manage and experience your life.

For example, when it comes to making changes to your work life:

Most of the time you may not want to work less - just differentlyStart with what you DO want, not what you DON'T want. The only thing most people know is that they don't want the fit they currently have. You must begin by asking: "How do I want work to fit into my life?"Ask! What's the worst that can happen? They'll say "No" - and most likely, they'll say "Yes" to a well thought out plan for at least a trial period, which is why you must ask - especially if you're really ready to leave anyway.Redefine success to match your fit. Make sure that your personal definition of success is working FOR you and not AGAINST you.

It hurts your career more not to adjust your fit. Burning out, becoming unproductive, ignoring personal problems or getting sick certainly won't help your career (mind you - hindsight is always 20/20).

Pretty please, with lots of sugar on top (and little sprinklies if they're your thing) - use my experience as an example of what NOT to do. I don't mind being a poster child for recovering dysfunctional work-life balance syndrome (okay - I know I just made that up), as long as it helps get you off that roller coaster ride you're on and on the path to being your fully integrated, awesome self! Sweet!

As Founder & CEO of Inner Affluence, Evelyn specializes in helping midlife career women increase their sacred capital. For these women, the desire to play a bigger game requires a strong profit motive, but making money is no longer the goal. The goal is a search for significance, a journey to uncover the wealth of the self, a rite of passage to their highest purpose, and to a life that is as unique as their fingerprint.

Evelyn is currently writing a book about women navigating through midlife. She is a speaker, consultant, published author and poet. Visit her at: http://www.inneraffluence.com/.

"Increase Your Sacred Capital!"

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Ladies, Wake Up!

It is about time we think further to make sure our daughters have a better life than we do.

Ok, in the western world, women's situation is not that bad: they can vote. They can study, work, aim for the top positions politically and in business organizations. The reality though is in the numbers.

Sheryl Sandberg talks much better than me about these numbers and I really invite you to view the video that you can watch on my blog.

The reality is also that working women with children are not only consumed with guilt, but they also feel a pressure that men don't feel. The pressure I am talking about is the one linked to physical appearance and ability to seduce and convince.

It is hard to change patterns that have been going on for centuries. The lack of self-confidence in most women stems from the fact that, for a very long time, women have seen themselves through the men's eyes.

I was looking at the TV show Bewitched with my daughter the other day. And suddenly I understood why unconsciously I had banned all pink and girlies stuff for my daughter, who, as a result, has never played dolls, princess or anything like that. I guess I had the intimate conviction that this was a fraud.

I find it difficult shopping for gifts for girls because I do not want to feed into this debilitating, servile drive to confine women in an obedient domestic role.

If we want the male female interaction to change, it has to start in education. It has to start in our homes. Who would offer a doll or an ironing board to a boy? Who would offer cars, power symbols to a girl?

My little boy who is five loved to dress up a baby doll neglected by my daughter, but very soon peer pressure taught him that it is not cool to do so for a boy: it is a girl thing!

How long more learning to care for others will stay a primarily girl thing? Most of the best teachers my kids have had were male teachers; they were all very diligent about teaching respect between genders, teaching girls and boys to work together.

It is stunning to me to see how it is, here in California. From a very early age, boys are encouraged to socialize with boys only and idem for girls. How come we don't see how deeply wrong this is? Women and men are very different, so are boys and girls. This is the reason why we need to put more effort to make sure they acclimate and understand in a respectful way one another.

When I finished the equivalent of fifth grade in France, I changed school to start my middle school years. I was among twenty two other girls the first generation of female students in a fifty year old boy school. To "survive" in that male dominated environment, we all had to review our behaviors and our way of thinking. We had to be as good as the boys in games that they had been playing for a long time, and that were new to us. Personally, it was not difficult, I loved boys games; I found them much more fun than anything the girls did.

That experience probably shaped me much more than I have ever been aware of. I guess my initial interest for male's mind rooted there.

I believe today that we need to create a balanced communication between men and women. This is what my website will be about: PeaceReminder will be this bridge that makes understandable for men what women truly want in their relationship.

But we need to restore healthy women relationships. The insecurity most women feel hinder their relationship not only with men but also with women. As a result, women are not helping one another the way they could.

By the time we will have reached complete male female equality in home and childcare duties, we might as well be dead and our children too. Collective patterns are very hard to change. So before we blame men for not changing fast enough, we should review our own behaviors first.

As I said in a previous post "Are working women the root of the problem?", we need more and more women in the work force, especially in leading positions. Personal fulfillment is also critical for most women, and this is healthy. It is healthy for them and for the world, because it fosters ethics and values in the business world. A woman who has children will be less likely to make decisions that could potentially harm her children in the long run.

This is what the world need.

So not only we would benefit to have more women in leading positions, we would benefit even more if these women had a fulfilling personal life. The whole work place would be transformed.

For that we must support one another. We should not feel threatened by the appearance or the success of another woman. We are not in competition anymore to get the full attention of a male for our sake and future. Our daughters will seize the opportunity that was offered to us, to be fully financially independent from the start: they will choose their male partner because they want a fulfilling personal life, not because they have to.

Raising children should be part of the process in a manageable way. I keep repeating post after post that a day is twenty four hours no matter what. It is unsustainable to ask a woman to have two, sometimes three jobs a day. You know that I am adamant about domestic help, believing it is a necessity to keep all sanity. I also think that more women interactions would lower the stress level of many. Women benefit from talking to one another. Even John Gray in his last book Venus on Fire Mars on Ice says so. Never, in human history raising a child has fallen on the shoulders of one person only. If you take a look at traditional communities, as soon as they are weaned, children are raised by the entire community.

So what are we waiting for to increase the mutual help we can offer? Why is there so few carpool for example?
Here is my explanation:

Women after freeing themselves more or less successfully from a male tutorial system, have submitted to the dictatorship of their own children. They let who they should guide be the guidance. They follow their kids' agenda relentlessly.

I am close to believe that there is a conspiracy to make sure that women will never reach their full potential.

Once you have a child these days, know that crystal is easier to take care of.

You, the mother, are responsible for his health, his mental health, his development, his growth, his attitude. And just a bit like the couple hours embryo is a human being with full rights, know that the child is a mini adult with full rights. In fact this child has more rights than you, the mother, do. He can traumatize you by driving you insane but you can't take any measures of retorsion because this is bad parenting. This child needs to express himself, he needs to be heard, he needs to be acknowledged every minute, even if this child has no sense of boundaries and steps over your personal space repeatedly.

A child is self-centered, which is part of the process of being a child. As a result he is completely selfish, and that selfishness should be weeded out if we want to eventually make a responsible and caring adult out of that child.

Children are not those fragile creatures, easily traumatized that most parenting lecturers will claim they are: if that were so we would not exist. How could our grandparents or even our parents have coped with the dreadful childhood they had when they were not seen nor heard?

Children are growing beings who need love and assistance until their brain is fully developed.
So can we stop pretending that these little beings have the ability to decide for themselves. The worse is teenage years. It seems that the more research is being done on these transitional years the less common sense we are using. Teenagers are deceiving because very quickly they look like grown-ups even if their brain is still a child's brain. How can we expect a teenager to make the right decision for his own sake when he does not have the brain to do so?

So we don't carpool because the child does not want to, because it is not fun for him.

Are we all mad???

We should not let children rule our lives. It is detrimental for us and for them. Please see my other post "children should come after your couple" for that matter.

Ladies friends, the alternative is this: either we find a way to bring back balance in our lives or we stop having children altogether.

For those of us who already have children, there is no alternative: we must find a way!

Women, get together, be kind to one another, make your life easier, help one another, so you can express your potential. Have no fear. Other women and many men will be here to cheer you.

My name is Anne Benissan. I am dedicated to improve long-term relationship in a pragmatic way. I believe that women need to go beyond the boundaries that have been theirs for so long. Soon will be launched PeaceReminder, the ultimate tool for men to improve their relationship efficiently. For the moment, only my blog http://www.annebenissan.com/ is live where you can check my bio, my ideas and of course give me your comments.

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