The Joys and Challenges of Being a Single Mom
When the make-up is gone…You show up anyway!
I am a single mother in a foreign country, with no family nearby and no one to turn to when life becomes too heavy to carry alone.
My husband left in 2020. He told me he was going to sell his deceased father’s home so that we could buy our first home in this foreign land we had slowly begun to call our own. I believed him. I believed in the future we were building together, in the life we had created over eighteen years of marriage, and in the dreams we still had ahead of us.
But he never came back.
Instead, over a phone call, he told me he was done with me and that I could manage on my own.
Eighteen years of marriage. A life built together. Dreams, promises, and memories. All brought to an end through deception and a phone call.
And just like that, I was left to figure out how to put my life back together.
So I did what I thought I had to do. I picked up the pieces, lifted my chin, and carried on. Not because I wasn’t hurting, not because I wasn’t afraid, and certainly not because I had everything figured out. I carried on because I was a mother, and I wanted my son to know that life is not defined by how many times we fall, but by how we rise after we fall. I wanted him to see that even when life breaks us, we can find a way to stand again, with dignity, courage, and love.
I wanted to teach him resilience.
I never imagined how much life would ask of me in return.
Sometimes, life gives us far more than our fair share of challenges. Just when we think we have endured enough, another wave comes crashing in. As though losing my beautiful daughter and watching my marriage fall apart were not enough, life dealt me another blow.
About three years after my husband left, my son began suffering from depression.
And this time, the ground beneath my feet didn’t just tremble. It gave way completely.
There is a particular kind of helplessness that comes from watching your child suffer and not knowing how to make the pain go away. You want to protect them, to take their hurt into your own hands, to find the right words, the right answers, the right help. You search for a way to make things better, but sometimes love alone cannot tell you what to do next.
I was trying to navigate a world I knew so little about. I was learning about depression while watching my child struggle through it. I was trying to understand what he needed, how to help him, and how to hold him up when I was barely holding myself together.
And I was doing it without a support system.
No family nearby to share the burden. No familiar hand to reach for when the fear became overwhelming. No one to take over for a little while so I could catch my breath. No one to look me in the eye and say, You don’t have to figure everything out today. I am here. We will get through this together.
I had spent years trying to show my son how to rise after falling. But what happens when the person teaching resilience is falling apart inside? What happens when the mother who is supposed to have the answers has none? When the person everyone expects to be strong is quietly wondering how much more she can take?
I discovered that you can love your child with every part of your being and still feel helpless. You can keep showing up, making appointments, searching for answers, and doing everything you know how to do, while carrying a fear that never quite leaves you. You can be grateful for the moments of hope and still be exhausted by the uncertainty of what tomorrow might bring.
And through it all, life continues.
Bills need to be paid. Work must go on. Meals must be prepared. Decisions must be made. The ordinary responsibilities of life do not pause simply because your heart is breaking.
The world keeps moving, even when yours feels as though it has come to a standstill.
You learn to cry quietly. To wipe your tears, take a deep breath, and return to whatever needs to be done. You learn to carry fear in one hand and hope in the other. You learn to be strong, not because you feel strong, but because someone you love needs you to keep showing up.
But there is a side of strength that we rarely talk about.
We celebrate the woman who rises after heartbreak. We admire the mother who sacrifices everything for her child. We tell people how strong they are when they survive what should have broken them.
But who asks how the strong are doing?
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Who holds the woman who is always holding everyone else? Who reminds the mother that she, too, is allowed to fall apart? Who sits beside the person who has spent so long being brave that she has forgotten what it feels like to be vulnerable without fear of being judged?
And what happens when there is no one?
I am sharing my story because I know I cannot be the only one.
There are so many people in this world who are fighting battles no one knows about. People who have been betrayed, abandoned, disappointed, or broken by circumstances they never chose. People who wake up every morning, put on a brave face, go to work, care for their children, meet their responsibilities, and carry on as though everything is fine.
People who have no one nearby to call when the night feels too long. People who have learned not to ask for help because they don’t know whom to ask. People who are tired of being told how strong they are when what they really need is permission not to be strong for a little while.
They are not looking for someone to solve every problem. They are not asking for the world to rescue them. Sometimes, they simply need a hand to hold, a shoulder to cry on, or a friend who will listen without judgment and stay without needing to have all the answers.
Sometimes, the greatest gift we can give another human being is the reassurance that they do not have to face everything alone.
I know what it feels like to have life take one thing after another from you and still have to find a reason to get out of bed the next morning. I know what it feels like to keep going because someone depends on you, even when you desperately wish someone would tell you that you can rest, too.
I am still learning. Still finding my way. Still discovering that strength does not mean never breaking, and resilience does not mean never needing help.
Perhaps real strength is not about standing tall through every storm. Perhaps it is about allowing ourselves to be human in the middle of it. To admit that we are hurting. To reach out when we can. To accept kindness when it comes. And, when we find the strength, to offer that same kindness to someone else.
I don’t know all the answers. I don’t have a perfect ending to my story. I am not writing from a place where every wound has healed and every question has been answered. I am writing from the middle of it all, from a life that has tested me in ways I never imagined and continues to teach me what it means to keep going.
But I do know this: somewhere out there, someone is living a story that feels painfully similar to mine. Someone is sitting alone, wondering how they will get through another day. Someone is holding a family together while quietly falling apart. Someone is wondering whether anyone would understand if they finally admitted how tired they are.
And if my words can reach even one of those people, I want them to know this:
I see you.
I may not know your name or understand every detail of your story, but I know that life can be unbearably hard. I know that some battles are fought in silence, that some wounds cannot be seen, and that some of the bravest people are simply those who find a way to begin again after a night they thought they could not survive.
You do not have to prove your strength by carrying everything alone. You do not have to have all the answers. You do not have to pretend that you are okay.
And you deserve love, kindness, and support — not only when you are strong, but especially when you are not.
Perhaps that is why I am telling my story. Not because I have overcome everything, and not because I have discovered some extraordinary secret to surviving life’s hardest moments.
But because I believe that in a world that so often expects us to be strong, we need to become better at holding one another.
We need to ask the difficult questions. We need to listen a little longer. We need to be gentler with one another. We need to remember that behind every smile, every achievement, and every person who seems to have it all together, there may be a story we know nothing about.
And perhaps, if we learn to share our stories and listen to one another without judgment, fewer people will have to fight their hardest battles feeling completely alone.
Until then, some of us will keep getting up, keep trying, keep loving, and keep showing up.
Not because it is easy.
Not because we are never afraid.
But because somewhere within us, even after everything, a small part still believes that tomorrow might be kinder.
And sometimes, that small part is enough to help us begin again.
