I never really gave much thought regarding single parents, my family was a close knit one, I had a happy home, and I never really understood how lucky I was to have that.
When I first started at my new job waiting at a cafe a friend owned, it was really out of convenience. It was a nice, relatively easy and simple gig that I did because I could use the extra money and because it was conveniently located in the Hong Kong Squash Center, which meant that I could go straight to practice before and after work.
On the first day of work, as my coworker showed me the ropes we made idle conversation, getting to know each other and such. It wasn’t until lunch when our other colleague asked how her kid was doing, that I found out she was a single mom. Somewhat surprised, I turned and asked, “you have kids?”, and her eyes simply lit up in happiness as she answered that she was, in fact, a single mother of two children, a seven-year-old boy, and a four-year-old girl.
As the conversation progressed, I learned about how she had always been somewhat of a wild child, and that she hadn’t even known she was pregnant five months in. That up until she found out, she was drinking and smoking heavily, as well as doing heavy drugs. The moment she did discover her pregnancy, she quit everything cold turkey. As a former smoker myself, I knew just how hard that was. When I asked her how bad the withdrawal was, she replied, “Surprisingly not too bad, I never even had the urge to relapse.” Going on to attribute that to a mother’s love for her child, or unborn child in this case.
To leave her previous lifestyle behind, in such a decisive and definitive manner, is notoriously hard. Indeed, there are many similar stories with vastly different endings, where the mother unfortunately relapses or is unable to completely leave their previous life behind and the entire family is left in poverty. My coworker, however, did not, she works two jobs to provide for her family and has remained clean for over seven years now without a single relapse, not an easy feat at all.
The amount of respect I have for her has only increased in the time that I have known her, she turned her life around, managed to successfully provide for her entire family all by herself, and is not only a diligent worker but also one of the most compassionate people I have had the fortune to meet. To me, she is living proof that it’s never, ever too late to change, that no matter how terrible the situation you're in seems, there's always a way to turn it around.
