To the single mother,
You mostly likely did not choose this life. You probably did not expect to be a mother, promising yourself you wouldn't be like your own mother. Maybe you didn't expect to do raise a child alone, figure out life alone.
Yet you chose your children’s welfare, health, and education over anything else life could offer for you. You made them lunch for school everyday, or at least scrap every single bill and coin so he/she can eat. You work at that crappy customer service job just so you could buy the clothes on your children’s back. You made sure they had access to health insurance for every shot required by the school district and for anytime your children had the flu.
Your job is the hardest in the entire world, especially since you're doing it alone. It’s hard enough that you’re a woman, but you're also a single mother. And some ignorant people are going to give you sh*t for it. For every screw up your children does, it’s “your fault” or “figures” since you're a single mother without a husband to provide. I know, I saw that all the times when people treated or made judgement eye contact with my mother.
So many people have done extraordinary things as a single mother or being a child of one. JK Rowling had been in an abusive marriage, needed welfare from the government for her and her daughter, and considered committing suicide before the age of 30. Right after she wrote one of the most beautiful pieces of children literature. Audrey Hepburn was a child of war and a child of a strong single mother during one of the most hateful times in human history that it inspired her to serve as an UNICEF ambassador after she retired from acting. Barack Obama learned about the world and how to be kind, open-minded and observant of humankind from his single anthropologist mother. And they are few of hundreds of thousands of the amazing things single mothers and children of single mothers have accomplished.
So screw those idiots.
So that sack of lunch, the new Nike sneakers, and the winter coat to last that harsh winter means so much to us. They are little (but financially big) things to show your love for us and support for the hopes of our future, the future you dream for us to obtain, our potential to do good for the world. You dealt with our complaining for not having enough, our icky illnesses, our “angsty” years, our weird aesthetic phases, our heartbreak, our tears. And you did it alone.
You are not only our mother, but our rock, our cheerleader, our mentor and our friend. You are not appreciated enough and I proclaim their should be at least a Mothers’ Week, am I right? Because being a mother, a single mother, is one of the most underpaid, stressful jobs in the world.
You are proof that women are out-of-this-world, crazy-amazing, Supergirl-strong creatures that can take out any obstacle in life or threatening alien lifeforms if the alien invasion ever happens. I’m pretty sure you already have some game plan.
My point is say thank you. Thank you, thank you, a million times thank you for being “phenomenal woman," using the words of Maya Angelou.
Enjoy your Mother’s Day because you deserve it.
With love,
A child of a fearless single mother
