Tag: Plan B

Skipping Steps to My Happily-Ever-After

Choosing Single Motherhood

Most women’s journey to motherhood begins with a trip to the bedroom. Mine began with a trip to my parents’ basement. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as kinky as that sounds.

While visiting my parents, I spied a pile of nostalgia on a dusty shelf downstairs: old photos, yearbooks, and my senior year psychology project. I think the project was supposed to be a sketch of our lives from birth to death, but hand a bunch of adolescents an assignment like this, and you’re just asking for a suburban girl’s mash-up of Sex in the City meets Cinderella, complete with magazine cut-outs of wedding dresses and beaus-to-be. I didn’t think of myself as overly boy-crazy back then. I certainly didn’t keep bridal clippings in my nightstand like some of my friends, but I was raised on Disney princesses, too. I knew how life was supposed to work out.… Continue reading

Plan B?

I never pictured myself as a single mom; but then again, I didn’t always picture myself as a mom, period. Unlike some of my friends who were always talking about having babies during their 20s and 30s, I said things like, “I’ll have kids if I marry a guy who I know will be a great dad, and who really wants to have kids,” but I wasn’t obsessed with being a mother at all. I wasn’t even comfortable around children, and didn’t think they liked me very much. In fact, before I had Jayda, I’d never changed a diaper, and could count on the fingers of one hand how many babies I’d actually held. And yet, as soon as the nurses put my newborn child on my chest, I knew I was put in this world to be Jayda’s mom and care for her.

There was a point in my … Continue reading

Grief

I recall learning the stages of grief in graduate school. D-A-B-D-A, my professor stated. He was providing an acronym to assist us with recalling that grief progressed through the stages of Denial then Anger followed by Bargaining then Depression and finally Acceptance. The stages appeared to make sense and seemed pretty straightforward; that is until you actually have to go through them!

I ran head-on into grief when I began to view motherhood as a reality I must experience. Why was I grieving? I had to mourn the loss of my vision for the future, my Plan A (as it’s often referred to in the world of SMC). Plan A for me meant boyfriend, followed by marriage, and then children. But that is not how life played itself out, and at the age of 42, I was left having to consider a new path: Plan B.

When I joined the … Continue reading

Skipping Steps to My Happily-Ever-After

Choosing Motherhood

Most women’s journey to motherhood begins with a trip to the bedroom. Mine began with a trip to my parents’ basement. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as kinky as that sounds.

While visiting my parents, I spied a pile of nostalgia on a dusty shelf downstairs: old photos, yearbooks, and my senior year psychology project. I think the project was supposed to be a sketch of our lives from birth to death, but hand a bunch of adolescents an assignment like this, and you’re just asking for a suburban girl’s mash-up of Sex in the City meets Cinderella, complete with magazine cut-outs of wedding dresses and beaus-to-be. I didn’t think of myself as overly boy-crazy back then. I certainly didn’t keep bridal clippings in my nightstand like some of my friends, but I was raised on Disney princesses, too. I knew how life was supposed to work out.

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“I used to think that becoming an SMC was my plan B, but it was the best decision I ever made. My son is my pride and joy. I can't imagine life without him. I am thankful that I had support along the way through the SMC community. I no longer consider it my plan B.”

– Anonymous