There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full. ~ Henry A. Kissinger

Last time, I spoke about my fledgling idea to start a community for single moms. That was the Idea Stage. It is time now to move to the next level; the dreaded Action Stage. This is a tad more difficult because by its very nature, it may require me to get out of my most favorite chair and actually DO something. Oh but it is still snowing, and the fire is quite lovely…

What is involved in the Action Stage? Talk to people. No, I don’t mean just those you can find on-line, I mean people you can touch and some day remember the name that goes with the face. Stage 2 means I need to go out and tell people about what I’m attempting to do. To whom shall I speak? Ah, people I work with. I will send an email out to the entire agency. It will be something like, “You probably don’t know who I am, but I work in Data Processing and have decided to start an organization to support single moms. How many of you are single moms and how many of you know and love a single mom? Help me to build a community in our small sphere of influence to support these lovely women who are raising the wonderful young people who will someday be in charge of our future.” Nope, a tad LAME and it doesn’t give specifics on what they can do to get involved. Next!

OK, attempt number two of the Action Stage. Somehow, it seems odd that I am starting an on-line website and still have to go out and actually talk to living, breathing people. That is a little scary and I thought by starting a website I wouldn’t have to do that. But this project needs to work so, after facing the inevitable, this is what I have decided to do; I currently work in an agency that is focused on public education, and even has an early head start program which means they come in contact with a lot of single moms. BANANZA! So instead of sending an email that blankets the entire organization, I’ll walk down the hall and talk with one of the staff who is in charge of providing the services. Hmm, that might just work.

The Next Day
Before I do that, I need to figure out what I’m going to say. The speech must include the purpose and the desired outcome.
In the days when my older girls were very young and I was in my 20’s I recall being quite proud of all I had accomplished on my own. I mowed the lawn every week or so, kept the garden tidy, at least to my standards which weren’t very high, sanded and painted the front deck, installed a garbage disposal by myself in just over five hours; all while working full time and raising two young girls. I was a single mom and being able to accomplish all that is great, but it was also very lonely. Why do we single mothers keep to ourselves so much? Is it because we are independent and reluctant to ask for help, or just because we are so damn busy? It would have been wonderful to have someone to share these accomplishments with, but a man was not what I was looking for at the time.

There have to be other single mothers out there who would benefit by sharing their experiences, projects, and kids with others; face to face. I once build a small patio in my back yard; if it survives another winter, I will be amazed. It would have been fantastic to have a friend come over and help me lay bricks, the right way. In return, I could go to her place and help her put up wall paper in the bath, or sand the deck, or plant a tree. One of us could watch the kids while the other went grocery shopping. You have no idea what a treat it is to go to the grocery store without the kids begging for this treat or that toy and crying, loudly, when mom says, “No.” It is heavenly to walk down the breakfast cereal aisle without having to leave one in the cart while chasing after the other who is pulling Lucky Charms off the shelf. Why do they put all the sugary cereals on the bottom?

 
There was a time when moms got together to have coffee while their kids played in the street. I grew up on a dead end so playing in the street was what we did. What the moms were actually doing while we played was a mystery because I did not have one; but I will save that story for another day. As a young adult, I have found it very difficult to connect with others like myself. I could have uses a community and that is why I want to start one.

The Vision – To bring people together to support single moms.
When I talk to the folks in the Early Head Start Program, I will first ask what they are currently doing to connect single moms with resources and each other. I suspect they are doing a great deal but have limited funds so cannot do as much as they would like. My goal will be to find the gaps and a way to fill those gaps. That is where the community will start.

 
As it turned out, I didn’t talk to the Early Head Start staff. A co-worker came up to me in the morning and while we were chatting, she mentioned that she is going to be leaving to work with teen moms. When she noticed my eyes light up, she said, “We need to go to lunch,” so we did.

Over spicy chicken wraps and water, we shared our similar visions. She is starting a YoungLife program to mentor teen moms. The first young mom she spoke with scared her half to death with stories of how she came to be a teen mom. Retelling stories of abuse, neglect; that the father is in jail for drugs, and now she has this little baby. I realized that no matter how hard my life was and is at times, it will never be as difficult as this young girl’s life had been up to this point. It hit me that there is a much bigger need than I could have imagined. I had just gotten a nudge to move forward with my project to build communities to support single moms.

How to use this blog: I will post every week, probably more often in the beginning, no later than Wednesday morning so keep checking back or sign up for the RSS feed. Included in each post will be two tasks for the week; one For You, the single mom, and one For Others, those of you who want to support a single mom. The tasks will focus on how to improve the life of a single mom; yourself and/or someone else. If you are passionate about building communities, these tasks will help you stay focused.

This week’s task:

For you and For others – On my website supportasinglemom.com I will start to build a directory of resources for single moms. I would like all of you to send me information on organizations or groups that have helped you get through some of your most difficult times. From this information, I will start to build a directory by city and state so please include that information in your response. Write a story on what you found helpful from the organization and send it to info@supportasinglemom.com. Let’s get this community started!

Love every day and remember to breathe,

K magoo

Imperfect Action is better than no action. ~ Giovanna Garcia

Sitting in front of the fire on a snowy, cold morning, I find myself with a few rare moments to myself. This is a perfect time to start working on my new project. I planted the seed for the idea more than 25 years ago, but alas, it never grew into anything very substantial and I had almost forgotten it was there until a couple of weeks ago.

We recently moved into a new, for us, house and in the process I decided to get rid of anything I hadn’t warn, used, or eaten in the previous three years or more. Mattie’s out grown books and stuffed animals went into boxes labeled “Mattie’s Old Books and Stuffed Animals.” Unwanted clothing went into kitchen garbage bags and in an old broken down plastic laundry basket, were placed the books and tapes from motivational speakers I hadn’t listened to in years. Some had never been taken out of the original packaging. The intent was to take this old stuff to GoodWill so the kids wouldn’t have to deal with them when I passed. If the items made it into the house, they would be there forever. Somehow, the basket and bags stayed in the back of my car until they arrived at the new house. By then we were too busy to do anything but set them in the corner of the garage where all the other non-essential items always end up.

Before heading off to work one morning I noticed the basket and a couple of the kitchen garbage bags full of clothing on the garage floor and tossed them in the back of my car thinking I would drop them at GoodWill after work. As you get to know me better, you will realize that I have great ideas but take action on few. So naturally, the items rolled around the back of my car for weeks until one day I needed to make room for a suitcase, lap top bag, groceries and other essentials for a three-day business trip to Forks, WA. You will also learn that my life is exceedingly thrilling. Not everyone gets paid for the opportunity to drive four hours to a tiny town shrouded 361 days a year in dewy mist and inhabited by vampires. I am truly one of the lucky ones.

Back on the garage floor went the kitchen garbage bags and the basket of motivational materials, right where they had been three weeks earlier. I was looking ahead to the very long, lonely four-hour drive and thought, “You know; it might be nice to have someone talk to me on the way.” I grabbed two or three of the unopened cassettes and off I went.

Someone recently told me that to create a perfect outcome for any project, “You first need to create a roadmap. Think of it like a cookie recipe,” he said. “Start by deciding the kind of cookies you want to make.” Perhaps a little condescending I thought, but he was a nice young man trying his best to sell me something so, I went along.

Question: What kind of cookies do you want to make?

Answer: I want to make cookies that look like communities of single moms and their supporters on-line and off.

Question: Excellent! I admire your desire to help with such a worthy cause! That is a very big cookie though. The next step is to nail down WHY you want to make that kind of cookie. (He was very enthusiastic.)

Answer: I have been a single mom off and on, mostly on, for more than 27 years (yikes has it really been that long?). As my daughter recently reminded me; being a single mom SUCKS; I had almost forgotten how sucky it really is. Having always wanted to somehow make a difference in the world, and due to my experiences as a single mom, I decided that would be the natural focus for my project.

Question: Alright, you know what kind of cookies you want to make. Now what are the ingredients?

Answer: That is a very interesting question (stalling). Hmm… (stalling, stalling). Let me think (Time is MONEY!). Well you see, I want to make really, really good cookies. Ones that are different from all the others, so choosing my ingredients must take time, and care, and a lot of practice before I get it just right. (Oh for Pete’s Sake.) OK, don’t go away, here it is. The ingredients are people; lots and lots of people. Single moms of course, but also other people who care for single moms and have the resources and desire to help. There are tens of thousands out there and my task is to find them all. I don’t want to make just one batch of cookies and I don’t want all the cookies to be the same, so I’m going to have to do some research.

Question: How are you going to approach the research? What questions are you going to ask?

Answer: Basically the question is “Do you want to support a single mom?” That is the question and the best way to find the people who will answer ‘Yes’ to that question is to ask other single moms. I have found in my 55+ years that I am the most at peace and happy with me when I help others to feel good about themselves. With that knowledge, I hope to inspire others to do the same. The special ingredients in my cookies are compassion and desire. The sugar, which is the stuff that holds a good cookie together, will be all the people who come into the community to make a real difference.

Question: OK, I know I started the analogy, but enough with the cookie recipe; how do you build a community?

Answer: First, talk to people because a community cannot be build without people. The method I’ve chosen to communicate is to start a blog. I have no idea what a BLOG is, but they tell me I need one, so now I have one. (In case you want to sell me something, my email is somewhere on this page). Clearly, this old dog needs to learn a few new tricks.

Question: You have now started a blog, what next?

Answer: I find out what people want. In my days of doing Social Work, I would have called it Outreach. It was called Market Research in business. In adult education we get feedback on Evaluation Forms. Today I would say, it is looking for love in all the right places.
How to use this blog: I will post every week no later than Wednesday morning so keep checking back or sign up for the automatic email option (coming soon). Included in each post will be two tasks for the week; one For You, the single mom, and one For Others, those of you who want to support a single mom. The tasks will focus on how to improve the life of a single mom; yourself and/or someone else. If you are passionate about building communities, these tasks will help you stay focused.

This week’s task:

For you – When you search the web for ideas, information, and resources on being a single mom, what do you search for? Are you looking for ideas on how to survive, ways to make the money last an entire month, how to have a social life? Do you want stories of how others have gotten through their days as single moms?

Let us start a conversation. I am looking for ways I can help you as a single mom. Do you need to learn how to feel good about yourself again, or ideas on how to keep your sanity when everything around you seems to be falling apart? Send me a comment with some of your thoughts. Include areas you feel you can use advice. This blog is about YOU and I want to address your concerns and answer your questions. From your responses, I will take the most frequent requests and put them in a future blog. I will ask for ideas from others watching this Blog to include in these posts. So be open and honest, and share, privately, with me. We will build a community one single mom at a time.

For others – Let us build a community to support single moms. To do that we need to start a conversation, network, build a resource bank. For those of you who want to support a single mom, send a comment with your reasons for wanting to help and any ideas you have tried or wanted to try. If you haven’t reached out, what is stopping you from moving forward? Have you tried to help but didn’t seem to get very far? Send your thoughts and I will share them or answer the questions in a future blog.

Love every day and remember to breathe,

K magoo

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Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.    ~ Jane Howard

The Purpose. The purpose of the site is not simply to give single moms advice or helpful tips, but rather to ask for help from those of us who care very deeply for a single mom.  A single mom raised my children and now one of the kids is following mommy’s example; embarking on what I have often called “The closest thing to an impossible task you will ever do.” She is a very good mom with an amazingly adorable (aren’t they all) son. She is independent, smart, loving, capable, and driven. I admire and respect her as much as any mom ever could, but more than anything else, I love her.

Having raised my three girls nearly, but not totally, on my own, brought me to the realization that single mothers can use a lot of help. I’ve always wanted to make a difference in the world somehow, and due to my experiences as a single mom, decided that would be the natural focus. From this idea, I said to myself, “Why not set up a website to address the issues of single moms and give helpful advice and resources on how to cope? I know how hard it is and really want to help.” Tell others you want to help single mothers and they will smile sweetly and say, “That’s nice dear; helping single parents is a noble cause.” Hmm, I did not want to embark on a ‘noble cause’, I wanted to make a difference, a real difference.

The Research.  I went about researching what was already available to single mothers on the web. At first, I was excited about all the web sites offering help to single moms, until I looked deeper at what most of the sites were about. Try searching for ‘single mom’ and see what you get. I found offers for scholarships, grants, tips, and dating advice; none of which addressed my issues or those of my daughter. There were statistics and research on how difficult it is to raise a healthy child alone, sad and scary stories on how women became single moms in the first place, and nearly every article started with, “There have been many sacrifices along the way, and plenty of times when you wished things were different.” Duh!

There were so many flashing ads and pop ups on most of the sites I landed on that I had a difficult time finding the content and when I found the content, I had a difficult time reaping a benefit.

Get Help. It has been my pattern in life to do everything on my own and hope for the best, but I had an epiphany that day: I needed help so I went to my daughter. The first thing she did when I told her what I was trying to do was to remind me that it SUCKS to be a single mom. I had almost forgotten how much it really SUCKS.  No matter how positive a spin you put on it or how much all these websites offer you help, being a single mom sucks. And I might add, no matter how much both sets of grandparents help, it still sucks.

Get More Help. Now what to do? I decided with great trepidation to confess to my man friend, Mark, what I had been working on for the past two weeks. I know he noticed that I had been on my computer writing and searching the web way more than normal. If I was doing anything other than play Sudoku on the iPad, I drew suspicion. I also suspected he noted that my daughter and I had been having a lively conversation until he walked into the room. He didn’t have to say a word, but I couldn’t stand the secrecy any longer. My initial fear was that he would criticize what I was trying to do, but to my surprise, he was supportive (do not under estimate a good man). He even spent time looking for acronyms for the site name. The real epiphany came when he suggested that perhaps a person who wants to give should start at home. He went so far as to suggest a few ideas I could employ to make my daughter’s life a little easier. Save the world by helping one person at a time; what an amazingly novel idea! I think I’ll try that.

Do Something Different. A major decision was needed and I made it. Do not follow the others, do something different. So now here we are, on an adventure of a lifetime. We are going to do everything we can to save one single mom at a time and in doing so, we just might save the world; or at least a part of it. If you want to make a difference in the life of another, follow this blog and add your ideas. I cannot do this alone, nor do I want to.

How to use this blog: I will post every week no later than Wednesday morning so keep checking back or sign up for the automatic email option.  Included in each post will be two tasks for the week; one For You, the single mom, and one For Others, those of you who want to support a single mom. If you are passionate about building communities, these tasks will help you stay focused.

This week’s task:

For you – When someone offers you help, take it. I know you are independent, do not want to appear needy, and don’t want to feel obligated to return the favor, but take the help. Think about how it feels to do something to help another for no reason. It feels great! Don’t deprive that person the opportunity to feel good about giving; take what is offered. Of course, if it seems creepy or weird, trust your instincts and back away.

For others – Your first task is to find a single mom or an organization that supports single moms. They are everywhere, at work, in your neighborhood, even your family. If you can’t find a single mom within your sphere of influence, contact your local school, church, or club.

Once you find a single mom who can use your help, do not go to her and ask, “What can I do to help?” In fact, do not say anything at all to her. Your task for this week is just for you to find someone or some group to focus your attention on. Start small; you will have the opportunity to enlarge your community later on.

Enter a comment below to send feedback. Your thoughts and ideas are welcome and necessary to accomplish our goals.

Love every day and remember to breathe,

K magoo