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Two Things Single Parenting Taught Me

Shannon Vaughn
2 min readNov 9, 2021

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Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Not sure if I ever doubted my ability to be a single parent. In fact, it was never a thought.

My mom always said I didn’t want to be a single mother. I agreed. But who wants to be an unhappy wife? When a marriage turns sour its inevitable.

So as parents we do what we must. Slide into our new parenting roles with a vengeance to avoid defeat.

Six years have passed since becoming a single mother. Though it hasn’t been easy — I learned a couple of things:

#1 I can do this

When times got hard with the kids emotionally, I was the only adult present to take that on. In the beginning, everyone’s raw emotionally. Mom feels a way about dad. Dad about mom. And the kids feel a way about both.

Skipping on opportunities to speak ill of their dad, lashing out at him, and develop an emotional intelligence about myself were constant mantras in my head.

I can do this single mother thing.

The right way.

The best way for all of us.

#2 Holy sh*t I can do this!!

One reason I hadn’t split sooner from my ex was finances. Despite earning more that him in our latter years, I wasn’t confident in carrying a household on my…

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Shannon Vaughn
Shannon Vaughn

Written by Shannon Vaughn

I’ll think of a bio later. Tik Tok: hereisshannon hereisshannon@gmail.com

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