The Stigma by Treshenna Miller
Everyone knows the stigma of the single parent.
This was something I had to overcome and overcome it I did.
I was in an unhappy relationship and I was scared to leave it. I didn’ t want to become a single mother. I knew the stereotype. I grew up with married parents so I didn’ t understand it totally, but I knew I didn’ t want to become one.
But I did.
After I found out about another relationship, it gave me the strength to leave. I was willing to try to work on it, just being unhappy with the relationship in general, but cheating was a different story. That is one thing I was not willing to overlook.
I was ashamed that I couldn’ t make it work. I began to work on my life and it was hard. Not just the being single part, but being a mom when I was pretty down with how things were going. It seemed like everywhere I looked, the stigma was there, watching and waiting. Visits to the zoo had families with 2 parents, as well as the Children’ s Museum. There was no safe place for me. I was constantly focusing on this one missing element.
Slowly but surely I continued on with life. There was no need to wallow around on the floor in embarrassment because of a stigma most everyone was thinking when they saw me with my daughter. I had a very important job to do- live my life and raise the daughter in whom God entrusted to me.
Outside of that relationship, I was always a person who didn’ t care what other people thought about me. It was time to remember what my name was and bring that person back. I always traveled and I began to take little day trips with her, which led to overnight trips. I did everything I had imagined doing when we were a 3 person family, alone, as a 2 person family. It was scary. It felt like everyone was watching and judging me... but I kept going.
I refused to let someone’ s---no society’ s-- view of me become my story, the beginning and end. My story is not of a downtrodden woman! My story consists of a confident woman who wavered, might have even stumbled, but did not fall down and lay down waiting to die.
I remembered what my name was, got up and kept going.
12 THRIVE MAGAZINE