I am a single mom, a Naval Officer, and an attorney. I had my daughter during my second year of law school. With a baby on my hip, I pushed through the last year of school, passed the bar, and decided to run for Congress. Then one day my phone rang and I was told that I would be deploying for a year and I would have to leave my daughter behind.
So, after three deployments, one and half years of living overseas, and four and half years of driving both an aircraft carrier and an amphibious helicopter carrier, I would say good-bye to my little one, drop out of my Congressional race, and once again put on my marching boots.
Seems pretty straight forward right? Not so much. I am a truly single mom. By that I mean, I receive no child support, her father has no involvement in her life, and most of my family lived about 1.5 hours away from us while I was home. All that to say, I had to leave my one-year-old with a cousin that she hardly knew, in a state where she never lived, attending daycare for the first time, all while living without me.
I did all the research in the world trying to find books or guidance on how to get through this difficult journey. I found nothing. There are books about fathers being deployed, books about mom’s of children deploying, but what of moms? More specifically, what of single moms? While I know there are millions (or at least thousands) of us out there, I guess we’re all too busy to put pen to paper to help each other through. Well, no longer! Still no pen to paper, but this should do.
How did we make it through? Well we haven’t yet, but I can share my journey and hopefully be of service to you. I can guide you through not just being a deployed, single, mother, but also just a single mom generally as well as a single mom law student and entrepreneur.
This road isn’t easy, but now, you no longer have travel on it alone.
