I was speaking to a woman about a week ago and her words genuinely touched my heart. She gave me a new perspective on my parenting situation. I was explaining to her that I was on a fourteen month deployment, I had a two-year-old daughter, and that I was a single mom. I described how my daughter began to have separation anxiety issues after I left. Ellie spent her entire life with me and was away from me and living with a man that she didn’t really know that well before January. Now, whenever she is in a room with someone, she holds tight to their finger and tries not to let go. In my mind, this is her way of making sure that they don’t leave her.
Helpful Stranger: The stranger explained that the measure of a great parent is the lengths that they are willing to go in order to take care of their children. She said that as single parents, we have no one else that we can truly count on to take care of our children, financially. If the only way that we can ensure that our children have a roof over their heads and food in their stomachs is to go away, then a good parent will go away.
Survival: The woman is living in Florida and explained that she knows many moms who have immigrated to the United States in order to find work. Some of those mom can only afford to travel to the United States alone and are forced to leave their children behind. She said that she spoke to some women who left infants, others elementary aged children, and some teenagers. It doesn’t really matter what age the children are, no age makes it easier to leave your flesh and blood. If leaving their child is the only way that their child can avoid starvation, they are willing to sacrifice their hearts and minds so that their child’s can survive. Some of these moms are never able to see their children again. Others are able to be reunited in a decade or so.
We discussed the relationship challenges associated with parents leaving children for extended periods of time. Some children are never able to forgive their parent for leaving them. Children, often-times, feel as though they have been abandoned and have difficulty understanding why their parent had to leave. The result is that a parent could sacrifice EVERYTHING in effort to protect their children, only for their child to grow up and hate them. I suppose this ultimate result is not much different than the average parent, it’s just an extreme version.
Other parents send their children to the United States alone in order to save them from the horrible life in their home country. These are typically older children, but it is still a major sacrifice. That mom has no idea whether their child will have a place to sleep or food to eat when they arrive. They often times don’t know if they ever arrive or what happens to them while they are travelling to their final destination. To think that a situation is so dire that they believe the only way to save their child is to flip the proverbial coin is terrifying.
Gained Perspective: This woman pointing out the similarities between a deployed mom’s situation and a fleeing immigrant mother, truly changed my perspective. I wasn’t leaving my child behind in a war-torn or gang-ridden country. I didn’t have to get to my final destination and find a job as soon as possible to make sure that the family member at home didn’t stop caring for my child because the money didn’t come fast enough. I’m not worried that I may never see my child again. Compared to some mom’s, I have nothing to worry about. While this perspective doesn’t make my situation any more easy, I now see that it could definitely be much worse. I just want to thank my cousin Vaughn and my mom, other cousins, and aunt’s for taking care of my baby while I’m gone. Without all of you, I truly would not be able to sleep at night.
