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"  &amp;quot;My network of mom friends is my other half&amp;quot; I became a single mom by choice, because I was confident, independent, and really, really wanted children. None of that helped me, however, when I found myself with a newborn and the stomach flu, unable to stand upright long enough to change a diaper or lift my baby girl into her crib. I discovered the limits of autonomy as I lay in bed with my milky infant and agonized about my options. Desperate, I emailed a mothers&amp;#039; group through my church in Cincinnati: &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m violently ill and really need help tonight. I know you&amp;#039;re all busy with your own bedtimes, but can anyone possibly come by for an hour or two?&amp;quot; A fellow mom \u2014 who I&amp;#039;d never even met before \u2014 was at my door in minutes. And thus a wonderful pattern began. Partnered parents have a copilot, a significant other, to help when times get tough. I don&amp;#039;t. Instead, I have a community of other mothers on this journey, and four years into the trip, I&amp;#039;ve become convinced this village of moms has made my family whole. Years have passed since that flu, and I&amp;#039;ve moved to Toronto, but my fellow moms still remain my other half. A week before my daughter&amp;#039;s third birthday, I was struggling through a practice cake \u2014 strawberry-shaped, per her request, with pumpkin seeds on pink icing and a complicated green section for the stem. When my neighbor Sarah happened to knock on the door, we started chatting, and soon enough I was crying from fatigue and lamenting a midwinter birthday, a fussy new second baby, and the absence of family. She hugged and consoled me, and left. An hour later, she was back with the most fragrant potted spring bulb, a pink hyacinth, that&amp;#039;s obscenely expensive in January. She had dragged her own two small children out into the snow to find the flower. It was the simple gesture of support that I had needed to keep me going. I&amp;#039;ve never forgotten these kindnesses, and I try to pay them forward. When a mom I met outside our daughters&amp;#039; ballet class confided of a worrying lump, I filled a bag with chocolate, magazines, and bubble bath for her. And after a neighbor told me of her house full of vomitty kids, my daughter and I got out the mixing bowls and had breakfast muffins on her doorstep before dawn. It&amp;#039;s not much. Muffins. A spring bulb. A hot meal. Extra chairs for the birthday party, a can of chickpeas in a pinch, a playdate when someone really needs time to herself. But these little things that my mom friends do for me, and I for them \u2014 they&amp;#039;re everything. \u2014 ANDREA HOPKINS is a writer in Toronto  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m a proud single parent \u2014 even on food stamps&amp;quot; In 2007, I was a married mother of two kids, living in a four-bedroom house with a pool. My income as a writer and Spanish translator helped to support our comfortable lifestyle. Then came 2008. As newspapers closed down, I lost writing gigs, and my husband was unemployed as well. After years of trying to keep our marriage going, we divorced and had nothing left but a huge pile of debt. The girls and I moved into a small two-bedroom apartment in 2009. I was so broke I could barely keep enough gas in the car to drive them to school, and was forced to sell my jewelry and family heirlooms. I can still remember my 4-year-old admiring the bling in the cases while the jeweler handed me an $800 check. It was just enough to cover the rent. I was too proud to ask for help, but thank God I wasn&amp;#039;t too proud to accept it when it was offered. After a rough day of job hunting, I unloaded on an acquaintance that I had sold my jewelry. She was twice divorced and told me she&amp;#039;d been saving her platinum engagement and wedding rings for someone in need. Pressing them into my hands, she said, &amp;quot;Sell them. For you and for your girls.&amp;quot; Had I not been a mom, I never would&amp;#039;ve accepted such a gift, but my need to provide smothered my pride. I cried as I took her jewels, and told her I would never forget her gesture. &amp;quot;I was waiting for the right person,&amp;quot; she said. Soon after, another friend came through for me in a different way. He asked me why I hadn&amp;#039;t applied for food stamps. &amp;quot;But those are for poor people,&amp;quot; I said. He just stared at me. I couldn&amp;#039;t face how much my life had changed \u2014 the year before I&amp;#039;d been donating to charity, and now I needed it. I applied, and we qualified. A few weeks later we had food on the table. Jobs eventually returned and I got back on my feet, but I&amp;#039;ll never forget those days of need and the generosity of near strangers. Now, my 10-year-old gives clothes she&amp;#039;s outgrown to a friend whose single mom is struggling. It&amp;#039;s not about being thanked, but about making them feel a little warmer and more hopeful about the future, just like others did for us. \u2014 LORRAINE C. LADISH is the managing editor of the website VOXXI.com, Mujer for Latinas  &amp;quot;I do it all when my husband&amp;#039;s deployed&amp;quot; When I married Tom, a naval officer, 16 years ago, I never envisioned myself becoming a single mom. But here I am, commander in chief at home to four boys while my husband is on a 20-month deployment overseas \u2014 his third since 9/11. I&amp;#039;m out there pushing the mower, pulling weeds, and trimming bushes when the grass starts growing in the spring. When a shelf in our craft closet fell down, I was the one at the hardware store buying the parts, whipping out the electric drill, and putting it back up. And when I decided the family room needed freshening up, I picked the color (peanut butter brown) and painted it myself. Knowing I can do the heavy lifting is pretty empowering; it&amp;#039;s the emotional work that wears me down. One of our boys is autistic, and when he has a rough day, I find myself carrying the weight of it all, because it feels selfish to share it with Tom while he&amp;#039;s shouldering heavy responsibilities with international consequences. I keep my emails and video calls with him light, so I usually lean on another Navy wife. And I&amp;#039;ve been deeply touched by words of encouragement from friends and strangers in our community. Hearing a simple &amp;quot;Thank you for your service and sacrifice&amp;quot; gets me through some tough days. Unlike other single parents, my situation is temporary. When Tom returns in July, I&amp;#039;ll be ecstatic. But I confess, readjusting after a long deployment can be tricky. He can feel out of the loop and unsure of his role. It takes a while to find the new dynamic, but being aware of the problem makes it easier \u2014 and we&amp;#039;ve had a lot of practice! In July, we&amp;#039;re headed to Disney World for a much-needed family vacation. And then, after more than a year and a half of solo parenting, it might be nice to take my own vacation. \u2014 ERIN ROVAK HENDERSCHEDT blogs at deploymentdiatribes.com  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s hard to let go of your kids when you share custody&amp;quot; An entire day and a half to read books, sleep in, take uninterrupted baths?!&amp;quot; That&amp;#039;s the envious cry I hear from married moms when they find out that my 12- and 8-year-old sons spend the bulk of each weekend with their dad. Since my marriage ended two years ago, my boys are with their father \u2014 a wonderful, loving father \u2014 from Saturday afternoon through Monday morning. That&amp;#039;s two nights a week I&amp;#039;m alone, without the bedtime struggle or midnight requests for water, but also minus irreplaceable tuck-ins and the comforting lullaby of little snores. The truth is, I feel like a mother isn&amp;#039;t meant to be separated from her young children \u2014 I&amp;#039;m not there for a third of their short childhoods. I want to be the one making little decisions like whether they should keep that sweatshirt on to play outside or if they&amp;#039;ve eaten enough dinner to get dessert. Complicating matters is that the rules are more lax at Dad&amp;#039;s house. Bedtime is later. Screen time is longer. Discipline is different. There&amp;#039;s a duality to my children&amp;#039;s lives, and I can&amp;#039;t do anything about it. I&amp;#039;ve had to accept a certain lack of control and focus some of my nurturing energy inward. For me, sharing custody is like facing an empty nest a decade early. It has required a reinvestigation of who I am and what makes me happy. I&amp;#039;ve restarted the improv classes that lit me up in the years before having kids, built an excuse-free relationship with my treadmill, and given away my TV (which invited me to sit on the couch feeling sorry for myself). Now I spend that time reading books that make me feel something. And I&amp;#039;ve restored my commitment to my faith through prayer. These steps don&amp;#039;t fill the space that the absence of my children has created. But they do push me to focus on being resilient and positive. In a more standard family, I might have found myself wishing away my boys&amp;#039; childhoods under the pressure of unrelenting demands at home and at work. But now, the demands are all too relenting. That allows me to be more patient with my sons than I might otherwise have been \u2014 and, most importantly, to be fully present in the moments with them, even the challenging ones, because I know how fleeting they really are. \u2014 RESHMA MEMON YAQUB is a writer in Bethesda, MD  JON HAMM ON HIS SINGLE MOM The Mad Men star told REDBOOK that he was raised primarily by his mother, Deborah, after his parents split. And before he lost her to cancer, she gave him everything he would ever need. &amp;quot;My mom did an amazing job at instilling incredible confidence in me. She was a secretary back in the &amp;#039;60s and &amp;#039;70s. She would say, &amp;#039;There are opportunities in this world. Take advantage of them.&amp;#039; She impressed upon me that achievement is something to be lauded and to work toward. She told me that I could accomplish anything I wanted, and that really stuck with me. When I became a teacher out of college, I tried to instill that same sense in my students \u2014 that it&amp;#039;s not dorky to be good at school, that it&amp;#039;s about putting value in the things that matter. Whatever I&amp;#039;ve accomplished, it&amp;#039;s because of my mom, even though she died when I was 9 years old.&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.redbookmag.com/life/mom-kids/advice/a13801/single-moms/>