Divorced Parent Guilt
A solo-parenting perspective
I know every parent feels tremendous amounts of guilt regarding their children. It doesn’t matter how great of a parent you are, how abundant your life is, how invested you are in in your child(ren). Every parent I know struggles with feeling like they aren’t or can’t do enough.
I also know that a good parent is one that loves their children the best ways they know how, is invested in them, and genuinely cares about their wellbeing. The daily semantics of how you love, invest, and care will look wildly different, but those traits do make for a great parent.
So, even though I know that I love my daughter unconditionally, I am invested in her completely, and genuinely care and provide for her wellbeing, I also feel a tremendous amount of parenting guilt when it comes to her life, particularly now that I am a single, divorced parent.
My co-parenting relationship is somewhat unique, as my ex-husband and the father of my child is an active-duty soldier with the US Army. A respectable and heroic career, to be sure, but for all of its prestige and importance, the worst part of that career path is that a soldier is committed to the Army above all else. His time and location are determined by the military, not by family obligations, and it is mostly outside of his control. So while I know he loves our daughter and wants to take care of her to the best of his abilities, he is unable to live near us or be with her as often as he’d like. So, once my husband and I physically separated and my daughter and I moved from Georgia back home to California nearly two years ago, I became a true solo-parent (ask any military wife that is also a mother whether or not they feel like a solo-parent most of the time and the answer will be yes, but that’s a different story for another day).
So even though I was already running our household and handling nearly all of the decisions regarding our daughter’s wellbeing while we were married, I was suddenly completely alone in raising her. There was a six month transition period we had living with my parents before we were able to get a house of our own after the physical separation from my ex-partner, thankfully, but then I suddenly became the only adult in our new family home, completely responsible for all household management and childcare. It is a very different feeling being the only adult in a house and no longer having a partner to share life’s moments, thoughts, and concerns with. I could no longer ask anyone to watch her while I took a shower, to put her to bed while I cleaned up the kitchen, or help me transfer a car seat. Everything, and I do mean everything, is now on me when it comes to raising my daughter and running a house. Talk about a reality check!
Now that I am a true solo-parent of nearly two years, I can tell you the phases I went through in adapting to this new reality. You’ll recognize these as the stages of grief, although listed out of order. Grief, in my opinion, doesn’t have an actual order to it. Yes, the five stages are written in such a way that they are progressive, but I’ve learned you often hop around these depending upon the month, week, day, hour, or even minute. Grief is an absolute rollercoaster.
Denial - A true, hard, devastating denial that this was my new reality. Luckily, most of this denial period was during the six month transition period of our lives while we were living with my parents, so I could ask for help when I felt so overwhelmed and buried by grief that I felt like I couldn’t function. I am so, so grateful for my parents and other family and friends that really kept me afloat when I thought I might drown in sorrow.
Anger - Oh, the anger! I would be FURIOUS when there were moments I would recognize as amazing, heartfelt, or milestones that should’ve been shared with her dad, but instead were only seen by me. While I would still marvel at our daughter’s growth, joy, and often cower at her tantrums (who doesn’t cower a bit at a 2-year-old’s tantrums?), I would feel those waves of anger rise up above whatever other emotion I was feeling and clobber it. Anger would win and there was more than one occasion that I would have to hide myself in another room so I didn’t let it unleash on anyone else, especially my innocent child.
Depression - I wouldn’t wish divorce on my worst enemy, particularly being the person that was left. Oooooh, buddy. That’ll bring you to your knees. And it did for me, several times, for months and months. I’ve been separated from my husband for over two years now and it occasionally still brings me to my knees. (I’m already mentally preparing for the devastation and wave of grief I’ll be feeling when the divorce is finalized.) The depression made it hard to function like I wanted to. I pride myself on being a hard worker, a leader, a driver that is always moving forward. Depression stopped me in my tracks. I felt like I was treading water for years. To be fair, my depression hit hard in 2019 after I had my daughter. With a traumatic birth, living far away from family, and having a husband that was always gone or unavailable to help (sometimes physically, but more often emotionally), I felt more alone that I had ever been before. Postpartum depression and anxiety hit so hard… and then less than a year after my daughter was born, we had a global pandemic. Not great timing for a PPD/PPA mother of a newborn! So while I was treading water to just stay alive and to keep my daughter alive, my husband didn’t know how to help me and he became closed off and likely depressed himself. It was a recipe for disaster for not only our marriage, but it made it so difficult to pull myself out of the depression. And then we had to move! The military re-opened Permanent Change of Station (PCS) moves and off we went from Washington state to Georgia (again). This was devastating for me for a number of reasons:
Our daughter was born in Washington.
I LOVE the state of Washington. It is so incredibly beautiful.
We were living in our first purchased home, in a beautiful community, in a part of Washington I really loved.
We had some family nearby. My sister-in-law and her family were about 40 minutes from us, and although we didn’t see them very often with our busy schedules, it was still nice to know they were close by.
Having my sister-in-law and her family close by meant that my mother-in-law was able to come visit fairly often and came to help with my daughter quite a few times while either myself or her son were away for work.
My family lives in California, so they were able to more easily fly or drive up to visit us in Washington and also help with our newborn. It’s much harder to do that if we’re living in Georgia.
Moving meant we had to sell our first home and find another, site unseen, because of the pandemic and how difficult it was to travel there during the summer of 2020.
Moving to Georgia meant I would have to find a full-time nanny to care for our daughter while I was working and soon returning to traveling for my job within the year and because my husband’s new position within the military meant that he would be working between 12-20 hour days most of the time.
All of these major changes would have to be managed by me. This was the unspoken arrangement in our marriage.
Bargaining - I begged, tried to make accommodations, and asked for change from my then husband to stay, to fix our marriage, and then to support his daughter in a bigger way. While I don’t love the phrase “bargaining” for the co-parenting relationship we are now establishing, there will obviously have to continue to be accommodations and compromises regarding our daughter’s wellbeing for the rest of her youth and adolescents.
Acceptance - I’m not sure I’m completely at peace with my marriage ending, but I have accepted it and am at peace being the primary parent of my daughter. I’m honestly grateful for it. It’s incredibly hard, nerve-wracking, and the guilt is tremendous, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. I feel so grateful that I can be with her (almost) every day and that I am able to continue to help facilitate and foster her relationship with her father via FaceTime and visits.
Our daughter will never know her dad and I being married. She was two years old when we separated and moved away. She won’t remember us living together, for better or for worse. I feel guilty about my marriage to her dad failing. I feel guilty she’ll never know her nuclear family as a unit. I feel guilty that she doesn’t get to see her father very often and that she only has me. I feel guilty when I get so burnt out and stressed that I yell, or need time to “take a break,” or have to clean instead of play with her as she wants.
But I know this guilt is normal. I also know that the guilt is just a thing I have to learn to live with, because even though I feel guilty, I know I am a good mom. I love my daughter unconditionally. I will do whatever it takes to support her, to keep her safe, to help her grow and develop into an even more remarkable person than she already is. And feeling guilty about being a solo-parent, a divorced parent, is only hurting me. She doesn’t care that I have those labels. All she cares about is that I am her mom and that I am there for her.
One of my favorite quotes from the incredible divorce and co-parenting specialist Michelle Dempsey-Multack is, “Your kids don’t need a married mom, they need a happy mom.” So when I am feeling guilty about no longer being married, or struggling as a solo-parent, I remember this quote and the feeling of empowerment and peace it brings me, and I hold on to all of the ways I am reclaiming my joy and strength in this new phase of life.
*Image owned by author. Not authorized for redistribution.