Empty Bed, Full Heart- A Single Mother's Journey

  “Comparison is the thief of joy.” -Teddy Roosevelt My 9 year old son’s eyes lit up like a freshly struck match as he pulled the wrapping paper away from his Christmas gift, the biggest box under the tree.  “Whoa!! I saw this and wanted it!! Remember??” The sleek black box held a LEGO Technic car, a set with over 900 pieces and a working engine that he could drive using an app on my phone. My fiancé had handpicked it for him, knowing how much he loved building and engineering. It was the perfect gift. He was ecstatic and ready to tear the box open, but I told him to wait until he’d opened the rest of his gifts. He set it aside and moved on to his other gifts, still stealing glances at it as he went. Next to him, his sisters began opening their presents, too. My 11 year old was finally old enough for her own phone, so she’d gotten an iPhone; my 14 year old, after YEARS of begging, finally got her own iPad. Suddenly, my son’s face darkened. “Why did they get a phone and an iPad...

On December 18th, 2021, at 9:30 am, I got into my car and drove to a coffee shop in Bismarck. On the way, I called my friend Becky and joked that if I disappeared, she’d know who the prime suspect was and that I’d text her if I needed her to call me and give me an excuse to bail. I’d been a divorced, single parent for going on 9 years at this point and this was a common pre-first date ritual that my best friend and I shared. Unlike my other first dates, however, I was a knot of joyful nerves. This guy checked all my boxes, which was unusual in itself, but he also seemed to get better every time I learned something new about him. He was intelligent, articulate, and a little sarcastic. He was a practicing Catholic from a big family who grew up reading Westerns and loving the prairie. He was a hard-working farm kid who also knew how to build things with his hands and loved to cook. And he was unbelievably attractive. The words “Too good to be true” came to my mind often in my communicatio...

 Instincts are a funny thing. Sometimes, instincts are natural and immediate, the way you jump back if a spider falls out of the sky or the way a mother fiercely protects her child. But sometimes our instincts are developed over time by experience and habit. Pavlov’s dogs began to drool when the bell rang because they learned that the bell was equal to a treat. So what happens when trauma informs our experiences and our instincts have been shaped by that trauma? How do I relearn that relationships are healthy and good, when they’ve so often been toxic and dangerous? How do I relearn that trust is essential and not foolish? How do I relearn that vulnerability isn’t weakness, that watching someone I love leave for the night doesn’t mean they’re leaving forever? How do I relearn that tired doesn’t mean disinterested; away doesn’t mean cheating; space doesn’t mean rejection? How do I relearn that I’m worthy, that I’m enough for another person to love? My instincts, the learned ones, pr...