Like a Mother

Nadia Wiseman found herself struggling when she left an unsafe relationship: struggling to to pay rent for herself and her now-5-year-old son. Struggling to find direction for her newly single life. Struggling to find other women who could relate in her city of Montreal, Canada. 

While she found ways to refocus her education and skills as a social worker, Nadia Wiseman launched Single MOMtreal, an organization designed to support single moms in need of resources like food and, clothes, friendship and, for some, help escaping domestic violence. So far, the group has served more than a thousand moms and their families. 

"I knew that if I, an educated, professional woman, struggled with these things as a single mom, there were other women out there who were in the same situation," she told me. "I knew I could help a lot of people if I could build a community of single moms." 

Last April she launched Single MOMtreal, which started as a Facebook group, and has has meetups, parties, and sprouted informal networks of all kinds of individuals and families supporting unmarried moms in Montreal. There is a board of directors, and Wiseman has a knack for attracting positive media coverage — which has inspired dozens of donors around her city to contribute money, food, goods and services to single moms in need.

Plus, friendships and mom-owned businesses are flourishing. 

Wiseman says: "Montreal single moms are now helping and hiring each other. For example, some single moms hire other single moms to babysit their kids, others hire single moms to do their nails, others donate items, etc."

Nothing breaks my heart more than a woman who cannot be without a man. That personality is always rife with desperation, bad decisions and alienating others who love her best. Never a good look.

Even if you are not prone to dramatics of partnering up ASAP, you may feel like a loser because you are not in a relationship. It is normal to feel sad and lonely if you don't have a boy- or girlfriend. (It can also feel horny, but that is a slightly different topic — don't get those confused!) 

In this episode I share why being single is such an incredible opportunity you should not squander. It doesn't have to be forever, but if you couple-up right away, you miss out on so many opportunities for personal growth, new adventure, learning so much about yourself, others around you, and what your next relationship might be.

Often women say they need to earn enough to cover child care costs. That hold women back individually, and keeps the pay gap alive and well. 

Child care if for both parents to work and earn, develop their careers and reap the fruits of work.

Thinking about dating after divorce and babies can be beyond daunting. After I stopped nursing (a blissful period during which my round hips narrowed, my small tits swelled, and my acne-prone skin cleared  and glowed), it has been all downhill for this bod. A newly poofy stomach, C-section scar and boobs that would not stop lactating -- all while my thighs grew increasingly gooey.

But once out on the dating scene, I got over it quickly. That I don't look like Heidi Klum or Kim Kardashian (that butt, I mean, really) has zero to do with my ability to find really amazing sex (keep reading) and love. And what your body has absolutely nothing to do with your ability find a man to adore your body during mind-blowing sex. No matter what said body may look like.

Shared parenting is a critical issue for children, who suffer from absentee fathers in alarming figures, as well as men, who are automatically reduced to paychecks and an afterthought in family life. Shared parenting is critical for women, too, as involved co-parents, both inside and outside of marriage, mean women have far more support at home, which allows us to thrive as parents, as well as professionals and earners. After all, we can’t be equals at work, if men are not equals at home.

Tiffany Horsely is a Kansas nurse, mom of three, and she has no shame about sharing that her ex husband molested and raped for more than four years their oldest daughter, Robyn. At age 17, depressed and despondent, Robyn found the courage to tell her friend, and eventually her mom, and the police the truth. Together they went through the horror that sexual assault trials are known to be, the loss of a father, and marriage, and pushed forward through grief and on to healing.

What's more, soon after the ordeal, Robyn turned to social media to publicaly share her story, with her mom at her side. By owning her truth, she freed herself — and others — from the shame of secrets.

What is special about Robyn and Tiffany is that they are funny. Without diminishing the gravity of the trauma of their history, they have found ways to laugh at themselves and life — snapping a selfie from the back of the patrol car as they were escorted to the police station to file a rape report, Tiffany joking that she does pay alimony to her incarcerated ex — by way of taxes.

The Crimes Against Children Research Center reports:

• 1 in 5 girls, and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse
• 20% of adult women and 5 to 10% of adult men remeMber a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident
• During a one-year period in the U.S., 16% of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized
• Over the course of their lifetime, 28% of U.S. youth were sexually victimized

A National Institute of Justice report found that 3 out of 4 adolescents who had been sexually assaulted were victimized by someone they knew well.

A Bureau of Justice Statistics report shows 1.6 % of children between the ages of 12 and 17 were victims of rape/sexual assault.

If you or someone you know is a victim of sexual assault, call 800.656.HOPE (4673) to be connected with a trained staff member from a sexual assault service provider in your area. This is a core service of RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the nation's largest anti-sexual violence organization and was named one of "America's 100 Best Charities" by Worth magazine. 800.656.HOPE (4673)

If you're not a member of Millionaire Single Moms, my Facebook group for ambitious mothers seeking independence and full lives (no income requirements), please join. Nearly 4,000 women chatting all day about career, money, parenting, dating, sex and living awesome lives. Click here to join.

Wow, this interview was so, so amazing.  Regena Thomashauser, aka Mama Gena, is truly a renegade pioneer of feminism and female sexuality (is that redundant?). Through her in-person and online workshops called Mama Gena's School of Womanly Arts, and books by the same name, including (to-be-released in September) Pussy: A Reclamation, Thomashauser offers a fascinating history on the power of female sensuality and sexuality, biology lessons on female anatomy and the possibilities (and fruits of) hours-long orgasms. Most critically, Mama Gena shares advice on how women today can reclaim and master the power of their own sensualities — something no one I know of is doing.

• Why "pussy" (and not vagina, vulva, yoo-hoo, or ... like my friend grew up calling her, 'chicken') and what that word really, truly means.
• The urgent need for for women everywhere to prioritize the learning of what pleases their every senses — a practice that guarantees  attracting the biggest genuine fulfillment and success in career, parenting, romance, and global domination.
•  Thomashauser's own journey as a divorced mother of a young daughter, while dating and building a seven-figure business.
• Why she appreciates that her first post-divorce love affair — with a remarkable, wealthy, glamorous man who adored her — ended, freeing her to manifest her life's work.
• How to nurture your daughters' sensuality even if you are struggling to nurture your own.
• Her reaction when I told her I tried to do a word count on "pussy" in the PDF of her new book, but there were too many to tally.
• The power of PJ (don't know what PJ is? Hint: it's pussy juice) and right there in my Times Square studio, two grown women harvested and applied a dab of her own behind her ear.

The holidays are so hard for divorced and separated families. They just are. Especially if you are new to sharing the kids on the holidays. You are grieving what you thought your family would look like. What you hoped and expected your family would look like. And so much of that image is wrapped up in special occasions like holidays — holidays informed by magazines, movies, Hallmark and William Sonoma ads — not to mention social media and your own memories from your childhood (whether you hoped to replicate good times, or deviate from bad ones). Now your family looks different and it sucks. No matter how you dice it, it is ugly.

If you’re negotiating holiday schedules for this season, or are in custody negotiations,  here is my one piece of advice for you this year, and years going forward:

For the past 10 years Free-Range Kids' Lenore Skenazy,  New York City journalist and mom of two, has been taking one for the team. The Free-Range Kids author and blog founder has been on a one-woman mission to give kids back the freedom and autonomy they need to grow into self-actualized adults.

I can't get enough of every single thing she has to say, including stats like:

• Crime is back to the level it was when gas cost 29 cents a gallon, says the Christian Science Monitor.
• Crime is back to the level it was before color TV, says The Week magazine.
• 2013 gun crime rate back to level of early 1960s, says Pew Study.
• 2014 violent crime rate down another4.4%, says USA Today.
• Pedestrian, bicyclist and car deaths ALSO at lowest rate in decades, says The Council on Foreign Relations.
• And here’s an overall report on crime over the last 25 years, which includes the graph below: Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School
• All violent crime in the U.S.: Down  48% 1993 – 2012
• All homicides: Down 50.5% 1993-2012
• Forcible rape: Down 34.5% 1993 – 2012
•  Violence Against Children 2-17 is going down too (and not just because we are helicoptering. Crime is down grown men and women  too, and we don’t helicopter them):
• Physical Assault: down 33% 2003 – 2011
• Rape, attempted or completed: down 43% 2003 – 2011

In fact, the most dangerous thing your kids can do? RIDE IN A CAR!!

I love Lenore's informed candor about what is happening in the world, and what you and I can do about it. Examples:

• Let your kids walk to the bus stop alone.
• Let your kids play at the playground alone.
• Let your kids stay home unsupervised while friends are over -- unsupervised.
• Let your kid do their own homework. 

I chose this month's grant winner because her mission is so very apropos of this chapter of women's empowerment. The Harvey Weinstein accusers, and the web of silent compliance around this powerful man is really just the result of millennia of women's pent up silent suffering, marginalization, and separation from their sexual power. Weinstein is just the tip of this iceberg, and it is a painful process for the change that must — and is — happening. 

I have had some private conversations with feminist women I know, and in these shared #metoos and pride in the victims' bravery in coming forward, we ask ourselves: How do we raise our daughters to have a different experience? And more to the point: How can we talk about empowering women, without victim shaming?

Which is exactly why I was drawn to Vanessa Osage's work. Vanessa is a Bellingham, Wash., sexuality educator with her consulting business, and nonprofit, Rooted Emerging. Pay attention, there. She teaches young people about sexuality, expressing and sharing and owning their sensual natures (not the nuts and bolts of biology). 

In her Kickass Single Mom Grant application, Vanessa wrote me:

I am a woman on a mission. I always knew I would do something meaningful in my life, and I have found it. I also always knew I would be a mother. I didn't know I would be divorced in my 30's, but that's besides the point. My journey has brought me to the ideal ripening of my life's work and I am passionately forging ahead.

I am a sexuality educator and Founder/Executive Director of the nonprofit Rooted Emerging. We have been celebrating youth rites of passage since 2010, empowering young people through a healthy sexual maturity and celebrating the new life phase to come. As a sexuality educator, I reach people of all ages; children to elders. As culture changes, our intimate relationships are the places where either unhealthy patterns are perpetuated - or new, enlightened ways of relating may bravely be forged. This is my life's work.