mamashonestjournal

Whether you are divorced, widowed, single by choice, or simply doing your best to get through each day… this is for you.

Valentine’s Day celebrates romantic love, but today I want to honor a different kind of love. The kind that wakes up exhausted and keeps going anyway.

Some households truly have one parent.

Others appear complete from the outside yet one parent quietly carries the emotional, physical, and mental load alone. Different circumstances but same exhaustion and resilience.

A single parent manages schedules, handles finances, tends to sick children through the night, and keeps daily life running without collapse.

Imagine holding a small deck of two cards, one leaning on the other. If one card falls, the other is expected to collapse as well. That is how the world often sees single parents, as fragile or incomplete.

But the reality is their strength does not depend on anyone else.

In the quiet moments there is sometimes a longing for partnership, for someone to share the load, for someone to say I’ve got this tonight. That strength is rarely visible but deeply real.

In many communities, single mothers carry an added burden of stigma. They are blamed when relationships end, shamed for raising children alone, or quietly excluded. I have seen this too often.

Fathers who leave may escape the same scrutiny, leaving women to carry both the responsibilities of parenting and the weight of judgment.

Yet they rise every day.

They work, nurture, protect, and build stability where others predicted collapse. Not shame, but strength. Not failure, but fortitude. Not brokenness, but pure bravery.

Single mothers do not deserve stigma. They deserve respect. Single fathers carry immense responsibility and deserve recognition.

All who carry their families forward deserve their flowers, not because they are struggling but because they show up every day in ways the world often overlooks.

They build stability, create safety, and raise children in LOVE even when exhausted. Acknowledging their strength is not pity, it is respect.

This Valentine’s Day, let us honor the love that shows up in the middle of the night, stretches a paycheck, comforts after nightmares, cheers the loudest at school events, and perseveres.

To every single parent out there, your family is whole, your love is powerful, your strength is seen, and what you do each day matters more than words can hold.