August 30, 2026

A reflection for single mothers on identity, labour, justice, and wholeness.

A song came on this morning, and I let it soak in. I did not rush past it. I let it sit with me, let it press against the parts of me that still know how to hide. And I shared it because its invitation to me felt like an invitation that needed to be shared—to tell the truth without self-protection, even when the truth hurts, even when it is ugly, even when naming it makes your voice tremble. If we can be honest enough to expose what is weak or broken, not to condemn ourselves but to finally see ourselves clearly, we may discover the very place where strength begins to rise.

That invitation to truth is the current running through today’s reflection.

It is the day before my birthday, and I am on my way to a worship gathering. There is something tender about standing at the edge of another year, looking back over what has stretched me, what has steadied me, what almost broke me, and what resolutely kept me alive.

I am wearing my 12345 shirt, appropriate as I celebrate my fifth decade of life. This shirt is a part of a powerful message  primarily connected to mental-health awareness. Megan te Boekhorst created this shirt as a part of her Living With (Mental Illness) nonprofit work. Her goal is to bring awareness to the need for Canadians to recognize and pay attention to mental illness as openly as we pay attention to physical illness and invest in healing. Living With wishes to inform us that approximately one in five Canadians experiences mental illness in a given year. All of us have mental health to maintain, yet many of us do not pay attention to mental illness even when we ourselves are experiencing it. We learn to keep functioning while hurting. We learn to smile while carrying weight. We need to become more aware. We need to pay attention.

As I continue to share the feedback that has shaped me through these years of life, my single mamas, today this one is for us. Everyone may benefit from the conversation, but Mama I especially invite you to pause and dialogue with me.

In the 1990s in the United States, the idea of the “superpredator” was a prevalent and popular narrative. Young Black boys, particularly those in certain neighbourhoods, were labelled predators in the making through research and statistics that were deeply flawed. From that label, policy was formed. Stop-and-frisk in predominantly Black neighbourhoods increased. New statistics then grew from those increased encounters, appearing to reinforce the very story that had produced them.

Years later, it was acknowledged that the research was flawed. There was no such thing as a superpredator, and policy needed to pivot. But changing a policy does not erase the harm created by the policy, especially when the super-predator label had been laid over generations of racial supremacy that had already shaped both the flawed statistics and the poor treatment of young Black boys.

The label normalized and legitimized supremacist treatment that was already in play. It robbed young Black boys of childhood. They were treated as men developmentally, emotionally, and mentally; tried and punished as men; and sometimes killed by police as though they were men in man-to-man combat. If police officers were taught that Black boys were becoming superpredators, then Black men could be treated as superpredators already formed, deserving harsh treatment within a punitive legal system. I say legal system because legality is not necessarily justice.

How did that label affect the way those boys learned to see themselves? If you are continually treated like a criminal, you may begin to judge yourself as one. What does that do to the way you move through life, to what you believe you are capable of becoming, to the goals you attempt, and to the way you dream?

And who profited from defining young Black boys that way? How many businesses arose to imprison, reform, monitor, and manage the people created as a problem by that definition? Countless structures within the school-to-prison pipeline were tied to a label built from statistics already distorted by supremacy. People profited from defining young Black boys as predators in the making.

Single moms, who defined you as less than? And how long have you been trying to live, breathe, parent, pray, and build under the weight of deficiencies that were never true?

Who defined you as the leader of a family destined, by virtue of your singleness, to fail and flounder? Who defined your home as incapable of raising and guiding children who will be successful in society? Who has defined you that way, and how has that affected you?

Who profits when you receive that definition into your being and allow it to limit the way you show up in the world? Who profits when it changes what you believe about yourself? I need you to look deeply at how that story has affected you, not with shame, but with compassion. Because some of us have been surviving so long broken by the burden of that story that we no longer recognize the places where it has narrowed our voice, our dreams, our expectations, and even the way we allow ourselves to be loved.

Have you felt whole, successful, vibrant, and worthy in your singleness and your womanhood? Have you recognized the worth of your leadership, resourcefulness, resilience, insight, advocacy, and ability to create something from nothing? Have you felt worthy of the way you celebrate your children in the absence of a father?

How did the statistics become focused on you parenting singly, as though there were not another person involved in that equation? How did fathers not being present become evidence that you were less? How did that happen?

Why have systems, communities, and churches so often told single mothers how downtrodden we are and then served us as though we are standing with our hands out, bringing nothing to the table? Why is what we bring to the table assigned less value? Do you understand the value of your work, whether other people understand it or not?

I have had to ask myself the same question. I have had to look honestly at the skill I offer and the worth I bring to the table. My first instinct was to blame myself for not having understood it earlier, but I caught myself. Blame is not useful here. What is useful is to examine this way of seeing ourselves, and recognize that it began somewhere, for reasons that need to be understood and addressed.

Now, I know the proficiency with which I work. I know the rooms I have held steady, the people I have helped breathe again, the visions I have helped carry from fragile idea to living reality. I show up when people are in distress. I show up when people are celebrating. I show up when people are dreaming and when visions are being put into play. I show up, even when I am tired, even when I am grieving, even when my own life is asking more of me than anyone can see. That is who I have always been and who I will continue to be because peace, progress, profitability, and purpose are my lifeblood and my passion.

I’ll share one of many situations where my service was sought because of my proficiency with little expectation of compensating me even close to market value. They were in a situation where they would have absolutely needed care that would have typically cost between $40,000 and $50,000. I told them not to spend that kind of money because I would help. I did not establish a fee. I simply told them to pay what they thought was fair.

Never do that. Do not undersell yourself. AND do not participate in the inflated capitalist market either.

Look at the work you are offering. Look at its value in the market, your expenses, and the actual profit you need in order to cover those expenses and live well and sensibly. Then assign a fair price. Do not balloon your profit. I do not believe a 50 to 100 percent profit markup is just when vulnerable people come to us for a necessary service rather than a luxury. A person should be able to make enough profit to live well, but another person’s vulnerability should never become an opportunity for exploitation.

In this case, the person suggested $1,000 for work that would ordinarily have cost between $40,000 and $50,000. It threw me for a loop. They understood business and what things cost. They would have paid the market price if necessary. What made $1,000 seem reasonable for my work?

As I processed it, I realized that I had been giving my work away within a system that was willing to exploit that generosity. The realization hit me squarely in the face. It was not only about money. It was about all the moments I had taught people, without meaning to, that they could receive the fullness of my labour while offering me only a fraction of honour in return. Somewhere in my forties, I understood that I had spent years offering my abilities without attaching an honest value to them, and an expectation had formed around the perception that this devaluation was an acceptable norm. This was the part that I played having unconsciously internalized the devaluation assigned to nurture, giving care, and singleness.

That was my part. I have examined it. What was theirs?

The work was not substandard. They kept returning for it because it was excellent. That was the painful part. The very thing that proved its value was also being used as permission to keep taking it lightly. The problem was not the quality of what I offered. The problem was the expectation that my excellence could continue to be received without being honoured materially.

That is why I shared the economic impact assessment alongside my reflection titled Love Pays Attention to the Shadows. I knew the worth of the work I had done. I know that all of this work is invaluable, and we also live inside a system in which money is the tool we use to pay for food, shelter, and what we need to live, and live well. I know what my work is worth within that system. I also know that other people have usurped my work to make money.

That recognition leads me to the parallel between my experience and the story of David, Bathsheba, and Uriah. The connection may initially seem like a large leap, but hear me out. David looked at Bathsheba and desired what he saw. He used his power to take her. In doing so, he betrayed Uriah, a Hittite warrior and one of his mighty men who had served him faithfully, and then arranged Uriah’s death to conceal what he had done.

David did not fail to recognize value. He saw what he wanted and chose to take it at another person’s terrible expense. That is part of the shadow I was naming when I shared the economic impact of my work. Sometimes people recognize what is good, valuable, and profitable in another human being and, rather than honouring that person, deliberately use what they carry for their own benefit.

When one person deliberately and knowingly uses another human being for profit at that person’s expense, that is the logic of slavery. Slavery requires a person to be defined as less than human so that their labour, gifts, body, or life can be treated as available for someone else’s taking. That was the experience of people of African origin and others around the world who were trapped in slavery and often legally defined as less than human. The false definition created permission for the exploitation.

So, single mom, within whatever context you are looking at yourself in the world today, please do not allow yourself to be defined by someone’s false narrative serving their flawed or nefarious purpose. Do not let someone else’s convenience become your identity. Do not let their inability to honour you become the measure of your worth.

You are a woman of God.

You are a reflection of the Creator, a reflection of I AM.

You are full of purpose.

You are full of passion.

You are full of possibility.

You are full of wonder, joy, and amazement.

You are full and worthy and whole, alone.

Being whole does not mean that you must build alone. Please hear that gently. Wholeness is not isolation. Strength is not silence. Faith is not pretending you have no needs. Whenever we want to build something meaningful, we typically cannot build it alone. While society shines a blinding spotlight on the absence of a father in your household, it often fails to ask how a team might be built around you.

So begin to build your team. Begin to build your life. Teach your children to view themselves as whole and your family as whole. Build a team of other whole people—including single people— around your family so that all of us can thrive together. You are not less because you are single. You are a whole person who needs a team in order to build.

I think specifically of churches when I consider this subject, because churches often feed us a narrow narrative about the family God created, as though any family that does not match that arrangement is not ideal. But who among us, in any way, shape, or form, is ideal? And who defined any one type of family as the ideal, and why? What I do know is that when circumstances are not ideal, the question that we would best ask ourselves is “What are we doing to create a stronger way forward?”

Instead of building forward together as equals, why do we label people as less than or define them as the problem, while continuing to use their labour and gifts to thrive and profit as they struggle? That pattern is one of the things that drove me to build single-mother community. Every time I saw an announcement for a service to single mothers, it seemed to use the same mournful, needy framework: we must help these poor women. Even the speaker’s tone of voice would change, as though our lives were only tragedy, as though our homes held no laughter, wisdom, strategy, beauty, discipline, prayer, creativity, or power.

I do not think we are always conscious of it. We can sit inside a way of being for so long that it becomes normal. But what is normalized is not necessarily right. I continue to reference the photo of a child posed smiling beside the charred body of a lynched Black man because the violence surrounding her had been normalized. The horror of that is obvious to us now and hopefully warns us to examine what our own cultures have taught us not to see. Diminishing societal value based on a set of hierarchical ideals has caused us grievous harm.

Those who are harmed are clearly harmed. Those who do harm also harm themselves. They rob themselves of the profit of being in good relationship with another human being, and they place themselves inside the consequences that follow harm.

The universe delivers consequences when we harm others. If we atone for the wrong we have done, there is mercy. Without atonement, the consequences remain. That is not an externally imposed punishment. It is the flow of justice. What is stolen calls for restitution, one way or another.

Jesus told the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Lazarus lived in poverty and suffering at the rich man’s gate while the rich man lived comfortably and did not help him. After they died, Lazarus was restored while the rich man experienced the torment he had permitted another person to endure. The rich man asked Abraham to warn his brothers, but the answer was that they had already received the message and had chosen not to listen.

Our refusal to listen does not eliminate consequence. If we keep stealing from others, be that money or honour, justice will come in some way, whether or not it comes immediately.

I was once reminded of this matter of justice  in a small and unforgettable way. One day, I was deeply impatient with a child. I raised my voice and completely flipped my lid because I believed the child should simply have listened. In my anger, I was no longer fully in control of my body. When an adult or a child flips their lid, the ability to focus and regulate is diminished.

I turned a corner, struck my foot against the doorpost, and broke my little toe. As soon as it happened, I recognized justice. I asked myself: Why are you losing your mind? Why are you not being gentle? Why are you not being kind? The pain you feel in your foot is like the pain that child felt when you raised your voice and lost control because they would not listen.

And how well did I listen? How well did I listen to the Spirit saying, right as I raised my voice, “Stop it,”

 Did I stop? No.

God did not push my foot into the doorpost. That is not what I am saying. I lost control of myself. I chose not to listen, and I struck my foot as a consequence. I broke my little toe, and I would never again forget the lesson.

Was God with me as it happened? Absolutely. As soon as I recognized the justice in that moment, I also felt seen, known, and surrounded. I did not feel abandoned. I did not feel ashamed. I felt that I had learned something and gained something from the pain. It became a significant turning point for me.

Accountability does not erase our worth. It calls us back to ourselves. It tells the truth without throwing us away.

Single mom, know who you are.

Do not wear the definition that anyone else has placed upon you.

Arise today to wholeness.

Begin the journey home to yourself, one honest breath, one reclaimed boundary, one brave step at a time.

Your children will be blessed because of it.

I love you.

Isn’t she though?! Hell to the yes!!