Single, Brave, and assured. The story of empowered motherhood.

Confidence building for single mothers.

In April 2007, my world came crushing unexpectedly. We lost the father of children. The loss was enormous. It crushed my being and shuttered the windows of my nest. My confidence was the first casualty. Once brave and strong woman I was, became recluse.  I felt alone amid multitudes of people. Every night I cried myself to sleep. Kept asking Thomas why he left us. In my mind, he was not dead, he was alive. For a long time, I convinced myself that he moved on and left us. I refused to accept that he died. Even after I had thrown a scoop of dust into his grave during his funeral. I lost weight. I couldn’t bring myself to look at the reflection of my image in the mirror because I looked horrible. I was in denial and refused to move on.

A huge tone of fear and self-doubt expelled my confidence and built themselves a warm corner in my nest. They ruled my mind like a colossus. I had no hope in hell of surviving those two. Every morning, they reminded me that I was alone, that no one cared for me, that I will soon lose my job. They kept asking “if you lose your job, how will you manage life? What will your children eat, how will you pay school fees? Who will pay the rent for you?”   I developed issues with short term memory, something I carry to date. It is called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder( PTSD).  It was not easy.

One morning in December of 2009, I light bulb went off inside my head. It was the day after my daughter received her admission to Moi High school, Nairobi. One of the prestigious schools in Nairobi then.  I realized that Thomas hasn’t come home yet. He was not coming back anyway. I had not been sacked from work and I have been maintaining my home and caring for my two children. My children have been attending school every day and there was no one time that I failed to pay for their school fees. I remember sitting up on my bed, inside my iron sheet made house in Kitengela, Kajiado County, Kenya. It felt like I had been lost for a long time and just found my way back right then. I felt a gust of warm energy sweep up over my body, thrill kind of a spark. I broke into a wide smile, warm tears streaming down my cheeks. Warm tears of joy.  I became a changed person going forward.

That is how my confidence arrived, kicked out the duo of fear and self-doubt, resuscitated my lost me and occupied my being to date.

Being parent is unending role. A role that has never been paid for because it cannot be quantified yet it is one of the oldest and crucial roles of its kind. It is one of the most fulfilling professions on Earth. It is also one of the most demanding and intense social roles a person can experience in their life. Its expectation is even more compounded when the individual is a single mother.

Parenting after a traumatic event like death of a spouse, separation or divorce can be taunting. It is easy to doubt our skills, question our capabilities and lose trust in the direction of our ship call life. It is easy to drift away from our goals and wander into risky situations. It can significantly impact on our mental health.

Research suggests that single mothers are more likely to experience moments of self-doubt due to the unique challenges they face. Australian Council of Single Mothers and their children (CSMC) indicate that 87% of single mothers in paid employment struggle with maintaining financial sustainability. They also find insecurity in housing to be a significant challenge.

Depending on individual circumstances, other issues like conflict over parenting with estranged partner, lack support from family and significant others be shake the confidence of a single mother. With such stressors, single mothers are more likely to suffer from low self-esteem and poor self-confidence.

A friend who is a single mother to three children recently told me that she was worried about her children’s growth and well-being. She said the growing demand in work responsibilities and expectations of running a family was taking a toll on her self-confidence.  Working long hours and multiple shifts to meet financial demands kept her away from spending quality time with her children. She said, she was worried that her children are more likely to spend more time in childcare center than being with her. As such, she was worried that it might be difficult in future to form a remarkable bond with the children. 

Such situations predispose single mothers to developing low self esteem or lack of confidence in their parenting skills and even in their general outlook on life. Some may fall victim to societal prejudices that view female headed families as failures when relationships with their teenage children don’t work out as expected.

Self-confidence explained.

Confidence is the belief that you can achieve what you have set yourself to do despite what it takes to achieve it. For example, it is that self -reassurance that you will pass an exam despite the challenges. It is believing in your sales skills to convince a client to buy a product, idea, project, service. It is having the courage to own up to a mistake and say sorry to your child or deciding to have that candid conversation with your teenage daughter or son.

Real self-confidence comes from within you. It is the determination you have set yourself to have in pursuit of your dreams and desires. It is not about what people tell you that you have. It is that inner calling, that inner decision that comes within you. What people can do is to compliment you on it. It is an art at the same time a science. It can be proven.

Confidence is not cast on stone it can mutate. It is not perfection it encompasses failure and self-doubt; they are system of the same. When faced by adversity that we didn’t thing we could manage, and we pull through the perceived fear that afflict us during such times, our confidence grows. Every body’s confidence gets shaken every now and then.

A person can choose to give up on developing their confidence by avoiding situations. They allow accept fear and failure to rule them by choosing to remain in their comfort zone. And another person can decide to push themselves, make calculated risks and achieve results thereby strengthening their confidence.

How then can single mothers develop or reinforce their confidence to manage situations despite challenges?

Below are three helpful steps that, if truly considered can help build or strengthen self-confidence.

1.Viewing confidence as an art and a science at the same time

Sustainable confidence comes from mastering the art of facing the little  challenges that we go through every other day and learning from them.  For example, you have received a rejection from that interview you attended recently. You really were looking forward to getting that job, but you received a regret.  Instead of wallowing in regret and self-bashing (it is human to feel bad after all the preparations put into the application), just don’t stay there for too long. Instead learn from it by seeking feedback from the employing company. Use that feedback as a learning curve for future interviews. Seek the services of a coach or family member and practice future interview questions. With time, you might realize that receiving regrets no longer bother you as it used to, instead you use them as a learning. Your confidence has grown.

In a situation that you may doubt your parenting or relationship skills, do not blame yourself and assume things. Speak openly and have transparent discussion with your children and significant other. Find out how they feel and want things done. Accept mistakes and apologize where required. Soon you will find your confidence soaring. When we avoid situations that test our confidence, we gradually reduce our confidence and finally make it weak.

 Build your confidence on the act of trust, the trust in yourself to carry out what you have set yourself to accomplish. Following through with what you promised yourself to do on daily basis, helps grow and strengthen your confidence.

2.Face your fears and self-doubt in instalments.

In 2007 when fear asked how I will care for my children in an event that I lost my job, I didn’t have the answer. Instead of me looking at fear and self-doubt on the face and telling them that “we will cross the bridge when we get there,” I choose instead to wallow in self-pity. Fear terrorized me like a plaque. My confidence plummeted. I now look back and can see that I was worried about a future that had not arrived and didn’t arrive until I chose to quit my job on my own volition.

The incident above shows how creepy fear can be. At no point was I in danger of losing my job but I didn’t see that. Fear blindsided me.  Fear is the biggest killer and can easily wear down ourselves confidence. The more we fear our situations and avoid facing them instead of finding solutions to them, the more we allow fear to chip away at our confidence.

As I said above, self-confidence does not come from a onetime breakthrough or in achieving a one-off big goal like having a project proposal accepted. Confidence is cumulative. Even when you have made a one-off breakthrough in an event that you felt it boosted your confidence, it might not be sustainable long term or might not happen next time. So, it is required of you to maintain and grow your confidence every time.

Look, truth be told, being confidence does not mean there is absence of fear or self-doubt. No. Confidence is the art of mastering fear and self-doubt. It is about acting despite having some spots of fear within you. The more we act, the more we become resilient, the stronger our confidence becomes.  Every time you enter a situation that inspires fear in you, but you choose to pull through it and come out strong, your confidence strengthens.  For example, gathering the courage to discuss salary rise with your employer, or saying no to that ever-demanding manager. It can also be setting boundaries for bad behaviour that could be displayed by your children or standing up to that nagging in law who has been making baseless accusations against you.

Research indicates that most of the time, fear is an illusion or imaginary. It might surprise you to realize that whatever you have been fearing all along is unfounded barrier that you had created in your mind all along. And once you break through that mental barrier you set yourself, you will be free to undertake calculated risks. Whatever it is fear or self-doubt that could preventing from taking that step towards achieving your set goal, I would like you to develop the audacity to dare it and watch what happens.

Jim Rohn one of the world’s motivational speakers states that “every small discipline you make in facing situations, is like adding a coin to your confidence bank.” Over time, it will grow like the case with your bank savings.  You may not realize it at the beginning, and you may feel frustrated with yourself. However, over time you will be able to manage with ease situations that you used to avoid because your confidence has grown.

3. Invest in self-education. Both informal and formal

Invest in educating yourself on things you feel you lack knowledge in. Attend industry related workshops, listen to online podcasts on interested topics, engage in online courses etc. Investing in building the knowledge and skills that help you grow in your desires and skills will help your confidence grow. Knowledge is power. There is nothing liberating like when you understand and have good knowledge on situations that you are involved in. I struggled with raising my teenage daughter as a single mother way back in Kenya. However, when I came to Australia, I got the ability to access online knowledge and attended forums on how to raise teenagers. I combined this with the knowledge I received from my upbringing, the results were incredible.

The more knowledge you have about your situation, dreams, goals, and aspirations including challenges that come with it, the more your confidence grows. And the more your confidence grows, the more your capacity to triage and solve problems and create opportunities for yourself grows too.

Sometimes we are faced with situation that we don’t know how to approach or resolve them. That is when education comes in. Education can also come from seeking knowledge from a friend or someone who may have experienced in the past what you are going through. They could be a friend, family member, neighbor, or colleague at work. You can also approach a mentor or coach for help.

Remember, education or learning is not only about reading or listening, it does to involve action or practice/application to achieve intended goal. Always put into practice what you have learnt or apply it in your current situation. Because if you only consume whatever you are learning without putting into practice, it will not serve the intended purpose. And once you put the acquired knowledge into practice and see the results, your confidence will triple.

Remember, confidence is a lifelong process. And every skill, knowledge and experience you gain adds into your tool kit of confidence and soon you will have a kit that has sufficient tools to help you address with confidence the issues that you face on daily basis.

So, building a robust self-confidence is not a one-off thing but work in progress. It is a lifetime growth. Confidence is not absence of fear, failure, or self-doubt. It is in facing those fears and moving through them that strengthens your confidence. Fear, failure, self-doubt, and confidence is parts of each other. It is in the art of tackling the later that spurs growth for the fore. It takes commitment and continuous learning to achieve lasting confidence.

Add the 3 steps above into your confidence tool kit today if you have not done it yet and you will develop a lasting self-confidence as a single mother/parent.