Finding Myself as Head of Household

I’ve been around single moms all my life. My own mother is a single mom, and I have friends who are single parents. However, nothing opened my eyes to the life of a single parent like becoming one. In 2011, I was 48 years old and my kids were 13, 11, and 10. In a single hour, my husband died. In that hour, all of the ways he cared for and invested in our family now fell to me. I was suddenly the head of our household. 

Becoming a single mom, I received a lot of help from friends. Still, every parenting decision and every financial decision and every future planning decision now fell to me. I discovered how to fix things from YouTube and that yard work in springtime just keeps coming. I also gained new eyes to see women who shoulder family life on their own. 

Each female head of house likely has a favorite way she wishes she could enrich her family’s life. Mine was dinner conversation. I sought to make dinner conversation intentional and personal. However, by the end of most days, I also felt physically drained and without imagination. I needed strategies and encouragement to persevere. 

If you’re like me, you may be thinking of a good resource my past-self might have benefitted from. I did find some helpful tools and they gave some benefit. But that is not where this article is going. 

Because so much of life is “caught,” my hope in writing this is to help you become more aware of our female head of households within our church.

Even though I knew women who were leading their households, I’d never considered how my “normal” ordinary family could do good to them or if they had any interest.

One thing a female head of house cannot give her kids is the daily in-home face-to-face time with a man. Men engage differently. 

The morning Scott died, he got our 10- and 11-year old sons into a conversation about saving their money. During my and the kids 2012 move, we stayed with Phil and Cassie Sasser for two weeks where Phil taught the kids about how to watch classic American films. Our homegroup leader at the time, Travis Sasser, arranged one-to-one cross-generational interview questions for a homegroup. My kids each got to interview and be interviewed by a man they knew but would have no other reason to speak with directly. Recently after a WNC trip, the Catalano and Liggett families came over to our house for lunch. My husband Ray posed to the kids a thoughtful question couched in a silly game. Each responded in line with their age and personality. Men bring different energies.

Not everyone is a big talker. One holiday, Jim and Colleen Martin invited us over for a multi-team cooking contest where Jim was both teammate and [necessary] adjudicator. Sam Hodges homegroup invited us to join their multi-family kickball game. For the first time, I got to see how “into it” Will and Jen Henderson can be with sports. Lou Gregus and Jason Rickard and Gary Michels have each coordinated with my kids to get them summer jobs. Jonathan and Hannah Reeves often school and carpool and support a female head of household. Sharing life is irreplaceable.

Can you name the female heads of households in our church family? How many do you count? I count four who still have children living at home. There may be more. 

My hope in writing this blog post is to help you see these women. They are near you. Consider the many ways you work to enrich your own family, and remember that she shoulders the same cares for her family, but alone. And after seeing her, might you invite her and her children to join your family for something you like to do? Something ordinary. Something good.

Carla