A Single Mother’s Notes on Faith-Driven Resilience

I. Thirty-Minute Intermission

The front door clicks shut, the echo of their laughter still hanging faintly in the hallway, and the silence of the house rushes in like a physical weight. They are gone for the moment—my two beautiful, brilliant children who carry the universe in their eyes.

And now, finally, I can cry.

For thirty minutes, until they come back from buying their favorite ice cream flavors at the local dessert shop, I can let down the spine of steel I wear. In the stillness of the hallway, I can fall to the ground and let out a loud, exhausted wail, opening the dam of pent-up frustration coursing through my veins. With zero shame, I let a river of tears fall from my face and drench my clothes, finally releasing the weight I have been forced to bear on my own. Weights that have always been too heavy for one person to shoulder.

II. Scars on the Bloodline

I wipe the tears and snot from my face with my multi-colored cotton skirt and look up at the photos of my children hanging on the wall. In their eyes, I see nothing but promise and a limitless future. Yet, I carry a crushing, suffocating rage. The army that should have protected them alongside me, the family who should have prioritized building them a safe world, threw them away like trash. They treated them like they were nothing, all to achieve the slow, calculated disintegration of their mother’s spirit.

They rallied behind a decade’s worth of soapbox banter, lies, gossip, slander, addictions, and performative illnesses to water their deep-seated hatred of one woman who refused to stay small. They joyfully convened around sacrificing my two innocent children, just to ensure that I would vanish under the weight of bearing their responsibilities alongside my own. They ate popcorn and laughed while they watched us have to start over and over again after every premeditated financial attack they sent our way. They engineered a slow disappearance. Yet, all they delivered was profound cruelty: the kind that leaves a permanent scar on a bloodline, because they forgot one crucial variable. Mom refuses to stay down.

My children know how many times we’ve been sacrificed for pleasure. They rebelliously laugh at the Devil while he serves doughnuts to anyone thirsting for betrayal, denial, and neglect. Even still, I am charged with healing the wounds my children were given to spite me, even as I tend to my own. Alongside their shamed ancestors, I protect them at all costs. I will show them that even in the midst of familial war, love always prevails over hate. No matter how hard they try, God will not forsake us.

III. An Island Within an Island

I cry because the emptiness doesn’t stop at the front door. Hate bombs continue to go off all around us because the external world all too often mirrors that same casual cruelty and indifference. I am a single, brown mother. I live in America, and I was the first in my family born on this soil. Outside of my children, I have little to no safety net. Unfortunately, the people who loved us unconditionally are dead; the rest have positioned themselves to win at all costs and revel in our struggles. There are no elders to lean on, no cousins to split the load, no childhood home to retreat to when the external world beats us down. Except for the mighty hand of God, I have no local heritage to ground me, no roots deep enough in this earth to keep us from shaking.

My children could have had that missing safety net. They could have had the elders, the cousins, and the family dynamic they deserve, but only on one condition: the complete sacrifice of their mother. It is a price my children fiercely and righteously refuse to pay. We stand together as an unbroken, united front. They will not trade my soul for their comfort, and we will continue to face the shaking of this earth hand-in-hand.

Everything I am, everything that feels like home, is on the other side of the world. And I can’t even get there. People love to throw out the casual, cruel directive: “Go home.” They say it with malice, or they say it with a dismissive shrug. But even with a graduate degree, I can’t make enough money in this economy to buy a ticket. I am trapped in the geographic middle of nowhere, exiled from my own bloodline, starving for a sense of belonging that is priced completely out of reach.

To make matters more isolating, I don’t fit into America’s neat, comfortable boxes of diversity. I am not Black. I am not Hispanic. I am not White. Because I don’t belong to the groups that dominate the cultural conversation, my struggle is invisible. In the grand calculus of American identity, I don’t matter. I am an island within an island, navigating a system that has no box to check for my specific brand of displacement.

IV. Building Tables, Breaking Legs

The horrific reality of how men treat women like me is enough to make me abandon this hallway of horrors forever. To them, I am a target, an exoticized checklist, or a threat. They take what is sacred and try to control or degrade it, mistaking a single brown mother’s resilience through forced poverty for an invitation to inflict more harm. It is entertainment for them to see if I can get back up. Like players in a violent video game, they offer no protection because they only crave the drama.

I am confident. I am beautiful. I am intelligent. I am statuesque. In a fair world, those would be tools of elevation. In the world I am leaving behind, these very traits became weapons to draw the worst kinds of predators, envious eyes, and consuming minds. Intelligence paired with beauty makes people uncomfortable, turning potential sanctuaries into battlegrounds. Being confident and statuesque means I take up space, and the “upside-down” world hates a woman who refuses to shrink into a corner. These traits did not save me; they isolated me.

That isolation bled directly into corporate spaces, turning interviews into invasive interrogations. Men drilled me about my love life, my heritage, and my age, entirely ignoring the resume and drive that qualified me to build the very table where they sat, treating me instead, like its broken leg. It is viciously hard to secure a career when you are viewed as an alien to be poked, prodded, and tested. Crumbs and banter were all they ever offered.

In that old world, safety was a myth, and love was a transaction I refused to afford.

V. The Mirror

Here is the ultimate cosmic joke: the bitterest pill to swallow is the mirror this country holds up to my own soul. I am trapped, broke, exhausted, and abandoned in this rebellious, freedom-loving, opinionated country, and I totally identify with it.

I am just like America: ornery, demanding sovereignty mixed with simplicity, fiercely independent, and rebellious against the chains put on me. Underneath the loud exterior, I am deeply, fundamentally disappointed in the American Dream. I hate it here in the underworld, yet its chaotic, stubborn nature mirrors the profound grief in my own chest.

So, I sit here in the quiet, trying to shake off the tears that come with this wretched old-world mindset. With just minutes left, I let the last of the tears fall for the family I didn’t have, the money I couldn’t make, the help that never came, and the kids who deserve a world that doesn’t treat them like it has treated their mother.

Having released my anguish, I hop up off the floor and quickly run up the stairs to my room. I don’t want them to see my swollen face. After changing my shirt and placing a cold washcloth over the back of my neck, I take one last deep breath. I intentionally release the rest and reclaim my power.

VI. We Are Going to Be Just Fine.

I can hear them now, laughing on the sidewalk. I imagine their hands are sticky, and at least one of them has acquired an ice cream stain on their shirt on their way back home.

Their joy reminds me of how lucky I am. It shows me that the grief born from my worst experiences was part of God’s plan to forge me into someone who can build a brighter path forward. It may not look the way I wanted it to, but it is here. Right now. I have free will. I can let go of the haunting narratives born from my past and hand my sword over to God. I know that the right support systems are on the way and that the war is finally over. I just needed a good cry.

In just a few seconds, and then again tomorrow, the door will open. When I ask them how their trip to the ice cream store went, I will quietly return the toxic doughnuts to all the senders who covet them. I will hop up and down to shake off the weight of those old emotions. Then, relaxing my shoulders, I will drop my hands to my sides and keep going. We are going to be just fine.