I didn't plan on doing this alone.

As I look back after my husband passed away I remember how much I struggled with wanting to be both parents to my son. I believed in my heart that he deserved to have both parents not just one, so I tried having split personalities for a while...as you can imagine it didn't work out too well.

I ended up driving myself crazy and constantly feeling bad because I was always coming up short. It would get to the point that I would be so exhausted from trying to do it all that by the end of the day I was so impatient and short fused that I was constantly irritated by my son. Then after he went to bed I would cry myself to sleep because I wasn't patient enough and in my head was a bad mommy.

Then I think one day I just stopped trying so hard. I was just me. I was loving and patient and even though I didn't have the daddy voice that I was constantly told that I needed, I found my own ways of disciplining that worked for me and not someone I wasn't. After that I enjoyed my son so much more, we would go on walks together and laugh and bath time was about making things out of bubbles and sticking letters and numbers on the wall.

It was so hard holding all the weight of grieving and trying to be both parents. There is a reason it takes two people to have a child, because one person can't have it all. Granted I can do it on my own, but I am not a man nor will I ever be. I am a woman, a loving, caring, compassionate woman. I have learned to get my hands a little dirty like a man, but I will never again try to play a man's role as a father. I am me, no one else, and I am pretty darn good at being me too :)