Enough with the Single Mom Guilt: Why Being Selfish is the Best Thing for Your Kids Right Now

I can’t help but notice that society loves to help single moms feel guilty.

As if we don’t struggle to overcome mom guilt after divorce all on our own.

But ‘done’ is a whole vibe, and I’m living it out.

Check out this post to see what I mean!

If you’re reading this while hiding in your closet wondering if it’s selfish to focus on yourself after divorce, listen to me carefully: the martyr complex is officially dead. Your kids do not need you depleted, miserable, and sacrificing your soul to keep up appearances.

Look, we’ve tried following society’s rules and it almost broke us. Now, we rewrite them.

The Lie of the Martyr Complex that Enables Single Mom Guilt

I know that your guilt is eating you alive. Your marriage ended, by society’s standards you have failed your kids, and now you must pay the penalty tax of absolute mothering.

After all, you’ve got to prove yourself now, right? All these eyes looking, watching, judging you for leaving when you could have “just stayed and worked it out.”

Girl, please.

Being the tragic hero who erases herself to somehow elevate her children is a lie. You can’t raise resilient kids when you yourself are drowning in shame and self-neglect.

This toxic expectation relies on three key lies and we’re about to debunk them together.

Lie 1: Your Suffering Keeps Your Kids From Theirs

Burning yourself at both ends does not keep your kids from feeling the fallout of divorce.

It amplifies it.

You cannot co-regulate nervous systems when your own is frazzled and fried.

This lie keeps you anxious, stressed, and constantly overwhelmed which forces your kids into survival mode, too.

Rebel Move: Make sure you’re not trying to run on empty. Whatever you have to do to replenish your own reserves is the right move for your entire family.

Lie 2: Self-Preservation is Self-Centered

Paying for and utilizing a gym membership, locking the door to your room for an hour every afternoon, or refusing to entertain toxic people for the sake of ‘community’ is standard maintenance, not self-centered.

If you’re leaking energy, how will you have enough to ensure your kids not only survive but thrive? A single mom who carries too much guilt doesn’t have the reserves to carry the emotional weight of a life come undone for her and her kids.

Rebel Move: Create boundaries like it’s your job, because it is. No one else is looking out for you. Your life, your rules, for your purposes… and all of it will ultimately benefit your kids

Lie 3: The Martyr Gets Rewarded

There is no award for most selfless mom. The mom who loses herself to motherhood ends up losing so much more.

She teaches her daughters that being a mom means no longer being a woman. She demonstrates to her son that his future wife shouldn’t need anything more.

A guilt-ridden single mom will only become bitter, resentful, and overwhelmingly burnt out. Your kids deserve so much more than that.

Rebel Move: Remember who you are as a woman. Live out your individual identity outside of the roles you fulfill. And stop trying to garner applause from a society that refuses to be impressed.

Is It Selfish to Focus on Yourself After Divorce?

This question is a two-fold pondering.

Because, is it selfish? Perhaps.

But is that necessarily a bad thing? I don’t believe so.

All I ever heard from well-intentioned friends acquaintances, is “focus on the kids.”

And yes, focus on your kids.

Definitely.

Just not at your own expense.

If you’re not taking care of yourself, figuring out who you are, what you want, where your life is headed now, then you can’t do much for your kids.

Because they need a parent who knows themselves, knows how to walk through trauma without it breaking her, knows what she wants in life and how to get it.

Focusing on the kids by centering your entire world around them in some sort of apology for failing them in your marital vows is a quick way to experience stay at home mom burnout. It’ll build resentment for your newfound role of single mom.

And quite frankly, it’ll make life incredibly boring and monotonous.

When did it become praise worthy to lose your identity the second you have a baby, anyways?

Just because you’re a divorced single mom now, that does not mean you owe your life to proving you don’t suck as a mother.

I literally just saw a reel of a happily married man talking about how single moms are ruining their kids by having a dating life. That you absolutely should not date if you’re a single mom.

Not, mind you, that you should not introduce every date to your kids. But literally that you should not date at all.

Period.

What a bogus message. Because you chose not to stay somewhere that was killing you, you somehow stop becoming an individual woman, a human being with needs and desires?

Not gonna lie, I saw red after watching that short little waste of time.

Look. Maybe it is selfish to focus on yourself after divorce, I know the single mom guilt is strong. But this is your one life, too. This is your first time living through this, too. This is your future at stake, too.

Being resilient begins with being healthy. And being healthy begins by deciding you deserve to be healthy as much as anyone else does. And then, after you’ve made that decision, you make the time to invest in…you guessed it… yourself.

Raising Resilient Kids by Choosing Yourself First

I don’t know about you, but I refuse to model to my children that moms- single moms after divorce- stop mattering. I’m tired of the narrative that says if you’re a post-divorce mom you must be overwhelmed, stressed out, and sad.

Or you must live quietly, lest someone misinterpret you celebrating your life for celebrating divorce.

Or you should live apologetically, for choosing to leave instead of suffering for the rest of your life to keep everyone else comfortable.

And not for one second am I going to live in that space of “waiting for a knight in shining armor to give me purpose,” knowing how closely and carefully my kids are watching.

To that end, apparently I both have to wait for someone to validate me and also can’t date him because I’ll ruin my children. Can you feel the eye-roll?

Burn. It. Down.

The shoulds. The expectations. The trying to live out the advice of everyone who’s never been where you are.

And hear me.

You teach resilience by being resilient. This is not a “do as I say not what I do” situation. This is in the trenches, in the gutter, digging your way out of the absolute pit of hell and showing your kids that anything is possible.

That happiness is not dependent upon someone keeping their promise.

That life doesn’t end just because a marriage does.

This is about showing up for your life, for you, for them, because it matters.

I promise you, when you find yourself again, you will naturally be paving the way for your kids to find safety and stability in their lives, too.

Rebel against society induced guilt and start blazing your own trail here.