Single Mum loneliness...

As a single mum, you are everything - the financier, the financial controller, the home-help, the carer, the domestic whizz, the homework-helper, the taxi-driver, the decision-maker everything that your kids need and want you for. So there is no time for playgroups, helping at school functions or any type of social life of some sort. And when you try to make time, have a spare couple of hours just to be you, trying to find a friend to go to the movies with, have a cuppa with, whatever it is just to feel normal again, no one is there for you, because you've never created a bond with anyone that's strong enough for them to recognise that you just need some time out.

So you go home wondering if you should just go to the movie by yourself for the third time in 12 months, or just forget it. I thought I was developing a network of good friends, but they seem to happy to help me out with with my kids - dropping them off at school early in the morning if I have appointments, but when it comes to me, someone looking after me and giving me a break to feel normal, I have no one...

People have suggested to me over time, that they must get my boys and I over for dinner one night, or we should come down to their holiday house one day, etc. But its all hypothetical opportunities that never happen. As a single mum, you don't get invited around to other people's houses because their husbands have no one to talk to. So again, you're left out.

I have one dear friend who has always been there, through all her troubles, she is the only one who invites me to parties or out for a girls night, because she has been a single mum for a short time, but now she has a husband and two step-children plus her own two kids, but she knows. It's really hard to find someone who knows what it's like to crave an adult conversation without having your kids screaming around your legs, or just get a reassuring hug.

That's why my lover has been so wonderful, but he is thousands of miles away, and even he sometimes rejects me because he has family commitments he has to deal with. And he can't give me a hug.

So for all you single mums out there who struggle to just be 'you', I'm really feeling for You today... and just think, You're not alone...