Being the best mom for your children

Dannika Russell
Dec 9, 2015
5 min read

Realtor Nicole McKenzie, mother of two, has been doing the job of two people for most of her children’s lives. When she moved from the Cayman Islands to Canada in 2000, her son, Devon, was three years old and her daughter, Sarah, was two. They settled in London, Ont. and 15 years later, McKenzie says even though she struggled in the beginning, she wouldn’t change the experience she had with her children for anything.

Sandra Drozd is a single mother and a lawyer at Lerners law firm in London, Ont. She was with the father of her son, Cole, for 10 years before getting married in 2005. She separated from her husband after four years of marriage when her son was two years old. Since then she’s been Cole’s primary caregiver, even though her ex-husband is an involved co-parent. She describes being a single mother as “a balancing act,” juggling her job and duties around the house with Cole’s schooling and extra-curricular activities.

Both McKenzie and Drozd say they didn’t want their children to feel left out because they were single parents. They both went out of their way to make sure their children were well provided for and even admit to sometimes forgetting that they had to take care of themselves as well.

McKenzie says you should never forget to take care of yourself; yes, the children are the top priority, but your well-being is just as important. She explains that she spent a long time over-compensating for the lack of a father figure in her children’s lives.

“When I was trying to be everything for (them), the one thing I couldn’t be was (their) dad,” she says. It took her some time to realize that even “supermoms” need some “me-time” every once in a while.

She would get up earlier than Devon and Sarah, around 5 a.m., and use that as her alone time. “I was always an early riser,” she says.

“In order to be better for (my) kids, I had to be better for myself.”

Drozd is big on extra-curricular activities for her son. Cole, now 8, has been involved in soccer, skiing, snowboarding, music lessons (piano and guitar) and is learning to skate. At school he also participates in the choir, cross-country team and chess club.

Drozd says she has Cole involved in so much because she believes it will have a positive effect on him.

“I think it will help him,” she says. “Sometimes he’s a bit shy and I find these things are a great way to get him out of that.”

She says she wants to stay as involved in his life as she can, and so far she has. She is a frequent volunteer at his school helping out with pizza lunches and career days and sits on the committee that plans the yearly celebration of the school and its students.

She even stepped out of her comfort zone and coached Cole’s soccer team for three years.

Ann-Marie Ricketts, 48, is the founder of Single Women In Motherhood (SWIM), a non-profit organization run by volunteers in the London community, where she relocated from Toronto with her three children about 20 years ago.

Ricketts modelled SWIM after the Big Brother/Big Sister programs. She refers to her organization as the “Big Mama” program because it helps out single mothers who don’t have anyone else. Most of their programs are designed to give mothers their “me time.” They do this by offering a child care exchange, where they watch the children for a few hours so the moms can have some time to themselves.

McKenzie and Drozd came across SWIM accidentally on the Internet.

McKenzie says wishes she knew about SWIM earlier when she needed mentorship, adding she could still use a little help now and then after raising her children alone for so long.

However, she’s the one providing the help these days. As the co-ordinator of SWIM’s life coaching program, she uses her own experiences to help her connect with single moms who are scared and feeling alone. She interviews those who wish to be mentors ensuring that they would be a good fit for the organization and can help the young single mothers who need guidance.

“It all starts with a choice to be happy, to make the best of a not-so-great situation and to find everything you need inside of you,” she said.

Drozd describes getting divorced as making her feel vulnerable a blow to her her self-esteem.

“I felt like I needed to be around single moms and get a grasp of what I was looking at.”

She says attending SWIM’s public community session, ‘Let’s Talk About It,’ helped her meet other single moms and better understand her new situation. She describes a specific session as “uplifting,” saying that as Ricketts spoke, it helped her and other moms understand their self-worth.

Ricketts is a mother of four and first became a mom at the age of 16. She was also the child of a single mother and explains that being on both sides of the same coin motivated her to start the organization when she first moved to London. She says the reason she formed SWIM was because at the time she moved to London, there were no resources for single mothers.

“There is a big stigmatization and people still look down on single moms,” she said.

Ricketts says that after raising three children as a single mother, the experience now helps her connect with this generation of single mothers. She is now raising her fourth child, a one-year-old daughter, with her husband and says that though the baby was a surprise, having had her allows her to understand the hardships mothers face in this decade.

She says that when doing it alone, “the greatest joy is when your child develops a personality and can actually make you laugh.”

“But also when you develop past the parent-child relationship and they are able to give you back your own lesson,” she adds.

McKenzie believes that being the sole parent to her children has helped to strengthen their relationship. She goes out and throws the football around with her son. She enjoys the same music as her daughter and they attend concerts together. She says that though it isn’t the life she would have chosen for her children, she’s glad has that freedom and she didn’t miss out on a single milestone in their lives.

Drozd feels the same way. She says that she and Cole are very close and that their favourite thing to do together is go to the movies. At the movies, Cole always leans over to repeat the funny punchlines to her. She loves this about him because it was the same thing her late mother would do.

This summer, she wanted to take Cole somewhere special because he couldn’t remember being on a plane. She suggested going to Florida because of Disney World but Cole was adamant on going to New York. Once they were there, Drozd asked her son why he wanted to go there so badly, and he replied, “Because you like it here, Mom.”

She couldn’t believe that her son thought of her when the vacation was for him.

“I know that I’m having a huge impact on the person he’s going to be,” she said.

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