Blog Every Day in August: A Role Model

I am taking part in Yummy Mummy in Training's Blog Every Day in August challenge.
Day 26 is: A role model.

Sally Pearson is an Australian hurdler. She won Gold at the 2012 Olympics for the 100m hurdles. When you read her bio on Wikipedia though, under "Personal life" it tells you that she was raised by a single mother, who worked two jobs to support her athletics career.

With so many people who were raised by single mothers, you hear "oh, she sacrificed so much to allow me to dance/sing/go to college/whatever."

I've been thinking about that and really, I don't want that for S.

The last thing I want is for her to grow up thinking I've given things up for her. I don't want her to look at me saying "look at what she sacrificed for me..." I want her to look at me and think "wow, I want to be like my mum."

I want to be successful, and lead by example, and for her to see that being a single parent is not a handicap, not something to endure or tolerate, not something that defines you and means you can be nothing but. I will also sing along to Coldplay before I allow my being a single mother to define S and what she can achieve in her life.

Of course, I would give up everything I have or will ever own for her; I would scrub toilets with a toothbrush to get money to buy her nice things; that's just what you do when you're a parent, and single parents the world over have sacrificed all manner of things in order to allow their children "the life I never had..."

But I want to be someone for S to look up to, not someone for her to pity or feel guilty about. I don't want her to look back on her childhood and think, wow, my mum could have been this, or done that, or gone there, but she didn't because she put me first. I want her to look back and think, we were happy. I had a good childhood. I want to be like my mum.

Now I just have to figure out how to make that happen...