Single Mothers Stand Tall

Single mums are fighters, but not in the sense that most people think. We don’t fight just for the sake of it or from the habitual experience we have had with our exes. Instead, we fight for what we believe in and we fight for the rights of ourselves and our children. Our fights are not aggressive nor just a case of standing up for our principles. We stand because otherwise we would fall. There is no choice. None of us wants to fall. We have to think of our children. So we fight to continue our stand.

Most of us have had a chequered background. Many have had difficult exes… and still do. But that experience, that fight, that determination to get us through the most hardened situations is what hundreds of single mums harnessed last Tuesday when they rallied the government to restore the welfare cuts.  Even the government rallied the government. The Greens, the Liberals and Independents all joined forces to help single mothers stand tall again, despite the government’s desire to watch us on our hands and knees. But we are not begging for anything. We are standing up for what is our Australian right: to raise our children in conditions well above the poverty line and, with dignity.

Single mothers have an incredible internal strength, even if in many that strength still lies dormant. Often it is only when we have to fight that we realise we have more in us than we ever believed possible. Without doubt, the single mums at the Australian-wide rallies found their stand empowering. And that’s what this is all about: empowerment. No one has the right to weaken another, especially not the government.

Single mums aren’t victims. We’re strong individuals who have had tough lessons to learn. We work exceptionally hard, many doing two or three jobs, double or triple shifts. We are far from victims. We are in fact, some of the strongest women on this planet. We have to be. We have our children to take care of, often under very tough conditions.  We don’t have time to play victim because quite simply, we are too busy being mothers moving forward.

Vicki Morrison is the founder of Mothers Moving Forward and the author of the children's picture book, So Shy.