Henrietta Taylor

Henrietta Taylor is a New Single. She's the author of Lavender and Linen (Harper Collins 2007), a memoir about moving to Provence after the death of her husband and building a new life for herself and her children. I loved it.

How many times?

How many times every week, month, year do New Singles have to answer questions about dating?

Am I seeing someone? Have I met anyone nice? Do I think I will ever marry again?

It really starts to get irritating when it becomes a daily enquiry.

Answers to above. No, no and not before the answers to the first two questions are not no.

The force

I read somewhere the other day that there are 40 million divorced women in America.

40 million anythings is a force to be reckoned with.

Time travel

Time travel is part of life as a New Single.

Most of the time it is back to the fifties where schools require both parents' signatures and insist on calling long-divorced women 'Mrs'.

Sometimes it's into the future that we are all working hard for. The picture of that future life is what sustains us.

Getting on with it

The message of this blog, not just this post, is undeniably 'getting on with it'. It should equally be that 'sometimes that's easier said than done'.

Even if you've been a New Single for years, you can still have days, hey weeks, when it's tougher than usual.

The secret is to acknowledge you've hit a stumbling block, take a little time to think it through, then continue on your previous path of 'getting on with it'.

Unbroken homes

All New Singles have had their households described as 'broken homes'. It is a particularly vicious attack but usually used unthinkingly. It hurts but surely no harm is intended.

I am sure smug married people don't really think that the life-altering decisions we make to become New Singles, always always with the best interests of our children in mind, lead to homes that are 'broken'. It is simply more likely that their experience of life to date hasn't allowed them to think outside their square.

What New Singles with children to raise by themselves know is that they have moved from broken homes dominated by failing relationships and dysfunction into unbroken homes where there is room for peace and optimism and the brightest of futures for everyone living there.

Welcome New Singles

I've been a New Single for six years. It's no picnic being single again after years of marriage and never expecting that single parenting much less New Singledom would be part of my reality.

It is a life of dodging stereotypes of 'broken homes', 'single mothers' and being a third wheel in social circumstances we once fitted into.

But life after divorce or whatever is about getting on with it and I invite you to join me in rising above the negatives and embracing life as a New Single.