I overheard a conversation recently that really had nothing to do with me, but it stayed with me long after it was over. It was about custody schedules, relationships, traveling, and trying to figure out how all of those pieces fit together. Nothing particularly dramatic, just real life. But at some point, I found myself thinking, This. This is exactly why I made some of the choices I made when my kids were little.

I spent most of my children’s childhood single. And when I say that, I don’t mean I never dated. I did. I met people, went to dinner, and tried at different points to make room for that part of my life. But there was always one problem: my children were completely non-negotiable.

I don’t just mean that in the obvious way that most parents would say their children come first. I mean their time with me was non-negotiable. Their access to me was non-negotiable. If they needed me, I was going. I can remember being on a date and getting a call that one of my kids wasn’t feeling well and wanted to come home to me. There was never a debate in my head about what I should do or a thought of, But I already have plans. My plans changed.

Eventually, I realized something that I actually think was very fair to everyone involved. I probably wasn’t capable of being a great partner during that season of my life, because another person deserves to matter too. They deserve someone who can occasionally choose them, someone who can make plans and protect those plans, and someone who can build a life with them without constantly making them feel like they are in second place. With me, during those years, they would have been. Every single time.

That doesn’t make me a better mother than someone who chose differently. It doesn’t mean divorced parents shouldn’t date, fall in love, remarry, travel, or build beautiful blended families. Plenty of people do exactly that and raise incredibly happy children. This is simply something I knew about myself and what I was capable of giving at that point in my life.

When I decided to become a mother, I did it believing I was building a family where my children would be with me every day. I never imagined divorce. I never imagined custody schedules, and I certainly never imagined having to negotiate pieces of their childhood around another relationship. Divorce changed that reality for me, so when their father had his time with them, I respected it. But I never wanted to start looking at the time I had with them as something I needed to rearrange so my romantic life could be more convenient.

There were times people didn’t understand that. Why couldn’t the kids just stay with their dad an extra night? Why couldn’t I change weekends? Why couldn’t I make a trip work? Why couldn’t someone else keep them? Technically, I probably could have done all of those things. I just didn’t want to.

What I didn’t fully understand then was how quickly those years were disappearing. There would eventually be plenty of Friday nights when nobody needed me. There would eventually be weekends when nobody was asking what we were doing. There would eventually be vacations they couldn’t take because they had school, work, girlfriends, friends, responsibilities, and lives of their own. There would eventually be a time when I could get on a plane without coordinating anyone else’s schedule.

I live in that time now.

And maybe that’s why that conversation stayed with me. Looking back, I understand something I probably couldn’t fully articulate then: I wasn’t putting my life on hold for my children. That was my life. Being their mom wasn’t the thing keeping me from living. It was the thing I had chosen to live fully during that season.

Of course there were sacrifices attached to that choice. Maybe I missed relationships that could have become something. Maybe there were people who would have loved me well. Maybe there were trips I could have taken, dinners I could have attended, and experiences I could have had. I’ll never really know, but I know what I did have.

I had ordinary Tuesdays. I had sick kids crawling into my bed. I had Friday nights when nobody had anywhere better to be. I had rides in the car, dinners at home, ridiculous conversations, last-minute plans, and the thousand completely unremarkable moments that somehow become the ones you miss the most.

Now my kids are grown. They don’t need me the way they once did, and my time belongs mostly to me again. I can date. I can travel. I can make plans without checking a custody calendar. I can build a relationship differently today because I’m in a completely different season of motherhood.

Strangely enough, I don’t look back at those years and feel like I lost anything. If anything, hearing that conversation made me realize how certain I still am about the choice I made. I didn’t choose being alone because I didn’t believe in love. I chose not to force romantic love into a season of my life where I knew I wasn’t willing to give it the space it deserved.

My children had that space, and for me, that was exactly where it belonged.