Single Mom Stories: Seeking community

This month we celebrate the many experiences, lessons, missteps and triumphs of single mothers for Single Mom Stories September. Join us by reading, sharing, commenting and -- if you have your own story to tell -- contributing here as we strengthen the circle of support of mamas. 

Meet Dawn Sanders, a single mother with physical challenges and a fiery spirit, who is not afraid to start over. Here's how Dawn introduced herself to Single Mom Nation as she seeks community and a new career as an activist for people who have been told they don't fit in.  

I'm a single mum with a severe visual impairment, with a lad of 17 and who has additional needs (hearing impaired/partial sight). Yep! We're a cracking, quirky unit.

I'm an expat from Southern California, now living in Sheffield, UK. I have moved around a lot since I've been here, so I've encountered colorful life experiences, lived on the edge of what is coined 'mainstream society' to embrace an alternative, non-capitalist, Socialist, feminist and Wicca Pagan path and approach. 
I have tried my hand at many things here (mostly being at the mercy of cultural constraints and a "know-your-place" in a classist society ethos). It has damaged me in many ways, but I think made me that much more determined to defy stereotypes, roll with the given status quo or adhere to a downtrodden victim culture.

At 47, I'm now trying again to recreate my social enterprise and break into freelance journalism. My passions are in providing a voice for the most marginalized in society, like single parents, people with additional needs (be it physical, cognitive or mental health,) ethnic minorities, homeless people or disadvantaged young people.

As someone who immigrated from a skin-deep world, I never fit in or felt apart of on my own at age 24, been homeless in London, raised my son from day one as a single mum, traveled, lived in eco-communities, did an international politics degree and now am somewhere in the middle all over again.

Let's show Dawn some love and support, dear friends. Leave a comment or word of support. We're all in this together.