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January 17, 2007 | Blog |  No comments

Single Mom Seeking — A REVIEW!

By Ericka Lutz

Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from the Dating World
by Rachel Sarah
ISBN#1580051669
published by Seal Press

Review by Shari Maser

I’ve never been a single mother, and I haven’t been on a date in over seventeen years. So I was quite wary of Single Mom Seeking: Playdates, Blind Dates and Other Dispatches from the Dating World, even though a friend highly recommended it. I was sure that it would bore me because the subject matter was so far removed from my own reality, or (worse) I was afraid that I might feel voyeuristic, reading what amounts to someone else’s diary about her hot dates!

But my worries were unfounded. This was a page-turner, in a “wow, I know exactly what she’s talking about even though I never thought about it THAT way before” kind of way.

Sometimes her experiences resonated with my own… balancing the needs of a sick child against a scheduled commitment, racing to get my work done before my baby wakes up from her nap, balancing my need for intimate adult conversation with my child’s need to be with me, oozing breastmilk in public…

When her experiences didn’t resonate, they still captured my imagination. I found myself wondering, “What would I have done?” I was inspired to discuss her dilemmas with my husband, my friends, my sister. I was prompted to evaluate my own moral character and challenged to re-examine some of my “black-and-white” ideas about relationships.

I was so intrigued that I would have read this book from cover to cover…but whenever I put it down for a moment to brew some tea or use the bathroom, my husband swiped it, and I had to fight to get it back.
I asked Steve what a forty-something married man found so fascinating about the dating life of a single mother. His response — it’s fresh. Not a story he’s heard before. Funny, real, unpredictable, action-packed.

This is all true. It is fresh — with a unique perspective on motherhood, dating, friendship, and family. It is definitely an original story, as Rachel Sarah gives us a play-by-play narrative about her dating life as a single, attachment-parenting, breastfeeding mother. It’s also funny, action-packed and unpredictable — full of life’s little moments, the kinds that nobody could possibly make up if they tried.

Single Mom Seeking is about relationships — between parents and children, between women and men, between service providers and recipients, among friends. Rachel Sarah, a natural storyteller with a strong sense of humor, entertains us with the “who said what to whom” details while she enriches us with her thoughtful evaluation of the elements that contribute to the construction and destruction of relationships. She makes us think, care, and laugh all at the same time. For me, reading can’t get any better than that!

Shari Maser is the attachment-parenting, home-educating mother of Alex and Erica. She is the author of Blessingways: A Guide to Mother-Centered Baby Showers – Celebrating Pregnancy, Birth, and Motherhood.

Tagged: Reading

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