Coping with stress fact of life for working moms

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Job, kids, housework, shopping. Not enough hours in the day, and never enough sleep.|ret||ret||tab|

For most working mothers, stress is an everyday companion. |ret||ret||tab|

Single working moms carry the greatest stress of all working women, and yet they bear up and endure, even when, as with Debbie Hunt, the stress is unrelenting.|ret||ret||tab|

Hunt, a single mom in her mid-30s, was a tilesetter in Arkansas before moving to Springfield, a job too physically demanding when gestational diabetes complicated her pregnancy. |ret||ret||tab|

After her son Carl was born, she found herself living alone again. |ret||ret||tab|

"Work was hard to find," she said, "but I took a register job at Price Cutter. I work nights so my mom can watch the baby at night and keep her day job." |ret||ret||tab|

Hunt thought the arrangement meant she would be able to sleep during the day, but as the baby grows, he naps only briefly. Now she finds that her greatest physical stress is lack of sleep. |ret||ret||tab|

Hunt has never had health insurance and does what she can to handle her medical bills as they come up. |ret||ret||tab|

"I ask them to take payments," she said of medical providers. "If they will, that's great. If not," she says, "then sometimes I just can't pay them."|ret||ret||tab|

Hunt would love a day job that offers good benefits, but dreads "leaving Carl with someone I don't know." She said she is "missing out on all the things that Carl does. I'd love to be married and have a little home business, so I could watch him grow up." |ret||ret||tab|

In the meantime, Hunt attempts to handle stress through yoga, meditation and prayer. |ret||ret||tab|

"I just ask God for the strength to keep going," she said. |ret||ret||tab|

Single mom Heidi Benton is a daytime hostess at Shoney's Restaurant. Married at 18 and divorced three years later, Benton moved here with her son, Evan, to attend Southwest Missouri State University. Although she started taking full-time classes, the burden of raising a child alone forced her to become a part-time student. |ret||ret||tab|

She is currently taking a break from school to improve her finances. |ret||ret||tab|

"It's very hard to manage," she says. "We live day by day, check to check. The worst stress is having it all on my shoulders at once. Every time I get one tragedy fixed, liked replacing a wrecked car, another happens." |ret||ret||tab|

Weekends she leaves her son with her parents in Lebanon, so she can work. Weekdays, the child is in day care. |ret||ret||tab|

Benton said that her best anti-stress medication is reading and playing with her son. Prayer and singing lift her spirits, but she dreams of the day when she meets "the knight in shining armor who comes to take care of me and my son. He won't have to be perfect. I just don't want to have to worry so much anymore."|ret||ret||tab|

Jeanie Dresslaer, an Iyengar yoga teacher with Success Naturally Yoga Center, was a single mom for more than 15 years. |ret||ret||tab|

A teacher at Portland Elementary for 27 years, she left several years ago for family reasons. Although her kids are grown now, there were years when she taught school during the day and worked at Sylvan Learning Centers nights and weekends. |ret||ret||tab|

When daughter Trishna was accepted as a dance student with Alvin Ailey in New York City, Dresslaer, who holds a master's degree in guidance and counseling, kept her day job and waited tables at night to pay for Trishna's dance education. |ret||ret||tab|

Did she feel stressed? "No," she said emphatically. "I never felt stressed because I was on a mission." |ret||ret||tab|

Dresslaer paused and searched for the words to explain her philosophy. |ret||ret||tab|

"I found out long ago that life is tough," she said. "So I learned to wrap joy and courage around my pain and put one foot in front of the other."|ret||ret||tab|

The worst years, she said, were the ones when her son Travis was injured in a car accident, and then her daughter Trishna became very ill with diabetes. Although insurance covered most of the medical bills, Dresslaer had to deal with the emotional impact.|ret||ret||tab|

She was already practicing yoga, which helped her release some stress. |ret||ret||tab|

Walking, gardening, lawn mowing and other outdoor activities helped, too. Still, she said, the real trick in stress relief is attitude. |ret||ret||tab|

"Women need to realize their own power," she says. "We do have control of our lives and we can make decisions." |ret||ret||tab|

These days, Dresslaer's schedule as a full-time yoga teacher has her leading classes at the Success Naturally Yoga Center, at OTC, at Drury University, and at a yoga outreach center in Bolivar. |ret||ret||tab|

She also is teaching ACT preparatory classes and still does private tutoring in elementary academics and ACT. |ret||ret||tab|

Her days are hectic, and when she finds herself suffering from too much stress, she takes a break to check her diet, how much rest she's getting, and how much quiet time for inspirational reading, meditation and prayer she's allowing herself. |ret||ret||tab|

She also analyzes her life situation. Is she spending time in situations or with people who are "toxic" to her? If the answer is yes, she leaves those people behind. |ret||ret||tab|

Dresslaer said that "stress relief isn't all that tough. You take care of yourself, and you learn to be grateful for what you do have. Feeling good about the positive things in your life can really limit the amount of stress you feel."[[In-content Ad]]