Miriama McDowell with daughters Hero (left) and Talanoa. Photo/Supplied
Miriama McDowell with daughters Hero (left) and Talanoa. Photo/Supplied
Join Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard, parents and hosts of the Herald's parenting podcast: One Day You'll Thank Me, as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
Miriama McDowell is a successful actor, director, playwright and mum to two girls. Sharing the challenges and beautiful moments of solo-parenting she reveals how she's learning to let go of such a defining part of herself as she prepares to get married.
McDowell still gets emotional when she remembers a particularly difficult night with her second daughter, Hero, when she was just 6 months old.
"I'd been doing the nights, doing the grind, all by myself. And I hadn't planned to do it by myself, it was the opposite of what I had wanted."
It got to 5am and McDowell was "at that low point when you're like, I don't know if I can go on another day, I really don't know if I can do this", when her older child, Talanoa, 6, at the time, came into her mother's room and asked: "Do you want me to take the baby so you can have an hour's sleep?"
An exhausted McDowell handed over the child. From that day, for two years, her little girl came in to help her mum. "Every morning," recalls McDowell, "She got up in the dark. I still cry when I talk about that."
This is just one of the many beautiful and unexpected moments McDowell has experienced as a solo mother to her girls, now 11 and 4.
On her journey, she shares that she has felt both heartened by help and acknowledgement from others, and "deeply alone" and discriminated against.
"As we know, being a parent, so much of it is unseen. And especially if you're in a home on your own as the only adult, all of it is unseen.
"The sad moments are really hard. Just the practical stuff, like getting the shopping out of the car, after carrying both the kids upstairs, then going back out into the dark to get the groceries. Those are when I felt deeply alone ... but the joyful moments have always outweighed those."
McDowell says "especially as a solo mother" she found that "people acknowledge you all the time ... especially women. They go, 'That is amazing, what you're doing'. That means the whole world, just to be acknowledged," says the actor who played a young Whina Cooper in this year's hit biopic, Whina.
But being "the only adult" has brought challenges and unfair assumptions too.
"I found it really hard to get a mortgage as a solo parent. And being a freelancer, that was just like, double no-no. You do not exist in the world, there's no place for you."
Finding a rental also came with discrimination.
"I literally had landlords say, 'Well, if you're a solo mother you're probably going to have parties.' I'm like, I just work and need a safe place for my kids.
"Something changes when you're looking for a flat and you have children. The responsibility is so different, especially when you're on your own," she says.
"I remember I found a place and the landlord, before I'd moved in, started sending me inappropriate text messages. It was just like, holy s***, I'm not just looking after myself anymore. That for me, as a woman anyway, is not cool. But then I'm going to be alone at night with my kids in the house – and he's got a key ... That was a huge shift for me in understanding what it's like to be alone in the world with children."
Miriama McDowell with her daughters, Talanoa (left) and Hero (right). Photo / Supplied
Alongside raising her girls on her own, McDowell has achieved much in her professional life, creating award-winning television shows, films and theatre. Asked how she's managed to juggle both, the actor, whose new play, The Wasp, opens soon at Auckland's Q Theatre, points to her "amazing friends".
"I had lots of other mothers who sort of gathered around me ... and other people who aren't solo parents but helped ... and I've had to use my creative brain to do the juggle. I think that's how I've always been able to continue as an actor and solo parent.
"There's a lot of brain work to consider how I can have the luxury of showing up to work every day. And I consider my job a luxury ... it's a privilege. But I probably use a third of my income on childcare. Every job I've had to weigh up. And sometimes it cost me to do my job."
Reflecting on her time without a partner and the bond she's built with her girls, McDowell says for years she never felt the need for someone else in her life, because she got so much from her children.
"I was single for four years, didn't have sex for four years … and I didn't need it. There was nothing missing. I think it was because you're still getting all the oxytocin from caresses and love, you're getting that from children. And then there comes a point where you think, now I need more."
As she prepares to become a wife, she says: "I'm actually engaged to be married to a wonderful, supportive man". She's also processing what no longer being a solo parent will feel like.
"I think it's so much a part of my identity ... and that's really hard to give up," says McDowell, who grew up with a solo dad she describes as "so emotionally available" and who gave her and her three siblings "such a full and joyful" childhood.
It's an adjustment for her daughter, Talanoa, too, who "grew up as the other parent. So, there's a process for both of us, for her learning to let go of that. To be a kid again ... because she's never done that.
"We're going through a process where I ask her to ask me for a cuddle every day … 'I want you to stop me and say, can I have a cuddle, Mum?' And I have to put everything down and I lie on the couch and give her a proper cuddle. It's lovely for me, too. Having those practical things as parents to connect and stop and ground you."
• To find out more about Miriama McDowell's parenting journey listen to this week's episode of One Day You'll Thank Me.
