The Challenge of Being Mom

For as long as I could remember, I wanted to be a mom.

The day my mother told me I'd soon have a sibling, I was about to turn 4, and I made my own announcement. I'm going to have 5 children, I told her: two boys, two girls, and one who was like me: a boy who wasn't really a boy, but looked like one.

"You can't have babies, silly," she told me.

I remember crying myself to sleep that night, not understanding what was wrong with me that I couldn't have babies.

Those memories came flooding back when I assumed the mantle of mom last year, upon the death of my wife. Maybe I shouldn't say, "wife;" she preferred the term "spouse," ever since my gender transition from male to female.

But I remained "Dad." And she will always be their mom.

For close to two decades, we had been husband and wife, mother and father. But we blurred traditional gender roles. I breastfed our youngest and took our daughter bra shopping; she assembled furniture, mowed the lawn and operated the power tools.

She also cooked. And cleaned. And organized. She drove our kids all over town and taught Sunday School.

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Their mom's cancer forced me to step up like I never had before, and it still wasn't enough. I should have done so much more.

And now that is what I do, day in and day out, as a widow, as a single dad doing the job of mom, and as a work-from-home parent.

The challenge of being a mom called "Dad" is recognizing how much more I could have done before all this fell solely on my shoulders, and how much I treasure having this responsibility: the hardest job I've ever loved.

But no way am I having two more babies.

Dawn Ennis is host of "RiseUP," a talk show on YouTube, as well as a blogger, writer, and editor. She is a widow who does the job of "mom" to 3 kids who call her "Dad." Follow her @lifeafterdawn on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.