Single OKC Moms Get Help Celebrating Mother’s Day

Most of us are preparing to shower the mothers in our lives with love and gifts this weekend, but that will not be the case for thousands of single moms in the metro. The Bethel Foundation is working to give some of them a holiday to remember.

The Bethel Foundation's donors have given out everything from gift baskets to food processors to a van, just in the past week. Lynda Powell's organization helps more than 30,000 single parents a year.

“Many, many years ago as a struggling single mother myself, there wasn’t a lot out there,” Powell said.

Now, Powell’s community center is filled with groceries from the food bank, clothes, toys and even furniture.

Jeannaua Robertson used to volunteer there, but providing for three children of incarcerated parents, as well as her own four, has not allow time for much else.

She said, “You miss their football games. You miss basketball games. You miss a lot because you have to work, so you sacrifice.”

This Mother's Day, Robertson is not expecting much. “I’m normally cooking or I’m the one paying to take us out,” she said. “One year my oldest son took me out and I loved that, but it’s normally me.”

Still, Robertson is grateful for the spacious house she is now renting, through the Bethel Foundation.

Susan Heinen visits the Bethel Foundation often as well. Raising her two young grandchildren as a retiree has its own challenges.

She said, “Daily I thank God for these children, but I also ask him for health and energy for me.”

Heinen is learned to cherish the little things, like this year's Mother's Day gift from her granddaughter.

“It was a heart-shaped paper envelope and it had little colored flowers in it,” she described, “and on the stems she had written gifts to me that were chores.”

Right now, Heinen will take all the help she can get. She asks those of you with extra in your lives to remember, and give, to those without.

“There’s always someone who can use what you don’t need,” she said.

To learn more or to donate to the Bethel Foundation, click here.