Erin Molan on her first year as a single mum

Sky News presenter Erin Molan speaks out about her new family structure, and why co-parenting isn’t a failure.

I still struggle on the nights I don’t have my little girl, not because I’m worried about her welfare or think she might need me, but because I feel incomplete without her.

I get a sick feeling in my stomach that doesn’t go away until she’s home. If you’d told me a year ago there would be a time over the next 15 years or so that I wouldn’t come home to my daughter Eliza every night, I wouldn’t have believed you. Unthinkable. But here we are.

I’ll never go into detail publicly around my separation from Eliza’s father – he’s the equal most important person in her life, and she’s the most important person in mine.

Protecting her welfare and her relationship with Sean [Ogilvy] are two of my most important jobs. He is an amazing father and when she is old enough to Google, that’s all she will ever read about him from me.

She will find stories in much more detail about how much I love her. That is something I’m always willing to share publicly, and I’d shout it from the treetops if I could climb!

Erin Molan: “I’ll never go into detail publicly around my separation from Eliza’s father.” Picture: @erin_molan on Instagram.

So how has life changed since becoming a single mum? “A lot” is the short answer, but it’s not all harder. The more I meet people in similar situations, the more grateful I become that my loss is Eliza’s gain.

That the fact her dad is present and engaged in her life isn’t a given – some parents do it alone without the help of anyone else. My little girl has two parents who are desperate to have her all the time but who are also acutely aware of her need to have us both.

What do I miss? I miss someone else coming home and getting that half an hour to myself in the evening; that little break when they give your child dinner or a bath.

I miss going places as a family. I miss seeing her little face light up when her dad would get home from work.

I miss watching them together – playing, laughing, wrestling. I drop her to him and we still spend a bit of time together as a family, but it isn’t the same. It never will be, and that’s OK.

I miss the family unit that we were in the good times, and that’s a key point: the good times.

What’s changed for the better? I’m happier. My daughter is happier. It has taken a little while to get here, but I know, overall, we are – Sean included – better off.

I cherish my time with Eliza. She has been my priority since she was born, but I had too much going on. I couldn’t keep doing what I was doing professionally. Something had to give and it was never going to be time with her.

It was the catalyst for me, among other things, to make the biggest career change of my life [from the Nine Network to Sky News], to restructure my world in order to become a better mum and a happier person.

Erin Molan features in this Sunday’s Stellar. Picture: Steven Chee.

My parents recently celebrated 50 years of marriage. My three siblings and I feel like the luckiest kids in the world. We could not have asked for more love, security or support from Mum and Dad over the years. I wanted that for Eliza.

I thought I’d failed last year when the way our family looked changed, but now I know she has exactly what I had. It just looks a little different.

Erin Molan is a primetime contributor on Sky News Australia.