MOMENT | Solo parenting: Letting go of the picture you thought you’d have

0:06Just talking about some of those barriers, some of them we're in more control of, I'd say, particularly around letting go of the picture of how we thought we'd be letting go of that should you know we should do this we should do this but the finances is such a complex barrier isn't it and I know you've got a whole chapter in the book about that what are some of the things if someone is listening and they are thinking I cannot think of a way that I am going to be able to live my life pay for child care if we're not in a dual income family what can someone do? I think the first thing to say on this is, at the end of the day, sometimes it's not physically possible.

0:45And unfortunately, that is the economic climate that we're in. And anyone who is in that situation should not feel that they are failing because they're not able to provide that for their children. Secondly, there are things you can do. But again, you have to be able to repaint that picture of what you thought your life would look like and what it should look like and what it may look like in the future. So for me, I needed to essentially double my income if I wanted to stay in the house. I'm in a tiny little house, but it's got two bedrooms, one for me and one for my son. And if I wanted to stay here, then I needed to double my income because I had to cover all of the bills and everything on my own.

1:27And because I'm a writer, journalist, the magazine that I work for, Country and Townhouse, let me work completely flexibly. I do part time for them. And then on top of that, I just needed to somehow conjure up another income. So I took on copywriting, freelance. I was working every single minute of the day whenever Jack was asleep. And now I often work into the evenings. Large parts of this book were written in the middle of the night because it was important for me that we could stay in this house and we could make that work. And again, that's not going to be possible for everybody because not everybody is a freelance writer.

2:02Not everybody can simply work more hours because they don't have more hours. so then that's where a lots and lots of budgeting what do you actually need and again it's not what you think you need or what you thought you would need for your life pre-becoming a single parent it's what do you actually physically need what does your child physically need to be safe to be secure putting those essentials down and thinking about how you're going to cover those costs and if you can't what are the options for support that are available to you you know we do have child benefit. We have universal credit.

2:35There is the child maintenance system. I mean, CMS is a whole nother story and people have very, very mixed experiences with it. But if your child's other parent is in the picture at all, then you may be able to get support from them financially. And if they're not willing to engage in that, there are systems in place that can support you in seeking that financial support. So it's getting to grips with all of the services and the support systems that are available to you and actually asking for help and engaging with the single parent community that's out there because everybody has been through this.

3:09And there are so many people that have help and advice and people really are willing to give it to you. Yeah. It's interesting how you said ask for help. And at the start of the conversation, you said, you know, I thought I didn't have a support network, but I actually did. What was stopping you asking for that support and how do you look at it differently now? Yeah. It's definitely shame and pride. It's that wonderful concoction of feelings. I think there's shame and stigma attached to the single mom label. However, as I've kind of unpicked that and as the years have gone on, I've realized that that was coming from me.

3:46You know, it's, yes, there are negative images of single mothers if you choose to look at them wherever, you know, there's certain newspapers that shall not be named that still have single mom this and single mum that all the time. And media portrayals of single mums tend to be quite chaotic, promiscuous, slightly messy, not saying I'm not all of those things, but it was coming from within. And as soon as I started to build that life and started to realize that I was actually okay, my son was okay, we were more than okay, we were content, we were happy in moments, then I was like, why would I feel ashamed of this?

4:25Why would I feel ashamed that I'm doing all of this by myself? It's something to be proud of. And equally with the pride of not needing help, not wanting help. I mean, I'm sure there's lots and lots of people listening who are hyper-independent and think that, you know, I'm fine. I've got this. I'm on my own and think that that's a good thing. And actually, when you're a single parent, there is a feeling of, I have to be able to be okay by myself because I've got no fallback, but also recognizing that, A, that's not good for you because it's too much stress. It's too much pressure to have on yourself, but also it's not good for your children because you're showing them that they need to be by themselves or they need to be okay by themselves all the time.

5:06And the fact is we don't live in that world. We build happiness through our interactions, through our relationships with other people. That's where we actually find joy. That's where we find contentment. I get nearly all of my joy in life from my connection with my son. And so to think that I need to be completely fine by myself is mad. It's so true. And you know, I'm thinking about friends of mine that have gone into single motherhood. How can someone support someone who maybe isn't asking for help, but you can see, like, how would you have loved someone to have supported you? I would have loved for people to not listen to me when I said I was fine.

5:49I would have loved when I had my first night off from my son and I said, I just wanted an early night for someone to say, no, I'm going to come around. In hindsight, that's what I would have loved is for people to see through that I'm fine because I clearly was not fine. And it's difficult. It's difficult when someone says, no, I want to be by myself to do something that's contrary to that. You know, I, I'm a cat lady and I'm, my cat died in the winter and it just broke my heart. It completely broke my heart because he'd been my companion when my son was away since I'd been a single mom. And I went into a deep, deep, deep period of grief.

6:28And my sister-in-law, I'm not massively, massively close with my sister in law. I see her as often as I can, but we don't speak all the time. But I saw her when I was at my mom's one weekend and she just instantly said, you're not okay, are you? And I was like, no, not really. That week, she just came over in the evening and just sat with me. And I cannot tell you how much of a difference it made just for her to show up for me like that. And it wasn't even that I needed anything from her. It was just somebody actively and physically showing up for me and saying, you're not on your own. And I think that's what single parents need in those kind of early moments where they're coming to terms with so much.

7:08It's just for people to show up for them and say, I'm here, just so you know, I'm not going anywhere. You're not on your own, as alone as you feel, because you feel so alone. And it's the evenings when you put your children to bed and you're in the house. I think in lockdown, it was amazing because so many of my friends were stuck in their houses and they'd never been stuck in their houses. And the ones that lived on their own were like, oh, I'm just stuck in the house on my own. I'm going mad. And I was like, that's what being a single parent's like. If you're a single parent to a young child, you put them to bed early and every evening you're just in your house you can't go out you can't pop to the shop if you need to you're just stuck in your house and it feels so isolating because you feel like nobody else is in this situation you've got this sudden sense of like anyone else can simply open the door and leave anytime they want you know you feel so alone in that and actually you're not there's millions of people doing it there's millions of single parents there's people doing it all over the country and connecting with some of those people is an amazing first step, which is why the work that Zoe does with Frolo is amazing because that community is just one of the most supportive spaces I've ever witnessed, honestly.

8:21It's so true, that sense of loneliness. Did you have to make new friendships? And what was that like when I guess you're trying to put your life back together with a different picture. Did you lose friends? Did you make new friends? What was that like? I mean, again, this isn't unique to single motherhood, but I think when you become a mother, you have such a need for new friends, right? You have such a need for friends for different things, for different phases of our lives. So you need friends with kids the same age that are in the same place as you at the same time. And the same is exactly true of single motherhood, you need single parent friends because not only do you need single parent friends, you need single parent friends with the same kind of situation as you.

9:04And I think that's why throughout the book, we've kind of spliced in people's stories from all different situations. So we have single moms and single dads, we have solo adopters, widows, widowers, single parents by choice, co-parents, because there's this amazing community where we all have one thing in common, but equally the challenges you're facing if you're co-parenting are completely different. If you've lost your partner, the logistics that having to have time off, they're not being able to have time off. It's like to have to be away from your children versus never getting a minute away from your kids.

9:39There's such unique challenges and to be able to find even one person who has the same situation as you. And I've got some amazing, amazing friends that I met through Frollo who had exactly the same situation. They've got exactly the same relationship with their ex. They have exactly the same amount of days here and there. And the children are the same age. One of my close friends, Amina, she has a son the same age as my son. And for the last four years, we've done holidays together. And our boys are a week apart in age. She lives miles away from me. I only see her a couple of times a year, but we speak fairly frequently.

10:17And we do this holiday once a year with the boys and they're so close. They're like brothers for this week. And it's amazing. We get to do this family holiday. There's two grownups to drink wine by the pool. There's two kids to play in the pool. We have that perfect family holiday that both of us thought we'd be having, but it's with a stranger I met on the internet and I'm so close with her and I love her to bits. And I've still got my school friends. They're all doing their own thing. And my best mate, I speak to at least four times a day on the phone but I need those friends who are in the same situation as me and I think we all need that really.