The first time I said it
The only time I became acutely aware of being a “single/solo” mum (the terminology is apparently up for debate) was at a journaling workshop, eight months pregnant, gluing bits of paper to other bits of paper with six strangers.
I should clarify. I am not a scrapbook journaler. Nothing against scrapbook journalers. It just isn’t me. But I had been invited, and I went, because apparently that’s the kind of decision you make in the third trimester.
Somewhere between the glue stick and the getting to know you small talk, someone asked, “So, are you in Thailand with your husband?”
It was the first time anyone had asked me that question, and therefore the first time I had to answer it out loud. Uhm… I’m a single mum.” I still hate the way I said it. There was a pause. The particular kind of silence where everyone becomes deeply interested in the paper in front of them, a tiny flicker of pity. And then: “You’re so strong.” Little did they know I wasn’t just a single mum. I was eight months pregnant and about to raise a mixed-race human being in a world that likes people to fit neatly into boxes, preferably with a bow on top.
And then, because one awkward conversation clearly wasn’t enough for one afternoon, the woman next to me turned to the Thai woman at our table and said, “Thai people have such beautiful skin. It’s thicker than ours,” and tugged at her own pale skin to demonstrate.
I wasn’t shocked by the racism. I’ve lived long enough, and thought about race deeply enough, to know that bias doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it comes dressed up as a compliment, delivered over scrap paper and glue by someone who genuinely believes she’s saying something lovely. What struck me was how completely normal the whole thing seemed. No malice. No raised voice. Just a bizarre racial observation delivered with the confidence of someone commenting on the weather. And I remember thinking: ah, so this is the world my daughter is going to grow up in.
I have always been aware of racial structures and the way Black and Brown people are treated. I know what it is to navigate them myself, and I can proudly say that I have never been good at looking the other way when I see someone else being subjected to them. Motherhood didn’t give me that awareness. If anything, it gave me something new to think about.
I was eight months pregnant, sitting at a table with strangers, and somewhere between the scrap paper and the glue, I started thinking about where the hell I would even begin with my daughter’s real-world education on white supremacy, privilege, and all the glorious ways they infiltrate just about every part of society. Because I could teach her to recognise it, to question it to call it out and I could teach her that other people’s assumptions about race, identity and belonging were not truths about her. But I cant guarantee that the world would do the same.
She was going to be growing up in a world that would try to make sense of her through other people’s assumptions and biases. And as I sat there listening to a White woman explain Thai skin to me by stretching her own arm, I understood something very plainly: I couldn’t control the boxes other people might try to put my child into. What I could do was make sure she never felt she had to fit into them.
I left that afternoon with two conclusions. I needed to answer less awkwardly to the husband question, and I was probably never bringing my daughter to a journaling workshop. Then I got on with my life, in my usual state of happy oblivion. I’ve been told my sky has pink clouds. I take that as a compliment.
Welcome to the Single Mum Club
Aya was born, and Instagram decided it was time to snap me out of the bubble entirely, flooding my algorithm with WELCOME TO THE SINGLE MUM CLUB.
There I was, next to my newborn, recovering from a C-section, mild postpartum, doomscrolling. Apparently being a solo mother was a whole aesthetic. Quotes about strength. Poems about doing it alone. Matching outfits. Matcha dates. Beautifully lit photographs of women holding babies and looking suspiciously well-rested. It was all very “it’s kind of chic to raise a child alone.”
Tucked between the beige linen and the inspirational quotes were the real accounts. Loneliness. Isolation. One-income households. Financial pressure. Exhaustion. The bits that don’t photograph well. That part was harder to dismiss.
And yet, I still couldn’t say I related. Every morning I woke up, looked at my baby, and carried on. Maybe that’s because I’ve always been fairly good at getting on with things. Not because I’m special. I just keep it moving, and I don’t spend much time rehearsing every disaster that might happen next.
So I read these women’s stories and thought, oh, I suppose that’s what this is going to be like. And then I kept going.
Until reality started to creep in. Slowly at first. And then, boy, did it set in.
The Comments
There were social events I wasn’t invited to. Friendships that quietly recalibrated. Spaces where I suddenly felt like I didn’t belong. Some moments revealed how uncomfortable people can become around a family shape they don’t recognise, relationships to Aya that seemed to depend entirely on whether the person in question was expected to play a paternal role, and evaporated the moment that expectation lifted. I haven’t quite worked out what I was supposed to do with that. Nobody had asked anyone to be her father. But somehow her whole relationship to certain people got reduced to that one unasked question, and everyone else had to work out where they fit, or whether they fit at all.
At swimming lessons, other parents formed their little “chatting clusters” while I stood there with Aya, sometimes ignored. For the record, we don’t want your husbands. I just wanted to be included in the conversation.
And always, the question: where is your husband? It’s remarkable how much pity can fit into three words. Sometimes a gentle “there’s nothing wrong with that.” Sometimes a sincere “I’m sorry.” And then the smaller comments, the ones that seem harmless on their own but stay with you regardless. “Is her hair soft?” Need I say more? Perhaps none of these moments would seem significant enough to write about on their own. Perhaps none of them were meant to hurt. But I’ve never been particularly good at pretending not to notice things.
When it became a pattern
I know what it’s like to be excluded, and the things people say when they think nobody’s paying attention. Motherhood didn’t make me newly conscious of it. It gave me another person to notice on behalf of, besides myself. I wasn’t only noticing how I was treated anymore. I noticed what was said about my daughter, what was dismissed, what people assumed about the family she belonged to.
There also is a particular way that single motherhood is viewed in some communities, where being without a partner is automatically seen as something unfortunate. I have on more than one occasion become the example people use when talking about their own families: “Look at Suhaila, she is alone and raising Aya by herself.” Sometimes it feels as though my life is held up as a reminder to appreciate your marriage, your husband, or simply the fact that you are not alone. It is strange to realise that my circumstances can become someone else’s lesson. At this point, I feel I deserve a small commission from the institution of marriage.
I also started wondering whether being a single mother had made me easier to disrespect. Sometimes it was subtle. A comment here, an omission there, a boundary that seemed to matter slightly less because no husband was standing beside me. I don’t know for certain. But after a while, the comments stopped feeling like isolated remarks and started sounding like a pattern. My sky full of pink clouds began to thin out. More often than I would have liked, I heard: “You’re so strong.”
Looking Past the Algorithm
I started wanting to understand what it actually means to raise a child in a one parent household, not the Instagram version, the real one. So I moved past social media, looked a little deeper, and found lots of women who felt the same way: alienated, isolated, as though they didn’t quite fit the script. Strangely, that made me feel less alone, not more.
I started to think the problem isn’t single motherhood itself. It’s that society still doesn’t quite know what to do with a mother who isn’t attached to a partner. We’ve made room on paper for different family shapes. Mum and mum, dad and Dad, mum alone with the kids. Socially, though, I think we still have some way to go. Why does it still feel like something that needs explaining?
To the people who can’t relate to my life, I can’t relate to theirs either. I filed for divorce five months pregnant. I’ve never known what it’s like to raise a child with a partner. I don’t know what it’s like to bicker over directions, or argue about chores, or whose turn it is at 3 am. There’s no one in my house stealing the duvet or leaving socks in places socks have no business being. My normal is toys thrown across the bed on a Sunday morning while I drink coffee and watch her play. My normal is raising her surrounded by strong women who keep going without breaking. What an honour that’s been. This is my beautiful normal. We assume the person outside the traditional shape must feel the absence of something. But how can you feel the absence of a thing you’ve never had?
It was never just about me
Being a single mother wasn’t initially an identity I felt strongly about, or even thought about. I didn’t spend my pregnancy thinking about what it meant to be a “single mum.” I was pregnant, I was busy preparing for a baby, I was becoming a mother and I was excited. It became an identity because others treated it as one, and that’s something I’ll always push back on. I am a mother, a daughter, and a woman. Yes, I’m raising my child without a partner. But that’s a circumstance of my life. It isn’t the entirety of who I am.
I’m still not entirely sure how to answer the “where is your husband?” question, but lately I’ve settled on: “It’s just us.” I like that answer. There’s no explanation in it, no apology, and no invitation for pity. It feels like a warm hug to myself.
Being called strong or brave is meant kindly, and I appreciate the sentiment. But what other choice did I have? I was fighting legal battles while growing little bones in my belly, navigating a divorce while preparing to give birth. I would have much preferred to spend those months being treated like a princess, eating strawberries and having fun at my baby shower. Alas. Life had other plans.
Besides, I don’t think strength belongs exclusively to single mothers. I think all mothers are strong, unstoppable forces of nature: married, single, widowed, divorced, mothers living through wars and genocide, mothers who chose to do this alone on purpose. Motherhood is hard. And yes, I’m sure bickering over who forgot the milk requires its own particular strength. I’m joking. Mostly.
My Grandmother
Then I think of my grandmother. Widowed in her twenties with three children, in a time and place with no Instagram communities, no algorithm waiting to tell her it was “chic.” Just three children and a life that had suddenly changed: financial hurdles, loneliness, alienation, and a set of hardships imposed on her by the people around her that she had very little power to resist. I can’t imagine what that must have been like.
The part that stays with me most is that she did it at a time with even fewer spaces for women like her. She didn’t have the luxury of turning her experience into an identity. She just had to live it. And she did. She raised three children the best way she could. I am here because she did.
So when I look at my own life, I don’t see a grand story of tragedy and triumph. I see a woman who came before me and did something incredibly difficult and magnificent in a world designed for and largely by men. Different circumstances, different countries, different generations, different vocabulary. I draw strength from her every day, and I honour her by continuing.
It’s Just Us
Maybe that’s what I’ve come to understand about being a “single mum.” I don’t need to love the label. I don’t even need to choose between single and solo. I can simply say: it’s just us. My mother, who has been my rock; my cat Lila, who adores my daughter; and a little girl who has somehow filled an entire home with herself. And maybe that’s enough. Because when I look around, I don’t see what’s missing anymore. I see my mother, Lila, Aya, and me. I see the life we have made, rather than the life I thought I was supposed to have.
A home that feels like sunshine.
And, for now, it’s just us. And honestly? I think we’re going to be alright.
Leave a Reply