The Unexpected Benefits of Building a Solo Mum Village (And Why I'm Making It Easier for You)
I thought I was building friendships. I did not realise I was building a diagnosis.
A few years ago, a fellow solo mum I’d become virtual friends with mentioned on Instagram that she had recently been diagnosed with ADHD.
I don't know exactly why I kept thinking about it after that conversation. But I did. Something about the way she described it — the way her brain worked, the patterns she had always put down to personality quirks or being disorganised or not trying hard enough — kept landing on me in a way I couldn't quite shake.
So I started looking into it. And then I started recognising things.
Months later, after meeting her in real life for the first time on a holiday in Fiji, I had my own diagnosis.
I wouldn't have that diagnosis if I hadn’t built a village of solo mums around me. Not because solo mums are more likely to have ADHD — though there is some interesting data suggesting that — but because in a community of women who are open, honest and talking about the full reality of their lives, things come up that would never come up in other company. And sometimes those things change everything.
That’s the unexpected benefit of building your village that nobody puts on a list.
But there are others. And I want to tell you about them — because they changed my life in ways I never anticipated when I started deliberately seeking out other solo mums.
1. My daughter is growing up with her story reflected back to her.
She is six. She has never once doubted her family.
Not because we have shielded her from questions or avoided the topic — but because she knows so many other children who were made the same way. Children with donors, not dads. Children who have one parent at home who loves them completely. Children whose family looks like hers.
When the children at school during family week told her she must have a dad — she corrected them calmly, matter-of-factly, and came home tired from the argument but certain in herself. That certainty did not come from nowhere. It came from growing up in a community where her story is normal.
You cannot give your child that from a single conversation. You give it to them over years, through the people you surround them with.
2. She is growing up surrounded by women who made their own dreams come true.
This one I did not anticipate at all.
My daughter is growing up watching women who decided what they wanted, faced real uncertainty and difficulty to get it, and built something extraordinary on their own terms. She sees that modelled not just by me, but by the whole community around her.
I genuinely believe that shapes who she will become. The belief that you don’t have to wait for someone else to make your life happen. That you can build the thing you want. That doing it on your own is not a consolation — it is a choice.
She is learning that from her village before she even knows she is learning it.
3. Someone is always awake at 3 am.
This one is particularly true for the online community — and it was particularly true in those early months with a newborn.
There is something about a 3 am feed — the dark, the quiet, the specific kind of loneliness of being the only adult awake in your house — that’s hard to describe to someone who has not been there. In a couple, at least you can wake your partner. As a solo mum, there is no one.
Except in a community of solo mums across time zones and sleep schedules, someone is always awake. Someone posts at 3 am and gets a response at 3:07 am from a woman on the other side of the country who is also feeding her baby in the dark. That response — just knowing someone else is there — is more comforting than I can adequately explain.
4. Easy friendships where you never have to explain.
With other solo mums, I have never once been asked where my daughter's dad is. I have never had to correct someone's language or explain donor conception or justify my family structure or field a well-meaning but exhausting question about whether I am worried about raising a child without a father figure.
They already know. They’re living it.
The mental energy saved by not having to explain your family in every new friendship is significant. You start the relationship at a different level. You skip the part where you have to decide how much to share, and whether this person will be weird about it and how to handle it if they are.
You just... talk. Like people who already understand each other.
5. They get that the small things are the big things.
Solo mum milestones hit differently.
Your child sleeps through the night for the first time, and you have no one at home to tell. Your embryo transfer works, and you can’t tell most people yet. Your child says mummy for the first time, and you’re genuinely, completely alone in the room.
In a general parenting community, these things get a polite congratulations. In a solo mum community, they get the response they deserve — because everyone in the room knows what it took to get there, and what it means to experience it.
The celebrations are louder. The support in the hard moments is more specific. Because the experience is shared in a way that goes beyond sympathy into genuine understanding.
6. A social life that actually works.
Solo mum friendships have a particular rhythm that makes them surprisingly easy to sustain.
Nobody makes plans after 7 pm. Nobody suggests a weeknight dinner without factoring in school the next morning. Nobody forgets that you can’t just get a babysitter — that it requires organising, cost, and advance notice (and generally has to be for a very good reason).
Instead: dinner parties that are also playdates. Camping trips where the kids exhaust themselves and the adults actually get to talk. Bali. A Disney Cruise. Disney Hong Kong later this year with three other solo mum families — because the kids entertain each other and the mums actually get to be present with the adults around them rather than managing everything solo.
Travel with other solo mums is its own magic. You are still a solo parent — but you have backup. Someone to watch the kids for twenty minutes while you actually eat a meal. Someone to help carry things. Someone who understands without explanation why the trip matters so much.
7. Resourceful, honest, non-judgmental advice.
Solo mums have generally had to figure a lot out for themselves. That makes them resourceful. It also makes them generous with what they know, because they remember what it felt like not to know it.
Questions that might feel embarrassing to ask in other communities — about money, about sex, about dating, about the moments you are not proud of as a parent — land differently here. Not because solo mums have no standards, but because they have lived enough to have perspective. They answer honestly. They do not perform.
8. People who are genuinely in your corner.
Over many years in this community, I've noticed that solo mums are unusually supportive of each other's success.
I think it’s because we are not in competition. We’re not comparing whose husband earns more, whose children are hitting milestones faster, or whose life looks more put-together from the outside. We’re all doing the same difficult, remarkable thing — and most of us know it.
When someone in this community succeeds — lands the job, finishes the IVF cycle, brings the baby home, gets the promotion, pays off the debt — the response is genuine. There is no undercurrent of comparison or jealousy. Just: I’m so glad for you. I know what it took.
That’s rare and I do not take it for granted.
How I built mine — and why it took effort.
None of this happened by accident.
I built my village through local meetups I organised. Through camping trips I joined when I didn’t know anyone else going. Through the Facebook group I started. Through Instagram and conversations in comment sections and DMs. Through school pickup and daycare drop-off and the courage to say to a woman I had just met who mentioned being a solo mum: we should get together. Through Bali — three times now. Through a book club that became a friendship group. Through a Disney Cruise. Through being the person who sends the message, makes the booking, suggests the plan.
The truth is, a lot of community-building in this space falls to the people willing to initiate. And for a long time, that was often me. Not because I’m anything special — but because I understood how much it mattered, and I was willing to start.
The connections I’ve made have given me more than I could have imagined when I first decided to become a solo mum. They gave me a diagnosis that changed how I understand myself. They gave my daughter a community in which she is not unusual. They gave me travel memories I will have for the rest of my life. They gave me friendship that does not require explanation.
But not everyone finds it easy to initiate. Not everyone lives somewhere with an active local community. Not everyone has the time or energy to be the one who organises everything. Not everyone has the confidence. Not everyone knows where to start.
That is exactly why I built the Solo Mum Society Membership.
Introducing the Solo Mum Society Membership.
The Solo Mum Society Membership is a community specifically for established solo mums — women past the fertility treatment and pregnancy stages, now living the day-to-day of raising their children on their own.
It’s the thing I wanted but couldn’t find when I was in the thick of early solo motherhood. It’s an extension of the community I spend so much of my time with now my daughter is older. It’s the place to start beautiful lifelong friendships, not only for mums, but also their children. It’s not another Facebook group full of questions about choosing donors. Not a general parenting community where you have to explain your family at every turn. A real, dedicated, curated community of women who are living this specific life — and who want connection, support and friendship with people who actually get it.
Inside the membership: regular virtual events to connect, real conversations, practical support, and the kind of community that means someone is always awake at 3 am. The kind where your small wins get the response they deserve. The kind where you never have to explain.
The Solo Mum Society Membership is now live:
Your village will not build itself. But you do not have to build it entirely on your own either.
Come and find yours.
Alisha Burns is the founder of Solo Mum Society and a solo mum by choice. Her daughter was conceived via donor conception and born in 2020. Solo Mum Society is Australia's leading community for women choosing solo motherhood by choice. This blog is for general informational purposes only. Fertility circumstances vary significantly between individuals. Please seek personalised advice from a fertility specialist and financial advisor for your specific situation.