6 Things Becoming a Solo Mum Taught Me That My Thirties Never Could
My daughter turned six last week.
Six years of being her mum. Six years of being the only person in our house who has to make every decision, carry every worry, celebrate every win — and somehow figure out how to do all of that while also being the fun one.
I turned forty sux weeks after she arrived. And I remember thinking that I already knew so much. I'd done the work. Therapy, growth, hard lessons learned the hard way. I was ready.
I had absolutely no idea.
Because becoming a mother — doing it intentionally, doing it alone, doing it in my forties — taught me things I couldn't have learned any other way. Things I wish I'd understood in my twenties, when I was burning time and energy and self-worth in places that didn't deserve any of it.
Here are six of them:
1. If you feel like you have to drink to fit in, it's probably not somewhere you want to fit in
I stopped drinking when my daughter was two and a half.
I didn't make that decision lightly. I'd spent long enough telling myself that moderation was the answer, that I just needed to be more disciplined, that everyone has a drink to take the edge off, and I was no different. But the truth, when I finally sat with it honestly, was that moderation was never going to be an option for me. It was all or nothing. And once I understood that, the choice became very simple.
My daughter is the reason I made it clearly and without looking back. Not because she asked me to. But because I knew, with complete certainty, that being the mother I wanted to be and drinking regularly were not compatible for me. My mental health, my presence, my patience, my energy — all of it was better without it.
What I didn't expect was what sobriety would reveal about the situations I'd been putting myself in for years. Because when you're sober, you notice things. You notice when a room only functions if everyone's drinking. You notice when conversation requires a glass in hand to feel comfortable. You notice when you're laughing at things you don't actually find funny because alcohol made it easier to perform.
I used to push through that discomfort because I wanted to be liked. By people I didn't even particularly like. In rooms that didn't particularly want me.
Here's what six years of motherhood has clarified: the right people don't require you to be someone you're not in order to accept you. The right rooms feel good when you're fully yourself, clear-headed, and present. And life is genuinely too short — and too good — to spend it performing for an audience that doesn't deserve the show.
2. Nothing resets your perspective like hearing “"I love you mummy”
There have been days — genuinely hard days, the kind where everything feels too heavy and too much — where I have walked through the door and had a small person launch herself at me like I am the greatest thing she has ever seen.
Nothing in my thirties prepared me for what that does.
It doesn't matter what just happened. It doesn't matter if I'm in the middle of the worst week. The moment she says Mummy, I love you — not because I did anything to earn it, just because I walked in — everything rearranges itself into the right order.
This isn't toxic positivity. Hard things are still hard. Grief is still grief. But motherhood gave me a perspective I genuinely didn't have before: most of what I spent years losing sleep over simply doesn't matter as much as I thought it did. The things that are actually important are a very small, very specific list. And she is at the top of it.
When your child is your world, you stop wasting energy on things that don't belong in that world. It's the most efficient clarity I've ever experienced.
3. Love and motherhood don't have to go together — and understanding that is the most freeing thing
This one is for you, if you're reading this wondering whether you're ready. Whether it makes sense. Whether you should wait.
For most of my life, I operated on an assumption I never consciously chose: that motherhood came after love. That the order was relationship, then marriage or commitment, then baby. That doing it in any other sequence was a last resort, a consolation prize, a plan B.
It was none of those things.
Choosing to become a solo mum by choice was the most deliberate, most intentional, most empowered decision I have ever made. It was plan A. It just wasn't a plan I knew existed until I needed it.
And here's what I know now that I didn't know then: choosing motherhood on your timeline, on your terms, does not close the door on love. It doesn't signal to the world that you've given up. If anything, it signals something entirely different — that you know what you want, you're not prepared to wait indefinitely, and you have the courage to build the life you want without needing someone else's permission to start.
The right person — when and if they arrive — will see that for exactly what it is.
If you're sitting with this question right now, I have something that might help. Download the free Solo Motherhood Clarity Guide →
4. A clean kitchen in the morning changes everything
This sounds minor. It is not minor.
I learned this the hard way — through enough mornings of waking up to the wreckage of the night before, trying to make lunches and pack a school bag and drink a tea while the mess of yesterday stared back at me. It doesn't take long before small chaos becomes big chaos. Before a bad start compounds into a bad morning, which bleeds into a bad afternoon.
But it goes deeper than cleanliness. What I learned is that the environment I wake up to shapes the version of myself I show up as. Not just physically — emotionally, energetically. Walking into a calm, clean kitchen tells my nervous system that things are under control. That I am on top of it. That the day ahead is something I can handle.
As a solo mum, I am the only person managing our environment. I can't outsource the bad mornings. I can't hand off the overwhelm to someone else while I regroup. Which means I've had to get very intentional about what I build around us — the routines, the rhythms, the small non-negotiables that set us up to win.
A clean kitchen is one of them. Music on in the morning is another. Non-negotiables aren't rigid — they're kind. They're what you put in place so that the harder days are still survivable.
5. Most things are better with music
This one needs no elaborate explanation. It's just true.
The hard morning is better with the right playlist. The long drive is better with something we can sing along to at the top of our lungs. The kitchen dance party we have at least once a week is better for both of us than any amount of screen time or structured activity.
Music is the fastest route to joy I have ever found. I put it on when I need to shift my energy. I put it on when she's spiralling. I put it on when the day feels grey and we need to feel something else.
I wish I'd understood in my twenties how much agency I had over my own emotional state. That I wasn't just at the mercy of my mood — I could actively create a different one. Music is part of that. So is movement. So is getting outside. So is choosing, deliberately, what I let into my environment.
You get to curate your own life. More than most people realise.
6. You don't have to tolerate environments — or people — that don't treat you with respect
This is the one I feel most strongly about. And the one I wish someone had said to me clearly, directly, without softening it, about thirty years ago.
I have left jobs. I have ended friendships. I have quietly stepped back from social circles where I didn't feel respected, where the energy was unkind, where I left feeling smaller than when I arrived. And I have done it without the long, drawn-out internal debate I used to have — the one where I convinced myself I was being too sensitive, too demanding, too difficult.
Becoming a mother changed my tolerance threshold for good.
Because my daughter is watching. Not in a performative way — she doesn't need me to narrate my decisions or explain my values like a lecture. But she sees how I move through the world. She sees what I accept and what I don't. She sees whether I stay in rooms that drain me or whether I leave them. She is learning, from me, what she is allowed to expect for herself.
That is a weight that clarifies everything.
I don't have time for environments that don't treat me well. I don't have energy for friendships that run in one direction. I don't have room in my life — or in my nervous system — for people who take more than they give and leave me feeling like I've done something wrong for noticing.
This is not bitterness. It's not hardness. It's self-respect with a very specific deadline: before my daughter is old enough to think that's how things are supposed to be.
My decisions now are made through one filter. What is best for my family — for us, for our home, for the life we're building together. Not what other people want from me. Not what makes me easier to be around. Not what earns me approval from people I'll barely remember in ten years.
That filter makes things very clear, very quickly.
If you're thinking about doing this on your own
Motherhood made me more myself than anything else ever has. More certain, more boundaried, more honest about what I want and what I'm not willing to settle for.
It also gave me the one thing I didn't know I was missing: the perspective that comes from having someone who needs you to be your best self — not because they're demanding it, but because you want to be it for them.
If you're sitting somewhere in your life right now wondering whether this is something you could do — wondering whether you're ready, whether the timing is right, whether you need to wait for something else to fall into place first — I want you to know that the clarity you're looking for isn't on the other side of waiting. It's on the other side of asking yourself the right questions.
I made something for exactly that moment.
Seven honest questions. No pressure. No agenda. Just a quiet space to get clear on what you actually want — and what your next step might look like.
If you're already on the path to solo motherhood, or have children solo
If you’re already TTC or navigating pregnancy — The Bump Membership is your community. The women who get it, because they're living it alongside you.
And if you're already a solo mum, I’m working on something I am already really proud of, to help us and our children be better connected and supported through motherhood and life.
Alisha x
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