Solo Parent Podcast

This week we’re discussing Growing Up with a Solo Parent.

One of the heaviest things a solo parent carries is not a task or a bill or a hard conversation. It is a question. The one that surfaces when the house is finally quiet and you have a moment to think. You wonder whether the circumstances your kids are growing up in, the things they are missing, the instability, the absence, the gaps you cannot fill on your own, will cost them something down the road that no amount of love can make up for.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent, sit down with Andy Marshall, entrepreneur, Boys and Girls Club Hall of Fame inductee, and candidate for Williamson County Mayor. Andy’s childhood was marked by instability, abuse, and loss. The odds were stacked against him in every direction. What he became anyway is worth paying attention to, not because his story wraps up neatly, but because of what it reveals about resilience, community, and the quiet ways God can work through even the most broken circumstances.

For solo parents carrying the weight of what their kids might be missing, this conversation offers something more useful than reassurance. It offers perspective.

Key Insights from This Episode:

• Children are shaped not only by what they have at home but by the people outside it who choose to see them. The adults who showed up consistently for Andy, coaches, neighbors, volunteers, quietly rebuilt what his home life was tearing down.
• Routine and predictability are not just practical tools. For kids in unstable homes, the simple consistency of a meal time or a homework check can feel like the first real safety they have known.
• A hard childhood does not have to become a tragic story. In the right hands, and with even one person who believes in you, the pressure and the struggle can become the very thing that builds something lasting.

Nobody gets through a childhood like Andy’s unscathed. But he closed by saying he doesn’t look back on his life as a tragedy. He looks back on all the ways God placed people in his path to get him exactly where he was meant to be. That is something worth holding onto.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• A. Marshall Hospitality
• Andy Marshall
• Boys and Girls Club

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