You already know you need people around you. You’ve probably known it for a while. But knowing that and actually building something that feels real, sturdy, and sustainable is a completely different challenge, especially when the daily weight of solo parenting makes finding and keeping community feel like one more thing you don’t quite have the bandwidth for.
The loneliness that can settle in during this season isn’t usually about being literally alone. It’s about looking around and realizing the people nearby don’t fully get your life. Maybe you’re walking into spaces where you feel out of place: the couples dinner, the neighborhood gathering, the church pew where everyone else seems paired off. Maybe you never had a built-in social world to begin with and you’re starting from scratch. Maybe the people who showed up initially have slowly stopped knowing what to say. Whatever the path that brought you here, that quiet ache of not quite belonging is something so many solo parents carry, often without naming it. And the good news is, it doesn’t have to stay that way. Real, meaningful community is possible to build, even now, even from here.
In this conversation, Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, sits down with Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host of the show, and Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy (MMFT) and single parent herself, to dig into the practical and emotional work of building a core community from scratch. All three have lived the rebuilding process firsthand, and the conversation is honest, warm, and grounded in what actually works.
The episode starts with a real question that landed in their social media comments: “You talk all the time about the importance of community, but how do I start? Where do I find this?” It’s the kind of question that sits behind a lot of solo parents’ daily experience. Wondering if it’s too late to build something. Wondering if people can actually handle showing up in the ways you need. Wondering whether the distance you feel is permanent, or whether you’ll ever find people who get what your life actually looks like. Feeling guilty for needing so much from so few people. Not sure if you should lead with your story or wait to be asked. Not knowing if what you’re building is “enough.” This conversation holds all of that without trying to tidy it up too quickly.
Key Insights from This Episode
- Build a patchwork of people, not a single lifeline.
- When people pull away, it’s usually discomfort, not cruelty.
- Giving is what turns a group of people into actual community.
Build a Patchwork of People, Not a Single Lifeline
One of the most freeing ideas in this episode is the image Robert offers of community as a patchwork quilt rather than a single relationship or even a small tight-knit group. It sounds simple, but it runs counter to the way many of us were taught to think about friendship: that there should be a best friend, a ride-or-die, someone who carries it all with us.
What Robert describes from his own life is something more distributed and honest: a friend you can call at 2am, a neighbor who helps with carpool, a mentor who gives wisdom without needing to know every detail, a buddy who just goes to football games with you. These people don’t all know each other. They don’t all play the same role. And that’s the point.
Amber builds on this with a financial metaphor that hits differently when you’re living in a season of limited resources. She puts it plainly: if you invest everything in one relationship and that relationship becomes unavailable during a critical moment, you’re in the ditch. Diversifying your relational investments isn’t a cold or calculated way to think about friendship. It’s what actually keeps you sustained over the long haul.
The practical takeaway here isn’t to go out and manufacture a whole new social life. Amber talks about starting with what’s already in front of you. She started walking with her next-door neighbor simply because the neighbor was there, it was easy, and she needed to move her body. That walk eventually became something meaningful. The invitation is to look around at the convenient entryways to connection that already exist in your orbit: the soccer carpool, the person down the street, the group that meets online every Monday night. No waiting for the perfect community to appear fully formed.
Elizabeth added the crucial counterbalance: don’t put everything on one person. Spread it out. Not because you’re managing people transactionally, but because it’s genuinely not fair to ask one human being to carry the weight of all your grief, all your questions, and all your needs. The patchwork is protective, for you and for the relationships themselves.
When People Pull Away, It’s Usually Discomfort, Not Cruelty
One of the more quietly healing parts of this conversation is the grace it extends to the people who aren’t fully showing up. It’s easy, and sometimes understandable, to read that distance as abandonment or judgment. But what Robert, Elizabeth, and Amber all point to is something different: most people just don’t know what to do.
Robert draws on what he hears often from the PALS community, solo parents who became single because of the death of a spouse, but the pattern applies more broadly. Whether it’s loss, divorce, or an unplanned pregnancy, there’s often an early wave of support followed by a quiet retreat. The casseroles arrive in the first weeks. The phone rings. People show up. And then, gradually, it stops. Not because people stopped caring, but because they ran out of knowing what to say or do. And for solo parents who came into this season without that initial wave of support at all, whose path into solo parenting didn’t come with a built-in community response, the starting point may feel even more solitary.
As Elizabeth reflects on it, the discomfort of watching someone suffer, especially when you’re a fixer by nature, can lead to withdrawal. Not because you’ve been written off, but because staying present in pain without being able to solve it is genuinely hard for most people. Most of the time, the distance isn’t about you at all.
What that means practically is giving grace to the relationships that have changed and not reading every shift as a verdict on your worth. Amber stayed close to two married friends after her divorce, even as the shape of their shared life diverged significantly. She did it by showing up honestly: telling them she couldn’t go on that beach trip, that she was putting a slip-and-slide in the backyard and calling it spring break. And something unexpected happened. Her honesty opened a window into her world and made them more compassionate. They began to understand something they’d never had a reason to before.
The risk of vulnerability turned out to be the thing that actually preserved those friendships. Not performing okayness. Not matching their season of life. Just telling the truth about hers.
Giving Is What Turns a Group of People into Actual Community
There’s a moment in this episode that’s easy to skim past but carries a lot of weight. Robert talks about what it meant to him during his solo season when friends showed up for some of the hardest appointments and hearings he had to sit through. Not because they were going through anything similar. They weren’t. They just came and sat with him for hours, doing their own work on their phones, just being present. No fixing, no processing, just there.
He holds that up not as a special memory but as a model. Because now he does that for other people. The things that kept him afloat became the things he offers. That’s what actual community does over time. It multiplies.
Amber references Marissa, a solo parent who became one after losing her husband, who talks often about how serving others opened doors to friendships she wouldn’t have found otherwise. Showing up to give, when it feels like you have nothing left to give, turns out to be one of the most reliable ways to build something real.
Robert also talks about something their groups practice: what they call a “plus one” moment, where someone in the group offers their number to another member and says, “I’m here if you need someone to talk to.” It’s a small, low-pressure act, but it builds relational tissue. And it asks something important: what am I contributing? How am I showing up?
That question isn’t meant to add pressure to an already full plate. It’s meant to reframe the whole project. Community isn’t a service you receive. It’s something you participate in. And the beautiful irony is that the act of showing up for others is often what heals the wound that said you didn’t belong anymore.
Elizabeth points to a specific woman in her Monday night group who lives outside Chicago and has made it her practice to remember what each person in the group is carrying, then follow up through the week. A text. A Facebook message. A simple “how did that go?” She’s not a therapist. She’s just someone who decided to pay attention. And that attention has become the connective tissue of something real.
You Don’t Have to Build This Alone
The isolation of the solo parent season is real, and the work of finding and building community can feel enormous from the inside. But the through-line of this conversation is that it doesn’t require starting from a perfect place. It requires paying attention to what’s already close, being honest about where you are, spreading your needs across multiple people rather than collapsing them onto one, and showing up for others in whatever way you’re able.
Robert puts it this way: if he could point to one thing that’s non-negotiable in navigating solo parenthood, it’s having at least one place where you can say almost anything and be held. A group. A person. A space where the full weight of what you’re carrying doesn’t have to be managed or edited before you walk in the door. If you don’t have that yet, the invitation isn’t to manufacture it from scratch. The invitation is to come find it, in one of their groups, in a neighbor’s driveway, in a prayer that simply says, “I don’t know where to start. You do.”
And it’s worth saying out loud: the fact that you’re even thinking about this, reading this, looking for ways to build something real. That already says something about who you are and the kind of life you’re working toward. For yourself. For your kids. That counts for something.
If you want to keep the conversation going, Robert, Elizabeth, and Amber are going live on July 19th at 7:00 PM Central to tackle another big community question: can men and women really just be friends? It’s going to be honest, a little unpredictable, and worth showing up for. Head to soloparent.org/safepeople to grab your spot.
