You’ve probably heard the word resilience more times than you can count. From well-meaning friends, from self-help content, maybe even from yourself in the mirror on the mornings when getting out of bed felt like a victory worth celebrating. And if you’re honest, the word might make you wince a little. Not because resilience isn’t a real thing, but because the version of it you’ve been handed doesn’t quite match the life you’re actually living.
Robert Beeson, Founder & CEO of Solo Parent, Elizabeth Cole, single parent, and Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy (MMFT) and single parent, sit down this week to talk about what resilience actually looks like when you’re parenting solo. Not the dictionary definition. Not the bounce-back-and-keep-going version that leaves you feeling like you’re somehow doing it wrong. The one that counts the days you got your feet on the floor as a genuine win, because they are.
The conversation starts where most honest ones do: with the gap between what we’re told we should feel and what we actually feel. That gap is where a lot of solo parents live. You’re not failing to be resilient. You may just be measuring the wrong thing.
The pain points in this episode are ones you’ve likely lived. The constant uncertainty that makes it hard to imagine a future, let alone build one. The grief that doesn’t announce itself on a schedule, but resurfaces right when you thought you were making progress. The way survival mode stops feeling temporary and starts feeling permanent. The comparison trap of watching other families take vacations and do all the things while you’re just trying to get through the week. And underneath all of it, the nagging question: am I doing enough?
Key Insights from This Episode:
- Resilience isn’t about bouncing back; it’s about continuing to show up
- Survival mode is not a personal failure; it’s a season
- Measure progress, not outcomes
Resilience for Solo Parents Isn’t About Bouncing Back; It’s About Continuing to Show Up
The dictionary definition of resilience is “the ability to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Robert raised it at the top of the conversation, and all three hosts agreed almost immediately: that definition doesn’t fit the life of a solo parent.
When your life changes overnight, whether through divorce, the death of a partner, or a path you chose on your own terms, you’re not in a situation you can easily bounce back from. The circumstances don’t reset. The kids still need to be fed. The bills don’t pause. The loneliness doesn’t take weekends off. Amber described the early season of her solo parenting as one of grief, anger, and shell shock. She wasn’t looking for a mountaintop. She was praying for strength to make it through one more day. That prayer, offered daily for years, is exactly what resilience looked like for her.
Robert pointed out that the traditional definition of resilience carries an implicit finish line, and that’s part of the problem. When life as a solo parent feels like an infinite loop rather than a challenge you resolve and move on from, treating resilience as a destination leaves you feeling like you’re perpetually falling short. Every time you seem to catch your footing, something shifts. The rug comes out again. The grief circles back. The situation that felt resolved turns complicated again overnight.
What this episode puts forward is a different measure. Resilience isn’t arriving somewhere. It’s deciding to keep moving. Getting your head off the pillow. Making the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Showing up to the school pickup even when you’re running on fumes. Those aren’t small things. They are the thing.
Survival Mode Is Not a Personal Failure; It’s a Season, and Recognizing It Is Itself a Form of Strength
Before her divorce, Elizabeth would have called herself the most resilient person she knew. She brushed things off, kept going, pulled herself up by the bootstraps. Looking back now, she recognizes that wasn’t resilience at all. It was denial. Real resilience came later, when she couldn’t avoid the hard things any longer and had to actually walk through them.
That kind of false resilience, the powering-through version, can be more isolating than helpful. It keeps you from naming what you’re carrying. It keeps you from asking for what you need. And it makes it nearly impossible to recognize the actual progress you’re making, because you’re too busy performing strength to notice you’ve developed some.
When you’re carrying the weight of loss, whether that’s the death of a partner, the end of a marriage, or the collapse of the life you planned, your capacity is genuinely reduced. Every step costs more. That’s not weakness. That’s the physics of grief. Amber put it plainly: expecting yourself to move at full speed while carrying that kind of weight isn’t resilience. It’s an unrealistic standard that will wear you down faster than the circumstances themselves.
Naming that you’re in survival mode matters. Not because the label makes things easier, but because it’s honest. And honesty is actually where resilience starts. Elizabeth said she wished someone had told her clearly, early on, that what she was experiencing was survival mode. Not to minimize it, but to normalize it. Knowing that other people had been in the depths of it and come out the other side, she said, would have given her just a little more momentum to keep going.
Measuring Progress Instead of Outcomes Changes Everything About How You See Yourself
One of the more concrete and applicable ideas in this conversation is this: we have to change what we measure. When you’re scrolling past images of family vacations and holidays and all the things that feel out of reach, and you’re measuring yourself against those outcomes, you will feel behind every single time. But outcomes aren’t the full picture of what’s happening in your life.
Progress is quieter. Progress is that you went to therapy even when it was hard. Progress is that you had a difficult conversation with your kids instead of avoiding it. Progress is that you recognized you needed help and you asked for it. Progress is three steps forward and two steps back, and getting up on day three to try again. None of that shows up in a highlight reel, but all of it counts.
Amber reflected on this from a decade of distance. In the middle of her solo parenting season, it felt like survival, like grinding, like nothing was moving. Looking back now, she sees the movement clearly. She kept showing up. She kept going. She was making progress the entire time, even when it felt like standing still. That perspective shift is one of the more freeing things this episode offers: what you’re doing right now, even if it doesn’t feel like much, may look entirely different to the version of you who is ten years further down the road.
Stepping back from the noise of outcomes and measuring direction instead, that’s the reframe this conversation lands on. Showing up, moving in the right direction, counting the movement however small. That is resilience for a solo parent. Not a destination. Not a personality trait you either have or don’t. A practice of continuing to face the day.
What You’re Carrying Is Real, and So Is the Strength It Takes to Keep Going
If you’re in the middle of a season that feels relentless, this episode is an honest acknowledgment that what you’re feeling is not a sign that you’re failing. It’s a sign that you’re in something genuinely hard, and you’re still here.
The three hosts who sat down for this conversation have all been there. They know what it is to wonder whether things will ever feel different. They know the particular weight of carrying your own grief while parenting children who have their own needs, their own losses, their own questions. And they know what it looks like to come out the other side not without scars, but with something real.
Amber’s reminder applies whether you’re one month into this or several years in: be gentle with yourself. Pay attention to where you are showing up. Notice the days you did it again. That noticing matters. Not as a performance or a productivity hack, but as a form of honesty about what you’re actually doing.
You don’t have to feel resilient to be resilient. You just have to keep going.
