Most of us hit a point in solo parenting where we’re doing everything and still wonder if we’re failing at all of it. Be a great parent, keep the house running, earn a living, heal, maybe exercise, maybe pursue something that’s just yours. The list is real and the pressure behind it is even more real. So we push harder, fill the calendar, keep going – and wonder why we’re still running on empty.
The answer might be simpler than you think. Not easier, but simpler. When self-care isn’t rooted in what you actually value, it just becomes one more thing to manage.
That’s the conversation this week. Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, is joined by Elizabeth Cole, single parent, and Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and single parent, for an honest look at what gets in the way of real self-care and what it actually looks like to build your life around what matters most to you – even when you’re not sure what that is anymore.
Here’s what the three of them found to be true: most solo parents don’t know what they value. Not because they’re not thoughtful, but because survival mode doesn’t leave a lot of room for that question. And if your values got tangled up in a relationship that’s now over, you might be living by a map that no longer belongs to you.
Key Insights from This Episode:
- Knowing your values is the foundation of self-care that actually works
- Your values don’t have to be figured out all at once – they unfold
- What you keep returning to, even under pressure, is your truest guide
Knowing your values is the foundation of self-care that actually works
Self-care has a messaging problem. Somewhere between the gym posts and the meal prep content and the advice to just take time for yourself, it got complicated. And for solo parents already stretched thin, the idea of adding one more thing – even a good thing – can feel like a joke.
The real issue isn’t willpower or time management. When everything came crashing down, Robert found himself completely unable to answer a basic question: what do you value? Not in a philosophical way, but practically. What actually matters to you? His honest answer was that he had no idea. Survival had taken over, and values had quietly disappeared underneath it.
Elizabeth landed in the same place, and for a reason a lot of us can relate to. When you’re a doer, you just go. You don’t stop to ask why you’re doing something or whether it’s even serving you. You just know it’s supposed to get done, so you do it. The question of what you actually value never makes it onto the list.
For many people who were in long-term relationships, values got merged with a partner’s over time. Amber describes it as values that melted and merged until she genuinely couldn’t tell which ones were hers and which ones she’d absorbed from someone else. When that relationship ended, the work wasn’t just logistical. It was figuring out, maybe for the first time, what she actually cared about. And not knowing? That’s not a personal failure. It’s what survival mode does to a person.
That’s why self-care built on anything other than your own values tends to wear out fast. It’s running on someone else’s fuel. The starting point isn’t adding more to your plate. It’s getting honest about what’s already on it and whether any of it is actually yours.
Your values don’t have to be figured out all at once – they unfold
You don’t have to have this figured out. Values aren’t a worksheet you complete once and frame on the wall. They’re something you discover over time, and that discovery looks different depending on where you are in your healing.
Elizabeth describes her early post-divorce season as too emotionally full to even access what she wanted. The grief and the overwhelm were taking up all the space. Real passions couldn’t surface because they were being crowded out by everything she was still processing. That’s not something she was doing wrong or against her values – that’s just where she was. Knowing where you are emotionally is part of knowing what your values look like right now.
A practical tool that helped was a set of value cards from a therapist – a deck of around fifty or sixty words, each with a short description, designed to help you narrow down to a handful that genuinely resonate. Not as a permanent declaration, but as a starting point. The goal was to pick a few, sit with them for a month, and pay attention. Did those values show up naturally? Did decisions made around them feel right? The answers came from living with them, not from thinking harder.
Robert’s encouragement is to resist the urge to rush it. Pick two or three things that feel true and watch yourself. Let the clarity come from observation rather than pressure. What you value in your mid-thirties may look different in your mid-forties, and that’s not inconsistency – that’s a life continuing to grow.
What you keep returning to, even under pressure, is your truest guide
Once you start paying attention, the most reliable signal isn’t what you intend to value. It’s what you actually keep doing, especially when things get hard.
Amber offers a vivid example of the opposite – signing up to be a room mom right after her divorce, wrapping brownies in cellophane and tying ribbons around gift cards while her whole world was falling apart. She kept doing it because she’d always done it, not because it meant anything to her in that season. It was a treadmill she had set the speed on when her life looked completely different, and she was just continuing to run at that pace.
The shift came when she started noticing what she kept returning to even under stress. Generosity kept showing up – making shoeboxes for kids at Christmas, finding ways to volunteer with her children, wrapping gifts for soldiers during school breaks. She didn’t manufacture that. It persisted on its own, which was her values showing up.
A useful three-question test, developed by self-coach Adriana Girdler, helps identify whether something is truly a core value:
- Would you give it up for money?
- Have you held onto it even during times of stress?
- Do you expect it to still be showing up in your life twenty-five years from now?
Core values tend to answer yes to all three. They’re persistent that way.
Elizabeth reframes the whole process simply: instead of deciding what you want your values to be and building toward them, look at what’s already naturally happening. What’s bringing you peace? What keeps coming back around? Let your actual life point you toward what matters, rather than trying to construct a version of yourself from scratch. The self-care that lasts is the kind that fits who you actually are not who you think you should be by now.
You Already Know More Than You Think
The pressure to have it all figured out isn’t helping you. Your values aren’t hiding from you. They’re showing up in what you keep choosing, what brings you back to yourself, what you find you can’t quite let go of even when everything else falls away.
For many solo parents, this season is the first time they’ve ever had the chance to ask what their life is actually built around. Not what a relationship decided. Not what they inherited by default. What genuinely matters to them.
Start where you are. Notice what’s already working. Give yourself a month instead of a deadline, and simply start paying attention.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Value Cards
- Adriana Girdler, Core Values Framework
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