You’re doing everything you can. Working, parenting, keeping it all from falling apart. And somewhere in the middle of all of that, a number on a screen, or a size on a tag, or whether the right person thinks you’re doing okay, gets to tell you whether you’re enough. That’s a heavy thing to carry. And if you’ve ever felt the sting of a declined card, looked in the mirror and felt like you were coming up short, or wondered whether the people around you actually think you’re doing a good job, you already know what this episode is about.
Because the real conversation isn’t about money. Money is just the place where most of us feel it first and feel it loudest. The real conversation is about all the external scorecards we use to measure ourselves, and why none of them are ever telling the full truth. Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, Elizabeth Cole, single parent, and Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy and single parent, bring a rare kind of honesty to this one. All three have lived it. All three are still working through it.
Solo parenting has a way of multiplying the pressure points. You went from two incomes to one, or from being home with your kids to suddenly needing to figure out what you’re doing professionally. You’re watching your career and your bank account and your relationships all at once, wondering which one is going to be the one that finally confirms you’re not getting it right. The fear that you’re not doing enough financially bleeds into fear that you’re not enough as a parent. The story you tell yourself in one area spills into the story you tell yourself everywhere. And it all comes back to the same question underneath: am I enough?
Key Insights from This Episode:
- The scorecards we use to measure ourselves often don’t tell the full story
- External worth markers, accomplishments, approval, and attributes, were never meant to carry you
- Getting curious about the shame voice is more powerful than trying to silence it
The Scorecards We Use to Measure Ourselves Often Don’t Tell the Full Story
Standing at an ATM waiting to pull out $20 to take your kids for ice cream and getting declined. The moment stings in a way that goes far deeper than a balance. It’s not just insufficient funds. It’s the feeling of being an insufficient parent, an insufficient provider, an insufficient person. That translation from circumstance to character is something most solo parents know too well.
Money is one of the most visible of the scorecards. It shows up every month in a way that’s impossible to ignore. But the logic underneath it is the same no matter which scorecard is doing the measuring. When one of them dips, we don’t just think “this is a hard season.” We think “I am the problem.”
Amber names the spiral clearly: instead of registering a struggle as a struggle, we absorb it as an identity. And it doesn’t stay contained to one area. The same broken logic that turns a low bank balance into “I’m a failing parent” is the same logic that turned years of not fitting a physical ideal into a belief, for Amber, that she was less desirable and less valuable as a person. Different arena, same crushing conclusion.
That’s what makes these scorecards so damaging. They feel objective. A number is a number. A reflection is a reflection. A client who doesn’t renew feels like a verdict. But what we’re actually doing is taking something external and circumstantial and using it to answer a question that it was never equipped to answer: whether we are enough.
What makes the financial version especially hard is the silence around it. You don’t tell people you couldn’t pull out $20 for ice cream with your kids. You don’t mention you’re short in a slow month even after years of building something. That silence keeps the shame from ever being examined, and shame gets louder in the dark. Knowing that this lands on solo parents at every income level, every stage, every background, doesn’t fix the math. But it starts to break the silence. And that matters more than most people realize.
External Worth Markers, Accomplishments, Approval, and Attributes, Were Never Meant to Carry You
Amber introduces a framework she calls the Three A’s, and once you hear it, you’ll start seeing it everywhere. Accomplishments, Approval, and Attributes. These are the three places most of us have learned to locate our worth, and they work, sort of, right up until something disrupts one of them.
Accomplishments: hit the income goal, finish the degree, check the box, and you’re worthwhile. Approval: your boss is happy, your kids are proud of you, that person thinks you’re doing great, and you’re okay. Attributes: you’re the compassionate one, the one who always shows up, and that’s what makes you valuable. None of these are wrong things to care about. The problem is that they’re all external. You have to keep feeding them. And the moment one of them wobbles, the whole structure feels unstable. Because it is.
Elizabeth describes what happens when accomplishment becomes the primary source of worth for someone who has always found her value in what she does. When performance slips or a season gets lean, the question underneath stops being “is this hard?” and becomes “do I deserve to be here?” Financial pressure and identity fuse together, and a slow month starts to feel like a verdict on her entire value as a professional and a parent.
Amber’s path into this looked entirely different. Years of not meeting a physical ideal had installed a belief that her worth was tied to how she looked. That belief didn’t live in her intellect. It lived in her choices, her sense of what she deserved, the way she moved through rooms. Changing her mind about it wasn’t the same as changing the belief. It took real work, and ultimately a moment of genuinely receiving a different and truer voice, to begin to replace it.
That’s where intrinsic worth comes in. It’s the grounded sense that you are valuable before you produce anything, before anyone approves of anything, before any external marker weighs in. When worth is rooted there, your accomplishments and attributes become things you offer from a full place rather than evidence you’re desperately gathering to prove you belong. Robert adds a grounding note here: a former cohost reflected on the seasons when she had the least, pulling a mattress into the living room, mac and cheese and bad TV, and those turned out to be among her children’s favorite memories. The scorecard we think we’re failing is often not the one our kids are keeping at all.
Getting Curious About the Shame Voice Is More Powerful Than Trying to Silence It
When the voice comes, the instinct is to fight it. Say the opposite as fast as you can. You are not a failure. You are doing great. You are more than any number or any mirror or any inbox waiting on a reply. And for a day or two, that might hold. But then you quickly pick up the scorecard again.
The problem with positive self-talk as the only tool is that it doesn’t feel true. When shame is loud, countering it with the opposite feels hollow. The voice is rooted in something deep, often something installed long before this season of solo parenting, and the cheerful comeback lands on top of it without ever reaching it. Intellect trying to override a core belief, and the core belief usually wins.
Getting curious is a different move. Instead of counterattacking, you ask a question. Is this the only story? Is it possible that a hard month doesn’t mean a failed life? Could a slow season for a small business be the actual explanation, rather than proof that you are fundamentally not enough? Asking the question opens a door that declarations keep locked, because it creates just enough space for another possibility to exist.
Elizabeth found her way into this through a self-love exercise that led her somewhere she didn’t expect. Beneath the surface thoughts about not being loved or valued, she found her ten-year-old self carrying a lie that had been planted by experiences that had nothing to do with her actual worth. Telling herself a different story intellectually hadn’t moved it. She had to go to where the voice was actually living and offer that younger version of herself something truer.
Amber’s version of this came through a moment of feeling called to step into a ministry leadership role and immediately disqualifying herself. What came back wasn’t a pep talk. It was a genuine reframe. The very thing she thought made her unqualified turned out to be the reason she belonged there. That voice reached somewhere her own internal arguments hadn’t, because it came from outside herself and from a source she trusted deeply.
This is the difference between managing the shame voice and actually beginning to change the story underneath it. Curiosity invites real inquiry. Counterattack just creates a louder argument. And most solo parents, already stretched thin and carrying more than their share, don’t have the energy for a war inside their own heads. The more honest move, and the more effective one, is simply asking whether there’s another story that’s more true.
You Are More Than Any Scorecard
If you’re sitting with a balance that doesn’t reflect how hard you’re working, or carrying a story about what any external measure says about you as a parent or a person, this conversation has something important to offer.
The scorecards are not the truth. They measure things that shift and fluctuate with the season, with the economy, with a slow month, with what someone else is dealing with when they decide whether to renew or reply. They were never reliable enough to carry the weight of your identity. They are not carrying it now.
Your worth is intrinsic. It exists underneath the output, before the approval, apart from the balance. It was there before solo parenting made everything harder. It is there right now, even if the voice inside is arguing otherwise.
That voice is old. It was almost certainly installed long before this season. Getting curious about where it came from and whether it’s actually true is how you begin to loosen its hold. And finding people who are carrying the same questions, who know the shame that comes with a season that didn’t produce the way you hoped, is how you stop carrying it alone.
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