Single Mother Survival Guide

Happy fourth birthday to the Single Mother Survival Guide Podcast!! Thanks so much for being a part of the journey.

Links mentioned in the episode:

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

In this episode, I answer more questions sent in by listeners. This week, these questions relate to:

• Dealing with your feelings, and the feelings of your family, around shame and guilt when pregnant and single.
• How to deal with bringing your baby to meet the woman your partner left you for.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Join the Thrive Tribe waitlist HERE.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

In this week's podcast episode, I talk with wife and husband team Poppy and Geoff. Poppy and Geoff have a beautiful love story. They were college sweethearts, who then both went their separate ways and 32 years, and two divorces later each, they came back together.

Poppy and Geoff are Certified Supreme Court Family Law Mediators and Relationship Counselors with expertise in neuroscience.

As Certified Parenting Experts, and Certified Myers Briggs Practitioners, they offer guidance to parents and co-parents, to help them move forward and flourish in their life.

In this episode, Poppy and Geoff talk about three tools that we can use to better understand our ex-partners and ourselves, and how we can use this knowledge to better our co-parenting relationships and to improve the parent/child relationship we have with our kids.

These tools include:

• Myers Briggs.
• The Five Love Languages.
• The Apology Languages.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Find out more about poppy and Geoff, and contact them here.

Connect with Poppy and Geoff on Instagram and Facebook.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Lynn Jimenez (based in Southern California), is a mental health therapist, yoga instructor, and single mum. She's also the founder of Connect.Flow.Grow - a platform that provides parents with easy to use tools so they can teach their kids about feelings and behaviours, reducing stress and frustration in the home, and increasing the MAGIC of family time.

She's had a broad range of experience ranging from the activation in the stress response system, to creating school-based programs to teach kids social-emotional skills, to working with adults in a substance abuse treatment centre.

In this episode, Lynn shares some tips to help you help your kids become emotionally intelligent by teaching them about their feelings and what to do with them. These easy to use tools will help parents and kids manage their emotions, will bring them closer together and will help promote peace in the home.

We also talk about:

• travelling as a single mum,
• the benefits of a family meeting and what to discuss,
• why saying "why did you do that?" to your kids is a completely useless question,
• repairing harm,
• raising emotionally connected boys, and
• SO MUCH MORE!

Links mentioned in the episode:

Visit Lynn's website Connect.Flow.Grow here.

Lynn has been kind enough to provide us with a discount code (SINGLEMUM20) to her foundational course or to enrol in her ongoing membership.

Connect with Lynn on Instagram and Facebook.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest

In this episode, I share seven lessons I learned as a single mum that will be sure to help you too.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Blog post: 9 REASONS WHY YOU NEED TO FIND YOUR SINGLE MUM TRIBE.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

Paula Booth was very much in love with an amazing man when after almost 8 years together he decided that he didn't want to have kids after all. Paula wasn't sure if she could have children of her own after an accident in 2011 left her with a spinal cord injury which had resulted in her becoming a paraplegic. Nonetheless, she was left with a decision - stay with her partner and forego the chance to try having a child or leave her partner and follow her dream of becoming a mum. Paula chose the latter.

After a brief stint of online dating, Paula decided it wasn't the path she wanted to take and spoke to her GP about becoming a single mother by choice. The GP advised her that she was not suitable for a referral to a fertility clinic because she didn't think she was capable of being a mother, let alone a single mother. How would she teach her child to climb a tree?

She decided to go about it privately and found a site where people who wanted to be donors or co-parent advertise. After a few false matches, she found a donor who was (and still is) in a relationship with a woman who didn't want children and this was their compromise.

After 7 months of trying to conceive, it was successful, and Paula now has a beautiful baby boy, who was 12 weeks old at the time of recording.

In this episode, Paula shares:

• how incredibly supportive her family has been,
• the process of using donor sperm through a private arrangement,
• pregnancy during COVID-19,
• how she managed pregnancy and childbirth with her disability,
• how she has adapted and found ways of parenting from a wheelchair,
• the relationship that her son has and will continue to have with the father,
• and so much more.

Paula is a true inspiration to anyone, and especially to other disabled women to know that they don't have to give up their dreams of being a mum.

Links mentioned in the episode:

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest

July 2020... the perfect time to re-focus and plan out the rest of this year, one that will be sure to go down in history. How will you remember 2020?

Links mentioned in the episode:

Listen to Episode 193 (single parenting in the time of coronavirus) HERE.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

In this episode, I answer more questions sent in by listeners. These questions relate to:

• The fear of having time without your child and when you're constantly threatened by your ex with being taken to court.
• What to do when you are constantly the one trying to facilitate a relationship between your young child and their father, and the father is not putting in any reciprocal effort.
• How to help your child when they struggle with you having a new partner and not seeing their dad.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Blog Post: THE BEST 5 BOOKS FOR CHILDREN OF SINGLE PARENTS.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest.

In 2015, at 36 years old, Anna von Frances packed up her house, sold all her things and left Canada. With a 40 L backpack and her Chihuahua x Jack Russel, Anna moved to Guatemala.

Six months later, she fell pregnant to a local tattoo artist after a one night stand. Despite pretty much everyone she spoke to about it advising her against having the baby, the father of the unborn child swept in and offered her a family and support. He encouraged her to have the baby. Anna didn't know it at the time, but he would become emotionally abusive.

As her pregnancy progressed, she found herself becoming increasingly reliant on this abusive man and more aware that she was gradually losing her identity and her own circle of friends through the tactics he used to isolate her. She had become a shell of the woman she used to be and was depressed and suicidal.

At 7 months pregnant, Anna packed up her things and escaped Guatemala in the middle of the night, driving over the mountain range into South Mexico.

After she had her daughter, she went back to Guatemala to get back to work and to be around people she knew.

A year later, Anna and her daughter Luna travelled for a year - through Asia and other parts of the world - and then they moved back to Mexico. By the time Luna was 2, they had travelled through 9 countries together.

This year she embarked on her next chapter – becoming a single mum by choice.

In this episode Anna shares:

• Why she left Canada in the first place.
• The shock of the pregnancy (as she had left the idea of having a child behind).
• Being raised by a single mum and how that affected her.
• Why travelling with kids as a single mum is easy.
• Why she loves her single mum life.
• How hard it is to celebrate the milestones on her own.
• Why she refers to her ex as the biological donor, and not her daughter's dad.
• Why she has decided to have another child by choice and choosing the right donor.
• Experiencing COVID-19 in Mexico.
• Her dating experiences as a single mum.
• The freedom that women have in being able to have children solo.
• Her advice to anyone thinking about becoming a single mum by choice.
• And so much more.

Anna has such a great vibe and is a true example of an empowered woman.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Join Thrive Tribe HERE.

Connect with Anna on Instagram here.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest

In this episode, I share two pieces of BIG news...

1. Thrive Tribe - the global membership experience for single mothers - will be open for enrollment from 8:00 am 1st July - 8:00 am 6th July (AEST). This is a membership that I am just SO excited to open up to you. I have been working with 34 founding members to bring you the best membership experience possible. This membership will show you where you are on the single mother journey and provide you with a clear strategy and action items to progress you along the path to get you THRIVING and living your best life. In addition, we have monthly zoom sessions (think of this as like the BEST kind of mothers group ever), Facebook lives where your questions are answered, masterclasses, workshops, the most AMAZING guest speakers, and surprises all along the way. Did I mention we also have the most beautiful community filled with so much love and support? This is not just a Facebook group, it's a family. It doesn't matter how old you are, what country you live in, or at what stage of your own personal journey you are on... if you are ready to be part of this incredible community, ready to give and receive support, and ready to take action to thrive, Thrive Tribe is for you! Want to know more about Thrive Tribe? Take a listen! In this episode, I tell you ALL about it. Jump on the waitlist here.
2. It's been over a year since I closed the doors to my mentoring programs, but from 1st July I am opening up a very limited number of spots to my Single Mother Survival Guide community. To find out more, take a listen.

Links mentioned in the episode:

Join the Thrive Tribe waitlist HERE.

To contact Julia, email: [email protected].

Visit us at Single Mother Survival Guide.

Or connect with Single Mother Survival Guide on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Pinterest