Solo Parent

This week we're discussing How to Keep Control from Destroying Your Peace.

Solo parenting puts you in a position where so much is genuinely outside your control. The other household. The court dates. How your kids are processing things you cannot fully see. And when that much is out of your hands, it is completely natural to tighten your grip on everything else. The schedule. The way the kitchen looks. The outcome of a conversation you have already rehearsed a dozen times. It feels like stability. It feels like you are doing something. But over time, that kind of control does not actually bring peace. It borrows against it.

That tension is exactly what this conversation digs into. 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 (MMFT) and single parent, sit down to work through what is really driving the urge to control, why letting go is not the same thing as giving up, and what it looks like in real life to hold things a little more loosely without losing yourself in the process. It is one of those conversations that has a way of naming things you have been feeling but have not quite had the words for.

• Control is often a counterfeit for peace. It mimics stability but quietly works against the peace you are actually looking for.
• Letting go is not the same as giving up. The shift is from gripping tightly to holding loosely enough to stay present and adapt.
• "What if" lives in the future; "if only" lives in the past. Real agency only exists in the present, in the one next right step.

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This week we're discussing Making Peace with Our Past with Dr. Dan Allender.

Most of us know our story. We could tell it in five minutes if someone asked. But knowing what happened and actually being free from it are two very different things. For a lot of solo parents, the past shows up uninvited, in a sharp reaction that didn't fit the moment, a fear that surfaces when things finally feel calm, a pattern with your kids you swore you'd never repeat. It doesn't mean you haven't tried. It means the trying might need to go a little deeper. And the longer we avoid that, the more the past quietly runs the present.

In this conversation, Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host, sit down with Dr. Dan Allender, a clinical psychologist and author who has spent decades helping people face their stories honestly and find real freedom on the other side. His books The Wounded Heart, The Healing Path, and To Be Told have walked thousands through the hard work of understanding how the past is still shaping the present and what it actually takes to change that. Together they explore why avoidance keeps us stuck, how shame operates and what disarms it, and why grief and anger aren't problems to manage but forces that, held together, can finally move you forward. The conversation is honest, practical, and grounded in real experience from all three voices at the table.

• Ignoring the past doesn't free you. It makes you reactive. The unaddressed past doesn't disappear, it shows up in your parenting, your relationships, and the moments you least expect it.
• Shame has to be faced, defied, and disarmed with kindness. Running from shame guarantees it follows you, but meeting it with defiance and then gentleness is what actually loosens its grip.
• Grief and anger belong together. Each one needs the other. Anger without grief hardens you, grief without anger drowns you, but held together they're what actually moves you forward.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Dr Dan Allender
  • The Wounded Heart
  • The Healing Path
  • To Be Told

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This week we're discussing: Tips for Creating a Peaceful Home Base

Most solo parents are not struggling to love their kids well. They are struggling to create the kind of home where that love actually lands. Where kids feel safe, settled, and like they can exhale when they walk through the door. That gap between intention and reality is something almost every solo parent feels but rarely talks about out loud.

A peaceful home is not something you either have or you don't. It is something you build, through the way you communicate, the way you listen, and the way you show up on the days when everything feels like too much. And it matters more than most of us realize, because when home feels unpredictable, kids do not just feel unsettled. They start filling the silence with their own story, and that story almost always ends with the same conclusion: something is wrong with me.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, sits down with Elizabeth Cole, a single parent, and Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy and a single parent herself, to talk practically about what it takes to build a peaceful home base. Not a perfect one. A consistent one.

• What you say, and how you say it, changes everything. Kids fill silence with their own story, and that story almost always puts the blame on themselves.
• Listening well is more powerful than having the right answer. Empathy before action helps you understand what your child actually needs, not just what the situation appears to need.
• A peaceful home is a slow build, not a single decision. Consistency over time is what creates safety, and safety is what peace is made of.

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This week we're discussing Surviving Summer Chaos

The school year gives solo parents a framework that helps them survive. The routines, the schedules, the predictable rhythm that makes life feel manageable. Then summer arrives and all of it shifts, fast. The magic of the season is real, but so is the pressure. Work does not slow down. The bills do not pause. And suddenly you are expected to hold everything together with more people in the house, less structure, and the quiet weight of doing it all on your own.

In this episode, Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent, are joined by Marissa Lee, author and single parent, for a practical and honest conversation about navigating summer as a solo parent. Together they dig into the real challenges of the season and share what has actually worked in their own homes.

Key Insights from This Episode:

• Structure is not a punishment for summer, it is a gift you give your kid. Simple daily rhythms, built with your child's input, can make the whole season more manageable for everyone.
• Letting go of control is a parenting skill that has to be practiced gradually. Summer is a natural proving ground for giving older kids more independence before you are forced to do it all at once.
• The best summer memories do not require money. They require presence, a little creativity, and the willingness to show up even when you are tired.

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This week we're discussing Overcoming Toxic Thoughts.

Most solo parents are not struggling because they are doing too little. They are struggling because the voice in their head will not let them believe what they are doing is enough. It is there before the day even starts, in the moment you realize you are the only one holding all of it together. It shows up when a hard conversation with your teenager goes sideways and you have no one to debrief with after. It is there when you are grieving a partner you lost and trying to keep things steady for kids who are grieving too. It surfaces when a grown child calls struggling and you wonder, quietly, if something you did years ago is the reason why. It is there at the end of a long day when the plan fell apart, the patience ran out, and the mental replay begins. Every misstep. Every thing left undone. Every version of yourself you think you are supposed to be but cannot quite reach. That voice sounds like fact. It has been running so long it feels like your own. But it is not.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host, bring in Jon Acuff, New York Times bestselling author of Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking and host of the podcast All It Takes Is a Goal, for a conversation that is equal parts practical and freeing. Jon has spent over a decade studying the repetitive thoughts that quietly run our lives, where they come from, how to spot the ones that are lying to us, and what it actually takes to replace them. Whether you are parenting through loss, navigating life after divorce, or building your family on your own terms, and whether your kids are still small or grown and finding their footing, the internal noise of doing this without a partner is real. This conversation goes there.

Key Insights from This Episode:

• Your Broken Soundtracks Have a Source. The repetitive thoughts holding you back did not appear out of nowhere, and knowing where they came from is the first move toward changing them.
• There Is a Three-Question Test to Tell Real Concerns from Toxic Overthinking. Not every hard thought is a lie, but there is a simple way to tell the difference between what is true and what is just loud.
• New Seasons Deserve New Scorecards. Measuring this chapter of your life against a different one is one of the quietest ways solo parents keep themselves stuck.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• Jon Acuff
  • Soundtracks: The Surprising Solution to Overthinking
  • Procrastination Proof (released April 2025)
  • All It Takes Is a Goal podcast by Jon Acuff
• That Sounds Fun with Annie F. Downs
• Chip Dodd / 8 CORE Feelings framework

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This week we're discussing Helping Our Kids Grow Through Challenges.

Most solo parents spend a lot of energy learning how to survive their own hard seasons. But at some point, almost every solo parent faces a different kind of challenge: watching their kids go through something painful and not knowing how to actually help. Not just show up, but show up well. The instinct most of us bring to that moment is to do something. Fix it, explain it, or find the resource that finally makes it better. And more often than not, that instinct gets in the way.

What kids need from their parents in hard seasons is rarely what we expect. It's usually quieter, slower, and less about having the right answer than we'd like. And for solo parents who are already carrying their own grief or transition while trying to hold things together for their kids, learning to offer that kind of presence is a real and ongoing challenge.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent, sit down with pastor, author, and co-founder of For Girls Like You Ministries Jonathan Pitts, and his oldest daughter Alena Pitts Franklin. Jonathan became a solo parent to four daughters in 2018 after his wife Wynter passed away suddenly. Alena, his oldest, shares her perspective on those same years now as an adult and author of the devotional God Is: 60 Days of Learning Who God Is to Understand Who We Are. Together they offer an honest look at what kids actually need from their parents in hard seasons, what it means to grow alongside your children emotionally, and how to trust that God is working in your child's story even when you can't see it.

Key Insights from This Episode:

• Presence, not answers, is what children in hard seasons actually need from their parents. Sitting with your child in their pain, without rushing to fix it, communicates something words rarely can.
• You don't have to be emotionally healed to parent your kids through their healing. Shared humanity isn't a parenting weakness. It builds the kind of trust that holds through the hardest seasons.
• God is not absent from your children's story just because you can't control their outcome. He works through people and circumstances you didn't plan, and your kids are not solely dependent on you to find their way through.

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

• My Wynter Season: Seeing God's Faithfulness in the Shadow of Grief by Jonathan Pitts
• She Is Yours: Trusting God As You Raise the Girl He Gave You by Jonathan Pitts
• God Is: 60 Days of Learning Who God Is to Understand Who We Are by Alena Pitts Franklin
• For Girls Like You Ministries
• The Emotion Wheel / Eight Core Emotions Framework
• The U Diagram / Friday-Saturday-Sunday resurrection framework (therapist Adam Young)
• Dr. Chip Dodd - Emotional Stability

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This week we're discussing Getting Out of Our Comfort Zone.

Most of us have a version of life we have quietly decided is good enough. Not thriving, maybe, but manageable. And when you are doing this alone, manageable starts to feel like a win. The problem is that manageable has a way of becoming permanent if nobody asks the harder question: is this actually where you want to stay?

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host, sit down with Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy and single parent herself, to get honest about what the comfort zone actually costs and what it looks like to take one step out of it without blowing up the life you have worked hard to build.

• Familiar is not the same as free. What feels like stability may actually be avoidance wearing the clothes of comfort.
• There is a real difference between the growth zone and the panic zone. One stretches you with purpose; the other pushes you past your limits and burns you out.
• One small step is not a consolation prize. Starting smaller than you think you need to is exactly how lasting growth happens.

• Judith Bardwick - Danger in the Comfort Zone
• Brene Brown
• Jon Acuff — Soundtracks

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This week we're discussing What's Holding You Back and How It's Affecting Your Kids.

Growth doesn't always announce itself as something you're missing. Sometimes you're functioning, even thriving in some areas, and still carrying patterns that are quietly working against you. Denial, shame spiraling, overcompensating, running to busyness or numbing out. You don't have to be falling apart to need this. You just have to be human. And the way you're handling the hard things right now is already shaping the way your kids will learn to handle theirs.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host, sit down with Amber Fuller, a counselor with a Master's in Marriage and Family Therapy and a single parent herself, to name the patterns that quietly keep solo parents from growing. Amber brings both clinical insight and lived experience, speaking not just as a therapist but as someone who has navigated the same hard terrain. Together they get honest about the traps, and the part nobody talks about enough: how those patterns find their way into our kids.

• Naming the trap is the most courageous first step. Whether it shows up as denial, shame spiraling, or overcompensating, you cannot grow through something you are not willing to honestly look at.

• Staying in the river is a learnable skill. Sitting with hard emotions rather than escaping to busyness or apathy is not something you either have or don't; it is something you practice, and it gets easier.

• Your growth is already teaching your kids something. More is caught than taught, and when you do the work of facing your own struggles honestly, that becomes one of the most powerful things you can model.

• Chip Dodd - Living Fully in the River - Podcast

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This week we're discussing From Panic to Plan: Thriving as a Solo Parent on a Budget.

For a lot of solo parents, the finances were never really theirs to begin with. Someone else handled it, and then one day that changed completely. No transition, no training, no runway. Just a pile of bills, a household to run, and children depending on every decision you make.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent, sit down with Shirley Baldiris, a single mom, Solo Parent community member, and emerging financial coach trained through Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. Shirley woke up one morning facing four months of back rent, a home in foreclosure, and debt she didn't know existed. What she built from that starting point, and how she built it, is what this conversation is about.

Most financial advice was not designed for the single income, single parent reality. Shirley's approach was. And the practical steps she shares are ones solo parents can actually use.

• Start with your four walls, not your full financial picture. When everything feels urgent, protecting your roof, food, transportation, and utilities first gives you a foundation to build from.
• Budgeting in small, honest increments builds more than a plan. Starting week by week instead of month by month creates the consistency and self-trust that makes financial stability possible over time.
• Negotiating with lenders is a skill, and it works more often than you think. Being honest about your situation with landlords, credit card companies, and mortgage lenders can open doors that most solo parents never think to knock on.

Shirley closed by saying what every solo parent in a financial crisis needs to hear: you have the intelligence, you have the stamina, and you are absolutely qualified to take hold of this. The panic is not the whole story.

• Financial Peace University (Dave Ramsey)
• The Four Walls Framework (Dave Ramsey)

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This week we're discussing Emotional Stability with Dr. Chip Dodd

When you are the only adult in the house, pushing through stops being a choice and starts being a reflex. Feelings get quieted because there is no margin for them. But survival mode and actually living are two very different things. One keeps you functional. The other is what you were made for. And until you understand the difference, it is easy to mistake getting through the day for being okay.

Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent and co-host, sit down with Dr. Chip Dodd, a counselor, speaker, and author with over 30 years of experience serving others through emotional health and recovery. His book Voice of the Heart has become foundational for many solo parents trying to understand their own emotional landscape. Together they walk through all eight core feelings, not as burdens to manage, but as gifts that, when understood, move us toward healing, connection, and a fuller life.

• Survival mode is not a failure, but staying there keeps you from the life you were made for. Reducing emotion to get through the day is a natural grief response, but remaining in that place over time recreates the very isolation you are trying to escape.
• Your feelings, even the painful ones, are not signs of weakness. Each of the eight core emotions has a purpose and a direction, designed to move you toward healing, connection, and ultimately a life lived more fully.
• Needing other people is not a liability. Dependency resilience, the capacity to lean on others and on God, is one of the most powerful qualities a human being can develop, and it grows in community.

• Dr. Chip Dodd
  • Voice of the Heart
  • Living With Heart Podcast
  • The Voice of the Heart Center
• "How Are You Feeling Today?" Podcast hosted by Alex Courington
• Solo Parent previous episode Courage to be Angry with Dr. Chip Dodd

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