Some seasons arrive without warning, a season you didn’t plan for.
You didn’t pencil them in. You didn’t sit down with your planner — the pretty one you bought in January with every intention of using and write “solo parenting era begins here.” You didn’t pray for this specific version of your life, at least not in those exact words. And yet here you are. Living it. Breathing through it. Slowly, quietly, stubbornly making something out of it.
This Sunday, I want to sit with that for a moment. Not to celebrate it with too much noise, and not to grieve it either. Just to acknowledge it, because sometimes, the most honest thing you can do is look at the season you’re in and say: I didn’t plan for this. And I’m still here.
The Plan You Had Before
Most of us had a version of life in our heads. It looked a certain way. It had a partner, a complete family, a sense of security that didn’t feel like something you had to manufacture alone from scratch every single morning before the kids even wake up.
It probably didn’t include solo school pickups, or lying awake wondering if you’re doing enough, or being asked “so are you seeing anyone?” at family gatherings by the same aunt who has asked you this every year for the past five years, bless her heart.
I know I had a plan. I held onto it longer than I should have, if I’m honest. Because letting go of the plan doesn’t just mean letting go of a future. It means letting go of the version of yourself you thought you’d become — the one in the story you’d been telling since you were young. That’s a quiet kind of grief that doesn’t always get its own ceremony, but it deserves one.
That kind of letting go takes time. And it’s okay if you’re not there yet.
What Happens When Life Doesn’t Follow the Script
Here’s what I’ve noticed, both in my own life and in the lives of the women I walk alongside: the seasons we didn’t plan for have a way of forming us that the ones we planned never could.
Not because pain is good. Not because hardship is something to romanticize over an aesthetically pleasing cup of tea. But because when you are stripped of the comfortable, the scripted, the expected — something in you has to wake up. You stop waiting for someone else to make decisions. You stop putting your own needs at the bottom of every list. You stop holding your breath, waiting to start living.
You start.
Solo parenting whether it came from a divorce, a separation, loss, or a choice you made with clarity and courage, dropped you into a season you weren’t prepared for. And in that unpreparedness, you found out what you were made of. Maybe you’re still finding out. Maybe some days it still feels like you’re barely holding it together, running on five hours of sleep and a prayer and whatever was left in the coffee pot.
That’s okay too. Finding out what you’re made of isn’t a one-time event. It’s the slow work of every ordinary Tuesday.
Trusting the Season You’re In
There’s a verse I keep coming back to, from Ecclesiastes 3:1 — “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”
I used to read that and feel comfort. Then I went through my hardest years and read it and felt, honestly, a little annoyed. A time for this? A season for this kind of hard? But the older I get, the more I understand it not as passive acceptance, as if we’re just along for the ride, hanging on — but as an invitation to stop fighting the chapter we’re in.
Because when we fight the season, we miss it. We miss the growth happening quietly underneath. We miss the small moments of grace that are only visible when we stop bracing against everything. We miss the version of ourselves being slowly shaped by the very thing we’re trying to escape.
Trusting the season doesn’t mean pretending it’s easy. It means choosing to be present in it anyway even on the days when “present” looks like surviving until bedtime and calling it a win.
You Are Not Behind
This is what I want to say directly to the solo mom reading this on a quiet Sunday morning, maybe with a cup of coffee that’s already gone cold (it happens to the best of us — every single time), maybe in a house that still feels too loud or too empty depending on the hour:
You are not behind.
The life you’re building doesn’t follow the same timeline as anyone else’s, and that’s not a flaw. It’s a different kind of story. Not less than. Not broken. Just different, and different can be beautiful, even when it’s hard, even when it doesn’t look anything like what you pinned on your vision board four years ago.
The season you didn’t plan for is not a detour from your real life. It is your real life. And there is something in it that is meant for you — a version of strength you couldn’t have developed in easier soil, a depth of love you couldn’t have discovered without this specific, beautiful, exhausting, meaningful journey.
Some of the most important chapters of my life started with the words: I didn’t expect this.
Maybe yours did too.
A Gentle Nudge for This Sunday
Before the week begins again, before the to-do lists and the school bags and the emails and the noise (and the aunt who will inevitably text you something) — take a few minutes today to sit with this question:
What season are you in right now? Not the one you wished for — the one you’re actually living.
Not to judge it. Not to rush it. Just to name it. Because naming what is true is the first step to making peace with it.
And if the season feels heavy right now, I want you to know: seasons change. Not always on our schedule, not always in the way we hoped. But they change. And you will not always feel exactly the way you feel today.
You are allowed to rest in this Sunday. You are allowed to let the week wait just a little longer. You are allowed to simply be — not performing strength, not pushing through, not holding everything together for everyone else.
Just you. Right here. In the season you’re in.
That is enough.
Until next Sunday — take care of yourself, love your people, and keep going.
Xo, Anne
If this reflection spoke to you, download the free Thrive Starter Kit — your first step toward healing, peace, and thriving on your own terms.