According to statistics, one in four families in the UK is headed by a single parent, 89% of whom are single mothers.
I’ll level with you, until five years ago, conversations about the plight of single mothers or parenthood, for that matter, were enough to induce a week-long snooze-fest. That was until it happened to me.
In August 2021, after giving birth to my beautiful baby girl, I was faced with the prospect of raising this little bundle on my own for the foreseeable future.
There are a multitude of reasons why a mother ends up raising a child on her own. True understanding requires a move away from unhelpful black and white thinking.
Over the years, I had been guilty of believing the single mother stereotype, one that I now know to be wildly inaccurate.
“A burden on the social welfare system”, “came from a lineage of fifteen-year-old mothers”, “destined to a life of social rejection and drudgery”.
It was a fate horrendous enough to warrant a chastity belt and one I was meticulous in my efforts to avoid.
When asked if I would like to have children someday, I answered “yes”, followed by a mental note to self, “but not as a single mother, for the love of god”.
Early years as single mum were challenging
The first couple of years of my daughter’s life were fraught with challenges; no family living close by and zero childcare places, all compounded by a sense of unrelenting emotional and physical overwhelm.
I’d reached breaking point and saw no way out. It only seemed like yesterday that I’d been living the good life, clean, serene and enjoying the fruits of sobriety.
After quitting drinking in 2016, I started We Love Lucid, the UK’s first ever sober travel company. My travel business even made it into National Geographic. Surely, I’d done the hard bit, hadn’t I? I’d transformed my life and gotten sober!
My daughter and I were living in an apartment in an “up and coming” area of Edinburgh, but truth be told, I’d been longing for a life in the countryside for a while.
Hailing from the green hills of County Antrim in Northern Ireland, I was keen for my daughter to have an upbringing like mine, where she could play outside until dusk and get covered in muck from head to toe.
City life was getting me down; the grey buildings; the grey faces; the anonymity.
To make matters worse, my girl had been attending an inner-city nursery school and was becoming seasoned in the ways of the ghetto, which in toddler terms equates to a lot of pushing and shoving.
Where did Lauren’s inspiration come from?
Last autumn, shortly after my daughter’s third birthday, I received a call from sober YouTuber and Author Bat Country.
I was immediately blown away by the synchronicities in our stories. He, too, lived in the far east before embarking on an all guns blazing off-the-beaten-track bike-packing trip across China.
Cycling had become my lifeline after quitting drinking in South Korea. I bought a bike and set off on an epic bike-packing adventure along the east coast of Korea, right up to the North Korean border.
It was this trip that opened my eyes to sober adventures and inspired me to create We Love Lucid.
We decided to organise a cycling challenge together from Beer, a sleepy seaside town in Devon, to Soberton, a hamlet in Southampton. I couldn’t believe these two places really existed and only 120 miles apart.
I say “only”, but 120 miles is no mean feat. It would require months of disciplined training and lots of reading up on endurance cycling.
I hadn’t ridden a bike since Korea, seven years before. I didn’t even own a bike, for that matter.
Where did Lauren get her first bike?
After some online research, I settled on buying a gravel bike on a monthly payment plan and a few bits of basic gear from Vinted.
It didn’t take long before I started to remember why I fell in love with cycling all those years ago in Korea.
The fresh air, movement and a chance to explore my surroundings were a tonic for my mental health. Cycling made me a happier, less stressed person and better parent.
A few weeks later, an opportunity arose to move to a cottage in Perthshire. It was perfect! I could have the country life I’d longed for and could live close to my family.
Perthshire – the perfect place to train
Training for the Beer to Soberton event on the quiet country roads was truly the icing on the cake.
One of the biggest struggles as a single parent in modern society is isolation. Gone are the days when whole villages rally around struggling members of the community.
In many ways, single mums are expected to just get on with it.
One of the biggest benefits of cycling around Perthshire is the ample opportunities to engage with locals, even if it’s nothing more than a bit of small talk about the weather.
Before having my daughter, I travelled the world, learned languages and relished the chance to speak to locals from all walks of life.
Importance of experiences
Cycling reminded me of the importance of incorporating experiences like these into my life as a single mother. Most importantly, I was reminded of people’s kindness.
Despite the abundance of negativity in the news these days, the truth is that most people are kind and willing to help; a simple but powerful lens through which I choose to navigate life.
With Beer to Soberton just around the corner and the Perthshire hills in full bloom, I’m reminded that just as the daffodils and hawthorn pay us a fleeting visit, difficult times also come and go.
Training for the cycling challenge has been an inner rediscovering of sorts and marks the beginning of a new empowered chapter for my daughter and me; one filled with community, creativity and unforgettable adventures
- You can read more about Lauren here. You can follow her Beer to Soberton journey on Instagram @welovelucid
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