Forty and single
It's time to update you all...
I turned 40 at the start of this month and decided it was finally time to resurrect this newsletter after a too long hiatus. I’ve so missed writing to you. I first started The Single Supplement on my 35th birthday. To say life has changed a lot since then would be a massive understatement. My life looks unrecognisable but one thing has remained the same: my relationship status. I’m as single as I was back in 2019 – and my life is still full of lots of joy and love.
What’s new?
You may be wondering why I stopped writing a year ago. There are a few reasons, including a very exciting work project that took all my time and attention and all of my creative juices to complete (I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all really soon!) but the main reason is I struggled to write about what was going on for me and I want to address that here. Deep breath. Many of you will have seen either the social media announcement of my pregnancy or Stella’s birth or the really big Guardian article I wrote but for those who missed all that – I’m now a mother of a 6 month old baby! I am platonically coparenting with my best friend. We are both single. He is gay. We live together and raise our daughter together (although in the future will move to separate houses hopefully very close to each other). Her name is Stella and she is the absolute best baby in the world.
Many of you know that I have always wanted to be a mother and have always imagined that having children would be part of my life – and yet I spent years feeling confusion and longing and pain because I couldn’t see how I was ever going to make it happen when I’d been single for so long, didn’t want to date just to find someone to procreate with and wasn’t made of money. I know from the messages I received whenever I wrote or spoke about this that many of you relate. After many years of deliberation and going back and forth on what I should do, I decided to ask my best friend Tom if he would like to platonically co-parent with me after realising the solo motherhood route wasn’t for me* – and that the person I was spending most of my nights out with (because most our friends were busy raising their kids), was perfect dad material. He had given up hope of ever being a biological dad even though he’d always wanted to be a father and it wasn’t until I finally asked him that I realised how much pain that caused him. Side note, I don’t think enough attention is given to the men who long to be fathers. (*I will write more about this soon).
Now she is here and all of the usual cliches apply. We are both in awe and unbelievably grateful that our dream came true and we are parents to our beautiful baby. Six months in and we still regularly turn to each other and say ‘we have a daughter’ or ‘we’re parents’. It’s been really emotional for both us to go from thinking it may never happen to where we are now. We know how lucky we are and will never take that for granted. There are so many ways we have been lucky. We are lucky to have found each other and lucky that so many of our wishes and values aligned and we are lucky that we were able to conceive without any complications. I am still pinching myself.
The future of The Single Supplement
The fact is I have been really nervous to share my news here. It’s the happiest of news to me – and I know many of you shared with my joy – but the reason I have been nervous to announce it here is that when I first posted on social media, around 150 people immediately unfollowed me (and subsequent posts featuring pictures of me pregnant also resulted in a lot of unfollows). I’m not complaining about that because I totally get it. We all have to protect our own peace and for those who are either struggling to conceive or accepting that they may never get to, seeing pregnant bellies all over their Instagram feeds must be triggering. I really believe in curating Instagram feeds so you don’t open the app and immediately feel like shit so trust me when I say I understand. But with the newsletter, it feels a bit different. I’ll explain why…
Firstly, the Single Supplement is not going to suddenly become a motherhood newsletter – and I don’t want people to miss out on what is coming because they think the newsletter will be all about babies from now on. If I ever did decide that I want to write extensively about motherhood, I will simply start a new newsletter (and in fact I recently started a new instagram account to funnel my thoughts on motherhood, mainly to do with how I am keeping the cost down and the immense pressure to spend spend spend). Secondly, I have some big plans for this newsletter and things in the pipework that I can’t talk about yet. Finally, I have a number of guest pieces lined up for the next couple of months and the topics include: being disabled and single, making friends as a single adult and the penalty those who live alone pay when it comes to council tax.
Of course that is not to say I will never write about being a mum because as I am technically a single mum (although obviously not actually parenting alone so I feel a bit of an imposter calling myself that), it is obviously relevant to the ethos of this newsletter. It’s also a topic I have always covered by interviewing or featuring single parents such as this one, this one and this one. My route to motherhood – and how I am coparenting – is also an unconventional one and I have always enjoyed writing about breaking free from the status quo. I believe there will be insights from my experience that could be interesting when applied to all sorts of other situations. These include making a new best friend in my late thirties, working out what’s really important in life, choosing to pursue your dreams and not let concerns about how things “should” look get in your way, letting go of fear, deciding to own it, hold your head up high and celebrate your choices instead of feeling shame that your life looks differently.
If I’m really honest, there has been something else going on. I’ve had this teeny tiny little voice telling me that somehow I have betrayed you all by going from single and childless to single and a mother. I know this is irrational and quite frankly ridiculous. I guess it’s because it has felt like we are in this together and now things have changed for me. Obviously I can’t live my life based on keeping other people happy but still, it’s there, this little niggling feeling. My tendency to be a people pleaser has a lot to do with it, I’m sure. I’ve done a lot of work on that in the last few years but still it lingers. I do know from the messages I’ve received and the comments on the Facebook group that so many of you are actually very happy for me – and some even inspired by what I’ve done, which is amazing. And I know I have plenty of single mothers – and a few single fathers – in this community – and plenty who are happily childfree. That’s what I love about this readership. It is so diverse. I even have readers who are married or in relationships who tell me they read to better support their single friends or just because they like to keep their fingers on the pulse of single issues (and the odd few who read because they are thinking of leaving).
But of course I know only too well the pain and ambiguous grief that comes along with being childless when you very much wish you weren’t and so I can also understand if any of you are having complicated feelings about this news given I may have been a safe port in the storm for you until now – and was very much one of you until a short time ago. We were in it together and now I’ve jumped ship as it were. I get it. I have felt like that before when single friends have announced they new boyfriends or when others have announced pregnancies after years of being your childfree friend. If this is you, please know I am sending you all my love. I understand and I won’t begrudge you if you do decide to unsubscribe.
I do know that it feels right to be back in your inboxes. Since I stopped writing, it has felt like every journalist, writer, podcaster and influencer has launched a Substack and although there has been some great writing about being single on other people’s newsletters (I’ll share some of these soon), I still think there is a gap in the market for a dedicated space for single people to gather - especially one where dating isn’t the focus - and I hope to rise once again to the challenge.
Forty and single
As for me, I’m still feeling mostly fine about my single status even at this ripe old age. Although I joked to friends about being horrified to turn 40, it was pretty painless. In the run up, I did have that weird feeling of being unable to comprehend that I was about to turn such a big age. It doesn’t feel real, like I must have done the maths wrong. I’m told by my elders this feeling doesn’t really ever go away. Even though it was a big birthday, I didn’t really have an existential crisis when my birthday rolled around this time but then again I didn’t have it when I turned 30 either. It wasn’t until I was 31 that I had a bit of a meltdown about my age and where I was in my life and all the things I hadn’t done yet. Maybe I’ve got it to look forward to next year.
Having said that, I did have a bit of a stomach drop moment about being single AND forty. I did have to remind myself how lucky I am to reach this age when so many don’t. Kris Hallenga, the founder of the breast cancer awareness charity CoppaFeel is one of those people. I interviewed her at the end of 2022 – will share more about this soon – and I know how much she loved life. Despite her terminal diagnosis, she was determined to squeeze as much life as possible from her short years on earth and that she did. I was so sad to hear of her death earlier this year. See below for my recommendation to watch her documentary which charts her diagnosis to death. We all go through shit things or turds as Kris would say but we can choose how we glitter those turds. In her words: “Even the most unpolishable turds are glitterable.” (Give this Positive News article a read if you haven’t heard of Kris).
Occasionally I do wonder how I would possibly make space for romantic love in my life which already feels so full now I have a baby – and sometimes I wonder, if I did want to start looking eventually, how desirable I would be to the opposite sex now. In fact the other day Tom and I talked about who is more likely to find someone first out of the two of us if we started looking (which neither of us are). He made the point that gay people are statistically less likely as there are a lot more straight people about. But I wonder what my chances would be now that I am both a single mother and over 40. I would also need to find someone willing to not only accept my unique family set up but also fully embrace it because I can’t see it working any other way. For now, I am happy to enjoy motherhood and coparenting and have quite enough on my plate without adding dating to the mix.
Anyway, I’d love to hear from you about how you are feeling about being single? What issues are impacting you? What would you like to see me write about, who should I commission to pen a piece and which inspiring single people do you want to see me interview? Email back to this newsletter or comment below (I’m opening the comment section up for all).
Have a good week,
Nicola
Follow me on Instagram: @Nicola_Slawson
What I've been watching recently
I cannot recommend this documentary enough. Obviously it is unbearably sad but it is also uplifting and will remind you that we really do only have one life and we need to live it. Kris was single for more than ten years before she died but she would never want anyone to feel sorry for her because of that. You can watch it on BBC iPlayer here: Living Every Second: The Kris Hallenga Story.
What I’ve been reading recently
It’s hard to read when you are looking after a baby but I received a copy of Marianne Power’s Love Me!: One woman’s search for a different happy ever after in the post from the publisher and it begged me to pick it up and read it immediately. I am only about a quarter of the way through but I’m really enjoying it. It is wonderfully gut wrenchingly honest and I am finding it relatable and also funny.
You can buy Marianne’s book on Bookshop.org*, Amazon, Waterstones or wherever you usually buy books.
Song of the week
About me
Nicola Slawson is passionate about telling human stories – either other people's or her own – and is a freelance journalist, writer and public speaker. She is based in Shropshire in the UK. The Single Supplement is an award-winning newsletter on Substack, especially for single people. Follow Nicola on Instagram and Twitter/X.
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*Disclosure: I am an affiliate for Bookshop.org and have included some links in this newsletter to my store. If you buy books linked to my site, I may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.
So happy you're back, this is the original substack that introduced me to this platform. I'm deeply inspired by your choice to become a mum with your best friend, and I'm not single or a mother, I just love your honest writing and trailblazing against the status quo. I'd love to hear more about the trust/conversatiknd it took to make that decision, if that's not too personal. I'd love to hear more about friendships as an adult un general. But mostly delighted you're back 👏✨️
Being single is different for every person. Thank you for sharing how you’re traveling your path. 💜