Single Parenting

Apparently no one ever told Randi Anderson that single moms can’t do it all. In between raising her two-year-old son by herself, starting a new job, and completing her Master’s in Public Administration, 34-year-old Randi Anderson has spearheaded a national non-profit for single moms called Single2Mother.

Single2Mother is a result of no sleep,” Anderson says half-jokingly about her Seattle, WA-based organization.

I ask her how she possibly does it all.

“I don’t know!” says Anderson, who also works part-time with Sound Families, an initiative of the Gates Foundation, as a grants and contracts specialist. “I’m just as amazed as anyone else.”

Like me, Anderson is a solo mom. She has been on her own since the day she drove herself to the hospital and gave birth to her son, Markai.

His father has never met him. “He is, however, paying child support through garnished wages,” Anderson says.

I’m not the only one who’s impressed by this go-getter.

This winter, Anderson and Single2Mother will be recognized by NPower Seattle, an organization dedicated to helping other nonprofits use technology effectively and creatively, as a runner up for its annual “Innovation Award.”

NPower recognizes Anderson for tapping into no-cost/low-cost resources for single moms nationwide, such as using Craigslist for outreach, and Evite as a fundraising tool to organize monthly potlucks and playgroups.

“Single2Mother has created a new community for marginalized single mothers for whom there was previously no existing support structure,” NPower states on its website. To date, there are more than 300 members online.

For Anderson, her “new community” involves planning monthly potlucks and playgroups, as well as facilitating an online dialogue about every issue single moms face, from “How do you deal with stress?” to “How do we explain our family situation to our children?”

Single2Mother is made up of “single moms from all walks of life” who are “creating the best lives for themselves and their families, while facing challenges they’d never anticipated,” Anderson says. “Dreams are being recreated.”

Anderson is certainly recreating hers.

Raised by a single mom in Montana “who fought depression and was quite absent — either at work or sleeping,” Anderson says that her son “deserves a mother who is proud of herself — and of him.”

“Giving single mothers an opportunity to connect and empower one another to succeed in positive parenting, personal success, and life balance, will make a difference for themselves, for their children, for their families, and for society as a whole,” she adds.

As a single mother in a leadership position, Anderson feels her most important role is to help other single moms get over the shame they feel about raising their children alone. She says the stigma toward single mothers is “outdated” and based on “ignorance and a lack of understanding.”

Last year on Mother’s Day, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer profiled Anderson in an article called, “Seattle’s Single Moms Find Strength in One Another.” It was a tribute to all the work she’s doing — and certainly an inspiration to me.

“I’m aware that how I feel and how I deal with my situation has a strong effect on my son and my family,” Anderson says. “I’m the one who took responsibility in a situation where two people should have taken responsibility — and for that, I should be proud.”

Proud indeed.