Christmas as a Single Mum: Holding the Love and the Grief

The holiday season can be beautiful — and brutal — especially when you’re a single parent.

In this end-of-year episode of Now What, Rachel speaks directly to the quiet, complicated realities that so many single mums carry through the festive period. The grief of waking up without your children on Christmas morning. The sting of moments you assumed were guaranteed. The comparison traps — to the other parent, to two-parent households, to families with bigger budgets, bigger holidays, bigger support systems.

This conversation is an honest acknowledgement that Christmas doesn’t magically become easier just because time has passed. Whether it’s your first Christmas post-separation or your fifth, the feelings can still surface — and that doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong.

Rachel explores how to hold both love and grief at the same time, how to release the pressure to “replicate” old traditions, and how to gently redefine what this season can look like now. She reminds us that children don’t care about dates on a calendar — they care about how they feel, how loved they are, and the moments we create with intention.

This episode also speaks to the mums spending Christmas without their kids, offering permission to take up space, to create rituals that soothe rather than distract, and to honour your own experience without shame or self-blame.

It’s a conversation about comparison being the thief of joy, about letting go of perfection, about creating magic within the reality you’re in — not the one you imagined. And about choosing, again and again, to feel the feelings without getting stuck in them.

If this season feels tender, heavy, or quietly lonely — this episode is for you. You are not broken for finding it hard. You are human.

Rachel closes the year with reflection, compassion, and a reminder that you get to decide what comes next.

Wishing you a gentle, intentional holiday period — however it looks for you.

Now What will be back in your ears in January 2026.

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