S5E0 - Happy Holidays: Gratitude, Growth, and What’s Coming in 2026

[00:00:04] Speaker A: Welcome to Start to Finish Motherhood, a. [00:00:06] Speaker B: Podcast for those thinking or already single mothers by choice. [00:00:10] Speaker A: Just looking for practical advice for navigating life's relationships. When you decide to have children on your own, it doesn't mean that you're completely alone. I'm Aisha Jenkins and I'm partnering with you every step of your journey. [00:00:26] Speaker B: So hi everyone. Well, a lot has happened in 2025 and I've been heads down at work, in my professional life, in my podcasting life, in my parenting life. But I wanted to pop my head in and say I know that this year has been a lot. It's been hell on wheels and I have no idea what the future holds, but I am glad that you and I made it to this point in the year. I wish you all a happy and peaceful holiday season, from my family to yours. And while I can't give you all gifts to express my sincere gratitude. As a thank you, I want to let you know that there will be a season five of the podcast, so be sure to follow the Start to Finish Motherhood socials for the first few episodes. And yay. I'm so excited. So in preparation for the new season, I wanted to where did I leave off? Okay, so at the end of season four, I did promise a longer hiatus as I figured out what the next chapters were going to be in my life because I was pivoting my career and I had been looking at government opportunities and those all fel through. And then I shifted into becoming a technical consultant and I was also considering what more I needed to say about parenting as a single mother by choice. And since my children are getting older and I wanted to honor their privacy, I wanted to take a step back and consider what more I wanted to say, what more I needed to say. I am so happy to say that the time time off served me well, allowed me space to clear my head. I now have a vision for the future direction of the podcast and my life and more on that to come in future seasons. As some of you might know, I had an earlier co hosted podcast that ended in disarray, leading to an expensive intellectual property dispute where toward the end I just decided that I'm just going to carve out my own independent voice, my own ideas. And since most of the podcast was based on relationships that I had established as I was getting started on my Single Mother by Choice journey, I took those relationships with me and I just moved on. And so the result was me creating the heavily edited Black Single Mothers by Choice podcast to house my earlier creative work until I figured out what I wanted to do with it. And so that podcast is doing its own thing, but what I decided during my hiatus. So I went back and listened to all four seasons of the podcast and it's really good. Even as a single voice with my guests, it's still, still very good. The information is still valid and important and it really reflected the early years of my parenting and my thoughts as a new parent entering the world. And I realized that it might be interesting to go back to those earlier episodes and provide some updates to my thoughts, some update to any of the stats, some updates to where I currently am in life. As I'm looking back on my earlier self, what I ended up doing was going back and updating each of those episodes. And then the second thing that I wanted to do was I wanted to bring my full body of creative work together. Housed under the Start to Finish Motherhood banner where it belongs, this has always been a space where I wanted to honor my journey as a single mother by choice and to bring some of my most trusted friends along for the ride and to share their insights. My work and my stories have evolved. My friendships, my relationships, they have all evolved too. My children, you know, they're growing up and so that. Look back at my earlier episodes, I'm calling them the Throwback seasons. They stand as a reminder of how lucky I am to be surrounded by love, to be surrounded by trust, to be living the life I dreamed of having and then having all of you here to share this experience with me. It has been. I mean, words cannot express. So thank you all. Take this time and enjoy it with your family and loved ones. And I wish you all a peaceful, joyous and wonderful new year and until 2026 with the drop of the new season. Bye now. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Thanks for listening. To Start to Finish Motherhood with Aisha. If you want to keep the conversation going, follow Start to Finish Motherhood on Instagram or email [email protected] if you love this episode, please share it with anyone who's thinking of becoming a single mother by choice. Anyone who's already parenting as a single mother by choice and just looking for advice on navigating it all, or a friend or family member who's looking to support someone else's single mother by Choice journey. Until next time. Bye now.