Adrienne and Lorelei

Adrienne Rumley never planned on becoming a single mother. Her journey started out as a surprise pregnancy from a boyfriend she'd been dating for barely four months. When she told him about it, he offered to pay for an abortion. But she had always wanted to have a baby. And Adrienne, at 35, felt she didn't have time to wait for a picture-perfect husband. She told him she was keeping her baby. He responded by hanging up on her and has been absent from their lives since.

The years before that had been hard ones. Burned out during the pandemic, she had quit her job as an assistant at a veterinary clinic. Then she lost her apartment. She was working part time and living in a shed at the wildlife center that employed her.

But the pregnancy changed the calculus of Adrienne's life.

Adrienne desperately wanted to chart a new course for her life. She started by naming her daughter Lorelei after the iconic single mom of the 2000s show Gilmore Girls. She went back to an old hobby, running. Soon she was running with Lorelei in the stroller, first a mile, then 5K and 10K. She recently moved up in her career, landing a new job as an assistant manager at a vet's clinic. She now earns $45,000, and she got her own apartment. She doesn't qualify for food benefits anymore. These days, Adrienne is building a new community for herself and Lorelei. She joined a running club and is training for a marathon. She's made new friends at work and around town, other moms with whom she swaps playdates and babysitting duties in a pinch.

She acknowledges that raising a child alone isn't easy. There isn't a second income to help pay the bills, or another pair of hands to pitch in with the housework. "I have got her 100% every single day," she says of Lorelei. "And there's very little wiggle room for that."

And on any given day, she often remembers the moment just after Lorelei was born, when they first locked eyes: "That was the moment that I knew we were about to have one hell of a life together."

Text by Pallavi Gogoi and Janet Lee, for NPR. Read the full story here.