Motherhood can be lonely—especially without a village. For actress Connie Britton, the realities of solo parenting hit hard after she adopted her son Eyob and took on a demanding role in Nashville, all while living in a city where she knew no one. The logistical and emotional load was immense, but so was the bond she built with her son.
In this episode of The Motherly Podcast, Britton joins Motherly co-founder Liz Tenety for a heartfelt conversation about identity, guilt, and finding community as a single mom. She also shares why she created The Motherhood, a new Hallmark reality series spotlighting the resilience of single moms—and the support they deserve.
Meet the expert:
Connie Britton is an Emmy-nominated actress, producer, and mom. Known for her iconic roles in Friday Night Lights, Nashville, and The White Lotus, Britton is now using her platform to champion real moms through The Motherhood, a new reality series focused on building community and restoring dignity for single mothers.
Liz Tenety: I always like to start by grounding us in your before and after motherhood journey. So a question is this, what surprised you about becoming a mother?
Connie Britton: You know, honestly for me, the biggest surprise about becoming a mother was how to budget my time.
Around having this other human, like, it’s sort of like you live your life and I became a mom at a slightly older age, sometimes relative to others. And so I had been living for a while making decisions, both big life decisions and also just my daily decisions, like, what am I gonna do today?
What can I get done? I’d been doing that a certain way for a really long time, and suddenly now you have this whole other human for whom you also have to make decisions. They have their own agenda and their own sets of needs that are completely different and independent of all of those things that you’ve been sort of using as parameters. For your whole life. So, that for me was one of the biggest shocks to the system.
Like the worst thing I could ever do was be late for work. Like, I would never be late for work. Suddenly it was so hard for me to not be late for work. I’m actually still very punctual. But it was so much more challenging. Suddenly it’s like, oh, I don’t know how to budget my time. I don’t know how to get out of the house in the morning and also, and take care of myself and also take care of this human.
It’s that thing that I remember so vividly when I first became a mom, which is I just don’t have space to do both things.
Liz Tenety: As an ambitious young journalist, I struggled after having my first child—juggling the logistics of baby care. It seemed absurd later, but the reorientation needed to happen. How did you shift from your accomplished career to focusing on your son’s needs? Was it a happy process, or was there grief in losing your autonomy?
Connie Britton: I think all of those things, for me it was a pretty specific experience, my example of this is I had just become a new mom. I adopted my son at nine months old. I had this brand new baby suddenly in my arms on my own. And so I am really figuring out what that is to be a mom.
And I was offered the role on the show, Nashville and I’d been making decisions my entire life for my career in a certain way. And so I was like, it’s like, it checked all these boxes. Like, oh, this is an exciting opportunity. And you know, I had moved to Austin, Texas for Friday Night Lights and like Nashville seems like a great place and like, what a wonderful experience to be able to be in the music scene in Nashville and work with these wonderful people.
And I didn’t know at that time how challenging it was going to be to go into a very ambitious job and role and be a brand new mother and have to leave my child at home every single day and have no support system. I had no support system in Nashville. I didn’t know anybody, so I had a nanny, which I was grateful for that privilege, but I also could not have done it without the nanny.
Liz Tenety: Let’s talk more about the show. I wanna talk about one theme in one of the episodes, this idea of getting your pink back. I know we’ve heard about that on social media as well. Again, so relatable. So what does that phrase mean? And I, I’m curious what it meant for you in your own motherhood journey.
Connie Britton: Well, where that idea comes from in our show is actually that flamingos when they have babies, they lose their pink because all those nutrients that create the pink go into feeding the babies, which I think is so incredible.
Like, it’s such a great metaphor, you know? ’cause it does sort of feel that way sometimes when we become moms. It’s sort of like we lose our pink because we’re putting so much of ourselves into this new baby. I think that’s probably relatable to any mom out there that the idea that because it is such an overwhelming change, the idea of like caring for this other human being, and the only thing we know is to put everything into that other human being.
Liz Tenety: I’ve heard experts say guilt can be helpful, pointing to misalignment. I’ve felt guilty for losing my temper with my kids, and that motivates change. But guilt about working? That often comes from societal narratives around motherhood. Sometimes, it signals a need for change, but other times it’s a harmful influence from motherhood culture.
Connie Britton:. I’m not gonna lie. Because truly it is. I learned a long time ago that for the most part, guilt, certainly making choices and living your life, directed by guilt is not healthy and creates a lot of codependency. But I think if you can, as you said, use guilt in the right way, which is to use it as an indicator like, I’m feeling guilty here and I know that that’s not a healthy state of being for me or for my child, then you can make an adjustment or you can see where an adjustment needs to be made, and that’s real.
And you know what, when you’re really experiencing serious mom guilt. Because I’m thinking about that for myself, that’s an act of bravery. Like to actually go against what that guilt is telling you and say, this is guilt, and I know inherently that that’s not healthy for me or for my child, so I’m gonna be brave and I’m gonna push past this.
Whatever this thing is, that’s telling me that I’m doing it wrong, that I’m not enough. That I don’t deserve. I’m going to push past those voices to whatever’s on the other side. That’s the healthier choice, and it will serve everybody in a better way. Right.
Liz Tenety: I’m curious if you’ve heard the term “aging.” Traditionally, human society was built around villages of kin, but modern American life has disrupted that. Your show models an act of aging—reminding us we’re not meant to raise children alone. How do you see this apply to women not on your show or not single moms?
Connie Britton: Well, first of all, I had not heard that term, but that’s exactly what the whole point of the show is. That’s exactly why I wanted to make the show. That’s why I do wanna create an organization that will become a resource for single moms and maybe even just all moms to come together and to know that they are in a community that reaches broadly. It was my experience.
I mean, a thousand percent. Like I could not have done, I could not be a parent if I hadn’t created a village and a community around myself. Community and love can really provide everything that we need as human beings in terms of everything from raising our children to knowing ourselves better, to making a healthy, happy world.
I love this term aging because I do think that’s what we’re, especially with, of course, the internet and social media and the way that we are communicating with each other now, which is so impersonal. No, nobody’s showing up. It’s a village of one.
Listen to the full episode with Connie Britton to hear more about her journey from iconic TV roles to real-life motherhood and the power of community—tune in to the Motherly podcast, available wherever you get your shows! 🎧