BATON ROUGE - The Life of a Single Mom organization is using funds from a national grant to support single moms. 

Nicole Rosas joined The Life of a Single Mom about 10 years ago. 

“I thought it was just a bunch of single moms, like bashing their exes, but, then, I attended and realized that it was so much more than that,” Rosas said. 

She started attending one of the organization’s weekly support groups. 

It gave her one evening a week to focus on improving herself.

“It wasn’t until a couple of meetings, and, then, I was like, ‘okay, I’m not okay,’” Rosas said. 

With support from the organization, she transformed her and her son’s lives. 

“I was in a bad place when I attended single moms,” she said. “I guess I had built myself up and put Band-Aids on myself, but they healed me…It was just knowing that I wasn't alone.”

Single moms are not alone. Eighty-five percent of single parents are women.

“I was married for 24 years and went through a devastating divorce and really thought I wouldn't survive,” The Life of a Single Mom programs manager Crystal Thibodeaux said. “When I walked in, I was just greeted with women who were in various stages of single momhood and had been successful.”

The success of the single-moms group is not going unnoticed. 

A former single mother nominated the organization for a national grant. The American Land Title Association Good Deeds Foundation awarded grants nationwide to 20 organizations that have impacted their community.

The Life of a Single Mom received a grant for $6,000. Thibodeaux said the money will be distributed to many parts of the organization, including support-group training. 

“Support groups are of paramount importance to a single mom,” she said. “That is the first thing that we want single moms to know is that you're not going to walk alone.”

The grant will also go toward providing more financial support for moms that want to enroll in Single Mom University.

“It's an online platform with over 100 classes for just single moms,” Thibodeaux said. “Classes are in the areas of parenting and finance, health and wellness.”

The main focus of the grant is to support single moms so that more moms like Rosas can focus on what really matters.

“Just thinking about where we would be without this program, if things would be different and how weird our life would be,” Rosas said. 

Rosas retired from the program about two years ago when she got married, but she now works as the organization’s project assistant in hopes of inspiring and supporting single moms in the community.