Wonder Woman: "I am a single mother with five foster kids."

Alicia never thought she’d be a single mum. But through a twist of fate and a whole lot of luck, she ended up being a single mum to five extremely lucky kids.

“I never wanted to be a single mom with kids,” American mum, Alicia, wrote for a post in the Facebook group Humans of Foster Care. “Never in a million years would I have thought I would end up being a single mom with FIVE kids. FOUR of those being BOYS! But this is the path I am on at the moment.”

“Never in a million years would I have thought I would end up being a single mom with FIVE kids. FOUR of those being BOYS! But this is the path I am on at the moment.”

Alicia’s fifth foster child came to her soon after her divorce causing many people to think that she had everything together and was very strong, but she says the opposite was true.

“At the time, my house was (and is still) a mess, I had a newborn baby girl, two toddlers (I call Thing 1 and Thing 2 because they act like them), and I work full-time,” she explained. But when she met her future fifth child at church one morning she knew he was suppose to join her family.

He was attending church with his siblings the morning she met him but due to unnamed circumstances, he hadn’t been allowed to live with them. Alicia explains that “he had been living at the shelter for almost a year.” But despite his issues, Alicia says she saw that she “could tell he just needed a family to help him heal.”

So, she says she decided, “Why not? What’s one more boy?” and took him in.

Listen: How this mother of five pulled her kids out of poverty. (Post continues after audio.)

“Deciding to get a 5th does not mean life was good or easy by any means, just that I knew that my messy life was a great life for this kid stuck at the shelter,” she explains.

“And since I know that God can use my life for good even during storms, my house was exactly what this child needed to heal. All he needed was a single mom, lots of siblings, rules, and a little chaos with love.”

In a second post, Alicia is asked to give advice to other single people/parents thinking about fostering a child.

Beyond a very useful tip for turning the clocks ahead an hour so the kids go to bed earlier, and making sure you have a good support system of friends in your life, Alicia advises parents to try and ignore what people say around them, whether it’s good or bad.

“People always say to me ‘I don’t know how you do it’, with good intentions, trying to be nice, but I heard it so much that it started becoming a negative thought,” Alicia explains. “I started thinking ‘If no one knows how I am doing this, how AM I actually doing it’ and I started doubting myself and what I am capable of.”

“I started thinking ‘If no one knows how I am doing this, how AM I actually doing it’ and I started doubting myself and what I am capable of.”

Alicia advises that if you know in your heart you are supposed to do something in your life, “don’t let the norm run you away from it.”

“Trust me,” she explains, “nothing about my life is normal even though I wish it was.”

Well, thankfully it isn’t, because all five of her children have a happy, healthy home.