All the single ladies, listen up! With single women rapidly becoming the majority, it is high time to stop feeling singled out. This Singles Day, let’s celebrate our freedom and independence by sharing all those solo milestones that make us go: ‘You’ve got this!’.

There I was, wading knee-deep through my flooded kitchen in my YSL party dress (I had just had an audience with glamorous Queen Máxima). Wi-fi troubles, heavy furniture; a few years earlier I would have just yelled for my husband and presto! Problems magically solved. But now I was single, and I didn’t have a second to feel sorry for myself. Because right at that moment I saw my daughter’s arm getting sucked into the broken pipe! With a deafening roar I pulled her out, lifted a 35 kg vase and blocked the pipe with it. In my Charlotte Olympia heels, nonetheless! As I high-fived my daughter I realized: I got this.

“Freedom is nothing else but a chance to be better”, the French philosopher Albert Camus once said. When I found myself single a while ago, I wholeheartedly embraced that freedom. Traveling alone, taking up kickboxing and meditation, focusing on friendships, I actively pushed myself out of my comfort zone. I conquered my fear of being alone. It was awesome. It was empowering. But sometimes, it was just a little inconvenient. Like when I had to ask a complete stranger to zip up my dress. Or when I had to replace the battery in my loudly-beeping fire alarm, perched on a rickety ladder. How I related to Jane Fonda when she posted about having to sleep in her fancy gown when she couldn’t unzip it! “Never wanted a husband in my life until now,” she wrote. As if.

I love this period for women. I love that we’re embracing our careers and learning to take care of ourselves first before we jump into relationships. I love how we’re dismantling the stigma that has surrounded female singlehood for so long. But there are always setbacks. Dresses that refuse to unzip, spiders that fall into your coffee mug, cars that break down in the middle of nowhere. Situations both slapstick-funny and infuriatingly frustrating. This Singles Day, let’s share and celebrate these moments. Let’s laugh together. Because as I learned in my flooded kitchen that night, once you tap into your inner strength, solo challenges become solo milestones. The final, empowering steps towards true freedom. Happy Singles Day! We’ve got this!