Ruby never really tried to end up as a single mother. Like so many women, her story kinda slips past the spotlight, and she ended up in it because of circumstances she never picked at all : assault, abandonment, betrayal. What she built afterward, quietly and without any kind of cheering, becomes something of a map for what real fortitude actually looks like.
That moment, the one decision everything shifted around
Ruby’s turning point happened when she was pushed to terminate the pregnancy and she wouldn’t. “It wasn’t part of what I believe in,” she tells it, as plainly as she can. Right there she made peace with a tough fact, she would raise her child alone, and she would still try her best. That choice, made in a kind of isolation, turned into the base everything else grew from.
Her road into motherhood was not at all smooth. Ruby first got pregnant when she was still very young, and it came after she was raped, before she even understood what was happening to her body. Later, years down the line, in another relationship, she faced a pregnancy scare that tested her faith in a way nothing else did. She bled for seven days and doctors thought she’d miscarried. Then an ultrasound proved it wasn’t over. When she told her child’s father the pregnancy was continuing, he said she was being selfish, and he went further, warning her the baby would arrive with disabilities. Ruby refused to accept that future. She prayed, she spoke life over her unborn child, and she chose faith instead of fear. In the end, her son was born healthy.
“I felt ready,” she says about that time, “even if in that moment I was abandoned it didn’t matter much to me, because I knew God was going to be with me.”
What Society Gets Wrong About Single Mothers
Ruby is candid about the judgment she faced, including from institutions meant to offer grace. She recalls being passed over for marriage by a man who told her, plainly, that the church would not accept a woman who had children outside of wedlock, even as he admitted she was a better match than his former wife. That experience pushed her away from organized religion altogether, though not away from her personal relationship with God.
Her message to a society quick to label single mothers by what they lack is direct: most women do not choose this path. “A woman does not just become a single mother,” she says. “Circumstances happen.” She wants people, especially within faith communities, to understand that judgment rarely accounts for the reality behind the label. Women are too often written off as unworthy of love or opportunity because of situations that were never within their control.
Raising a Leader, One Choice at a Time
If there is a throughline in Ruby’s parenting, it is intention. She describes shifting away from an authoritative style toward one built on partnership and listening. She and her son made decisions together. She encouraged him to read constantly, and by the time he was five or six, he had developed an independence that carried him through the rest of his life.
More than any single lesson, Ruby focused on living a life her son could be proud of. She made a conscious choice never to expose him to instability, chaos, or a revolving door of relationships. “I want you to be the man tomorrow that your father will look behind and say, I wish I had done things different,” she told him. That standard shaped her own daily choices as much as his.
The results speak for themselves. Ruby’s son grew into someone his friends describe with real admiration, a young man his mother calls disciplined and compassionate. During his school years, he wrote about her often, drawn to the example she had quietly set. She has gone nearly seven years without dating, a choice rooted entirely in protecting the environment she was building for her children.
Ruby is pretty firm on one rule, she thinks every parent should live by: don’t talk negatively about the other parent in front of the child. Whatever happened during the relationship, she says, is for the adults to handle. The kids deserve a real chance to build their own relationships with both parents, without carrying, like a quiet inheritance, the resentment that adults never really let go of.
Faith, Forgiveness, and Moving Forward
Faith stays as the backbone of Ruby’s resilience. Even after stepping away from formal church life, she said she still made a personal relationship with God, and it’s one she describes as trust based, not ritual driven. When the hard stuff showed up, she decided to believe it had a purpose, even if she could not yet see how that would play out.
Forgiveness became as essential to her recovery as faith itself. “I had to forgive so I can smile,” she says, “Because without forgiving I could not have found healing.” And that choice didn’t stop at people who were easier to forgive. She extends it even to the ones who hurt her the most, crediting that decision with helping her move forward instead of staying tied to her pain, like it was an anchor.
Her Message to Other Mothers
To other mothers who worry that their situation will shrink their children’s futures, Ruby offers a kind of hard-won clarity. She believes that staying in something harmful does more damage to a child than stepping away from it. In her view, single mothers are in a special place to teach compassion and love, not just despite what they’ve been through, but sometimes because of the resilience those moments demanded.
Ruby’s story is not one of perfect circumstances or easy choices. It is one of a woman who refused to let abandonment, abuse, and judgment write the ending to her story, or her son’s. She built a life of quiet discipline and unwavering faith, and in doing so, raised a leader the world is only beginning to notice.
As Ruby puts it, looking back on the life she built alone: “She did it for me.” Her son knows it. Now, so does everyone else.
Discover Abandoned But Not Defeated, Ruby S. Toussaint’s inspiring story of motherhood, faith, resilience, and overcoming life’s greatest challenges. A powerful reminder that abandonment does not mean defeat. Published by one of New York’s finest, Trinity Publishing Press.
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