Maybe you're on the toilet right now.
The only room in the house where nobody asks anything of you. Thirty seconds stolen between two emergencies.
Or maybe you're staring at the mountain of clean laundry on the sofa. You've been staring at it for three days. It's staring back.
Or maybe you just put your child to bed after an exhausting battle, and now you're looking at the living room floor. Toys everywhere. A half-finished puzzle. The juice glass you wiped up with a sock because you didn't have the strength to go get a sponge.
Or maybe you're eating standing over the sink, finishing the leftovers from your child's dinner because you forgot to make something for yourself. Again.
Or maybe you have 47 unread messages in the school WhatsApp group. You know. You don't have the strength to open it.
Or maybe you're signing a permission slip at 11pm that was due yesterday. Hoping nobody notices the date.
Or maybe you were on a video call earlier, smiling, professional, camera framed just high enough so nobody could see the chaos behind you.
Or maybe tonight your friends texted you at 7pm. "We're going out, coming?" And you looked at your phone, then your child, then your phone again. You needed that evening so much. To laugh. To just be you, not mum. But there was nobody to call. So you typed "ah sorry can't tonight" with a little smiley emoji. And you put your phone down. And you stayed there.
Or maybe your child has finally fallen asleep and you, exhausted but unable to sleep, collapsed on the sofa. You're scrolling through your phone without really looking. You have no energy for anything but you can't put the screen down either. You scroll. You scroll again. Until your eyes close on their own.
Or maybe you're on the metro, standing, bag too heavy, reading this between two stops because it's the only moment of the day when nobody talks to you.
Or maybe you just saw a post that made you think "that's exactly it" and you clicked without really knowing why.
Wherever you are.
If you're reading these words, something brought you here. Curiosity maybe. Exhaustion certainly. Or that small voice saying there must be something else.
You're in the right place. And you are not alone.
Meanwhile, there are dozens of apps for women to meet after work for drinks. To network. To make friends as singles. That's great. Really.
But us, single mothers, the ones who could bring each other something concrete and precious, the ones whose mutual support could literally change a day, a week, a life, we have almost nothing. No verified space. No place of trust. Just Facebook groups where nobody really knows each other.
Why do women without children have their friendship apps and we figure it out alone?
MAMAMI exists to answer that question.
My name is Zeynep. I'm a single mother, Turkish, living in Paris for several years. And I could tell you my story in a clean and organised way. But that wouldn't be honest.
So here's the truth.
I arrived in France with my family, full of hope. Within months, I lost my job. Then my marriage ended.
Loneliness doesn't always look like what you imagine. It's not necessarily crying in the dark. It's cooking too much and having nobody to give the extra plate to. It's looking for someone you trust to watch your child for two hours, and realising the options are either too expensive or too cold. It's being surrounded by people and still feeling invisible.
My son saved me, without knowing it. Through him I met other parents at his school. By chance I found my best friend, a mother of a one-year-old boy. Her son doesn't understand my language yet. But he knows I'm there. He calls me "tata". Because warmth, the intention to help, kindness: these don't need translation. They are felt. That bond didn't come from an app. It came from a door we dared to open.
But for every door I managed to open, I know there are a hundred still closed. Women who tonight are managing everything alone, without complaining, without asking. Not because they don't need help. Because they don't yet know that help exists.
A mother's exhaustion looks the same in Paris, in Istanbul, in every city you have never visited, whose name you don't even know, but where a mother tonight is doing exactly the same thing as you. We don't need to speak the same language to understand each other. We just need to see each other.
It takes a village to raise a child. But that village cannot be built by an app alone. It's built by truly meeting each other. By trusting each other. By reaching out a hand before you desperately need one.
MAMAMI is your village. Verified, local, human.
If you too are carrying too much, you are welcome here.
Zeynep, founder of MAMAMI