If Nancy Hartling had to sum up the hardest thing about being a single parent, what jumps out is "feeling isolated, alone." And that's true for whether your 25 or 55. It's also true whether you made a conscious choice to change your life's circumstances to be a single mother, or whether your aloneness was foisted on you.

Nancy has a good understanding of the situation. She experienced it personally, and also professional, as the founder and executive director of Support To Single Parents Inc. in Moncton.

As that organization prepares to celebrate its 25th anniversary this fall, Nancy is interested in gathering the personal stories from both the parent's and children's perspective of what life in a single-parent family is like. She hopes to gather them together for a special anniversary celebration.

To encourage people to participate in telling their family histories, the Times & Transcript has partnered with Support to Single Parents to launch a Tell Us About Your Single Parent Family contest. Every reader who submits a story will have their name entered in a draw to win one of two prizes: a $50 gift certificate for Esthetics/Massage from Rejuvenate, 306 Pine Glen Rd., Riverview (from owners Anne Lounder and Shelley Hartin), or a $25 movie pass donated by Brown Law Office in Moncton.

"The most important thing every single parent has to learn is that they are not alone," says Nancy, and that is something that prompted her a quarter of a century ago to start her organization.

"I was looking to do some work that I could feel passionate about and I was lucky to hear about a group in Edmonton that did this kind of service. So I cashed in my life insurance policy to get the money to fly to Alberta, and I studied how this group called Terra was dealing with single mothers and helping them to get an education."

It gave her a vision of what was really needed to help people turn their lives around.

"I knew right from the start that education was the step to self-sufficiency," she said. She saw in Alberta how single mothers were asking for help in very basic skills, like learning to drive or how to obtain child care in their community.

"It gave me a vision," Nancy says of her western trip. "I came back and interviewed about 50 single parents here about their needs. Gary MacAuley was the Moncton MP at that time, and he helped me to get a grant and get started."

At the same time, Nancy started to practice what she would ultimately advise. She already had a background in family services work, but she started on getting her degree in social work.

Her first degree was a Bachelor in Women's Studies and Adult Education which she studied for by distance education from Vermont. Later she obtained her Masters of Adult Education from St. Francis Xavier University.

Six months after her return from Alberta, Nancy had completed her research and started getting a board of directors together. She had no money, but she stuck with it.

In the early days, Family and Community Services and the Greater Moncton United Way were main supporters. She also worked hard to raise funds from a variety of other sources.

She said the change of name from Support for Single Mothers to Support for Single Parents came in the early 1990s when Anne Leslie was president.

"We saw that both men and women went through the same essential experiences as single parents and we wanted to broaden our perspective to help all single parents deal with the social isolation and have access to the resources they needed." Such programs as self-esteem and assertiveness are always full.

For the full 25 years of its existence, Support to Single Parents has done essential work in helping families survive rough times, but they in turn have always had their own struggle, to keep finding money to survive.

Nancy said there have been many times when board members would tell her they feel like inmates on death row because they don't know where their future will come from and it's hard to plan if you don't have money.

But Nancy has always been resourceful, inspired by a frugal grandmother who taught her about "patched income." That's the way Nancy describes her ability to find a bit here, a bit there to keep things going.

Besides directly helping single parents, Nancy campaigns in the community for openness and acceptance of different family lifestyles.

"A lot of single parents feel a bit of attitude when people find out they are divorced or separated. Communities need to understand that people don't go into relationships thinking they are going to fail; they go into them believing they can make them work. Community support is very important to all our families. We have to be able to say to single parents, we know this is difficult, but you are not alone. You're going to make it."

In the future, Nancy hopes her organization will be able to work in partnership with other like-minded groups to help meet social needs in the community.

"Groups trying to help people can't be territorial," she says. "We have to share resources and spread what we have as far as possible."

Your stories of being a single parent or being raised by a single parents can be sent to Times & Transcript Single Parents Contest, 939 Main St., Moncton, N.B., E1B 3E6, or after March 10, online at timestranscript.com. Deadline for submissions is March 26.