Amanda Kloots opens up about life as a single mom: 'Nobody sees you at home, the struggles, the balance that it takes'

Welcome to So Mini Ways, Yahoo Life's parenting series on the joys and challenges of childrearing.

Amanda Kloots — the television host, actress, fitness entrepreneur and author — became known to many when she began posting on Instagram about her husband Nick Cordero’s long battle with COVID. When 41-year-old Cordero, a Broadway star, died from complications of the virus in July 2020, Kloots suddenly and unexpectedly became a single parent to their 1-year-old son Elvis.

In the years since, Kloots has brought up Elvis on her own, along with the help of, as she refers to them, her village. In the process, she has prioritized keeping Cordero a central presence in her and Elvis’s daly lives, often through simple, little moments. “It's the things that come to me naturally, like we pack his lunch together in the morning and if I have carrots in the refrigerator, I put carrots in there and I go, ‘Who used to love carrots?’ And he goes, ‘Dada!’” Kloots shares with Yahoo Life. “We play Nick’s music a lot too and we have a lot of pictures of Nick up in the house. He’s always there. His presence is very profound.”

One of the ways Elvis and Kloots remember Cordero helped inspire The Talk co-host’s new children’s book Tell Me Your Dreams. The book, a trip through a little boy’s dreams, is based on their bedtime routine. “We would sing together and we would say a prayer, and then all of a sudden I just started saying to him, ‘Do you want me to tell you your dreams?’” Kloots shares of how their nightly practice started. She would then go about creating a story for Elvis to dream that night which, according to his interests, usually involved a trash truck. “While I was creating it I just instinctively was like, ‘and Dada is driving the trash truck,’” she says. “I always try to incorporate Nick into his life because obviously he doesn’t have any memories of Nick because he was such a baby. So I thought, this is a great way to not only incorporate Nick, but also to encourage Elvis to dream.”

“As a parent you do these things because it’s just instinctively what happens,” she adds of how this nightly practice entered their lives. “And then time changes and bedtime routine changes. I love that this book will always remind me of that time in our lives where Elvis and I were doing this every night.”

As anyone who follows Kloots on social media knows, she is contagiously optimistic but also incredibly honest, particularly about her grief and her sudden role as a single mom. “You find yourself in this unexpected place and it’s really tough,” she notes. “It’s important to fill your cup.”

When sharing advice for parents navigating a similar life change she offers, “Ask for help [and] have some great people in your corner that can give you a pat on the back as much as you need it, because that’s the other thing you don’t have: Nobody sees you at home, the struggles, the balance that it takes. You go to bed at night a lot of the time just really wishing there was someone there to pat you on the back — and that’s hard. So have somebody there, a girlfriend, a best friend, whoever, to give you that reminder once in a while. It’s really important.”

These days, with Elvis now almost 4, Kloots acknowledges they’re entering into a whole new mother and son phase. “I was just on vacation with my sister, and in years past I would have been — you know, single mom — like ‘Oh God, I really needed this.’ And this last time I was like, ‘I miss my boy! I wish I was here!’” she shares. “He and I are like buddies; we’re like best friends.”

That said, an almost 4-year-old also leads to a new world of challenges in daily parenting. “If I say a bad word, he hears it. If I treat somebody a certain way, he remembers,” she says. “He’s clocking, and he’s remembering, and it matters. I have to be the best version of myself.”

With the release of Tell Me Your Dreams, Kloots is also reflecting on the importance of dreaming in her own life as a mother and beyond. “I’m such a dreamer,” she says. “I’m such a believer in making your dreams come true, saying your dreams out loud and going for your dreams. It's how I've lived my life.”

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