Sammy Hibbard-Daniels, a 38-year-old business director from London, is challenging societal norms by embracing intentional single life. She says she is happier now than when she was in a relationship and wants to inspire others to pursue what truly fulfils them.
Choosing single life after decades of convention
Sammy admits she spent much of her twenties "blindly" pursuing the conventional route of finding a partner, getting married, and starting a family. However, in her thirties, she made a conscious decision to embrace single life and "decentre" the expectations she believes society imposed on her.
She now prioritises friendships, travel, her career, and her wellbeing. This year, she attended Boomtown festival on her own and has plans for another solo adventure over the Christmas and New Year period.
Redefining 'having it all'
Sammy explains: "I think for me having it all means having the options to create a life I want for myself. Being the age I am now, being single and not having children has given me time to stop and evaluate, 'what do I want from life?' and 'what does make me happy?' And decentring things society told me I should be focusing on instead of focusing on friendships, travel, my career, my health."
She added: "And being able to give proper time to those things made me far happier than I ever experienced in pursuit of finding a partner and following the traditional trajectory for myself. Lots of people hold traditional values and that's great for them. People say I'm gaslighting myself or that it's all just for show on social media and actually I'm just kidding myself and I can't be happy. I want people to see it is possible to be single and happy and see that's not not a possibility."
Freedom and spontaneity
Sammy highlights that being single and child-free allows her to be more spontaneous and spend money differently. "Of course not having children, not having a partner allows me to be more spontaneous and spend my money in different ways. I can travel, go to festivals and it enables me to do things by myself and do things solo - things I might not have been able to do otherwise," she said.
She reflected on a past relationship where work schedules differed, preventing holidays together. "It took me being single to realise you can do things like go on holiday by yourself and actually really enjoy them. Now I try and fill my life with more of those things. I went to Boomtown festival by myself last year solo and I loved it, I made loads of friends."
Inspiring others and a family role model
Sharing her uplifting single lifestyle on social media, Sammy has connected with women across all age groups navigating singledom for the first time. "There's such a unanimous feeling of optimism and hope. I think there's again comments from people who aren't in that situation who say 'Sammy can't possibly be telling the truth' and 'surely she must be miserable' and 'it's all just a front'. I'm not living life to prove them right or wrong, I'm just living my life to have a great time," she said.
Sammy credits her mother, Siobhan Daniels, 67, as an inspiration. "She's single in her late sixties and she lives an incredible solo life out on the road in her motorhome. She's set an inspirational path for me to follow of how fun independent life can be."
She added: "I'd love for people to feel inspired. Even women in relationships I would love for them to read something like this see they actually can have independence and do things for themselves. I've been in a relationship that was very co-dependant and it took being single to learn this."
Sammy can be followed on Instagram and TikTok @samsiekate.
