We all love to laugh along with Katherine Ryan, but it was no laughing matter as the mother-of-three recently explained that her motherhood journey came with overcoming the "shame" of raising a child on her own. While she is now happily loved-up with her childhood sweetheart Bobby Kootstra, with who she shares two young children, Fred and Fenna, she raised her twelve-year-old daughter by herself following her split from her ex-husband, which greatly impacted her confidence in her career. "When I came to this country, I was a young single mother. I did feel shame about that - the narrative was I was damaged goods," she told Glamour Magazine. "Everyone was like, 'why did he leave you?' And I was like, 'because I asked him to'. Soon I started feeling good about myself and enjoying the privilege that it was to have that time with my daughter and be a single mother to my daughter."
She also told Stylist in 2020: "It was really important to show that single motherhood was nothing to be ashamed of. When I was raising my daughter, it certainly wasn't an aspect of my life that I disparaged or made me less attractive or less valuable. It's something that is actually a lot easier, in many ways, than having a man around."