The Great Canadian Single Mothers' Website

Hey! Shameless Plug!

2010-06-24T14:28:00.000-07:00

My friend Sandy Chalkoun just got her book published! Here it is! Go look for it! It could help you a lot. I (amateurish 'editor' that I am) read it over many times for her and it helped me a lot! It's one of those books that can get you up out of your chair and set you on a better course. And that is a gift.

Early Mornng Companion

2010-06-08T17:54:00.000-07:00

She is tossed by the waves but is not sunk.

- Motto of the city of Paris

Early Morning Companion

2010-05-25T07:29:00.000-07:00

... between Austria and Italy, there is a section of the Alps called the Semmering. It is an impossibly steep, very high part of the mountains. They built a train track over these Alps to connect Vienna and Venice. They built these tracks even before there was a train in existence that could make the trip. They built it because they knew some day, the train would come.

from Under The Tuscan Sun
directed by Audrey Wells
Buena Vista Pictures, 2003

Early Morning Companion

2010-05-12T18:47:00.000-07:00

If no one else will hold you, hold yourself.

from the play Through the Night by Daniel Beaty

Happy Mother's Day!

2010-05-09T00:00:00.000-07:00

Happy he with such a mother!
Faith in womankind beats with his blood, and trust in all things high comes easy to him

from The Princess by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Early Morning Companion

2010-05-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

When I met my husband, and when I started dating him, it was pretty effortless and a lot of fun. I was completely incompatible with everyone I had experienced before. I sweated out these dates, thinking, Am I doing something wrong? Is it me? Should I be dressed differently? Should I be funnier? Should I be telling less jokes? Drinking less? And actually these feelings are very often because you're not meant to be there at all.

Shane Watson, London Sunday Times columnist, author of How to Meet a Man After Forty And Other Midlife Dilemmas Solved, in in interview for TIME published online June 16, 2009.

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

Though fairy tales end after ten pages, our lives do not. We are multivolume sets. In our lives, even though one episode amounts to a crash and burn, there is always another episode awaiting us and then another. There are always more opportunities to get it right, to fashion our lives in the ways we deserve to have them. Don't waste your time hating a failure. Failure is a greater teacher than success.

From Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estes 1992; Ballantine Books; New York

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-22T13:28:00.000-07:00

Enjoy when you can, and endure when you must.

Johann von Goethe, German poet
1749-1832

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

... get out there and do things girl. Make people nervous and make your old aunt glad.

from Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison; 1992; as quoted in The Quotable Woman: The First 5000 Years; Checkmark Books; New York; 2001

Jane Avril by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
National Gallery of Art; Washington, D.C.

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-10T07:05:00.000-07:00

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran; Alfred A. Knopf; New York; 1985

Portrait of a Young Woman by Vermeer; Courtesy Web Gallery of Art

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-10T00:07:00.000-07:00

My mother had been a young nurse in World War I in France. She had seen a lot of horrors and came away shaken. When I was born she was divorced. She brought me up totally by herself. Her energy was phenomenal. It must have been terribly hard. Divorce was still a disgrace in those days. A lot of friends and family distanced themselves from her. My heart went out to her even when I was barely conscious of it. She wasn't a possessive or corrective mother. She let me be free. She let me form my own personality.

Christopher Plummer; Canadian actor; Readers Digest Canada; 2002; Courtesy The Christopher Plummer Unofficial Fan Page

Library of Congress photo

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-10T00:00:00.000-07:00

The worst has happened ... it's rather liberating.

from The Crocodile Bird by Ruth Rendell; 1993; as quoted in The Quotable Woman: The First 5000 Years; Checkmark Books; New York; 2001

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

Well had Solomon said, "Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred within."

from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte; Bantam Classic Edition; New York; 1981

Portrait of Charlotte Bronte

courtesy Utopia Project

U. of Texas

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:18:00.000-07:00

Only thought stands in our way of attaining what we want in life. We can have what we think we deserve, and what we believe we can have. Conversely, if we are convinced we shouldn't have, or are unworthy of getting, what we want, we will put whatever we need in our path to prevent our becoming successful.

from Prospering Woman by Ruth Ross; Bantam Books; Toronto; 1982

Image courtesy LOC

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

Why has no one told me these things?

from A Grief Observed by C. S. Lewis; Walker and Co.; New York; 1984

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:12:00.000-07:00

I danced alone for a couple of years, and came to believe that I might not ever have a passionate romantic relationship - might end up alone! I'd always been terrified of this. But I'd rather not ever be in a couple, or ever get laid again, than be in a toxic relationship. I spent a few years celibate. It was lovely, and it was sometimes lonely. I had surrendered; I'd run out of bullets. I learned to be the person I wished I'd meet, at which point I found a kind, artistic, handsome man. When we get out of bed, we hold our lower backs, like Walter Brennan, and we laugh, and bring each other the Advil.

from Plan B - Further Thoughts On Faith by single mother Anne Lamott; Riverhead Books; New York; 2005

Image courtesy LOC

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:10:00.000-07:00

A wound will never disappear, but it will fade and become part of a beloved body, a laugh line perhaps or a visible reminder of pain long gone.

from Blue Windows: A Christian Science Childhood by Barbara Wilson; 1997; as quoted in The Quotable Woman: The First 5000 Years; Checkmark Books; New York; 2001

Woman Looking Up by Matthias Grunewald; Courtesy Web Gallery of Art

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:07:00.000-07:00

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit at home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

Dale Carnegie; as quoted in Face Your Fear by Shmuley Boteach; St. Martin's Press; New York; 2004

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:04:00.001-07:00

Don't let the bastards grind you down.

from Acrobat by U2

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:04:00.000-07:00

...Once a woman no longer sees her life as a series of punishing choices and crippling contradictions, she is free to inhabit it fully.

from Cutting Loose by Ashton Applewhite; Harper Collins; New York; 1997

Venus Between Terminal Gods
by Aubrey Beardsley

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-09T07:02:00.000-07:00

No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

Eleanor Roosevelt
1884-1962

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

Ironically, children who grow up in well-to-do homes often remain unaware of the depth of their own resources ... These youngsters may be the truly handicapped. Parents who expose children to early risk, by introducing a series of graduated sink-or-swim situations, can actually help a child to develop that most precious of attributes - the victorious personality.

from Spirit of Survival by Gail Sheehy; Bantam Books; Toronto; 1987; Image courtesy LOC

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-05T17:58:00.000-07:00

Rest, if you must, but don't you quit.

from Don't Quit; Anonymous

(No one seems to know who wrote this decent motivational rant but you can click here for some humorous stories about the many who claim to have written it, along with one of many versions of the full poem.)

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

I don't have any idea what I will tell Sam when he is old enough to ask about his father. I'll say that everybody doesn't have something and he doesn't have this one thing, but that we have each other and that is a lot.

from Operating Instructions by Anne Lamott; Pantheon Books; San Francisco; 1993

Early Morning Companion

2010-04-03T10:59:00.000-07:00

Women were expected, and expected themselves, to conform to freedom effortlessly, with superhuman resilience. But freedom is not learned easily overnight. One generation is not long enough to forget five millennia of learning how to bear being hurt.

from The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf; Vintage Books; Toronto; 1997