YWCA Single Mother's Services Celebrates Mother's Day
Each year in May we celebrate mothers - highlighting their love, their kindness, their sacrifice and their generosity. There is so much good out there that moms are putting into the world.
YWCA Metro Vancouver Single Mother’s Services is grateful to be able to provide a place for solo moms to gather, connect, share, give and receive support and build relationships. We offer 17 weekly support groups in a number of different communities where moms can come together, receive free childminding, sit and share a cup of tea and reflect on the victories and challenges they face on their journeys as parents. Every May these groups celebrate Mother’s Day, each in their own way. Some shared a special meal (that they didn’t have to cook for a change!), others did an activity and took a moment to appreciate themselves and one another. This year we were happy to be able to give out small care packages to these moms as well.
We gave the children of the moms in our support groups a chance to celebrate their moms too by creating art or a piece of writing that highlighted what they love about mom and entering it in a lucky draw. These entries won a gift card to treat their moms to something special.
We had many wonderful entries from all our programs, including entries came from children who are part of our group for Ukrainian refugee moms who are parenting alone in Canada.
Here are some entries from our kids that we wanted to share (with mom and the artist’s permission, of course!)
Below is a special poem sent to us by one of the moms in our group for single mothers of children on the autism spectrum and a note from his mom:
"My son is non-speaking and spells to communicate his thoughts by pointing letter-to-letter to form words and then sentences. As you can imagine, it takes a long time and a lot of energy for him to share his thoughts, but he perseveres. Her loves creating poetry, so here is a poem that melts my heart every time I read it."
My Mom Helps Me Grow
My mom is my water that helps me grow
No love beats that of internal needs
Say to the universe, love is all
Can I grow like a glorious rose?
Meaning to hem plants at the root
Let my love rise up
Tied at the root is my heart to my mom
She gives me strength to flourish
Not rot at the injustice of life
To grow is to marvel at life
I want to continue growing like a glowing rose.
We are glad we could help the kids highlight these incredible moms!
If you are interested in joining one of our support groups or finding out more information please feel free to fill out the form here: https://ywcavan.org/programs/support-single-moms
