Shutter Island star Michelle Williams has revealed her reasons for helping to set up a yoga group for single mothers.
The 30-year-old actress told Marie Claire magazine that she used the meditative practice to cope with the 2008 death of former partner Heath Ledger, with whom she had daughter Matilda, five.
She explained: “Yoga gave me relief like nothing else; it made be a better person and a better mother. “I could come back to my daughter anew. And then I started to think about how expensive it is to get a babysitter to take a yoga class, which makes it out of reach for so many women.”
A team of three good friends gave birth to the Yoga for Single Moms Project after a hectic month of trying to schedule a yoga class to attend together. The logistics became so challenging—between coordinating babysitters, dropping off kids, picking up kids, squeezing in lunch, finding clean yoga clothes, and all of the other timing issues that are inherent in single-mom-hood—that we eventually gave up.
But not for long. Yoga is important to us, so we brainstormed better ways to make it happen. With our extensive yoga connections, we were inspired to partner up with studios across the country to create classes specifically for single moms, along with a directory of resources for moms committed to a yoga practice.
