"There's no denying that to embrace being a woman alone isn't easy. But as Falk makes clear in this useful and appealing manual, it's inaccurate, unfair, and unhealthy to equate being alone with being unwanted or a failure. On My Own offers plenty of evidence for Falk's central thesis that 'aloneness is an opportunity, a state brimming with potentiality, with resources for renewed life.' Falk offers plenty of material to help even women with partners to understand the distinction between being abandoned and choosing to be alone, and to appreciate the healing and nurturing benefits of solitude."

—Publishers Weekly the hard landing that occurs when a relationship ends and she falls backward into the shaming belief that somehow she is to blame.
     Today, the woman who sits across from me still feels too bruised to try to pick herself up. "It feels like there's something terribly wrong with me. I don't understand why I feel so bad." Lisa speaks more slowly than usual, and in her eyes I see a threading of loss and bewilderment. "I think I knew for a long time that this day would come, but I didn't dare let myself think about it. I guess I swept it under the proverbial rug." She is silent while she struggles to make sense of her feelings. "It's not that I want to be with Sam. I mean, I do," she corrects, "but only if it could be the way it used to be, and I know it can't. It's just that..."
     "Just that what?" I ask.
     Lisa is staring at the floor. "That I'm alone, completely alone, and it's terrifying." She pauses for a moment, then looks at me helplessly. "I don't know how to be a woman alone."     (3 of 5)