When I think of courage, I think of my friend M.  When I first met her she was a happily married woman with five beautiful children and a nice home, living what looked like the suburban dream. 
 
A couple of years later she had six children, was pregnant with the seventh, and had just lost her beloved mother to cancer.  And then her husband left her for the woman he'd been having an affair with for a couple of years.
 
These things happen.  They happened to her.  She fought hard for her marriage, hard for her family, and she lost. 
 
He quit his job and put his assets in his new partner's name so he didn't have to pay maintenance for his children.  He never paid a cent, despite being ordered to by the courts.
 
M. brought up seven children on her own.  She got up early, she went to bed late.  She put her creativity on hold, she worked as many jobs as she needed to.  She got sick.  She kept going.  She made good nutritious meals out of next to nothing, and she accepted charity with grace when every fibre of her being rebelled against it. She made her home a loving, welcoming place.  She got out of bed day after day after day when she was sick with grief and exhaustion and she did what needed to be done.
 
She has made heroic efforts to allow her children to have a positive relationship with their father.  She spent Christmas on her own every second year.  She never denigrated him to them, and she grit her teeth and attended school functions with him for her children's sake.  She negotiates with her ex-husband's new partner to make sure her children are cared for when they are at his house.  She feels sick and shaky and often cries when she puts the phone down, but she does it and she does it with grace and courtesy.
 
She has done this, suffering from depression and poverty and illness for more than 10 years now.  Her older children are out in the world and starting to understand her sacrifices.  Her younger children are still heedless and demanding.  Every one of those children has been clothed and fed and cared for and loved.  And every day M. gets up and does it again. 
 
I hope that I can help her to hang on, so that one day she will have the time and energy to write and paint, and make the children's books that have been burbling away inside her for a long, long time.  Because they're going to be very good and that courage and integrity is going to make them the books you'll want to buy for your children and your friends' children and children you've never met.


(name withheld by request).

 This is the story of a little girl who's slowly finding her own little path in the world.

When I was three my dear mother was diagnosed with  breast cancer, stage 3 in fact. The doctors told my family she'd live 6 months to a year. But, my mother proved them all wrong and lived nine precious more years. Each day,week,month and year was a gift to our family. Never easy and almost always terrifying, not knowing that perhaps this visit or the next to the doctors may be the last. When she passed in November of 2004 my world shattered, I slipped into manic depression, I became a shell of what I was. 

 But, after two years of merely living something in me snapped. As if my brain was giving me a back-handed slap and saying' Did Mom just pity herself? Did Mom just sit and bemoan her existence? No! She lived and worked to see you grow up happy, now get to it young lady!' So with much tears and pulling one's self out of the gutter. I got back on track with my life. I figured out what I wanted to do and got to it. I saw my Father struggling to be a good Dad while working full time and told myself I'd never be his burden. That if anything we would pull equal weight in this mess of life. So I became a little adult, I taught myself to cook,clean, and take care of my Daddy. After all, I may have lost a mother, he lost the love of his life. I learned how to live in a world full of pain and hardship. Always searching for the tarnished silver in need of a little shine and loving. 

 Jumping a head to last year, after long and hard times, my life's become quite amazing. I live in Thailand with my Daddy, we work to help the locals here. Mostly teaching and encouraging those who have gone through tough times. Just last December I took a trip to Indonesia to teach college students how to tackle life. Granted I am younger then most of them, but they still wanted to learn from me. I've been accepted into Le Cordon Bleu culinary school and shall be out living on my own before I'm 18.  I've learned to accept that I will always be a little girl who lost her mother, but I can't let that handicap me. I have to let it be a part of my character and to drive me to be all I can be, to make her proud while she looks down from wherever she is. To make her see that even though I didn't have her to help me along she's still a part of me. Watching my mother live to the fullest while dying before my eyes truly taught me something. She taught me never to take life for granted, but to always find the good in things. To cherish what time is given to you. Not to wait for 'The right moment' because, it may never come. But, to just get up each morning and say ' Today I will make someone else smile and feel loved'


Martha McBride:
www.swimmingfrog.blogspot.com
http://jimmyfund.com/gif/

About 6 years ago, I started up a weekly knitting group in a nearby cafe. The local paper covered the story, I invited knitting friends to come along and I hoped others would join either by word of mouth or as a result of the newspaper article. And that is how it happened, a friendly gathering on a Tuesday afternoon for chat coffee and craft.

After a couple of months, a new woman joined us, older, less self assured, but a very competent knitter! She latched herself onto me and for a few weeks she came and went without contributing much, seemingly shy of the relaxed conversations from the rest of us .

It was after several weeks, when we were the last to leave that she told me. For two years she had been in her house, unable to leave due to severe depression. She had seen the article, cut it out, meaning to try and come. She said that for a few weeks she had got as far as the door of the cafe and then turned for home, knowing that she could not make that initial contact. It took her all the courage she could muster, not knowing what she would find or how she would be accepted - a huge leap of faith - to do something most of wouldn't give a second thought to.

I am so proud of the way she overcame her fears. She is now the stalwart member of our group - the one who sorts out all the knitting disasters for the rest of us, who teaches the new members tricky techniques, who has a pattern or just the right colour wool for someone's project. She has blossomed into a relaxed, confident and contented person. I am grateful for the many lessons she has taught me - not just 'knit two together, pass slip stitch over and repeat to end' but the power of simple friendship, the danger of making assumptions, the importance of using our hands to access our hearts and minds.

And the support we all gain from community. Sometimes, she is in full flow - telling the rest of us some story about her family- and I just look at her and marvel at the journey she has been on.
 

Submitted by Katie Jackson: http://www.whatkatiedid.typepad.com/

 I feel things, I love people, I think I’m a decent writer…but when someone experiences a great loss, I’m mute. It’s awful. I let days and then months and then years go by, thinking of the person, framing things I’d like to say, or wish to convey in my head, and do nothing.  It’s really a horrible failing, because to me it means that I’m ignoring people dear to me, when they might need affirmation most. I’m working on it.  Two summers ago, my Aunt Ruth was killed by a falling rock. She had been hiking with friends. She was my Dad’s beloved older sister, and a glamourous intellectual figure in my young Southern Illinois childhood. Like: she had a degree in anthropology and traveled to Taiwan with her husband. Her daughters studied ballet and piano. And my Dad had nothing but glowing stories of her: she introduced him to everything fair and good.

I don’t really know my Uncle Barry, her husband. I think he and my Dad didn’t get along. And my family didn’t go to lots of extended family trips and things like that, so I didn’t see Ruth’s family, or those cousins. Maybe twice in my entire childhood. Barry, maybe once.  Facebook has meant that I am now in touch with my cousins, and that’s wonderful.  But when Ruth died, I had all of these feelings, and desires– I wanted to say something to my Dad, and my Grammy, and perhaps send a note to my two cousins, and Barry.  And I did, said, nothing.  It was overwhelming, to pare down the difference between what I wanted to say, and what ought to be said, and what one writes and sends off into the post…  Terrible.

Last week, I got a congratulatory wedding card, with gift, from Barry.  Mind you: I don’t think I’ve ever spoken to the man– I have one memory of him running on a beach from childhood, and the unfounded sensation that my own Dad didn’t get along with him. That’s all. But I had sent him a wedding invitation because if I didn’t, he’d be the only person in my whole family not to get one. And that just seemed wrong. Also, if Ruth were alive, I’d have of course sent one. So I sent one.

His note was late, and he wrote, “I’m sorry this is late. Your Aunt Ruth would never have let that happen.”

My eyes promptly filled up with tears. What a perfect, sad, and good thing to say.

I wrote him a proper note in the thank you note. I told him how sorry I am that Aunt Ruth is gone, and described what they as a couple (an idea of a smart couple traveling the world) meant to me as a child, and that I had thought of him frequently– and that if he ever came to our city, he should let me know, because I’d like to see him in person.

Anyway. I felt anxious when I mailed the note– flurries of “it’s too much!” and “it’s not enough!” and “why even try to say these things?!” for a full 24 hours.  I eventually told myself, “You had to write something. We’re only human. Better to try and write something clunky, and convey it awkwardly, than ignore these things.”


(Contributed by Stephanie, from an original post at: www.girldogtorch.wordpress.com)

...a story of my own.

My middle child was born with allergies, quite literally a couple of patches of eczema under each leg on the day she arrived.  The midwife dismissed them, as did the doctor, but she was an excessively unhappy baby and over time the patches grew and began to cover her entire body until it was obvious she had severe atopic dermatitis.

The creams only seemed to make things worse.  Her allergies increased, spreading to asthma, hayfever, severe food and drug reactions.  Every day of her life she was driven crazy with the itching; I vividly recall lying her down on her towel after a bath when she was around 18 months old; she was scratching her legs, crying with frustration, and, with a look of desperation no baby should ever know anything about, holding her arms out and begging, 'help me'.

And I did.  I read and researched, took her to specialists, made my own creams and ointments, tried a thousand others, changed her diet, her bedding, her toys. Stopped wearing perfume, used homemade cleaning products, the least offensive washing powders. Picked my way through the complicated maze of sensitivities and true allergies; every day something else, something new.

Eventually things changed for the better.  The itching lessened, the patches shrunk, the unhappy baby grew into a joy-filled pre-schooler.  Years of dedication and educating myself on her particular allergies and their effect on her particular body had made a genuine difference.  How much of one, I'll never quite know - but I do know that when people saw how well she was doing and told me how lucky I was, I became angry.  I knew how hard we had worked and how quickly things worsened again when we dropped our guard.  They still do.  So luck, schmuck.

Most of all, I learned that my actions could make someone's life better.  That making mistakes was part of the process and just meant I needed to try again. That I could make use of experts without having my actions dictated to by them.  That I could trust my own understanding, and rely on my own persistence.

And, of course, that I had been blessed with a daughter who was one of the very best.

(Submitted by Megan Young: www.thescentofwater.typepad.com)