L@:] I read this quote today and it made me smile ,because it is true.
When life knocks you down, you have 2 choices. To use the little strength you have left to fight your way back up, not knowing when or why you could be knocked back down again, or just stay down. I guess that is why we call it courage, the courage to stand back up when life gives you hundreds of reasons to stay down. The other night I was talking to my younger brother and we were talking about when we were kids and
our mom left our dad. She only did it once, she really screwed it up. Moved us far away from family so
it was only her and us for about 3 months. My dad was working out of the country when she did it and
it was one of the most horrific times of ours lives and that's saying something, if you knew our mother, you'd
know. At the time she was strung out on ?????? and she is mentally ill so...
The thing is that my brother and I were actually laughing about how delicious beef broth was, it was one
of the few things we had to eat. We learned what being truely hungry was in those few months. We have our
own kids now and they have always had the best we could offer because, thank god, our father raised us
and showed us what a real loving parent is and in turn we have given that to our children. You know how you always say, someday we will look back on this and laugh, well, sometimes you do. We laughed that
we are still here to laugh, we laughed because we have each other to love and we laughed because we know
our children will never know what true hunger is. That was only one of the many things our mom did, granted
she was later found to be ill, but some things done cannot be undone, even with illness as an excuse. What
does not kill us makes us stronger, that's what my brother said after we laughed about that. It makes us
stronger but now that I am a mom, it breaks my heart a little too.
