Learning From Each Other

A couple of very positive notes: Larry Stewart and Dr. Bob Paeglow have made some enormous, selfless contributions to the world, not to get attention, but to make their life count for something. I so admire this and am always inspired by others

Tom Peters calls it a 'blinding flash of the obvious.' My children, talking amongst themselves have realized this week how very fortunate they are not to have been abused worse than they had been. It's difficult to assign degrees of abuse, who had it the worst, to trade battle scars, or even to measure this type of pain in any dimension. There's a beautiful 27 year old woman, the daughter of the family staying here with us, who was once a normal little girl, but was slammed by her birth father into a wall until her brain was irreparably damaged.

Yolie, who lived through all sorts of abuse and neglect, and who has worked as an adoption worker, was particularly stunned by this. She's a reader, she's known about similar situations, but to sit here and look at the results of what malicious humans can do to innocent humans is eye-opening.

Big Joe pointed all this out to Vanessa last night, it has gotten to all my children.

The other mom here, Judy, was telling me this morning though that her children are also seeing the love from my children to them, that is has helped her Treavor who was initially balking at having an armless baby in their family. He felt that people stared at them enough as it is, yet to see all my kids hovering around, and carrying, little Jonah, has helped him to accept his new little brother.