Life is a bit challenging, at the moment.  I spend the day feeling lost and tired and finally resign when I begin to “blank out” in front of the computer.  I take a nap; upon awakening, I feel a fear so great, as if I am in the dark, climbing out of my mother’s deep womb, again, only this time from the center of the earth.  Who am I, what am I supposed to be doing here, what is my purpose and how will I continue to make a living for my daughter and me?  I’ve always had faith that the universe will take care of us and it has, for the last five or so years, following my separation from my ex-husband and our subsequent divorce.  Why am I so full of fear, now?  What has changed, apart from the outer world’s financial woes?  I’m still a freelancer, still getting jobs here and there, still entrepreneurial with enough energy to begin new things that look fruitful.  Why, then, is my fear so great at times that I want to end my own life, because of it...because I can’t see the light for the dark and it feels so utterly hopeless and I am the only adult in our household...

Hayley springs into the house, through the front door and sings, “Hello, mum!”  Suddenly I have a purpose; I’m a mom, a caregiver/caretaker, and a role model.  How the hell can I ever even think of killing myself, with a daughter to teach, to cherish, to love?  How do I become so confused and selfish?  I don’t often fall and when I do, it’s deep and hard.  I know I’ll never end my life purposely; yet the feelings of wanting to die come on strong at these times in my life.

I go downstairs to greet her and give her a hug and a kiss on each cheek.  Hayley wants ice cream from Fergie’s, the shop across the street in the sweet town center, that serves the most delicious homemade ice cream.  She asks me to go with her and I say, “Of course I will.”  Another purpose here—to join her, to share my company with hers, to be grateful she is on this very earth.  We walk to the shop with the dog at our side and Cookie and me wait for Hayley outside, while she gets her afternoon-after-school treat.

A young girl suddenly opens the door to the ice cream shop—it is all I can do not to gasp.  Her face is badly disfigured—her right eye is pushed high above where it normally would be and pretty much slatted shut.  The half of her right face looks as though it was pounded in with a sledgehammer.  I am reminded of a friend’s granddaughter that is badly beaten as a young child and is now disfigured and deaf as a teen.  My heart goes out to the girl at the door and she looks at me with her left eye and smiles.  Her smile reaches my very soul.  She stands holding the door open and a woman pushes a young boy through on a wheelchair; he has only a stumpy core to his body and is missing legs and arms.  I smile, say hello and he gives me the most beautiful, sweet smile, in return.  I want to cry; here I am, feeling sorry for myself all day because I don’t know if or where my next client is going to appear.  And here are these kiddos, marked for life and seemingly don’t even know it.  (Hayley even remarks how perhaps they don’t realize that they are disfigured and have inner joy and peace, notwithstanding.)  In other words, their inner peace overrides their physical looks...they don’t judge themselves harshly or at all...and here I am judging myself and complaining about lacking the initiative to get work.

Hayley says (deriving from Eckhart Tolle) that when we are not thinking about the past or the future, life is joyful.  And on it goes, from one second to the next.  Oh, how sometimes the seconds seem to go on, forever!  And yet they also pass quickly because as soon as one thinks about the current second, it is long gone. 

In these lifetime of seconds, I wonder...how many times a day are these kiddos stared at or made fun of?  As a child, kids tease me because of my nose, which I never feel is large.  And it crushes my sense of self-esteem as they laugh at me from across the street.  These kids—these sadly disfigured and disabled children—make me feel like a total whiner, after witnessing their pride and confidence.  And man oh, man, reminds me hundreds of times over, how infinitely blessed I am. 

And what more of a sense of purpose is that?...To be blessed, to feel unlimited gratitude that I have legs and arms and a whole face and the most beautiful, loving daughter ever...ever...ever.  If only I can be here, now.  I think I can, I know I can...I can.  Especially if it means learning from the wise teachings of two young and innocent disabled children who are obviously more whole than they appear at first glance.