Yesterday’s Stats Canada report wasn’t good, so “Connect with Mark Kelley” has decided to do a show on the job situation. They’ve called me to come in for a live interview tonight. It can be seen on CBC News Network, between 7 and 9 PM Eastern time.
I should be on between 7:15 and 8:00 PM EST.
If it’s cancelled again, I’ll let you know. Otherwise, assume I’m on.
Posted in DEAR READERS | Tagged Connect, interview on job situation, with Mark Kelley | Leave a Comment »
Happy New Year to my readers! May this year bring you good health, renewed hope, peace, fulfillment and prosperity!
Posted in DEAR READERS | 2 Comments »
I thought that once I began my retrospective account of our fall from financial grace, I’d want to go full-tilt.
It didn’t work out that way.
Having a house on the real estate market has a way of sapping the energy out of you. It’s the constant cleaning. Everything must be perfectly presentable, ready for inspection at short notice. I’d start to write, then notice a dust bunny floating near the furnace vent. Out would come the vacuum, and then I’d ask myself what the point was in putting it away after just one room? I’d do the entire house, top to bottom, even if it was just done twelve hours earlier. The thing is, if you looked closely, the floors needed it. Makes me realize that the carpets we removed earlier this year must have caught a ton of stash in its fibres.
Two cats and a dog have a way of carting around mess too. Little muddy cat paw prints on the stairs; my shih tzu’s faceprints left on the living room floor after his meal. He wipes one side of his face, then the other. If only I could train him to use a towel.
Bottom line then is that I’ve been crazy busy – and my husband has been too, with renovation jobs cropping up here and there. Of course it’s still not been like a permanent job – when each contract finishes, that old familiar panic starts to surface a little again- but it’s still been a godsend for us. We are seeing a glimmer of light shining through all those dark clouds that seemed permanently overhead in the spring.
Which is why, I guess, I left the idea of recounting how we got to “this place” in our lives. Suddenly, I just couldn’t talk about it anymore. The “why’s and “what-for’s” no longer seemed as important as “where do we go from here?” On one particular night, soon after I’d broken my wrist and was feeling pretty down and out, my sister-in-law said to me “This situation is not your fault. Stop blaming yourself. It’s not your fault.” She said it over and over again until I finally started to cry. Such relief, and even though we did make some bad decisions, sometimes the bad decision simply being “no” decision, it felt like she’d given me permission to forgive myself. The thing is, guilt and self-disgust over mistakes you make are self-destructive. You can’t move forward when you feel like that.
I finally feel like we can, baby-step by baby-step.
We’ve been lucky. We’ve had terrific support from family and friends. Their constant encouragement, job leads, “conveniently-timed” renovation jobs, even loans in some cases, have helped us maintain our equilibrium.
One other bright light came into our lives this year. He is a black and white shih tzu, about four years old, and he’s our good news story. I used to say that down the road, I’d like to get a puppy. How was I to know that one day, literally down a country road, we’d find him? It was late May, and we were heading north to look at a house that was for sale. A van sped by, going south. We crested the hill from where the van had just come, and there, in the middle of the road, was this little black shih tzu: wet and scared, and without a collar. We slowed right down, and he circled the car, barking as if to ask for help. I didn’t hesitate even a second. “Let him come in,” I said. I wrapped him in an old towel to keep him dry and he fell asleep in my arms.
We put a sign up saying we’d found him. For days, I hunted through local newspapers and drove country roads looking for signs that someone was missing him. Nothing. We took him to the vet to look for a microchip or tattoo. Nothing. And then it occurred to us that the van we saw speeding past must have dropped the dog off, because anyone going by at that moment would have slowed down for fear of hitting him, jus as we had We claimed him as our own and named him Cadeau, which in French, means “gift.” He was our gift.
They say pets lower blood pressure. I have never owned a dog, but I can attest to his healing powers. He makes us laugh again. He makes us get outside and walk. He is a creature to love, something to think about other than our troubles. He’s been heaven-sent and right now, I can’t imagine being without him.
That’s life today, but there is a bit more to add. On November 20, I submitted an essay to the Facts and Arguments column in Canada’s national newspaper, the Globe and Mail. I wrote it to draw attention to the difficulties of unemployment in your fifties. Originally, the essay had a slightly more political tone, because at the point of writing, I’d just read that Ontario didn’t have the “Targeted Initiatives for Older Workers” programme that most other provinces had. That made me angry. If anyone needed help, wouldn’t it be Ontarians, considering the huge losses in the auto sector?
The people at the Globe asked me to make the essay more personal, and they published it yesterday, December 30. It’s titled “Unemployed, 59, and Trying to Stay Afloat.” You can read it online in the “Globe Life” section. In the past forty-eight hours, it has generated 170 comments (not all pleasant, of course) and been forwarded 54 times. I’ve received emails from all kinds of people with similar stories, but also from people wanting to help through possible employment opportunities. Today, I was contacted by the producer of CBC’s “Connect. with Mark Kelly” about doing an interview next week. Initially, I had misgivings – after finally getting to the point where I don’t feel like such a victim, I don’t want to look like I’m seeking sympathy on national television. I’ve thought over and over about whether to do it, going through every possible scenario. Something good could come from it, and if writing the essay empowered me, this might do even more. I just don’t want it to seem like a pity party for poor me – and certainly not for my husband, who I respect so much for his personal strength, integrity and work ethic. He’s my hero, and I don’t want him to come across as anything less than that.
We shall see. I’ll make my decision next week.
Posted in DEAR READERS, MEMOIR, REFLECTIONS | Tagged Connect. with Mark Kelly, Facts and Arguments, forgiving yourself, Globe and Mail, Picking yourself up after financial downfall, the joy of owning a dog, Unemployed after 55 | 18 Comments »
Those years in our first home went smoothly. Our expenses were reasonable, our income steady. Best of all, we lived in a town that posed very few temptations when it came to spending. There was a single movie theatre, two small malls, and a few modest restaurants and a string of fast food places – that’s all. If we were in the mood for something more, we had to drive to Toronto, an hour south of us. That happened only rarely. We were content to have a quiet, simple life, and it did wonders for our marriage.
Neither of us had been particularly ambitious when we first met, but gradually, that seemed to change. The same spirit that brought my husband trouble in school began to work in his favour now, and promotions came his way. Inevitably, he began to dream of bigger and better things. I couldn’t help but be excited for him, though in the back of my mind, I always feared the insecurity of his business ideas.
Those dreams came to fruition on one particular fall weekend, when he and another mechanic went to check out a garage in Toronto. Their intention was to rent it on Saturdays, where they would do repairs to supplement their regular income. He was gone for hours and arrived home on a cloud of euphoria.
“I’m starting a business,” he said.
“When?” I asked.
“On Monday,” he answered.
My jaw hit the floor. I wasn’t happy about it, but he’d made the decision already and there was no going back. I didn’t know it then, but it was the first in a series of impulsive career changes my husband would have throughout our marriage. Each time, I’d be blind-sided, but the truth was, his ambition and faith in himself, in contrast to my own rather limited self-confidence, amazed me. It felt wrong to squash his enthusiasm because of my own ingrained fear of risk. I felt powerless to do anything but close my eyes and hope for the best.
The move to his own business came with no plan and no extra money for the equipment he felt he had to have. Somehow, we managed, though not without going into debt. I became pregnant, and he sold his precious Mustang, saying it wasn’t appropriate for a newborn baby to ride in. The money helped keep us afloat for a while longer, until finally he gave the business up and returned to the job he’d left the year before.
In between, our marriage faced some personal challenges. We wanted to have children, and that proved to be a problem. It was a time when everyone seemed fertile but me. The joke I often heard was “I wish I had your problem,” or “I get pregnant every time my husband passes me in the hallway.” The idea of having a child of my own consumed me. After two years of trying, we saw fertility experts and I was put on clomid. Three months later, I was pregnant, and on cloud nine. Nine months aftere that, just one week past the baby’s due date, her heart stopped en utero, and my labour was induced. I never even got the chance to hold her, and I never really got over the loss. I’m not sure you can.
Having a baby became my obsession. I may, I was preganant again, but miscarried in August. I got pregnant in October, but miscarried in December. Two wweeks later I was preganat, but this time a I was under the care of a guynecologist who gave me propgesterone injections oince a week to heelp maintain the pregnancy. My son was born in September of 1977, and until he was walking and talking, I’m not sure I believed he was real. I was still in mourning for my daughter, though I didn’t know that then.
We quickly moved to a bigger, better house in Pickering, so Steve could be closer to his next job. Eight months into the job, we knew nit was not going to pan ou. We also found out I was pregant again, and accepted the fact that to make it financially, we had to take a few steps back and move to a smaller home in Brampton.
Soon Steve was promoted again, and at the age of twenty-eight, he became the youngest service manager at any Ford dealership in Ontario. Leadership came naturally to him. Within a year, he was president of the Ford Professional Service Managers’ Association. For the next fourteen years, there was the occasional roadblock, and sometimes a step backwards for a short while, but overall, his career flourished and he continued to be recognized as a bit of a maverick. He was chosen by General Motors to help develop the first automotive dealership college programme in Ontario. He represented his company at Rotary and sat on the executive. He initiated the General Motors Service Managers Association for Ontario. He won trips every year based on his department’s productivity and customer satisfaction ratings, and we travelled to places we’d never dreamed we’d see: Rio de Janeiro, Acapulco, the Canary Islands, London, the Pacific Coast of Mexico. In each case, we were treated like royalty; we ate in the best restaurants, saw 5-star theatre performances, stood in the courtyard of Blenheim Palace drinking mulled wine and watching the Queen’s Royal Guard march to “O Canada” in our honour. A private plane took us to Lanzarotte, where my husband snagged contraband volcanic rock to bring home (ironically, he has frequently blamed that rock for our bad luck since). On one particular trip, we were invited, out of the hundred and fifty other couples there, to sit with the top executives from General Motors Canada. People called him “a diamond in the rough,” and we both fully believed that nothing could stop him.
I can only write from my perspective in all this, because even though I often seemed in the background, I had some influence. Though I had less ambition than he did, I thrilled at his accomplishments. I had no trouble adjusting to the role of a woman married to a successful man, particularly when his colleagues seemed so warm towards me. I didn’t feel that I was spoiled, but looking back now, I was definitely living well. My husband told me constantly that I deserved it, and if I was dressed well, or spoiled in another way, he saw it as a reflection of his own success. It made him happy.
Perhaps you can hear it in my voice as you read this, but a subtle change came over me during those years. I’d married a mechanic, but he’d evolved into a true force of nature in the automobile business. I remember listening toithe song “Don’t Fall in Love with a Dreamer,” then saying I can’t imagine loving someone who was incapable of dreaming. My husband had been the underdog in school, and as a teacher, I loved nothing better than to see an underdog surpass everyone’s expectations – particularly those who’d put them down.
In some ways, you could say that my husband became my “project,” my prized pupil. I was in awe of his success. My role came to be one of support for him because it seemed that if I helped him, made his home life perfect rather than forging ahead on my own career, his success would come more easily, and would surely outshine anything I could accomplish as a teacher. I effectively “tied my horse to his wagon.” I stayed home, raising our two sons, and taking care of the mundane things that didn’t interest him: homemaking, cooking, cleaning, handling the bills. A couple of times I ventured out into the working world: two years in human resources and a year in social services. Then we moved to the home we’d always dreamed about, a country place still close to the city, and I fell into occasional supply-teaching assignments at my sons’ school.
It all felt perfect, until a particular day a year later when my husband called to tell me that he’d be home early, that he’d been released from his job of six years. The reasons for his dismissal were really never clear. He was told he’d done nothing wrong and was given a fair severance and letters of reference. The disappointment was that he’d believed that it would be his lifelong job. He was devastated.
A week later, in mid-October, the principal from my sons’ school called to ask me to take over a class whose teacher had gone AWOL. I had no time to think of the all the reasons why I really didn’t want to do it. I felt I had no choice. I said yes.
The balance of responsibility in our marriage shifted. For three months, my husband took over the homemaking duties, and I returned to the role of full-time classroom teacher after an absence of eleven years. We expected it to be temporary, over at the end of that school year. Fate had a different plan.
Posted in MEMOIR, THE HOLE IN OUR PARACHUTE | Leave a Comment »
People talk about the difficulties of youth – their struggle to not only find themselves, but settle on goals and work towards them. Once done, they think there is nothing but smooth sailing ahead, particularly if a few darling little children have already rounded out and enriched their lives.
Don’t be embarrassed by your naivete. I felt exactly the same way at your age. Life was full of promise. Because we’d had some heartbreak in our first few years of marriage, I firmly believed our share was spent, that life could only get better from that point on. It was self-delusion in its grandest form and it predicted a perfect future.
I’m here to be a wet blanket, someone to tell you what you don’t want to hear – at least I didn’t want to at your age. The truth is this. You can set goals and plan and do all the right things, but if you grow too comfortable and rest on your laurels, your nice little life can all be pulled out from under you in the blink of an eye. In the worst of cases, your health or that of a loved one can fail. Sometimes, it’s one or two bad decisions on your part; sometimes it’s the people who decide you’re not “right,” and work to make a case against you. Often it’s the young up-and-coming executive who decide to protect his ass over yours. Yes, some people lie or choose to forget the truth, even people you thought were your friends, because when push comes to shove, the future of their career is usually more important than yours anyday, dear friend.
Hence, this poem written a few years back about a similar person who single-handledly started the 8-ball ruling that triggered the end of my husband’s corporate career.
MR. POLITICALLY CORRECT
He is really nothing special,
down deep feels it too, you know,
so he’s learned to play the charmer,
see how far the game can go.
His shoes are always shiny,
his suit pants nicely pressed,
his golf score breaks a ninety,
his very life seems blessed.
He flatters all the ladies,
he “yes, sirs” all he can,
finds a way to flee the radar
when the feces hit the fan.
He knows to smile when needed,
seems modest with his blush,
feigns innocence to save his hide,
maintains his Midas touch.
He’s young and climbing upward,
he’s old and scared to fall,
friend or not, you can’t trust him,
when his back’s against the wall
A year in employment limbo, a downsized positon where he was set up to fail, and finally, the pink slip. Six years later and we’re still feeling the effects, both monetarily anad psychologically, of that one momentous loss.
When you’re young, you can start out on a path where it seems you are invincible. Employers convince you that you have a brilliant future ahead of you as long as you “stick with the programme, and toe the line.” It’s a horrible thing to suddenly realize that you’ve planned poorly; that you’ve underestimated everyone else’s ambition and overestimated their loyalty to you. You’ve suddenly missed the boat; that in the game of musical chairs, you’re one of the people left standing. What’s even worse is knowing you’re 58 or 59, and your chances of regaining what you’ve lost are unlikely.
The one good thing we have gained, though, is that we’re much more realistic now. We’ve been through hell in the past six years and proven we are tough enough to endure just about anything. It’s a difficult transition, not knowing what comes next. We just have to rely on ourselves to make something happen, because it’s more and more obvious every day that no former colleague is going to turn this situation around and make it right for us. In fact, former colleagues seem to avoid us, perhaps victims of survivor guilt. For one or two people, it’s possibly even justified.
Everyone thinks it’s hard for young people who are just starting out in the work force, but at least they have years ahead, to win through trial and error. We have no time to waste, no time to completely fix what’s wrong.
I just keep telling myself “if it is to be, it’s up to me.” If we all say that, something good has to happen, don’t you think?
Posted in MEMOIR, REFLECTIONS, THE HOLE IN OUR PARACHUTE | Tagged ageism, boomer unemployment, company politics, downsized, ovoerqualified and unemployed | Leave a Comment »
Experts in human behaviour theorize that when you’re depressed or your life is “out of sorts,” you become more accident prone. I’m beginning to think that they’re right.
After finally getting our house on the market, I looked forward to writing about our “fall from financial grace” under the category “A HOLE IN OUR PARACHUTE.” Then on Thursday night, after a busy, stress-filled day, guilt set in. I realized that while my husband had taken Cadeau out twice a day for washroom breaks, I hadn’t actually walked our little shih tzu in three or four days. Despite being well past dusk, I took him outside. At the end of our driveway, I looked left then right, deciding which way to go. I chose left, not my usual direction on our country road. It was the wrong decision. On my return, with the sky now black and no streetlights to show the way, my left foot caught a rut in the ground’s surface. I twisted my ankle, stumbled forward and fell over onto my right knee, right hand, and the right side of my face.
I knew it was bad – my teeth smashed together and I was sure one had broken (I was wrong). I was also certain I’d broken my cheekbone and my left foot. Two cars went by and didn’t stop to help me. Finally, I got myself up and limped home, crying all the way – not with the pain of it as much as the fear of what I’d done.
Bottom line: bruising and swelling of my foot and right knee, a black eye; cracked ribs high on my right side, a swollen, bruised cheekbone…and to top it all off, a broken right wrist that may still require surgery.
Needless to say, I’m pretty miserable. I’m not used to relying on someone else at the best of times, but asking hubby to blow-dry my hair so I don’t look like Janis Joplin, and dealing with the fact that even finished, I’m still Janis Joplin with a slight hair relaxer is, well….driving me nuts. I feel like a spoiled baby, but sometimes, after dealing with all kinds of serious drama in your life, it’s the silly last thing that happens that puts you over the edge (hence the straw and camel’s back expression).
Anyway, readers, this has put a serious dent in my typing abilities, so for a week or so, I’ll need to stay away from the keyboard. It’s too much to hunt and peck with my left hand, when it’s also still recovering from a break back in December.
And yes, a bone density test is on my to-do list for this week. *wink*
Posted in DEAR READERS | Tagged accident-prone, broken righjt wrist, osteoporosis, straw that broke the camel's back) | 4 Comments »
Right from the start, my husband and I realized we shared a similar philosophy towards money: it couldn’t buy happiness, but it was definitely meant to be enjoyed. Now, that doesn’t sound too unusual, until you consider the fact that together, we put a higher value on enjoying our money than we did on saving it. Until recently, I didn’t really consider the reasons for that shared view. To be honest, I was too busy just trying to make everything “work.” But in going through a situation like the one we’re in, you inevitably come to a point where you can no longer blame only circumstances. You begin to blame yourself. Self-recrimination is all part of the “mourning” process, but it can only go on so long, and once it was over, I had a lingering need to understand “why” we’d made some of our choices over the years. After all, we weren’t stupid. We weren’t extravagant. And to be honest, we weren’t terribly materialistic. So how did we get to this point in our lives, when we’re nearing sixty?
My perspective was clearer when I considered my husband’s beginnings.
His family had emigrated to Canada in 1957, in search of a better life than the one they’d left behind in East End London. Nothing came as easily as they’d anticipated, and my husband, just seven on his arrival here, learned quickly that it wasn’t fun to be one of the “have nots.” As soon as they were old enough, he and his siblings had to take on part-time jobs to help support the family, and much to the frustration of his parents, he usually spent his paper route money (on candy or cookies) the minute it was earned, sometimes even before he got home!
Those free-spending ways stayed with him through adulthood, the only difference being that with a wife and sons, there were three more people in his life to spoil.
Understanding my own situation took some serious soul-searching. I was the oldest of seven children, and my parents had to be frugal to feed and clothe so many. We were taught that wanting more was being greedy, and sometimes I found myself resenting the restrictions they lived by. Later, their financial situation improved, but to me, they didn’t reap the benefits of that as much as they could have. They didn’t ever seem to have “fun,” and it frustrated me because I could think of hundreds of things they could afford to do that would bring them pleasure: travel, dinners out, and entertainment, to name a few. I knew I wanted my life to be different. If I was going to work hard, I was also going to play hard. In many ways, the freedom to spend my own money as I wanted, to savour my share of the pleasurable experiences in this world, was a subconscious form of rebellion. And eventually, it led me to take too many financial risks.
The bad habits did not happen right away, possibly because credit cards were not yet a reality. The budget for my engagement ring was modest and would be not one penny more than the $225 my husband received when he sold his guitar amplifier. Our wedding, in July of 1971, was nice, but not extravagant. To save money, we spent the night in our apartment rather than a hotel. Our honeymoon flight was a present from his parents; our spending money, gifts from wedding guests. My going-away outfit, a wool-blend suit bought off-season and discounted by 50%, was a disaster. I sweated buckets and squirmed uncomfortably for the entire six-hour flight to England. I certainly didn’t feel like a big spender when we arrived at Gatwick and boarded the bus for another three-hour trip to our destination!
Actually, it wasn’t until we’d been married for nearly two years and decided to buy a home that we started to take financial risks. It came from a sense of our own “power” – just how much we could actually afford if we put our minds to it, just how “tight” we could live in order to get the things we wanted. Within three months of borrowing $2000 to buy a 1970 Mach I Mustang (gorgeous, by the way), we’d found the house of our dreams, borrowed $500 as a down payment on the house, paid off our car loan, and arranged a “hidden second” mortgage with the builder.
Two years into our marriage, at the ages of just twenty-two and twenty-three, we didn’t have a cent in the bank, but we had a house, and we felt invincible.
Next installment: Sometimes, we succeed despite ourselves.
Posted in MEMOIR, THE HOLE IN OUR PARACHUTE | Tagged attitudes towards money, downsized, downsizing, financial hardship in middle-age, spending versus saving, taking financial risks | Leave a Comment »
I haven’t posted a blog entry for over two months now, and you’re probably wondering if I’m just one of those “fly-by-nights” who start blogs with lofty intentions, then abandon them. I promise you, that’s not what’s happened. It’s “life” that’s gotten in the way, and while the mess and stress of it has given me lots of inspiration, guilt has stood squarely in the way of me sitting down to write.
I envy writers who are able to practice their craft no matter what is going on in their world. I find that “fiction” becomes an impossibility, and the non-fiction I want to write is just too close to home. There are others who would be affected if I wrote about all that’s going on around me, and the last thing I want to do is have them embarassed by my willingness to “bare all” in my writing.
Recently, I watched a couple on Oprah talk about their downturn since the recession. He was a newscaster, earning well over $200,000 a year. He lost his job due to downsizing and they were quickly in trouble. Now he works as a veterinary assistant, making just $30,000 a year, and he’s happy.
I guess the fact that he’s well-known was the “hook” to draw viewers. It certainly wasn’t because he and his wife had suffered more than others; but they had suffered nonetheless, been humiliated and forced to gratefully accept bailouts from friends. And I thought to myself, if they can go on Oprah and talk freely about what has happened to them, why should I be so hesitant to go public with our ordeal?
To tell the story properly, though, I have to go way back to the beginning, when life was less complicated, and all things seemed possible, as long as you worked hard enough.
Posted in MEMOIR, REFLECTIONS, THE HOLE IN OUR PARACHUTE | Tagged forced to downsize, unemployment | 6 Comments »
June 6th., 2009
Today is my mother’s birthday. If she were still alive, she would have been seventy-eight years old now, and I have no doubt she would still be impressing us with her fortitude and personal faith. It’s something rarely seen anymore. Nowadays, such conviction is not just suspect, but often an irritant. How can we trust someone who seems to have all the answers to life’s mysteries? Yet, while my six siblings and I were little, those explanations, told to us as she ironed clothes or baked cookies, formed a solid blanket of security around us, and helped us embrace events that normally would have brought childhood dismay. For that, I am grateful.
As fate would have it, Mom lost her own mother at a very young age, and was sent by her less-than-nurturing father to a convent school at the impressionable age of twelve. She was bright and headstrong, and the only girl in a family of hard-drinking, hard-fighting older brothers. There was a new stepmother, and life at home was growing steadily more difficult. What could be safer and more respectable than a Catholic convent school?
It was exactly what my mother needed to put structure and meaning into a life that was sometimes chaotic and dysfunctional. The world of the convent was a simple one: a time and place for everything; a logical explanation behind every rule; a common goal of discipline and purity; and above all, faith in a higher power.
My mother loved it, and in many ways, those very strict, proper nuns were the closest she ever experienced to mothers in her teenage years. She did well, graduated from grade twelve at fifteen years of age, and within two months had been appointed teacher at the one room school in her hometown. All of that helps explain why she found it so easy to profess her beliefs to others, without being self-conscious, without wavering. It also must have been an asset in later years, when there were seven children of her own asking her to explain the meaning of life and death and everything in-between.
That’s what I find myself thinking about today, on what would have been her birthday. I find myself hearing, all over again, the things she told us.
We asked her why God allowed people to suffer, and she told us that life’s tragedies were not God’s doing, but the result of living life in an imperfect world. She said that somewhere, God was crying for us just as we were crying. She reassured us that God had a special place in heaven for all people who had lived hard lives on earth. Best of all, she said that when we died, we would discard the ailing, aging bodies we had on earth, and magically transform into beautiful, angelic spirits. She said paradise had every wonderful thing that we’d ever loved in our lives on earth, and that there would be nothing but perfect happiness there.
I’m not sure if her interpretation of heaven was altered for the sensibilities of children, but it gave us great peace. Now that I am older, I often yearn for that wonderful reassurance of a perfect afterlife, especially on a day like my mother’s birthday.
Posted in REFLECTIONS | Tagged afterlife, faith, growing up in a convent, mothers, why bad things happen | 4 Comments »
ROADBLOCKS, DETOURS and ROUNDABOUTS 