Courage in Patience by Author Beth Fehlbaum

My sister Sonja is five years younger than me. We lost our Mom to cancer when she was 45. I was 21 and my sis was 15. It was real hard for her as Dad remarried in less than a year. She had to have a hysterectomy when she was 35. A year later she got breast cancer,the same time our Dad passed away. She had to have part of her breast removed , luckily it was real small and they caught it in time. She also found out through her yearly colonostopy that she has stomach polyps. This is what my Mom had and the polyps turned to cancer. I am worried the same thing will happen to my Sis. Through all her problems my sis Sonja has worked full-time. She is an emergency room nurse in Sacremento California. It is the largest hospital there so she sees gunshot wounds, car accident victims and all the scary things that happen in a very large city. I am way over in Wisconsin. I talk to her every weekend. I think she has the most courage I have ever seen in a woman and I love and miss her very much.

"My Mom," By Bobbi Rightmyer

My mom is the most couragous person I know. Although she is only 63, she has been living with Chron's Disease for the past 35 years. This illness keeps my mother from doing many of the things she enjoys, but she always keeps going. There are many times when my mom will feel good and it is during these times she tries to participate in her favorite activities - gardening, antiquing, shopping and visiting friends. She savors these moments and they keep her going during the bad times. Almost four years ago, my baby sister died - my parent's youngest child. Although I loved my sister with all my heart, she was not without her faults. My mom has spent so many years worrying about and trying to help my sister - now there is an empty hole in her heart. Since my sister's death, my parents have been raising my now 21 year old niece. To say my niece is a handfull is an understatement. But through all the trials and tribulations, my mom keeps going, trying to provide a stable home for her grandchild, the living embodiment of the child she lost. My mom never complains, she never wishes for things to be different - she keeps plowing through in the face of illness, stress and grief. My mom is my hero, and if I live to be 100, I will never be the woman - the person - my mom is.


"My Story" by Cheryl A. Thompson

I was born the oldest of 5 children, on my 12th birthday my mother stated she hated me and never wanted me. My sarcasm to her remark bought me another beating with a barber's belt on my back where no one would ever see it and I was to open my gift of a poncho (okay it was the 70's) to model it and then it was returned to the store.

My mother was a very emotionally disturbed woman, she was a thief all of her life. My poor father tried so hard to make her happy and actually talked her out of aborting me when she found out she was pregnant. I often wished she had aborted me. For some bizarre reason she went on to have 4 more children after me. I was the cleaning lady, laundry girl, cook and essentionally the 2nd mother because my mother was never home or in jail somewhere. My father often wondered how I grew up to be a level headed adult. Maybe my abusive childhood was a blessing, it certainly didn't seem like it.

My mother had always wanted everything but didn't have the means for it. She began stealing as a child from church out of the collection plate. She gradually moved onto fraud, forgery and embezzellment; she even destroyed my name by using my social security number for credit cards and utilities because she couldn't get services with her name. She at one time was wanted by the FBI, my father had to borrow money from his family to keep up with creditors or rent because she always spent his paycheck instead of using it for the bills. His family begged him to divorce her and give his children up for adoption, he would never be able to survive.

My father amazed me with his courage. He eventually went to the courts and turned my mother in for her stealing. He fought for custody of his children and got us out of foster homes to keep his children together. Here his family gave him the money to be done with his wife and children, yet he couldn't abandon us. He worked 4 jobs and still kept his 5 children together. He rescued me from my physical and emotional abuse just by getting my mother out of my life. Of course she still had to make my life miserable by demanding to see her children wherever she was. I was dragged by social workers to many jails with my siblings to visit her!! I couldn't believe she could do that.

Eventually she would not be a part of our lives anymore, it was awful to see my father try to reconcile with her when I was 16. I was still ending up in the hospital whenever my father wasn't home because I wouldn't tolerate her. I saw her stealing or having affairs behind my father's back and confronted her constantly. I tried to tell my father-he wouldn't listen until of course I ended up in the hospital for a skull fracture. She had beaten me that badly because I had received the mail in which bills had come to her in fradulant names. I was hiding them for my father to see and refused to give them to her. When my father arrived to the hospital I told him where the bills were, so he would never be responsible for her crimes again. He was already fed up with her adultry which he had seen a number of times.

My father eventually found another woman whom made him happy and he loved. I wasn't fond of her because she was an alcoholic, I was a good daughter to him by accepting her in his life. When my father died she cut off all of his children to everything that was his. She eventually gave it all to her own son, it wasn't like I didn't know that was coming. She hated me as well.

I eventually went on to marry a very good guy. I felt very blessed that I could love and give my son things I had never had which included a happy childhood and a loving mother. My son knows many horrible stories from my childhood that will eventually fill a book, he also knows how I felt about my father. He was an honorable man, he certainly wasn't the greatest father; but he loved his children and tried to do his best; despite his enormous obstacles.

I admired my father's courage for he tried to do right by his children-it did give me strength to see how he cared. My father in return admired my courage for always helping him-for seeing what my mother was doing and trying to save him as well. I am still haunted by my childhood for answers I will never have. Why was my mother like that, why did she hate me, why couldn't my father get more help from his family. I was really stunned to find out that his brothers and sister wouldn't help by taking in any of his children and help him keep us together. It seemed terribly selfish to me. I cannot be close to my father's family for that reason. None of his siblings were even at his funeral.

For myself and my siblings we all live very separate lives because of my step-mother. She caused enough riffs in our lives that seperated all of us. We do e-mail each other from time-to-time but we will never be close. It is just what happens to a dysfunctional family. I can only hope my son will be able to give his children what my husband and I gave him. Then I know I did right by my child and I will always feel blessed.



"Who Cares?" by Joy Jenkins

"I told you not to come in here!" Cal shouted. His real name was California, the name of the state we lived in. He's my dad, but ever since my mom's death and hardships, he turned to drink. Whenever he wasn't drunk, which rarely happened, he would crawl around, begging for a case of beer. But rigtht now, he was too drunk to remember that it was my job to clean out the attic. "Cal, it's my job to clean out this place." but I only made it through "Cal" before I felt the sting of a whip on my back." Stay still both you mutts." He was talking to not only me, but my dog, Tam. He tied me down and whipped me so much that the scars that were already there were ripped open. After he was done, with a strike to Tam, he stomped out shouting," If yer tryin' to get close to yer ma, don't even try." My mom had been expecting another child, but was murdered a couple of days before it was supposed to be born. He never talked about her, but when he did, he always said," I'm glad some one killed her. She always complained, was the laziest person ever, and was completly usless." I was 3 when she was killed, and she the most hard-working person ever to me. But before she was murdered, she seemed like she thought she was being haunted. She didn't trust anyone except Cal and me. I brock out of the memories I barely remembered and was brought back to reality when Tam interupted me with his whimpering that made you want to kill whoever hurt him. I unwraped on of the cloths I wore on my wrist and pushed down to soak up the blood on his back. I always kept rags tied around my wrist in case Tam or I got whipped, which happened quite often so they were all blood-red. Tam stood up and showed me that he wanted to go to our room by pretending to sleep. I lied on my bed, or what was supposed to be my bed: blankets. Tam and I Shared a little bed that was about as big as a mediem sized desk. With me being 13 and Tam being 6 months old, that wasn't very big. I gripped his furry neck and then sddeny he came up with a deep growl from the back of his throat. Strangley, it calmed me. Then things flooded into my mind before I found out what dangerous thing Tam was growling at: memories that I barly recalled raced across my mind.