Chicken Soup for the Unsinkable Soul
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"You don't love Sandra the same way you love Aaron," Diane observed mildly one afternoon, and I had to admit that she was right.
"I just need more time," I protested lamely.
I was ashamed of my feelings, and may God forgive me, I was ashamed of my little girl. I felt embarrassed to be seen with her. "Oh, she's so cute," people would coo, and I always felt like snatching them by the collar and shouting back: "You don't really think that! You think my daughter is ugly! You probably think she belongs in an institution!"
My anger soured into sadness, and my sadness faded into apathy and distance. Even taking walks or playing games with Aaron lost its thrill because it always reminded me of all the things Sandra could never do.
I went through the motions of caring for Sandra, but I grew increasingly hopeless and detached. "This is the way it's always going to be," I sighed one day about a year ago as I settled my two-year-old daughter into her high
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chair for lunch. I spooned baby food into a dish and wiped away tears of despair. I felt utterly empty inside.
But as I approached Sandra's high chair, she tilted her head and studied me with her large blue eyes. And then she reached out both tiny arms and hugged me with all the force she could muster, as if to say, "Daddy, I'll hug your sadness away."
I returned Sandra's hug and cried all the harder. Only now I wasn't crying from sadness. I was crying because my little girl had shown me what it felt like to be loved unconditionally. For a brief moment our roles had been reversed. Sandra had given me the love I had been so long unable to give to her.
I had grieved because my daughter wasn't perfect, but who was I to expect perfection when I had such a long way to go myself? Who was I to cry for what might have been, instead of accepting and cherishing my daughter for the very special being she is and will always be?
Sandra taught me how to open my heart and give my love willingly and without expectations. I'd spent so much time and energy taking care of Sandra's needs, I'd all but forgotten to take the time to simply enjoy being with her. I don't make that mistake anymore.
These days I read to both of my children at bedtime, and Saturday mornings you'll find all three of us curled up on the couch watching cartoons together. And whenever I'm making Sandra laugh with funny faces, or playing ball with her or hugging one of her dolls, it never fails to occur to me: Now that I've finally opened my heart to Sandra, every day she fills it to the brim with joy and love.
Mike Cottrill
As told to Bill Holton
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Like Me
I went to my dad, and I said to him,
There's a new kid who's come to my school.
He's different from me and he isn't too cool.
No, he's nothing at all like me, like me,
No, he's nothing at all like me.
He runs in a funnyish jerkyish way,
And he never comes first in a race.
Sometimes he forgets which way is first base,
And he's nothing at all like me, like me,
No, he's nothing at all like me.
He studies all day in a separate class,
And they say that it's called Special Ed.
And sometimes I don't understand what he's said,
And he's nothing at all like me, like me,
No, he's nothing at all like me.
His face looks kind of different from mine,
And his talking is sometimes slow.
And it makes me feel funny and there's one thing I know;
He is not at all like me, like me,
No, he's nothing at all like me!
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And my father said, "Son, I want you to think
When you meet someone different and new
That he may seem a little bit strange, it's true,
But he's not very different from you, from you,
No, he's not very different from you."
Well I guess, I admitted, I've looked at his face;
When he's left out of games, he feels bad.
And when other kids tease him, I can see he's so sad.
I guess that's not so different from me, from me,
No, that's not very different from me.
And when we're in Music, he sure loves to sing.
And he sings just like me, right out loud.
When he gets his report card, I can tell he feels proud.
And that's not very different from me, from me,
No, that's not very different from me.
And I know in the lunchroom he has lots of fun;
He loves hot dogs and ice cream and fries.
And he hates to eat spinach and that's not a surprise,
'Cause that's not very different from me, from me,
No, that's not very different from me.
And he's always so friendly, he always says hi,
And he waves and he calls out my name.
And he'd like to be friends and get into a game,
Which is not very different from me, from me,
No, I guess that's not different from me.
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And his folks really love him, I saw them at school
I remember on Open School Night
They were smiling and proud and they hugged him real tight,
And that's not very different from me, from me,
No, that's not very different from me.
So I said to my dad, "Hey, you know that new kid?"
Well, I've really been thinking a lot.
Some things are different . . . and some things are not . . .
But mostly he's really like me, like me,
Yes, my new friend's . . . a lot . . . like me.
Emily Perl Kingsley
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6
ON COURAGE AND DETERMINATION
You can't be afraid of stepping on toes if you want to go dancing.
Lewis Freedman
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The Best Advice I Ever Had
Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fearnot absence of fear.
Mark Twain
Life was just about perfect, I told myself, feeling immensely thankful that fate had been so good to me. Truly I was sitting on top of the world. I had been the star of a hit musical revue on the Paris stage for a year. I'd been signed to make four movies at an important studio. Best of all, I had scores of good friends whom I saw often.
That was in 1922. I did not know then how soon all my good luck was to end.
Looking back later on what happened at Les Bougges Parisiens that evening, I realized there had been warning signs. For months I had been working too hard, sleeping too little, and exhaustion occasionally caught up with mea terrible heaviness of spirit, a draining of morale. I had ignored it, however. ''Momentary fatigue," I would say, and move out before the footlights, forcing the gaiety that the audience awaited.
This night, however, was to be different. At a long
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lunch with friends, I'd foolishly indulged in too much rich food and too many wines. I had taken a nap, expecting to be myself again before curtain time. But at the theater my brain still seemed to be on fire. I had never felt this strange dizziness before, and I tried to dismiss it as I waited for my opening cue. When the cue came, though, the words seemed to reach me from far away. I responded with my customary linesor so I thought. But something obviously had gone wrong. I could see it in my fellow actor's eyes.
When I answered his second speech, I saw surprise turn to alarm, and I realized with horror that I had replied to both his cues with lines not from the first act but the third! Desperately I tried to get back on the track, but my mind was now suddenly a jumble. I was hopelessly lost.
The actor with whom I played the scene covered up for me beautifully, whispering the opening words of each of my lines, as did others in subsequent scenes. Somehow the evening came to an end with only those backstage the wiser.
The r
est of the cast laughed off the episode as a temporary upset. I wanted to believe them, but I was badly shaken. What if tonight was only the beginning? An actor who couldn't remember his linesthis could mean the end of a career which had brought me from rundown Montmartre cafés where I had sung for food to the finest theaters in Paris and a salary of thousands of dollars a week.
The next day I went over and over my lines, rehearsing speeches and songs I had known perfectly for a year. But that night the panic returned, and with it a nightmare existence I was destined to suffer for months. Onstage I found myself unable to concentrate on the lines I must say at the moment; instead, my mind would race to those which lay far ahead, trying to ready itself in advance. I
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hesitated, stammered; the debonair ease that had been my trademark as an entertainer was gone. And then came attacks of vertigo, when the floor would whirl up to meet me in a dizzying spin. I was afraid I might actually fall in the middle of a scene.
I visited one specialist after another. Nervous exhaustion, they said, and tried injections, electric massages, special diets. Nothing worked. People began to gossip openly that my performances were slipping. I tried to avoid my friends, certain that they must be aware that something was wrong.
With pressure building up inside me, a nervous breakdown seemed inevitable. It came. And with it came a conviction that I was really through.
The doctor ordered me to a rest home in Saujon, a tiny village in southwest France. The world of Maurice Chevalier had crumbled, I told myself, and nowhere would the pieces ever be put together again. But I reckoned without the wisdom and gentle patience of the graying, intelligent doctor who was awaiting me in Saujon. With my dossier before him, Dr. Robert Dubois outlined a simple treatment of rest and relaxation.
"It will do no good," I said wearily. "I'm beaten."
But in the weeks that followed I took the long, solitary walks on country roads that Doctor Dubois suggested, and I found a certain peace in the beauty of nature, which has never left me. There came finally a day when Doctor Dubois assured me that the damage to my nervous system had been repaired. I wanted to believe him, but I could not. The inner turmoil did seem to be gone, but I still had no confidence in myself.
Then one afternoon the doctor asked me to entertain a small group at a holiday celebration in the village. At the thought of facing an audienceany audienceI felt the blood drain from my head. I refused abruptly.
"I know you can do it, Maurice," he said, "but you must
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prove it to yourself. This is a good place to start."
I was terrified. What guarantee would there be that my mind would not go blank again?
"There are no guarantees," Doctor Dubois said slowly. And then he went on with words that I can hear as clearly today as thirty-seven years ago: "Don't be afraid to be afraid."
I was not sure what he meant until he explained.
"You are afraid to step onto a stage again, so you tell yourself you're finished. But fear is never a reason for quitting; it's only an excuse. When a brave man encounters fear, he admits itand goes on despite it."
He paused, waiting for my reply. There was a long moment before it came. I would try.
I returned to my room trembling at what lay ahead. I spent hours of torture during the next few days going over the words of the songs I would sing. Then came the final trial: when I stood in the wings of the tiny auditorium, waiting to go on.
For an instant, as panic mounted in me, I was tempted to turn and run. But the doctor's words echoed in my ear: Don't be afraid to be afraid. And then suddenly the amateur orchestra was playing my cue, and I moved onstage and began to sing.
Each word I sang and spoke that evening was anguish. But not once did my memory play me tricks. When I walked offstage to the sound of enthusiastic applause, I felt a triumphant joy welling up inside. Tonight I had not conquered fear; I had simply admitted it and gone on despite it. And the scheme had worked.
There was a road back after all. Probably I would never quite regain my old assurance, I told myself, for what had happened once could always happen again. But I could live with it now, and I was determined to prove it.
The path to Paris was not easy. I chose to begin it in Melun, only a few miles from the French capital. I selected
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a small movie theater, located the startled manager and offered to sing for a sum so low he thought I was joking. When I convinced him that he was helping me toward my comeback, he agreed, and I began a pattern that was to take me to city after city for many weeks. Each performance was an agonizing strain.
"So you are afraid," I would whisper to myself every time. "So what?"
I said that same thing when, at last, I waited for my cue in a magnificent new theater in Paris, willing finally to face the challenge of a Parisian appearance. The curtain fell that night on the beginning of a new world for me. Applause shook the theater. I answered calls for encores until I could physically do no more. Success, which I had once had and lost, was mine again.
Since that night, for almost four decades, I have gone on doing the work I love, playing for audiences everywhere. There have been many moments of fear, for the gentle doctor of Saujon was right: There are no guarantees. But being frightened has never again made me want to quit.
How often has fear been the barricade at which we have all halted in our tracks! We can see what we want beyond, but rather than admit we are afraid and go ahead nonetheless, we so frequently invent excuses and turn back in defeat.
But my own experience has taught me this: If we wait for that perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive. Mountains may not be climbed, races won or lasting happiness achieved.
Maurice Chevalier
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The Victim's Voice
A frightened woman speaks haltingly to Julie Alban, a thirty-one-year-old deputy prosecutor. Julie nods sympathetically as Lisa describes the night her boyfriend punched her in the eye. It was one blow too many in their turbulent relationship: For the first time, Lisa called the police. Now she must decide whether to speak out against the father of her babya man she says she still lovesor go home and forgive him once again.
Julie's advice is firm. "You don't want to stay with your boyfriend unless he gets counseling," she says, leaning forward in her wheelchair. "I'm very familiar with domestic violence. I'm in this chair because my ex-boyfriend tried to kill me."
Jarred out of her own dilemma, Lisa asks, "Oh my God, what happened?"
"I was breaking up with him," Julie answers, "and he shot me in the back."
That bullet shattered Julie's spine, paralyzing her below the waist. But she did not let it shatter her spirit. Instead, she used her anger, pain and frustration as fuel to launch a legal career and a personal crusade against domestic
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violence. Since joining the Long Beach district attorney's office in 1993, she has prosecuted thousands of domestic violence cases, handling as many as twenty-five a daymostly on behalf of women battered by their husbands and boyfriends. (Only fifteen of these cases have gone to trial. Most defendants plead no contest, then undergo counseling.) Amazingly, although Julie is a tough advocate, she is not a wild-eyed avenger.
Julie once enjoyed a gilded life among the California elite as the daughter of a wealthy orthopedic surgeon and a former teacher. In the fall of 1987, during her senior year at university, Julie began dating a childhood playmate named Brad. Brad was then twenty-three, a one-time national junior tennis champion who was literally the boy next door.
At first, Julie felt she had found a soul mate. "Brad was so sensitive," she says. "He would cut roses from his parents' garden and bring them to my mother. He adored my father and even asked if he could call him Dad."