Poverty’s merciless grip tightened around my family as yet another harvest yielded too little. Hunger’s familiar ache settled into my bones, as into my parents’ tired faces—weathered soldiers on a long campaign to provide for their children.
Books were my escape. Within their pages I tread lands of plenty, oblivious to the rumbling of my stomach. My parents noticed my passion for learning, and the faraway look in my eye after reading—a glimpse of the better life they longed for me to have.
Though they had little, my father said, they would give all so I might grasp what for them would remain ever out of reach: education.
Through back-breaking labour by my father and a penny-pinching economy by my mother, they saved enough to send me to school. To finally have my fill of books felt like a miracle—one shattered when illness claimed my mother’s life soon after.
The light left my father’s eyes with her passing, and as the cost of living buried all but our grief, the door of opportunity seemed sealed once more.
But my father would not let hope depart us entirely. Nor would uncles and aunts, who took my siblings and I into their homes and their hearts. “Your mother sacrificed everything so you might have this chance,” they said. “We will not let that sacrifice be in vain.”
Galvanized by their resolve and cherished memory of my mother’s dream for me, I pressed on through university—guided by her weathered hands in mine, and the new light of love that sustained us. The day I graduated, I looked to the sky and whispered, “Thank you, Mother. We made it.”
That dark season bore lessons writ in tears yet to lead me into the light. We need not weather the night alone; limitations deemed insurmountable may fall when clasping hands with indomitable love.
So now I work to lift others as I was lifted—paying the hope that sustained me forward in my mother’s name. She showed that our destiny need not be defined by what life denies us. Sometimes, it is defined by who holds us through to the dawn.
To be continued…
A short true life-story ♥️
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