My story is about resilience. I didn't choose this word infact it chose me.

I was 21 when I met the love of my life, the first man I gave my all to. We immediately started a family as we feared that our biological clocks were running a race we might never see the end to. We were deep in love and we had child after child, after child, although there were strains to that sort of life, but if given a choice, we would relive it all over again.

I was 6 weeks pregnant when the police came to my mother's door informing me of his death and that he was involved in a hit and run accident a few meters away from our home. I couldn't believe it at first, but upon approaching the scene of the accident my body shook uncontrollably and tears burst out of my eyes like water bursting from a worn out dam. My husband died that day leaving me with 4 school children, 1 toddler, renta, food, bills, and an unborn baby to tend to. My mother in-law stepped in to take care of the funeral and to also claim all the donations that we received from family, friends and colleagues for her use, and left us high and dry to go back to her luxurious life in America .

The drunk driver who killed my husband bribed the officers that were investigating the case and somehow all the evidence disappeared and he was released from jail for only 9 days in remand.

Some days I would be sitting on my front porch watching my children play out on our yard and wondering what I was going to feed them for we had not even a grain of salt in our kitchen...... And the driver passes by with his wife and children looking so happy and content from all the happy meals they just had and he looks up at me with a half smile seeing the brokenness on my face as I was slowly losing my grasp on hope.

I couldn't be stuck in my past, I was grieving, I was pregnant and I was unemployed, yet I still have to provide and bring home the bacon in any way I can. I turned to God constantly and he blessed me, not much materialistically, but spiritually, mentally, emotionally and faithfully. Somehow someway the rent was paid and my children were fed, even if we ate 1 meal a day, I never received a complaint from any of my beautiful babies.

Days turned into months, months into years and my unborn son was turning 3 when I met him. He was a close family friend and once he learned that my husband has passed, he would make every effort to visit us with whatever he could give us to carry on another day . Then one very auspicious day he couldn't turn his back on us anymore, he was a young handsome man with a soaring career in Engineering and he would throw that all away for my hand . I clearly saw how I was blessed and how God distinctively decided that from a coal, the most precious and rarest of all stones would be hid. And I was finally able to smile with content and happiness, not from any happy meal but from my role as a woman, the role to fold when it is time to fold and rise when it is time to rise, the role to distinguish the girl from the queen embedded within each and every one of us WOMEN and how I am VERY PROUD to be one .

Now I have given my husband 2 beautiful daughters and a handsome full of fire young son and a whole spiral of activity in the medical world, but that's a story for another day.