Better to Give and Receive!

Each year my family adopts a woman and her children from a local women’s shelter as our “foster family”. We surprise them with a Christmas that they didn’t expect.    You see most often they leave their apartments or their homes with what they have on their back and arrive homeless, hopeless and empty to the shelter for refuge.

So, on Black Friday my whole family hit the sales with military precision.  Members are armed with their list, my sister and I usually have the kitchen, and off we go at 4:00 o’clock in the morning to get the amazing deals to outfit a new home!  The list usually consists of towels, microwave, pans, dishes, and silverware and such.

What is the most startling of the requested items is that typically the children ask for us to purchase gifts for their mother and not for them and if they do ask, the list contains crayons, pj’s and socks, more necessities than indulgences.

Shouldn’t these items be a given in someone’s life?

During my journey to create our family I found myself so bitter and I was lacking the connection to the intended spirit behind our family ritual.  Instead, I was focused on the fact that even someone in the dire situation could conceive and I couldn’t!  How crazy was that?

My negative thoughts had gone to extreme and I was void of gratitude, well at least momentarily.

Then I realized something, we are all here facing similar feelings and life’s emotions but our individual “movies” of our lives are different.  The families that arrive at the shelter are hopeless and in crisis… Fertility issues can bring similar feelings, hopelessness and a personal life crisis.

What our fertility journey helped me to see more clearly is that we are all more alike than we are different.

What helped me so many years ago and still helps me today is that old adage “it is better to give than to receive” because the gift of helping that woman and her children helped me recognized the parts of me hidden in the darkness, my underbelly of resentment, envy and a hardened heart.

What I received then and will receive this year will out weight the amount of energy, time or financial investment in their family.  It is realizing that when you help someone else you are actually helping yourself!

During this time I ask you to be open to shift the energy from you and your current life struggle and help empower another woman or family that is perhaps feeling similarly through a different life situation.

Here is a list of organization that focuses on empowering women, children and families.   Take a peak and the contrast will be apparent.

Women for Women:  http://www.womenforwomen.org/
Heifer International: http://www.heifer.org
Food Bank of CNY: http://www.foodbankcny.org/