Writing to Those Who are Crushed and Hurting

by Martin Wiles @LinesFromGod

I had read many papers, but the crushing she described stood out.

Unfortunately, teachers don’t always have the opportunity to get involved in the details of their students’ lives. And I hadn’t in hers. She was a new student who had transferred in from another school. I rarely saw her talking to her peers, and I’m not sure she had said one word to me in the first nine weeks after she arrived at our school. But then, I read her story.

The Hands of a Mother

by Sarah Van Diest @SarahVanDiest

Mothers’ hands are often full. They hold bottles and diapers, dance costumes and permission slips, baseball caps and treasured, half-eaten, slightly moist cookies. Her hands are almost never empty. An empty hand can do many things, though. And sometimes mothers wish they had three or four. But an empty hand may sometimes feel odd, almost wrong, as if something important has been forgotten or dropped, as if something is missing.