Loading ...My mother always tells me I’m the only person she knows who would see a rainbow and call her to say “go outside, and look up”, and that she has never known anyone else who can fall into awful circumstances and always manage to come up smelling like a rose. I suppose she’s right…I always try to find the silver lining on the cloud.
When I was 18 years old, I was technically homeless. I lived in a real Native American tee pee for six months. I fished for my dinner most nights to save money. Now, many people will read that and think “That’s horrible!” And I would have completely agreed with them…at first.
In the beginning I was miserable. We had no phone and I was too embarrassed to face any of my friends. Then I became curious about how Native Americans lived and began reading about how to make a bow and arrows, do bead-work, make beef jerky, tan a hide with tea (although I never actually tried it!), and so many more things I couldn’t come close to listing them all. I “trained” the squirrels, chipmunks and birds that lived nearby to come when I whistled every morning so I could feed them. I even had the pleasure of giving two Girl Scout troops tours of the tee pee, taught them how it functioned and about some of the ways of life of Native Americans. Over time I realized I was actually happy, and living in the tee pee has become one of my most cherished memories.
I became unemployed a little over a year and a half ago, at the beginning of one of the worst economic downturns in history. I applied for every job I could think of, but no one was hiring. Remembering the tee pee, and how what could have been a horrible time in my life had become such a wonderful experience, I became determined to find ways to make the fact that I was at home every day a good thing. I enrolled my son in a wonderful preschool that he would not have been able to attend if I was working full-time and started a home based business.
If I were allowed only one thing to teach my son, it would be to find the silver lining on every cloud, make the best of any situation, and learn to dance in the rain.
