“You were a very pretty girl. You look like you had no worries.”
“Oh. Do I?” Jane laughs. She is showing photos from her childhood to her new friend. “At that age nobody believed I would be a well known psychologist. I would have an honorary degree from important universities. Nobody believed I would be giving motivational talks all over the country and abroad. Nobody believed I would be a mother of three happy children. Everybody said I would end up in the gutter.”
“Why did they say that?”
“In this photo I am 18. I was freshly released from prison for children. They didn’t keep me there because I was too old to stay. From then on, I lived on the streets and slept in abandoned houses. I had nowhere to go and nobody to ask for help.”
“Wow! No way! How come you are so successful now?”
“I guess I am lucky,” she says and puts the photos back into the box. “Let’s do something else. Let’s go for a walk. I love being outdoors. It charges me up.”
Originally posted 2020-05-21 19:22:00.